NZL One - Two - Three

What do you do for students who arrive with significant academic gaps? How you will identify them? How you will you know you have made a difference? This post highlights a recent discovery that will help  address question 1, that is a book written by Suzy Pepper Rollins,   Learning in the Fast lane, 8 ways to put ALL students on the road to achieve academic success. Suzy argues that we spend too much time focussing on  filling the gaps rather than  moving forward. In otherwords we spend far too much time remediating rather than accelerating students.  " instruction that aims to catch up lagging students or fix all their past problems ends up providing classroom experiences that are not compelling, rigorous, or engaging. Such instruction may inadvertently widen rather than close achievement gaps. " How do students feel? sourced from http://cpl.org.nz/Our-services/Accelerated-Literacy-Learning-ALL/Northern-region A colleague ...

A new year is synonymous with New Years resolutions that are never followed through. This year I came across the #onewordtrend2017. Rather than a a new years resolution i would find a New Years word. One of my words for 2017 will be resilience.  Resilience because I believe it is one of the most important things we need to teach our students  Resilience as the new PLD environment means navigating uncharted waters. Jo Boaler's setting up positive norms in the maths classroom offers a kete of ideas for building belief and developing resilience in students.  In the document these 7 key ideas are shared with supporting strategies to help set students up for a year of successful learning 1. Everyone Can Learn Math to the Highest Levels. Encourage students to believe in themselves. There is no such thing as a “math” person. Everyone can reach the highest levels they want to, with hard work.  2. Mistakes are Valuable Mistakes grow your bra...

The personal financial management unit standards have been reviewed and are now found under Financial Capability. Read the review here What's happening in NZ Schools around Financial Capability ? To find out I attended Sarah's workshop at the BOPMA conference day:  At Sarah's school they have trades & services academies however there was still a group of students who were not well catered for.    I ntroducing..... Maths for Life, a Level 2 course is based on the Financial Capability standards. Maths for Life students completed the following standards from t he framework to credential their learning US 28094 – produce a balanced budget US 28092 – analyse states of personal financial income US 24695 – taxation US 28093 - describe financial responsibilities of utilising tertiary study funding option US 28097 Banking ( didn’t get to this) US 24699 – smart goals US 28095 - investment US 28096 – insurance there were 17 studen...

"Giving students the information they need to pass exams is the beginning of the process" Christine Ward In preparing our students for exam we  tend to focus a lot of attention on preparing students with the content  but often pay little heed to how they feel and how we can help alleviate the stress. Where will they be sitting the exam? Will they be in a familiar classroom, the hall, gymnasium at another school? How do our students practice for the feeling of sitting in the space they will be sitting the exam in? How do we prepare them for the unfamiliar? Reading time Once upon a time exams began with 10 minutes of reading time where pens had to be left on the desk. My observations of students beginning exams these days is that almost all pick up their pens and begin answering question one as soon as the supervisor says they can start. Taking time to read the entire paper before starting to write can give students the time they need to become calm and cle...

... Gone. It seems hard to believe that three quarters of 2016 is behind us. As I look back over the year there are so many things I planned to do and didn't quite get to. http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1003733/images/n-STRESS-TIPS-628x314.jpg Planning for the last quarter includes completing some new learning. Here I have highlighted some of the more popular online courses that are relevant to us as maths & stats teachers in NZ. For Students As senior students head into exams its worth having them think about how they learn best. The most popular MOOC on Coursera is  Learning How to learn.   The course started this week  (September 12) registrations are still open.   https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn 5 options for teachers  1. FutureLearn: Data to Insight https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/data-to-insight This course is presented by Chris Wild from The University of Auckland. It is full of really powerful ide...

With the release of the learning progression framework we now have a growing kete of tools to select from to build numeracy skills with our students. From the beehive this week.... New resources to boost numeracy and literacy Education Minister Hekia Parata today officially launched a new resource, including an app, to strengthen teaching and learning in reading, writing and maths. “Being able to effectively evaluate a child’s rate of progress is essential for teachers, so they can identify where more support is required,” says Ms Parata. “There has been a gap in our understanding of progress and achievement in years 9 and 10. The Learning Progression Frameworks (LPF) that I’m launching today fills that gap, supporting teachers’ understanding of how their students are progressing in those two years.” The LPF acts as a guide, providing examples of student work to illustrate the significant steps that students need to take as they develop their skills in reading, writing and mat...

There is nothing like a bit of mystery to get Year 10 boys interested.  Ricky Pedersen, HoF De La Salle College and his Year 10 class looked at a fake crime scene and attempted to solve a murder mystery. This was their second lesson on solving for unknown angles in a right angle triangle.  How the lesson unfolded:- 1. Ricky created a hook: Before the students got into the classroom they noticed that something was different. Ricky had cordoned off an area of his classroom and set up a crime scene. Students could see something worthwhile was going to take place in this lesson. Ricky was bombarded with question What happened? What are we doing?  Why is the room different?  Their task: to collectively find out where each blood drop originated from and how the murder took place. 2. They made connections:   Together they looked at a diagram of a blood drop hitting the floor and recapped their trigo...