Fairlie Primary School ALIM Year 2

1. Fairlie Primary School ALIM Year 2 “How do we develop effective systems of support that sustain student acceleration and ensure intervention coherence at a school-wide level.”

2. Our Design Model What it looked like: Principal and Lead TeacherYear 3 ALIM Teacher - 5-7 just below students - Two 50 minute sessions a week -Principal provided release time for 4 hours a week. -Tuesday and Thursdays. Year 5&6 ALIM Teacher - Lead teacher provided theory support - 5-7 just below students and daily/weekly check ins. - Two 50 minute sessions a week

3. Our Design Model: What informed our decisions • Our decision to apply this model was based on our ability as a small rural school to access relievers. • Finding a teacher that would come to our school in Fairlie for 2 hours a day every Tuesday and Thursday was not an attractive option. • With our principal needing to fill .2 FTTE time in the class we then decided that part of that could be served as an ALIM release teacher. • This decision would also let the Lead teacher be able to observe ALIM lessons and the principal would combine the classes using our collaborative teaching model we are implementing at our school. • This model served its purpose but also had some downfalls at times.

4. Our Design Model: Successes' • Using a principal as a release teacher meant that the classroom teachers would not have to worry about curriculum delivery for their students. • Enabling the Lead Teacher to observe lessons let the ALIM teachers pick up tips and feed forward on their practice. • Daily and weekly discussions took place at staff meetings and being such a small school with only a couple of teachers having ALIM groups helped create valuable and worthwhile discussion. • The model was simple and their were no problems with rescheduling of ALIM teaching time. If the principal could not release a day it could easily be made up the next day. • The 40 minute teaching sessions were the perfect amount of time for student engagement and a 10 minute post lesson time for the ALIM teacher let them be able to record notes and reflect on their teaching. • Having a small staff involved made it easier for actionable processes. If we wanted to change something in the program it was easily done.

5. Our Design Model: Barriers • If the principal was sick or out for a period of time ALIM could not be run. There was no stand in reliever that would come to Fairlie for 2 hours of a day. • If the principal did not have the .2 FTTE time then the program couldn’t have worked. • Having two ALIM teachers that were at largely different curriculum levels took time to discuss barriers in the weekly meetings. If we had a learning team or a specific age we were focusing on and all the teachers were teaching the same level it would have streamlined the meetings better. • With the model we didn’t need the whole $7500 and since our principal had to complete .2 FTTE in a class we didn’t use the funding for relievers This made it difficult to spend the large amount of money since the guidelines to spending were quite restricting.

6. Our Design Model: Modifications • Planning around our principal’s timetable. • Children that excelled outside the criteria for the ALIM group were put back into the classroom and a new student was possibly added to the group. • As we developed our pedagogical knowledge through readings and observations from our UOC lecturer we restructured how we taught the lessons and our focuses and journey. • We came to the realization that the funds to be spent could be used beyond the ALIM 15 week program and be used next term or even next year for ongoing monitoring of those students previously in the program.

7. Curriculum and Achievement Plan

8. Our Design Model: Is it sustainable? Absolutely • As long as the principal .2 FTTE time in the classroom continues (which is due to student numbers in the school) the ALIM program will continue in our school most definitely until the end of the year. • Looking again at numbers and the availability of the principal hours next year their might be an issue and in that case we would need to look at changing the model to a reliever. • With the ALIM program having already developed now across the school, minus the new entrant class, the teacher’s now know how to use the accelerated learning in their day to day practice. So this pedagogy and new way of teaching by inquiry would have developed fully by the end of year and teacher’s should not need to release time and would start applying it naturally in-class time. • With not all the money spent this year we have put it aside to benefit future ALIM groups in relation to; teacher release time, Monitoring of past and future ALIM students, resources benefiting teaching practice and student learning.

