Number Agents

As a school over the past five to six years we have been working hard to understand what Engagement and Motivation looks like and how it is achieved for all children. Over this time we have refined our practice, using approaches like Mantle of the Expert and Play to increase student agency and in turn increase the level of engagement and motivation without the need for dangling carrots. This journey has been huge for us and I have been so glad that I have written about it along the way, because there has just been so much learning going on. Over the past few years I feel like we have really started to nail this, but there has still been a niggling group of children, that despite our best efforts have remained not disengaged, but definitely not as engaged as everyone else. Now we could have accepted that we can't reach 100% of the children 100% of the time, but that wouldn't fit with who we are. These children were a conundrum, and there is nothing that sparks an inquiry mor...

Throughout this journey into play over the last five years, one question comes up often, it has been one I have struggled to answer and actually have felt ill equipped to answer. The question is around those children that just cause absolute chaos in a play based class, that break things, fight, basically run riot. Those children who are oppositional and rebuff our attempts at forming strong relationships, basically seem to undermine everything we do.  What do we do about these children?  I have not felt able to answer this question, because I am incredibly lucky to work in a school where children usually come in with the ability to auto-regulate or to regulate with support from an a trusted person (co-regulate.) Don't get me wrong, we still have children who come in with obvious issues with regulation, due to early trauma or otherwise, but we don't usually have groups of them, we have one or two who we can work effectively with and help to self-manage. After reading this...

The word acceleration has been one that has irked me since it became the catch phrase of the Ministry and ERO. In my opinion it is productive struggle we should be aiming for, not acceleration. I got thinking more about this after a conversation I had with a group of learners identified as Maori and working below their expected stage in mathematics. Our data had thrown up some interesting patterns and I wanted to hear first hand what might be going on with mathematics for some of these children.  If in doubt, I always turn to student voice...I absolutely always learn something and am presented with ideas I wasn't expecting. So I gathered together this group, posed myself as an investigator, wanting to know more about maths in our school and proceeded to ask them about maths.    I was prepared for them to tell me they were bad at maths, found it hard and wanted more teacher support. Not only did these so called 'lower' level learners not do this but they tal...