Providing opportunities for SHIFT

My NCEA L2 students have not had any academic success in mainstream schools, let alone maths classes, so I had to be a point of DIFFERENCE if we wanted different outcomes. So what did we do differently?

On day one of each term, I gave my learners a mini whiteboard to write down one thing they wished their teachers knew about them. These are some of the responses from students in all my classes:

- My Name
- I am dyslexic
- I don’t focus when I don’t understand
- I work better if I am left alone and listening to music
- I like to be alone
- I tend to get mad really easily and don't like sitting still too long
- Some days I don't feel like doing anything and some days I want to finish all my work
- I have manners
- I am hard to teach.

When I set up my 12MAT course I had to be mindful of my clientele. None of my learners had had any NCEA L2 maths credits from their previous school, so we were starting with a blank slate which I used to my advantage.

Each term our learners get new timetables as they change courses/teachers, so we usually begin with introductions.
My attempt with my NCEA L2 class failed miserably as learners were not too keen to share anything about themselves except their name. I let them know it was OK and immediately moved on. I sought their permission about attempting some critical thinking activities using de Bono's 6 Hats and they were willing to give it a go. They loved it and when I suggested taking a short break after a few challenges, they all begged for more...... music to my ears........mission accomplished. They seemed to get the message, loud and clear, that they were very capable if they tried and they were beginning to trust me as their teacher.

When it was time to move on to academics, I had to tread carefully and told my learners that I had prepared a CHEAT Sheet for each standard and it was going to help them taste academic success in maths. Each CHEAT Sheet included
- Achievement Objectives rewritten in "student speak"
- Evidence needed to meet the standard
- Research based literacy standards
- Teacher-created learning strategies

After a discussion about the CHEAT Sheet all learners seemed keen to get on with their learning journey which they could monitor on a tracking sheet. The tracking sheet forced learners to self-manage, one of the 5 key competencies of the NZ curriculum. Learners were competing with themselves and not each other as they progressed through the course as they all worked at their own pace. To their surprise, some of them completed the programme and practice test ahead of the deadline and sat summative assessments before moving on to the next standard. In all 3 terms thus far, most learners have completed additional standards as they were not bound by a structured timeline set in stone. All it took was for one learner to set the pace before the others followed. "Nothing breeds success like success". My 12MAT results are shown below together with a comparison with National data.


You will notice that for each of the 4 standards, my learners' success data far exceeds national data. My next post will analyse Maori and Pasifika achievement.