Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Practice
5A - Assessing Learning.
Assessment as learning:
Student work samples can be viewed bellow.
Above is an overview of the Seesaw activities completed in week 5 of term 3 by the focus students. As you can see, there was a rather large variation in the level of engagement. Student D completed every Activity provided for him across the week where as Student A completed only one task on the 9th of August. This made it challenging to assess his progress in this week as I had no evidence of understanding.
Student B
This is a work sample from Student B Who completed this activity with the assistance of an Education Support Staff member while attending onsite during remote learning.
After speaking to the staff member I understood that Student B was able to count the items in each cloud independently, It was step 2, dragging the number to the cloud, that the student needed assistance to use the classroom visuals to identify each number.
Student D
This is a work sample from Student D, After receiving this via the Seesaw application I called the family and discussed the level of support they provided the student. Student D was supported by his mother, who used coactive assistance to complete this activity. Mum Moved the bees while prompting the student to count along with her.
Student C
This is a work sample from Student C who completed this activity with the assistance of an Education Support Staff member while attending onsite during remote learning.
After speaking to the staff member, I understood that after watching the modelled example attached to the beginning of this activity and receiving verbal and visual prompts from the education support, Student C could not use the materials (moving the lollies) to demonstrate the concept of subtraction. Although he could draw a picture, this shows me that Student C has a narrow understanding of the concept of subtraction with a fixed view on the process.
Again the above is an overview of the Seesaw activities completed in week 6 of term 3 by the focus students. As you can see, there was a rather large variation in the level of engagement. Student D completed every Activity provided for him across the week where as Student A begun only one task on the 19th of August, but did not finish it. This made it challenging to assess his progress in this week as I had no evidence of understanding. The engagement of Student B and student C saw an increase this week which was pleasing to see after speaking with the families the week before.
I assigned this activity after reviewing the last weeks activity as I thought that crossing out the objects might help to bridge the gap between drawing and moving objects to represent subtraction.
Student C
Student D
This is a work sample from Student D who completed this activity with the assistance of his mother.
Through our next conversation I found out that Student D completed this activity with the coactive assistance. Mum would count as the student would point to the dots, then the student would find and drag the correct number into its place.
This tells me that the student can recognise the numerals, but doesn't allow me to assess his counting skills.
Above is an overview of the Seesaw activities completed in week 7 of term 3 by the focus students. All students saw increased engagement during this week of remote learning, which was fantastic to see, Student A began attending onsite in this week which could explain his sudden engagement. Student D again completed every activity provided for him across the week and the engagement of Student B and student C saw an increase as well.
Student A
This is a work sample from Student A that I was able to work with him on as he began attending onsite this week.
After modelling an example and coactively completing another example, I provided the student with only verbal and visual prompts as I wanted to use this activity as an assessment piece. I know that this student is able to understand and count along a number line as i have observed in previous lessons before we began remote learning. As you can see Student A did not initially get each answer correct, I was able to give feedback to correct any mistakes.
I was pleased to see that he had understood the process of using the number line, though he needed to develop the skills to read his answers once this step was completed.
Student B
This is a work sample from Student B who completed this activity with the assistance of an ES while attending onsite.
I was able to talk to the ES prior to the completion of this task and discuss the level of prompting that I would have liked for this activity as I wanted to use this task as an assessment piece.
The student moved the candles onto the cakes independently showing that he understood the concept and could match the numeral to the amount by positioning the correct number of candles. It was with this task that I decided to extend student B to include addition and subtraction in his assigned tasks. I knew he was ready for this as I had previously observed the student when in the classroom.
Student C
This is a work sample from Student C who completed this activity with the assistance of an Education Support Staff member while attending onsite during remote learning.
After speaking to the staff member I understood that after watching the modeled example, Student C was able to count count up on the number line to demonstrate addition with very minimal verbal prompting. It was even suggested that he may have been able to complete the activity independently after the first number sentence was completed with prompts.
Student D
This is a work sample from Student D. For his activity I asked the family to record the activity being completed as I wanted to be sure of the level of prompting the student was receiving.
It was from this that I discovered that the length of the activities I was assigning was too long to be manageable for the student and family. When listening to the recording you can hear the student disengaging from the task and the parent increasing the level of prompting and coactively completing the activity with the student as a way to maintain engagement.
Student A
Student A completed this activity coactively with my support as he was attending onsite this day.
We recorded the session for future reference so that I could look back at it for assessment.
Student a would find the number on the number line and count how many numbers I should move, Student A then highlighted the number and read the number sentence including what it equaled.
Student B
This activity was completed by Student B, using only verbal prompts. As we were planning to move to single digit addition and subtraction in the near future I wanted to assess his ability to count one more from any given number. This also gave me further insight to the students ability to write numerals independently, notice the reversal of some letters, confusion about the number 10 and the inverted number 5.
for the numbers that are unclear I asked the student for verbal clarification a he has good language skills.
