Targeted Actions

To support our numeracy goal, we have taken several targeted actions this year. From September to January, a group of teachers worked with our teacher consultant, Janice Novakowski, as part of the Facilitating Collaboration and Numeracy Project. During this time, they focused on developing Math Workshop as a numeracy structure in their classrooms and well as establishing Math Thinking routines.

We have also dedicated time at every Staff Meeting to focus on our School Story. Having staff share what they have tried, introducing new routines, resources, or assessment practices, time for table talk discussions, and reflection are all ways that we engage with our School Story during this time.

Currently, a group of teachers and admin are part of a Numeracy Innovation Grant where together, they are exploring a resource and using time to team teach, co-plan, collaborate, and reflect on the practices, competency, and confidence in regard to building Thinking Classrooms.

Reasoning

Our specific focus for the year is how will a focus on math routines, growth mindset, and numeracy tasks improve competence and confidence in math? From our scanning, staff had identified that they noticed computation is a strength for our learners, but applying this knowledge to numeracy tasks was a stretch. Perseverance when tasks became challenging was also an area of opportunity for students.

We wanted to see if our targeted actions were making a difference for students. We asked students in Grades 1-7:

1. How do you feel about Math?
2. How confident do you feel when solving Math problems?
3. Which parts of Math do you enjoy the most?
4. Which parts of Math do you find challenging?
5. In Math, what would you like to get better at?

Results

Based on the survey results, overall, most students rank their feelings about math as “it’s ok.” They enjoyed working collaboratively with each other, when concepts were learned and reinforced through games and hands-on materials or manipulatives. Many students also noted they enjoyed equations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication and practicing different strategies to do so.

In response to question 2 which asked about students’ confidence when solving math problems, most students ranked themselves as “confident,” with a large group also remaining “neutral” in their response.

When we look more closely at the responses to questions by grade level, some interesting trends appear. For the most part, enjoyment and confidence are higher and more closely correlated in the primary grades and in intermediate, the joy and confidence in Math decreases.

This connected to student responses to questions 4 and 5. When looking at what students want to get better at, many students did make note of improving their computational fluency in operations (subtraction, multiplication, and division). This depended on grade level. Many other students also reported that solving word problems were difficult. Specifically, understanding the wording, keeping track of the steps, and translating words into equations were challenging.

Moving Forward and Next Steps

Our results show that building confidence and competence in students’ ability to understand, use strategies, and persevere through word problems is an area of opportunity. It will also be important to develop common mathematical language amongst grades. Building this common language and strategy toolbox from early primary sets students up for success when engaging with math, giving them more confidence in the older grades.  This is the focus for our group of staff currently working in the Innovation Grant. We will continue to provide opportunity for collaboration, co-teaching, and sharing with staff. We will also continue to seek out Professional Learning opportunities to support our focus.

As we continue to move forward with our Numeracy goals, we would like to look closer at strategies and competencies for fostering perseverance with difficult numeracy tasks and developing this self-awareness for our learners.