I fully intended to post regular blog posts but have fallen behind. It is easy to drop things like this from my to-do list. However, Jim Strachan reminded me how important it is to document and share the learning that is going in schools. By no means do I profess to have all the answers or think that what Tecumseh Vista is doing is correct. Kyle and I had a conversation that centered around that very topic the other day. Both of us have changed our practices over the years to find something that “works”. We have come to the conclusion that what works for one doesn’t work for others. There is no magic bullet.
So what is going on at TVA? A lot. Math council is going strong and picking up steam. The student voice in our building is loud and clear. I want to thank our Norweigan partners for putting us on to this underrated topic. I had a great conversation with a female student from my class in math council and she told me that I had to stop giving “sport questions”. I asked her why, since everyone loves sports right??? Nope, apparently a number of students don’t and they hate sport questions. I always felt that sport questions would be a hook and show the students “real-world” math. I asked her what she wanted instead and she said “art and music” questions. Now this poses a real problem for me since I know absolutely nothing about either topic and how to relate it to math but it got me thinking. I need to appeal to a broader audience. How? Make alternative questions and have students choose? Can I recruit music/art students to design these questions? I don’t have the answer to that yet but I am conscience of this when I design activities.
Paul has been very hard at work and has gone through our school performance data and identified lower-performing students on our EQAO assessment (our standardized test). Each of these students received a subtle invite to join our intermediate students at recesses to “practice” their math skills using Knowledgehook. Knowledgehook is a web-based math program that turns math into a game for students. Teachers assign “missions” (based on the topic being taught) and students work for their stars which moves them up the leaderboard versus other students. Students really seem to enjoy it.
Kyle has been doing a lot of research into our board’s data and his findings were presented at a board-wide workshop. What he found was that students that do poorly in Grade 3 standardized assessment (surprise) also did poorly in the Grade 6 and 9 tests. So our focus has been targeting these students early on and trying to bridge that gap. This also doubles as an opportunity for older students to demonstrate leadership.
There has been much planning going at TVA for our partners in May. Our visitors are going to get a great insight into our educational system. Teachers will learn about our very popular Student Work Study while the students experience life as a student in Ontario. It is a great mix of learning and socializing and we are looking forward to seeing our partner soon.
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