Mark’s Learning Log

What are the big ideas in maths that students need to know – in the Early Years?

At the start of the school year most of the local primary schools got together to Di Siemons from the Australian Catholic University speak about the big ideas in mathematics education. Di really challenged some of our teacher ideas and spoke about the big ideas in mathematics that all students need to learn. Some of the ideas here will challenge not only teachers but also parents – which is in part why I’m writing about this.

Di quoted the research by McIntyre and Melville [2005] who estimated the economic costs of failing to address the issue of the long tail of underachieving students in mathematics at $2.6 billion per year.

She argued that for too long mathematics classes have been about students solving written computational equations that few see the relevance of. Maths should be more argumentative [convince me style] with rich tasks, extended investigations, visulaisation, mental computations, use of hands on materials till well into secondary school. You learn a concept by experiencing and discussing it [I would add including reflecting upon its uses]. 

I am breaking up the article into 3 separate posts

Early Years Ideas

Di spoke about the importance of numeration in the Early Years [being able to model, name,write, read, interpret and use numbers] from 0-9 as all other numbers are based on patterns. She advised teachers to use the same colour counters as colours can distract younger students.

One of her ideas was the concept of building mental objects [visual imagery] so that students could recognise numbers without counting all objects - “subitising”. She believed that all students need to work on this almost daily up to year 4.

Subitising charts for 9 and 5.

I’d be interested to know of other teachers experiences here?

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Posted in Instruction, Mathematics, Teaching, curriculum | No Comments »

The eyewriter!

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Thanks to Julie O’Connell I came across this cheap use of open software that has changed the life of at least one person.

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Teach to the test – what’s next?

Well, as reported in the Age Newspaper, it didn’t take long for some directive to teachers to teach to the Naplan test. We all know you get some short term gain for 1 year and as the article points out what do we drop from the curriculum.

Is this a sign of the pressure schools and teachers will be under now that national tests assume greater significance in the high stakes accountability game. There are other assessments that which give teachers feedback that enables responsive teaching?

Two recent newspaper reports question the school comparsions and point to a potential hazard – the narrowing of the curriculum:

• Dr John Collier is the headmaster of St Andrew’s Cathedral School
• Australian Newspaper editoral

Collier’s article provoked some harsh responses from the comments and went so far as to suggest it the first step in relooking at the funding formula for private schools as it was hard to argue that they needed it the most on the Naplan results.

Perhaps the final word on all this is best said by the principal of Melbourne High School reported as the one of the best performing schools

My School purports to offer for the first time a means of comparing the performance of “statistically similar schools” by use of the ICSEA index. It is pleasing to see that those responsible for this clunky measure already concede that it has its problems. In effect, it is a “you-are-where-you-live” methodology that is based on census district profiling. This amounts to: All children in this district are orange. You live in this district, therefore you are orange.

As I doubt this logic would convince a grade 3 student, perhaps it should be included in this year’s NAPLAN test? It is ironic that the federal government has telegraphed that it wishes to abandon a similar “you-are-where-you-live” formula that has for too long been used as the basis for overfunding private schools, yet has sought to perpetuate its use here.

Our students come from almost every postcode in the Greater Melbourne area, yet the ICSEA index fails to take into account the only common characteristic that accounts for their outstanding academic performance: that they were selected for their exceptional academic ability through a statewide entry test.

It is therefore unsurprising that as a cohort our students are ranked as “significantly above” all others across every NAPLAN domain. But it is facile and misleading to attempt to compare this to other “statistically similar schools” while failing to take into account the most important characteristics of our students.

We are not the exception that proves the rule. The students and communities of every school have unique characteristics that blunt indices such as this cannot hope to quantify.

My School’s claim that it can “fairly and meaningfully compare” schools is untenable. So let the gnomes abandon this useless quest for fool’s gold. There are more meaningful stories to be written as we start a new school year.

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League tables

Over the past week newspapers all over Australia have featured articles and editorials on the Federal Governments new tax payer funded website “My School” which will allow parents [and others] to see how their schools rates against the national average in a series of tests [NAPLAN] and benchmarks [ i.e. retention]. The site allows parents to compare up to 60 schools with similar social and economic profiles.

The site becomes live this coming Thursday January 28th just before students start the new school year.

