This school year, Mitchell staff dove into a new school goal: “Building Confidence Through Numeracy”. Our objective was for both students and staff to gain confidence in their skills. Our work towards that goal focussed mainly on discovering ways to make Math more experiential, through games, real-life applications and a variety of school-wide displays of Math and numeracy learning. These objectives and strategies were established after surveying students and staff as well as a dive into our school data. Please refer to our Fall post for more information about this process.

During this school year, learning and confidence-building was evidenced anecdotally through several events:

1. Using our CEF grant, a committee (Mme Val, Ms. Yip, Mme Dewji, Mme Chang Dar Woon, Ms. Fedoruk, Mr. Genge) gathered with our teacher-consultant, Janice Novakowski, to determine strategies, content and implementation timelines to support our staff through meaningful professional development. Participating staff members shared feeling positive, enthusiastic and confident in their ability to support and mentor their peers in Math/Numeracy initiatives following our CEF sessions. 
2. Four mandatory collaboration sessions/workshops were offered to staff during school hours. The topics for professional development were:

• Exploring Math manipulatives
• Supporting language learning in Math
• Universal design for learning in Math (2 parts)

 

3. Four optional lunch sessions were also offered and included professional development around planning, assessing, vocabulary and language in Math and different manipulatives.

 

4. The CEF team put out fun Math manipulatives with instructions for other staff to explore. Doing so encouraged many staff members to engage with materials they wouldn’t have otherwise. Teachers reported this as one of their favourite strategies employed this year, stating the accessibility factor as a great way to encourage them in their development.

 

5. Another team from our school, Ms. House and Ms. Kullman used an innovation grant to dive deeper into hands-on Math, materials and manipulatives. They report feeling more confident with “paperless” math than before!

 

6. For Math visibility around the school, we had Monday Math Facts on the morning announcements every week. We also have a Math board where staff can post picture evidence of the hands-on Math learning that is happening in their classes.

 

7. For school-wide activities, students were engaged in hands-on Math activities during our four Family Teams activities this year. Having the opportunity to engage with Math and numeracy with students from a variety of grades encouraged students to develop new skills, building confidence in our younger students, and leadership and capacity in our older students. When asked what evidence they had that our students felt more confident with Math, several teachers mentioned that they noticed how much more confident students were during our Math Family Teams in the Spring compared to the Fall!

 

8. Another fantastic school-wide activity was our Math Festival in January! Students from all grades were engaged in fun hands-on Math. Staff noticed the confidence our students had in tackling challenging games. We also noticed the confidence of our grade 6/7 leaders in explaining games to younger students.

 

9. Finally, we have noticed projects all around the school in several classes: fundraisers where students dive into financial literacy, geometry art projects, game-creating to learn about probabilities. All these initiatives are evidence of the hands-on learning that is happening at Mitchell!

We also looked at some data gathered through surveys and assessments:

FSA data – Numeracy Proficiency

This data shows us that overall, our grade 4 and 7 students showed stronger proficiency in numeracy this year. As the FSA assessment takes place in October, when we had just started to act towards our new goal, we aren’t assuming that these improvements are necessarily all connected to our school plan. However, a hunch is that students may have felt more confident in taking a risk and trying a response on the test, rather than leaving it blank. We will continue monitoring FSA numeracy data next year to compare and have a better sense of the impact of our actions on numeracy proficiency for our students.

Report Card Data

This data indicates that teacher-assessed proficiency has not changed much, if at all, since starting our new goal.

Surveying Data

1. We surveyed staff at the start and at the end of the school year. We wanted to know their confidence levels in teaching numeracy and Math concepts. In June, teaching staff data indicated that teachers feel more confident explaining the relationship between Math and Numeracy and that they feel more confident in their knowledge of the Math curriculum. They are also more confident and comfortable in their knowledge of instructional routines and pedagogical approached related to Math. One area that most teachers recognize as still developing is their understanding and familiarity of the Numeracy Foundations. Assessment of proficiency was also an area of interest for further professional development for many staff members.
2. We also surveyed students in the Spring. We used the Ministry Student Learning Survey to get Grade 4 and 7 students’ opinions. See the results below:

 

Overall, these results are positive and indicate a good impact on student learning, confidence and pleasure in Math.

3. In the Spring, we surveyed all students, asking them: “How do you feel when learning Math this year?” See results below:

 

Grade by grade data showed a trend where students’ level of confidence in Math is higher in the primary grades and starts to dwindle in the intermediate grades. This is good information for target intervention in the next school year.

 

4. In the same survey, we also inquired about learning preferences. When asked “What helps you learn Math well?”, students’ top 3 answers were:

1. Playing games (126 students)
2. Group work (116 students)
3. Teacher help (110 students)

This is in alignment with the strategies deployed this year to build confidence through numeracy.

When asked “What do you want to do more of in Math?”, students’ top 3 answers were:

1. Playing games (134 students)
2. Group work (109 students)
3. Worksheets (87 students)

This is good feedback to support our work next year. It is important to note that students still see value in a more traditional approach to learning Math, which supports our hunch that a balance of playful, hands-on and problem-based work best supports our students’ needs in Math.

Based on the data accumulated through the year, we assess that we have made strong progress in our goal of “Building Confidence Through Numeracy”. This data will be revisited with staff in the Fall to decide on next steps and where to take our numeracy goal.