Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers - Project Update

As part of the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers program this year we were asked to identify a problem that we felt was important to address in our classrooms. I identified a focus, and it was that I felt there were students in my class who had a really strong grasp on numeracy, but were limited in performing to the level that they were capable of because they were hindered by their literacy, particularly the comprehension of word problems in math tests like PAT.

The vocabulary can be tricky, the questions lack context, and let's be honest, the scenarios are somehow both weird, and boring. I don't want my kids thinking that math is boring, and I certainly don't want them thinking that reading is either.

My original thought was, unfortunately, deficit minded, and didn't focus on how I could reframe the problem towards building a solution. Alongside my fellow MIT colleagues we spent a wonderful weekend in Omaha breaking each others ideas down, and building them back up towards a forward thinking solution. If you would like to read more about this process check out this blog post about our Omaha Hui

As part of this process we developed a "How might we" statement to help us focus our intentions, and set our minds on the solution.

"How might we support students to unpack maths problems which contain unfamiliar language?"

I returned home inspired, and motivated to create - the first story entitled "Jacob's Village Life"  was trialed in the final week of term across a wide range of Year 5 & 6 students at Pt England School. The prototype was built using Google Forms - this allowed me to seperate the story into sections, to add images, and an accompanying audio track for students to follow along as they read, and hyperlinks to a set of clarification slides to help the unpack the operative words in the questions. See the example below.

At the end of the prototype story the students were asked to give feedback, and while it gave me some things to work on, the elements which were of highest importance to me functioned how I wanted them to - the clarifications helped close to 50% of the students, with close to 30% not needing them at all, and the students wanted more, and the text was interesting, and Forms was easy to navigate for our students. Further investigation into what made the Clarifications confusing for the 18% of students is needed, and is part of the next steps in the process.

I am currently in the process of adding texts to what will eventually be a library of texts with new releases, coming out regularly, covering a range of math, and reading levels to give access to as many students as possible, and extending the clarification slides to include a wider variety of vocabulary words, and math terminology. 

Follow along with this journey as our students explore, and hopefully, become great MathVenturers!