Something Needs to Change

"Change in attitude is the key to all positive and long lasting change."

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What is it that you can change and improve on?

Kia ora again readers,

On Friday, we had the first teacher only day during the school term that I can remember!
Kelly Sheppard came in for our first PD session with all the staff at Hornby Primary.

With the short DMIC course which I attended last year I had a head start with accepting and understanding the heart of the DMIC pedagogy.



Kelly was emphatic that this way of learning is just mathematics. We might identify this pedagogy as DMIC in teacher jargon but for the children in the classroom this is maths. Here are some thoughts that I took away:

• Results published from 2018 the national Monitoring study found that in maths 27% of Māori students where achieving at standard in year 8. Pasifika results for year 8 is at 24%. NZ pakeha students sit at around 44%.

• What is deficit theorising? It is focusing on the negative and identifying what is not there. (ie. This child is cannot count to 20. They have no ___ from home.) It is up to us to make sure that we are doing something about this. It is easy to focus on the negative.

• It is often difficult for the Pakeha children to understand that they have a culture. They see ethnicity as a culture. It is not. Good teaching is about identifying with a child's own culture. Who they are at home and their collective knowledge and experience. There is such a disconnect between home life and school life especially for Pasifika students. But we see this reflected in all students. Who are they in themselves? What is their culture and their knowledge that they can involve in their learning and in their maths?

• As teachers it is our values that affect our children's learning. It is also values that impact on their learning. We need to teach children the skills to work with anybody. Teaching must be inclusive - not exclusive of anybody. It must be culturally sustaining for the students in your classroom. The students should be informing the next step of teaching.

• Use the cultural narrative from the Taumutu Runanga to develop rich maths tasks.

• To be good at maths you need to be good at mathematical practices. Instead of saying 'You got it right!' say 'You used these good mathematical practices.'

• When working out in a group - every single person in your group needs to be able to explain - if you don't understand, ask a question.

• Choose the group that used the highest order thinking to share second. (ie. Use the drawing and additive thinking first and then get a group to share their multiplicative thinking.)

• The whole group comes up when sharing - group accountability.

• Ask: whose responsible for your learning? If a child is sitting there being a passenger say: 'Your group is doing this. Today I want you to share so what are you going to do and ask your group to help prep your sharing.

• As a group is presenting they stop after each step and ask: are there any questions?

• The  teacher needs to facilitate this. Stop - ask the class. If there are no questions the teacher says, 'Oh yay! No questions so everyone understands... so can you repeat back what they said in your own words... ? Ok I'm glad you're clarifying and your're not sure. This means we can all learn from this.

• Use a misconception as a teaching point. Prep the group first. "You have a misconception I'm going to get you to share because we need to change this and we can all learn from this."

• Teach at the end - If all the students solve by addition teach them how to multiply.

• A cultural problem is about one child's life outside of school.

• Kids need to be engaged in productive struggle - raise the expectation for learning - avoid any dependency on the teacher. You know you are doing it well when you can stand back and listen when the children are doing group work.

• Teach only half the class the other half work on an independent task. Set the norms- one pen. The thinking and strategy needs to be talked about before being written down. Group activity - only 15 mins  - large group discussion. The teaching time is the most important at the end.

• For senior independent tasks - then the children individually need to solve the same problem that they did the day before and record it in multiple ways in the maths books - it is important that they are quiet and have a purposeful task that supports the teaching from the weeks lesson.

• You're not just telling the teacher anymore - its a collective environment. When students first start to share record on the board and clarify - this shows the students what is expected and what recording an idea looks like.

• Get the children to have a discussion first - do they all understand the strategy that they are using. What strategy do they want to record and how are they going to do that? Can they all explain it now?

These are just some thoughts that I took away from the session. If you have experienced DMIC before or just have some ideas or feedback to offer please share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Kind regards,

Alethea

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash