Term 2 Inquiry Update

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Will feeding vocabulary with directed discussion increase kids language acquisition and participation within class discussions?
This associates with the Manaiakalani CoL achievement challenge #6:

'Lift the achievement in maths for all students years 1-13.'





I still find myself regularly gifting vocabulary to the students hoping they retain some of this eventually and it becomes a part of their own vocabulary. To simplify my inquiry, I have split it into 2 sections; language acquisition and participation within classroom discussions.

Current Vocabulary:

RED: Unknown words
GREEN: Words they knew

This was a huge shock to me as I saw so many holes (red spaces) where I am probably using these terms with the students being clueless about what I have actually said. Once I begun to fill the holes of unknown words, it came to my attention that I'm still not improving their own language acquisition as they're still saying terms such as 'and 1 more to it' instead of counting, adding, etc.


I plan on assessing this by testing them in term 3/4 to see how they are getting on with using these words. Although this graph has a decent amount of green (words they know), they do not use these words so I'll be assessing their understanding and whether they are able to speak it in context.

Participation:



Name
Mid Term 1
Beginning Term 2
End of Term 2
Beginning term 3
Kid 1 
Kid 2
Kid 3
Kid 4
Kid 5
Kid 6
Kid 7
Kid 8
Kid 9
Kid 10
Kid 11
Kid 12
Kid 13
Kid 14
Kid 15
Kid 16
Kid 17
Kid 18

Learning to stay focussed 
Listens to ideas
Can listen and add to ideas within the group
Can listen and share their own ideas in the group
Can listen and share their ideas with the group and class


In the first table we see what words the students do and do not know (pre-test). I am testing this twice a term. I am happy to see progress within students participation and having confidence to voice their opinions but I am also worried about the students who are still only listening to ideas. Since these students lack confidence in their maths, I aim to get them talking in reading and writing where they feel more confident to speak their ideas, hopefully allowing them to finally begin sharing ideas in maths and start working on their language acquisition.

Students participation is based on my judgement during my maths (DMiC) lessons and watching whether they are able to engage in the lesson and voice their opinions. Our focus in maths has been ‘Listening, sharing and talking’ and for some students, this has become a challenge, while others are thriving. I have used teacher talk moves to support the students who lack confidence and struggle to voice their opinion in group situations. This is a work in progress, as I’m finding some students not communicating at all, having a negative impact on their language acquisition.
Is it seen in their mathematical language? 

Although majority of my students struggle to converse these mathematical terms, they are understanding the meanings of the words.

I recall questioning if I minimized my teacher talk, would this have a positive impact on the students language acquisition? After testing this, I realised this had a negative impact because they begun using slang and incorrect terminology. This meant that I needed to increase my teacher talk to model and guide them of the correct terminology. My goal is to continually speak the correct mathematical language, hoping to enforce this into their own language acquisition.
Word of the Week:
This strategy is very successful as we revisit the word every day as part of our morning routine. My next step I want to apply will be to ask the students to put it into a sentence, supporting the real life context and practicing using it in their own language, not just hearing it.
For example, we focused on the word 'fraction', and went over ½, ⅓, ¼ every morning and the students have successfully retained this information really well (with support of revisiting this sometimes) and they can confidently tell me that this cake is cut up in to quarters because there are 4 pieces, understanding the context of the word. It was an awesome win considering prior to this, my students would say '1 over 4' and can now recognise it and say 'That's a quarter!'
Where to next?

  • Grabbing opportunities where the mathematical language can be used in other subjects.

  • Supporting the students who lack confidence to speak, making sure they are hearing the correct vocabulary.

  • Getting the students to begin to speak the correct vocabulary - rather than just hearing it and understanding it
  • Students are still struggling when they see a word problem on the board in maths and cannot figure out what the question is asking them to do. Although I give them as much support as I can in the ‘Launch’ phase, they still get stuck. I need to make sure I am still consistently feeding vocabulary within maths to support their problem solving and making it easier for them to break the question down to successfully solve the problem.
  • How can I get the non-talkers talking?! These are my students that find mathematics a struggle so the added pressure of sharing their ideas becomes overwhelming. I will give these students the opportunity to use materials to support their thinking and sharing of ideas and hopefully this progresses their achievement!





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