Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to the wider school and cluster goals.

TAI2020WRFC Inquiry question#2: 
Collaborate with your school's leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to the wider school and cluster goals.

My Inquiry focus for 2020:How can I accelerate learning in my Year 12 calculus mix ability class so that Maori students (and other students) can gain at least 14 credits, endorsements, and pathways into the year13 Calculus course by focusing on Algebraic skills and literacy strategies to promote contextual based questions. 
Specific Outcomes:
• Facilitating year12 students’ pathway into the year13 Calculus course.
• This includes gaining at least 10 internal credits.
• Students must also pass at least 1 external exam.

By the end of the year, the Maori (targeted students) and the rest of the class can experience success in their learning bypassing at least one external and getting Merit / Excellence endorsements in Mathematics.

This is a mix ability class of 23 consisting of; 3 Maori students, 10 Tongan students, 5 Samoan students, 3 Cook Island Maori 1 Pakeha and 1 Asian. This class has great diversity and last year only two of these students endorsed with merit.

There are four different types of learners in this class. One group is working at the Achieved level, the second group is working at the Merit level, the third group is working at the Excellence level and the other group is working below the Achieved level.

I am very excited by the challenges of mixed ability classes and am interested in catering effectively to every learner in the classroom.

To make this effective, I have made the following initial plans with my students:
• Course booklets in order to cater according to their ability.
• Whanau engagement.
• Weekly study classes two times a week and holiday classes.
• Interactive activities, video lessons, Geogebra, Desmos 3DGraphing calculator, etc.
• Collaborate with MIT, Future tech, Ex-students, and other tertiary providers to promote Engineering, Architecture, and  Medicine.
• Collaborate with my old school.
• Organise sites/ workspace/unit plans/ yearly planner and weekly planner.
• Organising year planners, Daily planner, workspace
• Literacy strategies with Dr. Janni Van Hees and Mrs. Latu.
• Research into effective teaching strategies- te kotahitanga
• PDs if needed
• Apply SOLO taxonomy effectively.
• Working with Lenva Shearing.

Teacher in the same department:
There is three internals which I offer in this program which is common for all year12 classes. As an Assistant HOD, we have decided on a collaborative approach to the common standards which we teach. I am going to support my colleagues in teaching the skills and content of the course in order to maintain consistency and cater to every student in the classroom.
I have made the following to support/collaborate with my colleagues
• Marking and internal/external moderation.
• Weekly catch up with colleagues to keep everyone informed and on the same page.
• Updating unit plans every topic before the head of the term.
• Organise sites/ workspace/unit plans/ yearly planner and weekly planner.
• Organising year planners, Daily Planner, and workspace.
• Literacy strategies PEEL structure, Chuck, Chew and Check strategy.

Contribution with the other departments:
• Sharing my blog.
• Collaborate with school differentiation planning.
• Literacy strategies, SOLO taxonomy, and online resources.
• Sharing success during staff meetings.
• Collaborating within school CoL leaders.
• Collaborative Leadership Inquiry between Ms. Hinarau Anderson, Mrs. Elenoa Telefoni and me.

Contribution to wider School and cluster goal:
“School Goal 1: Maori Achievement-to raise Maori achievement and cultural visibility that 85% of the Maori students will achieve Level2”
“Mathematics Department Goal3: Year 13s to leave college with sufficient maths skills to get into their chosen vocational pathway”
• My inquiry will be a powerful contribution towards school goal one and fulfill the department goal too.
• Collaborate with MIT, Future tech, Ex-students, and other tertiary providers to promote Engineering, Architecture, and Medicine.
• Contribution to differentiation planning.

I am excited about the challenge this year brings with a mixed ability class, collaboration with  my colleagues as well as collaboration on teaching.
I strongly believe that collaboration adds motivation and value. When we work together with teachers we can identify the common challenges, analyse common data, and can test our instructional approach.

My Inquiry class

Pi day at Tamaki College

Pi day celebrations

Today is the International Pi day, we celebrated yesterday as today is the holiday.

