The MIT-2018 cohort took time out today to share progress with our inquiries and collaborate at our second meeting at KPMG's headquarters in Auckland.
Our focus was digging deeper into our inquiries through Catalyst, a collaborative inquiry game created by Core Education. This board game has been developed around the OECD's Seven Principles of Learning. Each person was allocated a different questioning role within the game which proved an effective way for the group to drill down and ask those tricky questions of each other to challenge ideas and current thinking.
I found that the game created a supportive structure and environment in which to articulate and clarify my thinking about my inquiry. The scanning and focusing stages of the game were particularly potent for me as they highlighted and reaffirmed the importance of learner well-being and engagement as we strive to optimise achievement. This may sound like common sense but it has strong connections to the goal of our school-wide professional Maths learning, Developing Mathematical Inquiry in a Learning Community. Through the careful selection of Maths problems with contexts that relate to the immediate world of our learners and our community, I believe we are strengthening the balance and connections between well-being, engagement and achievement.
Catalyst image retrieved from: https://core-ed.org/shop/catalyst/
It was wonderful to reconnect with our fellow Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers today at our first session at KPMG's head office to further challenge our thinking in relation to our inquiries: As we have faced the reality of the cohort of learners (and teachers) we are spending 2018 with, how has the thinking you developed ... gelled when ‘the rubber hit the road’?
My thinking, ponderings and wonderings returned to my identified problem: the need to lift the achievement in Maths for all students in Years 1-13 within the Manaiakalani Community of Learning. What does this mean for my inquiry? Am I on the right track? What is the most effective way of getting our waka to move through the water faster?
While getting to know my learners and gathering data for my target students, it has become evident that the language of Maths needs building up in order that learners can express and explain their mathematical ideas and thinking appropriately and clearly. For example, when asked to find a quarter of a set, two of my target students asked "What is a quarter?" In answer to the same question, another explained that the answer is 4 because a quarter is written 1/4. These examples have thus caused me to return to the problem and progress my thinking by choosing to focus on four areas, the first of which is the language of Maths:
This focus on the language of Maths will also build support for our school-wide Teaching As Inquiry.
Now that my thinking has progressed and clarified, my next step in the inquiry process is to prototype a digital framework to support my learners acquiring the language of Maths.
The MIT-2018 cohort took time out today to share progress with our inquiries and collaborate at our second meeting at KPMG's headquarters in Auckland.
Our focus was digging deeper into our inquiries through Catalyst, a collaborative inquiry game created by Core Education. This board game has been developed around the OECD's Seven Principles of Learning. Each person was allocated a different questioning role within the game which proved an effective way for the group to drill down and ask those tricky questions of each other to challenge ideas and current thinking.