Student C
For Student C I assigned this activity using the tens frames to scaffold the activity further from the prom the previous activities.
This activity was also completed over two weeks of learning as it was submitted prematurely by the student before he was finished. I made sure to provide feedback to Student C and return his work for completion.
Student D
For this activity I wanted to assess the depth of student understanding. The activity was modelled to the student via an instructional video that I had made and attached to the beginning of the activity to show the process and the student was asked to show the number in a range of different ways.
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Student A
This is a work sample from Student A. He was asked to write the numbers in the missing spaces, there were three pages with grids from 1-20 each with different numbers missing.
Student A was able to demonstrate that he knows the number sequence and what each number looks like.
Student D
This is a work sample from Student D where he was asked to move the fish into the fishbowls to match the number shown inside. Student D attended onsite for this day and I was able to work with him to complete this task.
Steudent D was able to move the fish to match the number shown when given verbal and visual prompts. The instruction was broken down for him (eg. 'How many fish do we need in this one?', 'Okay then we need to stop at...')
Student B
For this activity Student B was asked to watch an instructional video and then an modelled example before completing five pages similar to this example using the numbers 1-5.
Student B traced the numeral and then the number name, he then attempted to copy these within the lines.
If I were to assign this activity again, I would make the lines bigger so that students could write more accurately within them.
Student C
This is a work sample from Student C, who completed this activity with the assistance of an Education Support Staff member who provided visual and verbal prompts.
With this support and the feedback from the ES in the room Student C was able to correctly identify the pictures used to demonstrate addition. After these pages I included some demonstrating subtraction, which the student found much more challenging.
This week was both Tribes Day and Footy Day at the school therefore students were provided with a tribes day grid and a small number of football themed activities to complete on the Thursday and Friday. Student engagement was also lower in this week which I suspect may be due to it being the last week of the term, with fatigue setting in for both students and families.
Student D
This Work sample Was completed by Student D with visual and verbal prompts. The interesting thing about the presentation of this piece is the way the student arranged the turtles that he counted. It is very clear on this page where he arranged the eight turtles in two columns of four. This was seen not only on this page but on a number of other pages, which would indicate that Student D is beginning to partition numbers into smaller parts (indicating emerging part, part, whole knowledge)
Student A
This work sample from Student A shows how he was extended to expand his understanding of addition.
In this activity he was building on his knowledge of the part, part, whole relationship of addition and using the make all count all strategy to find the sum.
This was further scaffolded by the pre-existing watermelon seeds (removing the make all step), and focusing on the counting of each part and the whole.
Student A was also supported with visual and verbal prompts by the ES in the classroom.
Assessment of learning:
Students also completed the same Top Ten assessment that they had undertaken during the pre-assessment phase, this allowed for direct comparison of skills acquired during the inquiry process (Appendices 3-6).
5B - Evaluating the Effectiveness of Professional Practice
To conclude my inquiry process, the action plan I have undertaken appears to have been effective in differentiating my teaching of numeracy, allowing students of all abilities to access learning during this time. I have identified various teaching strategies to support tudents with additional needs and diverse linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds.
Through the collection of various assessments including work samples , observation and pre and post assessments, I have been able to identify the progress students have made during the inquiry period and plan to continue this development and apply my knowledge to other aspect of the curriculum.
I plan to continue my professional development in the area of numeracy through PDs, further collegiate visits and professional readings.
Finally I am happy with the progress students have made and the level of support and extension I have given each of my students for numeracy particularly throughout the remote learning phase.
Australian Professional Standards for Teachers addressed in this section:
Standard 1.1
Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students.
Standard 1.2
Understand how students learn.
Standard 1.5
Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.
Standard 1.6
Strategies to support full participation of students with disability.
Standard 2.6
Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
Standard 3.2
Plan, structure and sequence learning programs.
Standard 3.4
Select and use resources
Standard 3.5
Use effective classroom communication
Standard 1.3
Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Standard 2.1
Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area.
Standard 2.2
Content selection and organisation
Standard 2.5
Literacy and numeracy strategies
Standard 3.6
Evaluate and improve teaching programs
Standard 3.7
Engage parents / carers in the educative process.
Standard 4.1
Support student participation.
Standard 4.2
Manage classroom activities
Standard 4.3
Manage challenging behaviour
Standard 5.1
Assess student learning.
Standard 5.2
Provide feedback to students on their learning.
Standard 5.3
Make consistent and comparable judgements.
Standard 5.4
Interpret student data
Standard 5.5
Report on student achievement.
Standard 6.4
Apply professional learning and improve student learning.
Standard 7.3
Engage with the parents/carers.