The Herald Sun write that “the most controversial element of the website will be the ability to automatically display the outcomes of individual schools against the performance of up to 20 nearby schools effectively providing a localised ranking list”.

Teacher Unions across the country are threatening to boycott the implementation of the 2010 national tests to protest against the publication of league tables. The Age newspaper featured an editorial column saying:

“Many will feel some sympathy for teachers about their suspicion that national literacy and numeracy tests are the forerunner of school league tables. Such tests have been linked to school funding and teacher bonuses in other countries as diverse as Britain and South Korea, with devastating effect, resulting in principals setting aside broader education to storm the tests. League tables produced from simplistic comparisons of narrow data, without taking into account student backgrounds, can have demoralising results and actually reinforce disadvantage rather than helping equalise opportunity.”

It concluded saying teachers boycotting the tests was misguided however if Ms Gillard really wanted an education revolution, apart from providing computers and new school buildings, she needed to build human resources so that teaching was a prestigious vocation sought by the top graduates.

Teachers and teacher unions in other countries like Britain have expressed similar concerns as show by a recent article in the Guardian written by John Bangs, National Union of teachers:

“There is only one answer to the annual traditional hunt for “the worst school in the country”. Governments now and in the future have to drop their deeply ingrained habit of naming and shaming schools as their principal method of school improvement.

Currently, our high-stakes test results and inspection-driven system are damaging not encouraging improvement, particularly for the very children who most need the best education.”

Education Minister Julia Gillard has been quoted as saying that the transparency agenda would shine a light on the best practices. I would ask how it shines light on best practices for it just publishes results which can be misleading and need analysis?

The Australian newspaper published a piece saying league tables won’t work unless the government gives school principals more autonomy to manage their schools and parents vouchers to decide which public school they attend. Unless I have missed something parents already have the right to choose which public school their children attend and school funding is already tied to enrolments or bums on seats.

Yesterday the Age Newspaper published a piece saying that a recent poll said that most of parents were in favor of the website

A Sunday Age readers’ poll found 60 per cent of parents thought the My School website, which goes live this Thursday, was a good idea and 90 per cent believed they had the right to know how their child’s school compared with others.

And finally today in the Age Newspaper

“Barry McGaw, the chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which has created the My School website, said it would show which schools in affluent areas were ”coasting” – performing above the national average but not as well as other schools serving similar student populations.”

The Victorian’s Government’s response to the transparency agenda was to publish school data in context last year.  The website makes it difficult to publish league tables yet conveys data about school performance comparing it to state benchmarks and similar schools. Did this state government site about school performance create the same amount of press coverage? The simply answer is no – so parents have access to school data already.

So what is the agenda if school data is already available – perhaps what happened in NSW over 10 years ago when a newspaper used some leaked data sets to name and shame a local school portrays the real agenda – improvement through public shaming? Currently its illegal to publish league tables of school results in NSW.

I await the results but accept the political reality that I must continue to brief staff and the school community on our response to published school data, namely:

• students assessments including NAPLAN tests are used as diagnostic tools to plot individual student needs and inform our curriculum planning. We have used a range of tests for a number of years and continue to update our assessment tools on an annual basis.
• that we already have a strategic plan which is committed to maintaining our high standards in literacy and improve student performance in mathematics over the next 4 years
• that the annual report published on our school website has lots more information for parents to access about school performance.

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Student empowerment vs engagement

I’ve been following a conversation started by Chris Lehmann and joined by Dave Sherman questioning whether student engagement is a worthwhile improvement goal for schools to set.

The conversation is worth some thought as Victorian schools like Elsternwick Primary are mandated to set student engagement improvement goals as part of the strategic planning process. A little context here – student engagement is measured through a standard annual survey to students across the state from years 5 – 9. The survey measures student engagement with their peers, the school and their teachers.

Survey results like this tend to be bunched with the majority of schools measuring somewhere between 3.5 to 4.5 on a 5 point scale. However even given this bunching EPS’s scores for student engagement, particularly engagement with teachers, have been lower than most other schools over a number of year.

What – I hear you say just change the teachers – well these low scores have continued despite changes in teachers over these years. So what is it that student are saying – teachers have low energy levels – don’t give feedback – don’t make learning fun and enjoyable?

