End of Term 3 Update!

 It has been a very busy term, and I'll have to admit there have been distractions from my Inquiry! I have managed to film my Manaiakalani Film Festival movie, and have had a full week off with the flu - which could have easily been longer as I struggled through the last week of term with little to no voice! This, as well as students' own absences, has affected my ability to implement my planned EEs each Friday with student voice coming through. However, anecdotally, I feel good progress and focus on Mathematical language is still being made. There is just less consistent data to prove it.

It will be interesting looking ahead to testing early on next term, to see what the results have to say!

An example of some of our learning from this term!

Vosaic Recording - August: The Language of Equals.

 As directed by the Senior Management Team at our school, we have been recording snapshots of our teaching using Vosaic. 

In my video this term, I am instructing my group of learners in understanding the equals sign as meaning that both sides are 'balanced' - and relating that to the scales they see in front of me. They need to complete the given equations, by filling in the empty number box to make both sides 'balanced'.

There is a lot of language that is being unpacked in this session. So I asked the AI tool in Vosaic to assess me on my use of language, particularly the clarity with which I explain it, and the opportunities for the children to use it themselves. My prompt was "How well does the teacher explain the mathematical language and provide opportunities for the students to use it themselves in this lesson?"

Here is the feedback that I received:

Teacher's Explanation of Mathematical Language

The teacher effectively introduces and explains mathematical language throughout the lesson. For

instance, the teacher begins by discussing the concept of balance in equations, stating, "If it's the same

on each side, we can say that the equation is... that's balanced" This sets a clear foundation for understanding equality in mathematical terms.

Additionally, the teacher emphasizes the term "empty box" to represent a missing number in equations.

The teacher states, "the empty box means a number is missing", which helps students grasp the concept of variables in equations. This terminology is reinforced when the teacher asks students to identify the missing number in their equations, encouraging them to use the language actively.

Opportunities for Student Engagement

The lesson provides multiple opportunities for students to engage with the mathematical language. For

example:

• The teacher prompts students to write equations based on a word problem, asking, "Could you

write an equation for me?" (01:47 → -01:49 → ). This encourages students to apply their

understanding of the language in a practical context.

• Students are asked to share their equations, with the teacher facilitating discussion by asking, "Do

you agree?" (03:26 →

This not only reinforces their understanding but also allows them to articulate their reasoning.

• During the activity with shapes, the teacher instructs students to create their own equations using

the missing number box, stating, "I want to see missing number boxes" (10:20 → -10:21 →

This hands-on approach allows students to practice the language in a collaborative setting.

Overall, the teacher's clear explanations and structured opportunities for student participation effectively

promote the use of mathematical language in the lesson.

Research indicates that using precise mathematical language and providing opportunities for students to

engage with it can enhance their understanding and retention of mathematical concepts (Hattie, 2009).

Engaging students in discussions about their reasoning also fosters deeper learning and critical thinking

skills (Cohen, 1994).

Term 3 - Intervention Implementation!

We had our CoL meeting this afternoon at Panmure Bridge School. It was a really nice chance to share our Inquiries and korero around the challenges we are facing and where to from here?

I enjoyed sharing my Inquiry from 2024 with a colleague who is just starting out on her BSLA learning journey and questioning, as I did last year, how to push comprehension when you have to focus so heavily on phonemic awareness.

But, back to 2025 and Mathematics!

I have had time over the school holidays, and while observing my class under a student teachers' full control, to consider how best to implement my Inquiry intervention, while following a structured mathematics programme (in this case Numicon). 

While writing the students' report comments and talking about our focus in Mathematics with the parents at our Parent-Teacher conferences last term, it really does come back to understanding our concepts through the language of mathematics. I have been thinking this language over, while hearing senior management talk about learning intentions being understood by our students and in 'kid-friendly speak', I am intentionally teaching some more complicated language to the children so that while some of my learning intentions might not appear to be 'kid-friendly', we have in fact unpacked them as a class so that they should be able to explain what they are learning if and when asked. Exposing them to higher level vocabulary can only be a good thing surely?

Anyway, what is my intervention, and is it regular and measureable?

I am trying to balance the juggling act of all the must do's, supposed to do's and nice to do's, and this is only looking at the subject of mathematics! Numicon comes with Assessments called Milestones. I know from conversations with my colleagues that when we first looked at doing these in our school, they appeared quite overwhelming - it is impossible to do them on every student, on a one on one basis within a testing week. They are ongoing teaching and learning check-ins as units are taught.

