Where am I up to as an "Action Researcher"

 Yesterday at our Kāhui Ako (CoL teachers) meeting, Russell Burt shared a thought invoking message which really supported pulliing me back into the reality that research as a teacher isn't going to look the same as research you may do in a university. We are, what he called, "Action Researchers." It is important in our jobs as teachers that if we find something that is working, we don't withhold this from other children (as you might do with a 'control' group in other forms of research). If something works, why wouldn't we give the opportunity to ALL students!? 

I am in a position where, since I am not in a classroom, I am not in a position to see a whole class of children. However, I am seeing a group of 14 children for an hour a week. These children are all getting equal opportunities in what they get when they come to see me.

Russell's korero made me ask myself whether what I am doing is beneficial to the children in front of me. My answer to this question is, YES. I believe that what I am doing is supporting these children with confidence and acceleration of their maths learning. I am using a strategy which is known to support acceleration for children in reading in our Manaiakalani schools: Mileage. Mileage in reading refers to giving the children lots of opportunities to read. Mileage in the maths sense, and with my inquiry group looks like the students being given lots of opportunities to apply their understanding in a variety of ways.

Is 'believing' this really enough? No. As teachers, we still need evidence to show that what we are doing is benefiting the children. In our meeting yesterday, I realised that I had such a focus on ensuring I had good pre and post data, that I hadn't put much thought into the formative assessment and data gathering throughout the process.

So how am I going to do this?

From now, I am going to make sure I gather up the work that each child is doing from week-to-week. This will support me in knowing whether there is an improvement in how students are solving the problems and showing their working compared to earlier in the intervention.

Thinking about the affordances of Learn Create Share that cause accelerated shift

 The affordances of Learn-Create-Share that cause accelerated shift are:

- Engagement
- Teaching conversations
- Cognitive challenge
- Visibility
- Scaffolding

Manaiakalani Research Presentation: Manaiakalani Hui: 26.08.16 - Rebecca Jesson, Aaron Wilson, Woolf Fisher Research Centre.

I analysed the intervention that I am implementing in relation to this list. This is what I found:

Engagement: The students are all engaged with the learning. They are keen to give the problem solving a go, knowing that they will get supported after about 15 minutes with more information to help them solve the problem.

Teaching conversations: I have been having lots of conversations with teachers who also teach these children to ensure that what I am doing supports what they are doing back in the classroom.

Cognitive challenge: The children are definitely being cognitively challenged with the problems. They are all being given opportunities to extend their thinking.

Visibility: This is an area I think I am currently lacking in. The problems we have been looking at are added to a google slide which is visible for the children however the learning that goes with the problems is not being made rewindable and visible to the children. I need to think of ways I can make the learning more visible and rewindable.

Scaffolding: The way I am structuring the lessons is a good balance of allowing the children a chance to grapple with the problems whilst also scaffolding them through the process and new learning.

The Learning Progression Framework - Where are these students at?

 I decided to look into the Learning Progression Framework to figure out where these students were at at the beginning of implementation of the intervention, and where I would like them to be when I re-assess them at the end of the year.

I focussed on the Multiplicative thinking progressions as this is the focus of my inquiry. "This progression focuses on students' ability to think multiplicatively as they solve multiplication, division, and proportional problems involving an extended range of whole numbers, decimals, fractions, ratios, and percentages, and in a range of contexts." (Learning Progression Framework). Note the section of this quote that I have highlighted in red.

Hopefully through this, students will learn problem solving strategies which they can then utilise back in their classroom when learning in the other areas of maths and statistics.

When looking through the 9 progressions under Multiplicative thinking, all the students in this group are working at progression 3 or above. Most are working at progression 4. No students are confidently working beyond progression 5 yet.

Progression 3: Confidently uses skip counting, repeated addition or knowledge or doubles and understands that the groups are equal.

Progression 4: Starting to use multiplication facts. Knows it can be sets or groups of equal sizes. May use trial and error with known facts.

Progression 5: Using mix of place value partitioning and times tables facts. May be able to use multiplication facts to solve division problems. Can solve fraction problems with times tables facts.

None of the students are confidently working at Progression 6 yet. At this progression, students need to be working with "whole numbers, decimals, fractions, ratios and percentages..."