What Chris points out is that too often engagement get translated to fun. He argues that its about empowerment because

that sets us up for a more student-centered classroom because it is about what the students get from the experience once the class is done, not what happens during the class. It also allows us to do away with the notion that the classroom is always fun. It’s not.

Chris goes on to say

It’s o.k. if there are days when the work that kids do feels like work. We have to be o.k. with that. And we have to understand that school is work… but that it can be meaningful, powerful, empowering (and even engaging) work.

This makes sense to me.

It also fits in with our focus on teachers improving their capacities to give accurate and explicit feedback to students as individuals [this does not necessarily mean individually]. After a teacher is clear about what mastery looks like [with examples] and has given explicit instruction [differentiated according to the needs of the students] then its about feedback so that students know [in a scaffolded way] what they need to do next to get towards mastery of the subject.

But this is still not necessarily fun.

This generation of students who have access to seemingly infinite resources, who seem to expected immediate gratification or answers and who seem to want constant entertainment [substitute fun] might have the same expectations of teachers.

I see lots of conversations here with students about the context and purpose of learning, the value of effort and persistence and the mutual responsibility of feedback [in the teachers case to give it - explicit and not dressed up comments like I'm proud of your ..... behaviour and for students to use the feedback and make the improvements].

Empowering students to improve through feedback on work that has a clear and connected purpose to their lives is perhaps a higher aim than making work or teachers more engaging or fun?

Interested in thoughts here?

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New School Facilities

This photo of the new school gym and performing arts centre was taken over the January 2010 school holidays. Part of the governments recession proofing strategy in 2009 was to build much needed school buildings.

Elsternwick Primary School was entitled within this package to a new school gym. The building is expected to be completed in August 2010. This much needed facility will really enhance our PE /Music programs as well provide an after hours space for the wider community. From time to time I will publish photos of the progress of the facility.

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Here’s one creative teacher using technology in classrooms

Sometimes I stumble upon really creative ways to use technology in classrooms with kids. Chris Betcher prepared this for an online conference and it goes for about 20 minutes. There’s so much in this presentation that it’s useful to come back to again and again. Chris explains RSS feeds, news searches, hash tags, uses Google forms for surveys [really neat much like I use www.surveymonkey.com] and skype to name a few.

There’s a wealth of sites he uses including:

• http://maps.google.com
• http://technorati.com
• http://www.netvibes.com
• http://runkeeper.com [use of iphone here]
• http://voicethread.com
• http://animoto.com
• http://comiclife.com

This is well worth a look.

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Reflections on a year just finished – what changed and what’s ahead.

Photo courtesy of Bayside leader

At the end of a school year I generally get a little reflective – after a day or two on holidays that is and after I’ve spent some time catching up on the uncompleted tasks – which I just have.

Well my first reflection is that the general pace of change and community expectations have continued to increase. The “public accountability race” has been ramped up with more online school data for the community. The link to the Victorian Government’s site with increased data on school performance is their response to the accountability agenda. As principal I was asked to set some context around the Victorian data for Elsternwick Primary and now as a community we await the ‘raw data sets” from the Commonwealth Government’s online site next year. The real test on the usefulness of published data sets on school performance is who will use the either government’s sets and if there is a private or public agenda?

Elsternwick Primary has just completed a  major school review which took 12 months which included the setting of a new strategic plan priorities for the next 4 years. The improvement goals over the next 4 years include:

• improving mathematics outcomes for students
• strengthening teachers use of assessment for learning data to try and personalise learning for students
• using technology to engage with learners and their parents [refer Ultranet link below]
• supporting teachers to be more reflective about their instructional practice using a new E5 framework developed by DEECD.

Approximately 1/6 of our teachers are engaged in some study in 2010 connected with three different universities and a new Victorian leadership institute opened this year. These improvement targets are challenging and will require changes in the way we work together to achieve them.

A the end of year we were announced as a lead school in the implementation of the Ultranet – an online learning community for students, teachers and parents. This certainly fits with our goal of working to personalise learning for students. This will be an exciting innovation.

Of course we are still building. We completed stage one works worth estimated at $4 million. The facilities included new and modernised flexible learning areas which were officially opened this year. In addition we had a smaller infrastructure grant which paid for the painting of classrooms, new shade sails over playgrounds, a new roof over one of major buildings and badly needed maintenance on one end of our main buildings. Some work remains to be completed on this smaller project.

