Learning Inquiry 2017

Initial ideas around our Inquiry for this year:
Term One Week Three
Week 5

During Term One I decided that I wanted to work on how I could use technology as a tool to help with student agency in Mathematics.

At the end of last year I decided to let the students have all of the learning intentions that they needed to meet the standard in statistics.  They then had to follow a process whereby they could choose what they worked on and when.  They then had to prove that they could meet their goal in some way.

The students really enjoyed this.  Many were more focused on what they needed to achieve instead of me just telling them each day what they needed to learn.  I decided this was a good place to start this year to help the students have more input into their learning.

The Process:

CHOOSE A GOAL

What do you need to know next?

RESEARCH

Where can you look? Who can you ask? 

JOIN A WORKSHOP!

TAKE NOTES

What will help you remember it? What can you write to help you understand it?

PRACTISE

Give it a go! Use repetition! Test each other!

Prove IT

How can you prove  that you now understand it?

The students had to follow this process and needed to be able to say where they were on it at all times.  This works well with the majority.  I use workshops for students who need more input when understanding and researching.  

Example of Goal Sheet:

Geometry and Measurement

Length. Perimeter and Area

Learning Goals

Goals

Level 3 LENGTH, PERIMETER AND AREA I am learning how many centimetres there are in 1 metre I am learning how to use a ruler to measure an object in centimetres I am learning to measure the perimeter of a shape I am learning to measure the area of rectangles

Level 4 LENGTH, PERIMETER AND AREA I am learning about the size of a millimetre and how many are in 1 cm I am learning to measure objects that include parts of cm I am learning how big 1 km is and how it relates to the other measurements I am learning to convert between units (whole numbers, decimals) I am learning to find the area of triangles and parallelograms I am learning to find the area of more complicated shapes I am learning to find the perimeter of a circle I am learning to find the area of a circle

Extension – Level 5 ·         I am learning to select appropriate measurements for a variety of problems ·         I am learning to convert between metric units, using decimals. ·         I am learning to deduce and use formulae to find the perimeters and areas of polygons and the volumes of prisms. ·        I am learning to find the perimeters and areas of circles and composite shapes.

Since the holidays, however, my focus has changed more to:

"how do we reduce the reliance on the teacher and how do the students own their learning?"

I feel it is much more important to focus on student agency and getting the student to have more ownership of their learning.

 http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Learner-agency

http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Innovative-learning-environments/Student-agency-in-an-innovative-learning-environment

Here are the student examples that we used to look for good features of narrative writing and to see where they sat on the 5-star writing guide.  The students liked using their own writing and as they were working in groups the discussion about the levels was pretty detailed and pretty spot-on.