Some interesting facts about Pi     

• Pi is the most recognized mathematical constant in the world. Scholars often consider Pi the most important and intriguing number in all of mathematics.
•  Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day (3/14/1879) in Ulm Wurttemberg, Germany.
•  William Jones (1675-1749) introduced the symbol “π” in 1706, and it was later popularized by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) in 1737.
• Comedian John Evans once quipped: “What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o’-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin π.
• The symbol for pi (π) has been used regularly in its mathematical sense only for the past 250 years.
• In 2005, Lu Chao of China set a world record by memorizing the first 67,890 digits of pi.
•   A Givenchy men’s cologne named Pi is marketed as highlighting the sexual appeal of intelligent and visionary men.
• We can never truly measure the circumference or the area of a circle because we can never truly know the value of pi. Pi is an irrational number, meaning its digits go on forever in a seemingly random sequence.
• In the Greek alphabet, π (piwas) is the sixteenth letter. In the English alphabet, p is also the sixteenth letter.
• The first 144 digits of pi add up to 666 (which many scholars say is “the mark of the Beast”). And 144 = (6+6) x (6+6).
• In 2002, a Japanese scientist found 1.24 trillion digits of pi using a powerful computer called the Hitachi SR 8000, breaking all previous records.
•  Since there are 360 degrees in a circle and pi is intimately connected with the circle, some mathematicians were delighted to discover that the number 360 is at the 359th digit position of pi.

Highlights

Who can tell the longest digit 

How to calculate pi? Here is the blog from 10RKu

https://tckensingtonf.blogspot.com/2020/03/maths.html#comment-form

http://tcsoaneo.blogspot.com/

https://gbssalotea.blogspot.com/2020/03/piday.html

https://peskaharauh.blogspot.com/2020/03/pi.html

https://pesfetuaou.blogspot.com/2020/03/pi-day.html

Happy  𝛑(Pi) day everyone!!!!!

Use the ‘inquiry stock take doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

TAI2020WRFC Inquiry question#1: 

Use the ‘inquiry stock take doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

Here is my inquiry stock take reflection:
What worked well- Help from Dr Jannie Van Hees, Student voice, Whanau engagement, Causal chain, weekly monitoring and Feedbacks from Hana.
Challenges-Time management to cater to all students due to their career pathways, Maintaining the whanau engagement periodically and meeting the deadline.
Additional support- Buddy up with the same subject teacher(stand-alone courses) and more collaboration within each other.

Aspects of inquiry	What worked well	Challenges	Additional support that would be helpful
Identifying valued learning outcomes (VLOs) to focus on	The detailed frameworks provided after each session. WFRC support. Referred to end of year assessments from the previous year - had post data discussions with fellow CoL teachers within the school Good support and Feedbacks from WFRC. Student voice.	Time constraints as the diversity of the learners’ are huge.	Meetings to read/go over previous blogs / focus to see if anything has been done in your chosen area before.
Profiling students’ learning in those VLOs	Referred to data and identified who our target students are Whanau engagement (Hui and Fono’s)	Maintaining whanau engagement by talking to them periodically.	To bring in, everyone.
Generating hypotheses (especially teaching)	Collaborate with teachers and other schools with the same type of inquiry.	How far the hypotheses will be successful.	More the time during CoL PLG to discuss if needed.
Testing hypotheses (investigating own teaching)	Collecting student voice via google forms, videos etc.. Peer teacher/HOD observation. Comparing topic by topic with the previous year results/Decile 1 schools’ results.	Meeting deadline in case if it fails.	Ongoing feedbacks whether are I on track.
Using research literature and other sources to identify more effective approaches	ALL intervention ALIM intervention Best Evidence Synthesis (BES)	Knowing where to look for the correct kind of research on the particular topics.	A central “bank” that we could all add to, so we can see a breadth of reading being done and dip in.
Implementing new approaches	Having the freedom to try new ideas.	Not wanting to waste valuable class time with ideas that may not be successful The realities of busy classroom finding ‘how’ to implement within this. Meeting the deadline.	Always consult with expertise before put it on the action.
Monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches	Having previous blog posts to refer back to. Causal chain. Weekly monitoring. After school and holidays tutoring. Peer teaching.	Hard to get feedback for standalone courses.	Always have a mentor.
Evaluate shifts in own teaching	Trying something new and changing teacher practice Inter lead reflections Great to have a COL buddy capture the changes through observation and conversation	Very challenging in a big diversity class.	Feedback.
Evaluate shifts in student learning	Student voice. Conversation with learners. Discussion between Student and Teacher. Data Analysis.	Measuring key Competencies and self-efficacy. Narrow data gathering and honing in.	Feedback.
Keep a clear and detailed record of all stages of inquiry	Step-by-step process explicitly provided Keeping labels on blog Posts comments/emails from Hana were great.

what you aim to learn about inquiry this year?
I would like to dive deeper into literacy strategies, more collaboration with colleagues and whanau, working with experts, working with other schools for stand-alone courses and feed backs to colleagues.