We expect to have the new gym and performing arts centre completed in August 2010 worth over $3 million. New buildings generally lead to improved learning and teaching conditions its just the dislocation that gets a little tiring for people and we have had some of that this year.

There were improvements in tightening inquiry based curriculum units, a new Mandarin language introduced, an expanded teacher and student leadership program and the usual activity of schools that we should celebrate including a wonderful end of year concert.

So in summary its been a year of evaluation and direction setting, of building and of new programs. We have some exciting projects and professional learning opportunities ahead.

And I wonder why I’m tired and in need of a rest. Feel free to comment.

To my colleagues and readers have a Merry Christmas and I look forward to continuing our work together in 2010.

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How far have we come as teachers in using technology to engage learners?

Have a quick flick through this presentation as we in Australia shut down for the summer school holiday period. I’m reminded of a now famous quote “Yes we can” when I see this. I remember as far back as the spirit duplicator – what about you?

The presentation comes from Alan Stange’s blog – thanks Alan

On the same storyline I came across this clip which has a great story about a children copying homework for the weekend from the chalkboard. It challenges us in the future to us the tools we have to personalise learning for students.

In 2010 my school has been selected as a lead school in the implementation of what we in Victoria will call the Ultranet – an online community that connects teachers, students and parents with lots of social networking tools [e.g. blogs and wikis], individual portfolios, parent portals and much much more. I’m sure I’ll post about this next year but its exciting to teaching at this time.  Perhaps this will replace the teacher writing homework tasks on the blackboard?

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Does a school transition program make any difference to parent concerns about student class placements?

Certainly one of the by products of an effective school transition program we hoped was the easing of parent concerns about the student class placement for the following year. An earlier post on school transition described the program that we have implemented. In February at the start of the new school year the program moves into the 3rd phase of student induction which continues to build student relationships with each other and the teacher. I think this is one of the main expressed concerns of students and parents alike – will I have a friend in my class? The emphasis for teachers is a friend in the class, not meaning my best friend or friends which is often what students want and parent request.

What teachers comment on a lot in class placement is best friends often inadvertently restricting the friendship circle through lack of opportunity to make new friends or an over reliance on existing friendships that create a dependency. Sometimes these ”old” friendships place stress on the learning boundaries as well as students look to affirm the same relationships even though the learning tasks require students to work with peers with different skills, interests, passions and experiences. So they mix students up each year. 

This year in a slightly amended policy on class placement we tightened the boundaries of parent input into class placement saying the teacher selection [the first request of parent] was not appropriate as well as requests for continuing student friendships. Most parents are not silly and a recognise a quality teacher is the main criteria for student success although they form opinions on a different criteria of quality instruction to me. 

Still some parent try and persuade me to change their child’s class as the quality of the teacher is lower in their eyes than the selected class teacher. I could write a whole post on different perceptions of quality instruction but at this stage lets just acknowledge there are differences of opinions.

Our policy on class placement is to create mixed gender classes with a normal distribution of skills and capabilities.  I trust teachers to follow the policy, make sensible or justifiable placement decisions and seek feedback from students. Sometimes some outside factors are over looked [cousins in same class as an example] and a decision needs to be overturned but this happens in about 0.5% cases.

So what happened?

Well the number of parent emails and letters asking for teachers or friendships reduced. It’s hard to use this single measure as an indicator of a successful transition program and I know a sub committee is working on an online survey to collect additional data.

The emotional response by about 2% of the parent population, sometimes expressed as an anger or frustration, at an injustice in class placement [no perceived friends], at a teacher they don’t like, or a multi aged class where their bright child in the upper class who won’t be extended are still the same and it takes time to research, talk to teachers and respond.  

I sometimes wonder are we creating a generation of young people with reduced social skills to cope with life’s little frustrations? Are we creating dependency instead of resilience? Or are we as a population more informed and want a greater say in the small things that affect our children’s lives.

I know when one of my children didn’t get selected in the top representative side for their sport or dance performance they were upset but my job as a parent was to help them overcome the emotions and work on a plan to get better skills, make new friends and enjoy the whole court or stage time experience. I accepted the selection committees decision and moved on. Am I just more resilient, older, less caring, have more perspective or more pragmatic?

I know I have had no say on these class placement issues from year 7 onwards as its high school and a different culture. But the questions I raise are still worth pondering?

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