Teaching As Inquiry

This year as a staff, we have been focusing on the area of mathematics for our Teaching as Inquiry (TAI) focus.

As I started at my current school half way through last year, I didn't have the opportunity to start a full TAI last year. As this is my first one, I found the lead up to it daunting. I constantly had multiple questions running through my head. How would I identify my target children? How would I ensure that my target group would improve? How can I justify these improvements? Are only a few of the questions that took over my mind and stressed me out.

In the Senior Syndicate we are working our mathematics programme across a four. We have a system where we see the same groups at the same time every week. Each of us roam for half a session a week. For example I roam on a Tuesday for the first half of a session and then work with a group. (All of us are teaching during this point). The purpose of a roaming teacher for the first half of the session is to assist children where they need it, check in on specific learners to ensure they are on-task and observe teaching when/where needed. It is also beneficial for the roamer to see how other teachers teach certain strategies/work with children to gain ideas and professionally develop their own teaching and learning.
We have a "roaming book" which we record anything necessary in, so that we have a record of it.

Our Target Groups consist of children who we have identified from Gloss Testing, that are below where they currently should be. The other groups are not based on ability. They are completely mixed ability.
I find this beneficial as the children at higher stages, who are able to make sense of a strategy quickly are able to also become a teacher and teach their peers, engraining their knowledge further. Children who are working at a lower strategy stage then learn from their peers as are exposed to a wider range of mathematical vocabulary and reasoning.

My target group has been my main focus this term. However, my teaching strategies which I use on these children automatically flow through to my teaching of my other maths groups.

When working with my groups, I use my modelling book. I have one for each of my groups. I ensure we recap on the previous session and share any new learning that is going to occur within the next few sessions. The children use the modelling book when working independently or away from the teacher but collaboratively, to further understanding and challenge themselves.

Some of the activities that I have the children working through include:

- Working through a Task Board. This has been set up to encourage the children to purely work on what they need to learn based on their I Kan knowledge test results.
- Working through strategy based activities made up with informative videos, questions and games.
- Figure it out activities
- Weekly challenges
- Variety of group box games
- Knowledge games e.g. greedy pig, place value millionaire, rocket, countdown numbers, maths tag


Overall, I'm not sure what I was so worried about. I have found that with the right support, I have managed to keep on track and really dive head first into my TAI- with confidence and with the willingness to learn!
Most importantly though, the feedback provided from the children in the syndicate and the parents has been phenomenal! One parent has said "I don't think I've ever heard so many children rave about how much they are enjoying maths!"
Feedback like this, for me speaks for itself. The children are excited about their learning and can't wait to come to mathematics each day. I can't wait to see if there has been a change in their mathematics results, as there has been in their attitudes towards maths.