Right then so as you can see from the top there my question how can teachers develop effective
strategies that help students learn independently? So sometimes it's not about the maths
but understanding how to learn, to learn, or how to develop an appropriate mindset so I put
down a couple of statistics from what I got from using Hegarty maths which we use to help students
support students with the November reset which took place towards the end of last year as you
can see those that passed on average they did 3.8 hours during that period between
September the 6th and November the 8th those that failed on average did about 1.9 hours
so you can see there's a big difference there you know twice as much for those that passed
compared to those that failed and I'm going to be coming back to those as we go along.
So
so, why this topic so we support students aged between 16 and 19 who had previously
failed their grade three and only achieved a grade three maths we don't deal with grades one
and two they do functional skills so we're only dealing with grade three gcse maths
we do occasionally deal with other students but that depends on initial assessment usually esol
so we've got quite a low national pass rate for gcse in maths in fe so we're looking at how we
can develop strategies to improve that so we found that many of the students seem to have
an understanding of the basic math straight away so when you start a lesson they quite
quickly grasp what they need to do but what I'm trying to do is move away from doing the
basic maths in class and spending more time on the more complex problems so I try and
involve flipped learning with this approach, so as I say independent learning strategies.
So looking at the literature I was looking at growth mindset and fixed mindset
and then of course with blended learning looking at flipped learning so we looked at
some literature of the topic before I got started before I started doing the research itself.
So as part of growth mindset versus fixed mindset we did some reading on it
and we found you know growth mindset people who had a good growth mindset generally did better
and the same with flipped learning those that were able to access flip learning generally did
better now with the growth mindset versus fixed mindset it was just interesting listening to
the previous presentation with Louise brown and the growth zone model so that was something
I used as well and it came from the resource motivation and engagement toolkit, and I used
that and a card sort as part of understanding growth mindset with students in the classroom.
So once I've done the literature had a look at what we needed to do, I started with the research,
so the interviews on independent study this was done right at the beginning of the year so back in
September - October time, so I interviewed six students and got mixed responses about um their
understanding of independent study and I generally tried to choose students of mixed ability so some
high ability some middle in ability some low ability and it was interesting with some of
the responses so the two responses you can see there in quotes we need to learn to make our
own choices and how to achieve goals and helps prepare you for further study they're quite high
level students so we've got some quite high level responses but it was interesting students
that struggled and struggled to answer the questions so it was a case of the needed
extra input into helping them with the interview. As I say we used Hegarty maths
so I picked 36 students who didn't achieve a grade four and because it was all online all
on data analysis through Hegarty, I was able to use all 142 of the students that passed
in November to have a look at their results now as I said earlier 142 students,
they had a on average they did about 3.8 hours of work independent study during that period
and of those 36 students that didn't pass with the grade four or more it was half that amount,
what we was able to do was to get exam scripts of the 36 students that didn't pass
and with some of them was able to show them what they did I was able to put this information into
an exam analyzer so it's an aqa exam analyzer so one thing I really like doing is doing the
data analysis but not just for my purpose but being able to show it in the classroom as well
so it becomes part of my classroom presence I guess getting students to understand and
respond to what's going on with their exams with how they're using Hegarty or not using Hegarty
and then afterwards we reflected and analyzed I used six students going through some of the
questions from the November re sit exam to see what they understood and where they went wrong
but I also introduced the growth mindset activity so the growth zone model and the card sort
I've put this on purposefully because this is how I would show the students in the classroom
so I don't know if you've ever used Hegarty maths before it doesn't have to be Hegarty it
can be any online educational tool maths-watch, go-maths anything that has an a data analyzer
that you can use and this year we've been using Hegarty so I was able to put this on the screen
as you can see on the left hand side you've got the dates but I've taken the names off
so all the students could see what they've been doing during that period of time
and it's interesting to see how they responded to that information and it was quite a positive
response, so this information I showed after the exams and it was interesting that they looked and
they could see these results and were trying to work out what was going on here and through
questioning they were able to see that if they'd put in more effort they might have done better
now most of these students were mine and the ones that did the most on Hegarty they passed so 23
hours in the space of about four weeks that's quite intense answered a thousand questions
in that period and this is the conversation we were having with these students
so it's interesting to see how they responded to that as part of developing their own mindset.