9. Collaborative Inquiry: Inquiry Teaching Focus What was the main focus of our teaching inquiry? • For our school our main focus in our teaching inquiry for ALIM would have had to been how to address avoidance behaviors and then from there upskilling our teachers with content knowledge so we can better serve those students who are below the standard. • We had a hard look at some of the data we gathered since the start or the year and combined it with observational notes on certain students and found that they weren't below because of any academic or learning barriers but more because of their attitudes and behaviors towards Mathematics.

10. Collaborative Inquiry: What research informed our practice? • From the ALIM section of the NZmaths website I had a search to see if there were any resources we could apply to our focus. • I found that there was some valuable readings and PD that were free to access online around avoidance behaviors. We read these as a staff and talked about our findings at meetings and applied them to our lessons. • Staff found this helpful because it specifically related to students they had in their focus groups and gave them specific suggestions as to what might work for the behavior. • We also had our UOC lecturer come in and take some sessions with us around how we assess and manage student achievement. This helped us with the aspect of upskilling our staff and having someone that has a vast knowledge around a certain core curriculum area was great. • We also discovered there were readings online that on Nzmaths that focused on each stage in our curriculum for numeracy. Reading these between staff meetings and having discussions around them created a platform for us to inform our own teaching and go from there. • We also took anecdotal notes on students as we taught and at the end of lessons which linked back into our inquiry process to inform our practice.

11. Collaborative Inquiry: What approaches did we implement? • Approaches from the reading that we implemented were making connections in lesson times between learning and a students personal likes or favorite sport/food. • We started off using a range of physical manipulative resources but then realized from Lead Teacher observations that the students were getting too much of a choice and wasting time in lessons so we narrowed down our resources for the seniors to just money. This was also backed up in the online readings. • From observations from our UOC lecturer we discovered that rushing and giving lots of questions for the group was not as beneficial as we thought and was rushing the students. They weren’t experiencing the unpacking of the key ideas and more just ticking boxes. So we really spent time on creating worthwhile mathematical tasks and unpacked those key ideas. • Implementing mathematical language was a big push since the start of the program. We confused the students last year with a lot of language for the same processes so we had a clear “script” of what we were to call what so all the ALIM teachers were on the same page across the school. • Getting the students to put their number problems into word problems was a main focus of our lesson structure. The students needed to put their number problems into a real world context so that they understood them on a more personal or real level. • Having a folder with last years tips included and planning sheets was created by the Lead Teacher and this helped this year’s ALIM teacher’s to hit the ground running with what the program looked like.

12. Collaborative Inquiry: What was the impact on learners and their learning? • From the start of the program the students were not the most positive learners towards Maths but as the ALIM teacher implemented the approaches the students engagement seemed to rise. Their attitudes seemed to build and if key ideas were properly unpacked with the students, they felt they were achieving every step of the way and as a result it pushed their learning. • After the first few weeks the students made leaps and bounds moving through the key mathematical ideas and building on each one to the next. • From the start we asked the learners what they liked, disliked and wanted to learn in Maths, some of the responses were as follows: • “I like maths because it will help me become an astronomer” • “I find basic facts difficult” • “I don’t like checking my work” • “I like easy problems that get harder” • “I would like to learn my times tables” Opinions now: • “Being in the Maths group has helped me with my multiplication and using the money has definitely helped.” • “Instead of being left to our own devices the teacher has spent more time with us and given us materials that are easy to use and work out problems with. “ • “I’ve gotten way better at my equal additions strategy.” • “I don’t mind checking my work now because I feel I have gotten better at maths.” • “I think I’ve gotten better at learning lots of different strategies.”

13. Collaborative Inquiry: Did acceleration happen? Through the current results of student achievement and the knowledge gained by staff. How do we know? • The students were GloSs’d at the start and that test has been repeated now and there has been an obvious shift in strategy and number knowledge. • Teacher’s knowledge and delivery has changed since the start of the program and the way they plan and find next steps has changed. What is the evidence? • Teacher planning • Anecdotal notes • Academic results • Student attitude and engagement • Teacher conversations around mathematics and the support network we have formed.