Inquiry - hunches/focussing

29/04/17 - INQUIRY - HUNCHES/FOCUSSING

I have used the questions from Janelle's slides to help organise this stage of the inquiry process.

Hunches:

What’s leading to this situation?

My main hunch is that we don't spend enough of maths time 'talking' about maths. All three of the children I interviewed struggled to articulate clearly what they enjoyed, found difficult and wanted to learn. The children focussed on numeracy aspects of maths as well as very over arching subjects like 'times'.

How are WE contributing to it?

As teachers I feel we teach maths in a very 'bitsy' way. We tend to teach one strategy for a few weeks then move on to a different domain or strategy, filling in the gaps with activities to practise the taught strategy. Compared to literacy and inquiry teaching this is a very linear and pre-set way of teaching. In literacy we understand and value the benefit of integration and authentic contexts. I feel in my practice at the moment I struggle to do this in maths. So far the examples I've seen and used myself are making word problems 'authentic' by adding students names or likes/dislikes into the problem.

Focusing:

1. Where are we going to concentrate our energies?

Maths is broad. Direct focus for each child may be slightly different. E.g. instant recall, using materials, add-sub...

For children with lower maths ability (most of our priority learners) I think maths needs to become 'real'. This could be through using more materials, create real-world, project based problems in which maths skills are learned or talking more about maths and the 'why' of maths.

2. What will make the most substantive difference?

If this improves, this will impact other areas/skills

Although basic facts and general understanding of maths concepts needs to be improved for these learners I'm not sure the numeracy project and our current approach is working. Being able to understand, interpret problems and apply the relevant knowledge and skills will benefit all areas of learning.

3. What is manageable? What can we realistically achieve

At this stage switching programmes completely to a project based way of working would require a lot of time, research and thinking to organise. I think the most manageable way is to spend some time looking for a 'real' problem that needs to be solved then working out the mathematic knowledge taught through this. I did this last year with our topic around sustainability by re-imagining the reserve using geometry, measurement and graphing. I need to find something like this with a predominantly numeracy focus!

4. Do we need to collect further evidence? With a narrowed focus, do I need more info?

I think this is covered in the question above.

5. What are the students strengths? Increase engagement, personalise the learning

These students enjoy visual, creative tasks.

6. What changes do we want to see? What will be the best outcomes for this learner?

I want the students to have a better grasp of all the different aspects of maths and why maths is important to understand. I would also like them to be able to see the relationship between different areas of maths. For example in order to create tally charts (stats) you need to be able to count in 5s (number) and then accurately measure a table to record your results (measurement). Currently we teach all of these things however our learners only think we are learning how to record tally marks!