Navigating An Unexpected Numeracy Challenge

As I anticipated at the start of this 7 week contract, teaching Maths was challenging. I always felt like I was half a step ahead of some students, on par with other students and even behind some! I hadn't learnt about or practiced multiplying fractions and exponents for probably 13 years, so felt incredibly rusty. I was lucky to have a PE teacher in my office that also taught 8Maths to help me out though. I would've really struggled without him!

I was asked to complete a mini inquiry/professional development plan for the time I was at Plympton. My HOD and her PLG had developed a vocab 'test' for students as part of their PDPs. The purpose of this was for students to demonstrate the key terms/language they understood at the beginning of a unit, identify areas of development (between the teacher and the student) and then complete a post test at the end (to hopefully see progression!). I thought that this could be a great little tool for me and my Maths students. I liked that this would help students to self-identify their next steps and help me to plan for differentiation. See below the table that I gave students 6 weeks ago and again this week.

After the students did all they could on the pretest of the vocab, we went through some of the possible answers for each box as a class. Anything they'd left blank or were incorrect I asked them to add a correct answer in a different colour. This then became their study guide for the next 6 weeks (during class time and at home). The kids could refer to this when they were studying at home or when they were learning/completing practice questions at school. In hindsight I should have come up with a way to make this digital or actually given them glue to stick their now study guides into their books because unfortunately throughout the unit a lot of kids lost them! Nevertheless, there were still many who referred to the guide throughout the term.

Majority of students struggled to make real life connections during the pretest. They struggled to see the connection between the terms and how they can apply them into the world around them. As a result, I made sure throughout my lessons to include a variety of scenarios that applied the terms. We had vineyards, stores, school systems, stationary, orchards, birthday parties and whatever else popped into my head while I overheard the kids chatting and while I was planning. I actually really enjoyed coming up with these scenarios because they helped me to recognise and explain how and why the terms are relevant day to day. I certainly empathise with the question "when am I going to use this in the real world?" So, I tried really hard to answer this question before the kids asked!

Earlier this week the students completed their 'posttest'. I was so proud how many of them took this seriously to see their own progress since I started with them 6+ weeks ago. Conversely, some unfortunately did not take this opportunity with open arms (many of who were also the students who'd lost their pretest). To be honest this process also demonstrated clearly to me the pressure the kids feel when they hear the word 'test'. I noticed several students this week decided that they would rather not try than get things 'wrong', even when this was just an indicator for their learning and the fear of grades was removed! There seriously needs to be a shift away from kids thinking grades make or break them. It was sad how many of them thought it was better to not try, than it was to find out where the gaps were in their learning. I hope in my next gig I can help to change this.

When they'd completed their posttest, I asked the students to complete this mini reflection (they also had completed a similar one at the beginning of the unit for me to compare to). It was interesting for me to see their progression (which I could also send to the teacher who I have replaced over the last 7 weeks), but of most interest was the comments they made. Check out alongside some of the responses the students gave to the question 'What has this process shown you and why?'

One skill I developed throughout this contract was my attempt to differentiate learning. I very quickly realised there was a major difference between the levels of understanding in my Maths class. I was genuinely surprised how far apart the top end were from the bottom end. Although it became time consuming, for most of my lessons I actually had 3 levels of tasks/activities. They all helped students to meet/work towards the learning intention of the lesson but were different levels of difficulty. I organised the physical class into 3 spaces; need 1:1 help with the teacher, feeling ok but need more practice and feeling confident and ready to be challenged. The kids were able to choose where they wanted to go and could move between the groups/spaces each lesson. I've had great feedback from the kids about this flexibility and choice between their activities, and I feel it helped many students to self-regulate, so it's definitely something I will keep in my teaching toolbox!

Overall, this gig has pushed me out of my comfort zone, but this opportunity to teach Maths has increased my confidence to try new things and attempt to include different levels of learning. Here's to the close of another chapter. I can't wait to be a reliever next term as a bit of a change of scene!