With this in mind, I am designing tasks within Explain Everything, that are to happen on a Friday, within which students are assessed on the appropriate milestones for the week, while being required to record their voice using and explaining the target vocabulary and big idea learning from that week. 

Staying on top of implementing these - and training the children up! - is going to be my big challenge for the term. Children away on Friday's for instance will need to be given a catch up time - possibly before school in the morning or in some of my release. Therefore I need to keep these tasks short and sweet while targeting the key learning effectively.

Stay posted for how this plays out over the course of this term!

This is 1 of 7 pages of Milestone Checks for a Year 3.
It can seem quite an overwhelming assessment tool to implement effectively!

Reflecting on Engagement and Language Use in Mathematics

 It was our turn for the school news today, and I thought it was a really good opportunity for student voice to tell me how they felt about our new Maths programme this year. You can check out our video on our class blog here. 

I have children who really do struggle to tune into learning but have latched on to the Numicon resources. The overwhelming response from the children in my class in that they love Maths this year.

At the same time as creating my news item, I have student teacher in my classroom on full control. She is following the Numicon lesson plans as I have instructed her to, mindfully incorporating the target Maths vocabulary. It is really nice to sit back and watch the children build in confidence at understanding and then using themselves, the new vocabulary from each lesson. You can see the vocabulary features heavily alongside images of our learning, on our Maths group slides each week.

I will be on leave for much of the remainder of this term for family reasons. But I am thinking ahead to Term 3 and how to implement purposeful learning reflections to encourage target vocabulary use. I look forward to trying these ideas out in a fresh, new term!

Numicon Assessments!

 It has been really interesting undergoing the Numicon Milestone Assessment checks in the build up to report writing. There are a lot of gaps in the ‘higher level’ students’ mathematical understanding and concepts - such as using tens and ones to count large numbers quickly and accurately. I am really enjoying teaching using the Numicon programme now and can see the need for the deliberate teaching of vocabulary around such basic concepts as addition and subtraction. I am mindful of progressing towards the Pr1me programme as an end goal, but am currently just enjoying embedding Numicon in the classroom and making sure it is done to the best of my ability. As we started a term behind, I am also mindful of moving through the lessons at a brisk pace, to cover as much of the content before the year ends as I can - while maintaining understanding of the learning for the children. What has been reassuring for me, is that I am not ‘babying’ the learning for my top achievers. There are so many fundamental gaps in their knowledge base that I am actually really happy I didn’t put them on a separate Pr1me journey, although that could become a pathway I am open to later in the year.

A Snapshot of my Milestone Tracking Sheet so far!

Numicon in Room 13: 'Getting Started' before the Holidays!

 So, we are heading into the Term 1 Holidays, and I have only just finished the 'Getting Started' section of the Year 3 Numicon Planning. It is going to be interesting to see how much coverage of the programme I can complete before the end of the year, as I feel like I am already a term behind!

So far, I have to say I am enjoying teaching Numicon Maths. There is a clear purpose to each lesson and the materials relate well to the concepts being taught. At times, I am finding myself under prepared, because there are activities that require printing, cutting and laminating in advance, and if you don't read ahead carefully enough, this can catch you off guard.

The children are definitely engaged and enjoying discovering a 'new' way of learning Maths. I look forward to getting through some more areas of the curriculum over Term 2, and seeing how well their Number Knowledge sticks. There will be milestone assessments coming up, which I am looking forward to doing, as I feel they will be of more use than the traditional JAM assessments of the past.

Here are some photos to show some of what we have been doing in class this term!

My Vosaic Recording and Feedback

 Within our school, we have been asked to use vosaic.com, to record and analyse a lesson related to our Inquiry focus.

I have done one with a group of children, exploring the Numicon Shapes and the relationship between them and the numerals we write - Eg. 11 is 1 ten shape and a 1 shape. Unfortunately the audio recording was not of high quality, so I needed to rewrite much of the transcript and no student voice was picked up. This led my reflection to be on my own teaching as opposed to student voice (which I am much more interested in and will try to do next time)!

I entered the following prompt into the website:

"Does the teacher effectively explain and communicate the purpose of the lesson?" 

And this is what I got!

Screenshot from my Vosaic Recording.