This is the exam analyzer I used it's aqa and I didn't get to show
this to the students but I was able to input information from the exam scripts
into this analyzer I was able to see what was going on with our students so it's interesting
to see that you know typical of grade 3 students green at the top red at the bottom but you get
to see where they're going wrong as a cohort so like geometry and measure struggled with
algebra struggled with and it's interesting the lack of ability with common questions very low
marks for common questions so my idea of moving away from doing basic tasks in the classroom
because they generally get it quite quickly because they are grade three they obviously
understand it to be at that level it's trying to focus on common questions so problem solving.
So once I collected the data I wanted to look at the results and see what was happening
so it's interesting with the initial interviews at the beginning of the year got different
levels of understanding and ability and levels of communication when discussing independent learning
some students had a really good understanding of it and had no problem with it
and some students struggled with it so I think when it came to flipped learning I had to be
very careful how about how I did flip learning not everybody seemed to be able to access it
with ease so support was needed for those students that struggled to access it those next
two points those that passed and those that failed I'd put them on earlier so you as part of the
independent work using negative maths as I say 3.8 hours worth of work for those that pass 1.9
hours worth of work for those that failed and it's interesting seeing those two different statistics.
It was also interesting analyzing the data looking at the difficulty students had with like geometry
algebra and the common questions so these are areas I prefer to focus on so by analyzing
the data I think technology is great if you know how to use it there's a lot you can do with it.
So students did show a clear understanding of what they needed to do to overcome a fixed mindset and
develop a growth mindset but when I discussed it with them in the classroom using the card sort
talking about Hegarty math getting on the screen for them they understood, or had an understanding
of what they needed to do but they struggled with that question of but how do you do it?
And I found students responded really well to analyzing their own performance in the classroom
as a starter for 10-15 minutes you could get up that term data analysis i showed with here to math
and it's interesting the kind of questions that come out about what they should be doing
and what they do afterwards in terms of improving their own ability in terms of independent study.
So some of the themes that came out of it
so you know I was using a lot of digital technology and I've got to be aware
that some students either don't like it or can't access it um effectively for some of those reasons
there some students you know for whatever reason socioeconomic issues can't afford it
don't have access to the internet at home some preferred not to use online educational still
still preferred paper-based resources and you have to be able to adapt your classroom sessions
and your independent learning strategies around those ideas again with pedagogic pedagogical
issues differentiating between learners that can or showed an aptitude for independent
learners and those that found it challenging so this is where a teacher comes in and supports.
Planning resources so I found that sometimes I didn't need to use maths resources I used
I thought the growth and fixed mindset resources were great because it gives you
the opportunity to have a conversation about what you should be doing so it's not just
the learning matters for learning anything really good employable transferable
points that you could have I found the data analysis tools that i used was really
good in the classroom and uh and again with demographics something you need to be aware of.
So my last point what now so we've done all this what does it mean?
So as you can see at the top see how this sampler student failed with the June 2022 exam so those
36 students are used will have sat the June exam it would be interesting to see how they performed
with their exam results when they come out in August because I work quite closely with the head
of maths, I've already adapted the scheme of work and changed it accordingly to add these things
into this, so, looking to add growth mindset and independent learning strategies within lessons
and being able to incorporate the use of analytical tools with students being able to
uh join in the conversation about what they're doing as part of their classroom experience
and again even teachers have their own comfort and growth models or growth zones so it's
important to be able to offer cpd because you might be finding that some teachers will be
asked to operate outside their comfort zone how do you teach something that's not massive you're
a maths teacher so being able to opportunity for cpd at Leicester college and well anywhere else
and then because I did a master's degree last year i put that last point in because there's
two people on the action research team that are looking to do the master's degrees in education
and it follows a very very similar process to how action research works and it can be used to
develop the teacher and provide extra stimulus to research into improving education practices,
and I'll leave it there.