This year, I've had the privilege of leading a team of five enthusiastic teachers. It has been an interesting and sometimes challenging experience with a lot of changes: we welcomed some new team members who felt more comfortable teaching literacy than maths. I heard them say, 'I am not a maths person,' multiple times. Furthermore, most of our team had to learn the curriculum for new year levels they hadn't taught before.
Thinking of the wisdom of the famous saying, "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn," we involved our newbies in team planning. I believed that involvement and shared responsibility would be the keys to transforming their perception of teaching math.
I have been always available to model, co-teach, observe, explain maths progressions and resources, help with assessments, etc. Two of my team members had never planned for Year 5-6 maths (Level 3). I supported them by initially planning for those stages at the beginning of the year, gradually passing these responsibilities to them as they developed more knowledge and confidence.
Throughout the year, I observed the need for a universal planning template. So, in Term 3, a new universal planning design emerged, simplifying the planning process and enhancing our teaching and learning experiences. You can read about our planning here.
Last week, I collected feedback from my team, seeking their insights and perspectives on our collaboration, teacher capabilities in maths and areas for improvement as we always strive to provide the best for our learners. Some findings are below:
Did collaborative planning help you deepen your knowledge of the maths curriculum and better understand progressions (stages)?
Teacher #1: Yes- I think the strength comes from different perspectives and how everyone approached the planning of the math curriculum. Elena led the team well in that each member knew which progression they were planning. This made them grow stronger in planning for that area
Teacher #2: Yes, with having to plan all different stages it deepened my knowledge of the progressions as well as the curriculum. I was able to look at what my team had planned which allowed me to have access to more resources. As I had come from teaching year 3 & 4 I had never planned stage 6-7 before which at the beginning of the year I found challenging. With using my team's planning I was able to gain a deeper understanding of what these stages looked like for all different strands etc.
Teacher #3: I think for me personally (as a fairly inexperienced maths teacher), planning my own lessons has allowed me to deepen my understanding of individual stages one at a time. If I was to have planned for all stages at the same time, I would have likely become overwhelmed.
Did team planning help you feel more comfortable and confident when teaching maths?
Teacher #1: Yes! I love that I can bounce ideas off from my colleagues and that I can ask for advice in a safe space.
Teacher #2: I love the evolution of how the planning templates have developed. Elena was mindful to support her team (most of whom were relatively new to teaching) and as such the planning templates helped to scaffold understanding of concepts and delivery. Even for someone with experience like me, I found them so useful!
Teacher #3: Absolutely. Now I feel so much more confident teaching maths, I really enjoy it.
Teacher #4: Yes, it was helpful to use others' planning as an example when completing my own planning.
What do you like about our collaborative maths planning and the changes that we made this year?
Teacher #1: As a newbie! I love it, it made planning ahead so much easier and you can find planning and tailor it to suit the needs of our kids.
Teacher #2: For me, I found that different teachers’ plans varied to some extent. I initially found the planning layout confusing and when I went to look at other teachers' planning because they were all slightly different, I was often quite confused. However after the new template was explained to me, I better understood it. I loved our Term 4 strand planning idea, I found it extremely helpful having the resource bank of plans that we can use and to slot it into our own classroom programs when needed.
Teacher #3: I love to plan on the slides, it’s interactive and it is visually appealing. We also often reflect back on what worked well and what didn’t, which helps improve our planning and teaching (since we learn from our mistakes).
Teacher #4: I felt like the pressure of planning was reduced by a significant amount. I wasn't spending all weekend finding/ creating resources and lesson plans. Now with our planning, we are able to put more thought into our lessons and explicitly teach. I find that our learners are getting more out of each lesson and the design is easy for them and the teacher to follow. When I had my student teacher in class, she commented on how easy she found our template and how she found it easy to follow other teachers' planning.
As a team, we also reflected on the implementation of Maths Matrices.
All of us witnessed the positive impact they've had on empowering our students and engaging our students' whanau. This experience has reinforced our commitment to continue using Maths Matrices next year and beyond.
