Raising achievement - Numeracy

Teaching as Inquiry
My name: Ryan Dunn	Class Level: Year 7/8
Achievement Target: To develop students ability to apply part to whole and whole to part thinking when dealing with fractions. Specifically, I want students to be able to apply simple additive strategies to  find fractions of lengths and sets in line with the standard at the end of 6 years of schooling
Timeframe: 1 term (term 3, 2012)

Focusing Inquiry:

Why?

To insure that my teaching is in line with the school's goals as outlined in the Dannevirke South School Charter (2012 - 2014):

- To improve students achievement in Numeracy

- To improve the achievement of Maori students in Literacy and Numeracy

Students Data

Number of students	Year	Initial stage Prop/ratio	Final stage Prop/ratio	Time in programme	Predominant  Focus
6 - (3 Maori)	7/8	Stage 4/5	Stage 4-6	6 weeks	Fractional understanding (part/whole thinking)

Students in this group have exhibited difficulties when required to split numbers into smaller parts, demonstrating a lack of understanding of part whole concepts. This was evident during previous learning in the add/sub domain. 

Student work samples show minimal understanding of how parts (fractions) can be joined together to form a whole. 

Teaching inquiry

What strategies are most likely to help my students achieve this?

Effective pedagogy - NZ Curriculum:

- Providing sufficient opportunities to learn

My aim is to use a range of materials to demonstrate to concept of part/whole in a number of different context. Students will have plentiful opportunities to apply their new understanding through hands on learning.

Materials:

- Fraction magnets

- Fraction circles

- Paper strips

- Counters

- Multilink cubes

- Play dough

- Facilitating shared learning 

Students will be encouraged to collaborate with each other to solve problems during guided sessions as well as through applied learning with practical, follow-up activities. Giving students the opportunity to verbalise their understandings and share dialogue with other students will help them to consolidate their learning. 

Learning Inquiry

What happened as a result of the teaching, and what are the implications for future teaching?

Reflection questions  (Mid Term)

What aspects are going well? How do I know i.e what evidence is there to support this?

Allowing students to see and apply their fractions knowledge in a variety of different formats has helped improve their ability to part-whole think when referring to fractions.

Is there something I need to change?

Promote student to student dialogue through activities and opportunities to discuss their learning.  

What adjustments do I need to make for next time?

Use technology as a means of recording student thinking - e.g vocaroo (can be used for student summarise their learning at the end of the unit.

Encourage students to explain and describe their learning once they have completed an activity. I have been too focused on getting them explain to me. Explaining to a partner will be more powerful. 

The image below relates to an activity this completed and will work as a good opportunity for students to share learning with a partner.

Reflection questions  (End of term)

What aspects are going well? How do I know i.e what evidence is there to support this?

Students have enjoyed working with materials and are better able to conceptualise how fractions join together to make up the whole. Student self reflections in the modelling book tells me this as well as independent follow-up work.

What adjustments do I need to make for next time?

Although students made progress, some students still exhibited an inability to conceptualise the whole, particularly when imaging. A number of times I had to fold back to materials when students could not image.

I believe in the validity of the methods I was using. In the future, I would like to see how results differed over a more sustained period, say 2 terms instead of one.

I would also research into past case studies, evidence, research etc of how to move students from materials to being able to image. Although students where able to find a fraction of a set in the conclusion, which was one of the focuses, they were not able to do this without the aid of materials. In general, they found it easier to find fractions of lengths than fractions of sets.

Gloss strategy testing in the proportions and ratios domain shows that half of the students have progressed to be able to find fractions of lengths using a valid strategy (stage 6)