Leading Numeracy - Impact Case Study

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership Impact Case Study

Leading Numeracy

Closing the gaps – a team approach Participants:

Leading Numeracy gave Narissa Leung and her team the focus and confidence they needed to implement a new consistent, whole-school approach to numeracy. Now teachers and students are not only enjoying the boost in confidence, but also the improvement in outcomes.

Narissa Leung, Principal at Campbells Creek Primary School, together with Wendy Walsh and one other teacher from the school, participated in the Leading Numeracy course at Bastow in 2014 as a way to closely analyse exactly what numeracy teaching looked like in their school.

Narissa Leung Principal, Campbells Creek Primary School

During the six months it took to complete the course, the team also set clear aims and worked out the best way to achieve them. They then took another six months to train staff and refine their numeracy program, before implementing it across the school.

‘There’s been enormous change as a result of participating in the course,’ says Narissa. ‘What it was really good at doing was forcing us to not only dig deep into our school’s data, but also to examine and collect evidence on our current situation to make sure we implemented a program that suited us.’

Wendy Walsh Teacher, Campbells Creek Primary School

Bastow | Leading Numeracy

Wendy, a teacher from the school’s other campus at Guildford also saw the advantage in going slowly and not pushing staff to immediately change the way they taught.

‘We wanted everyone to see the gaps and understand how they were teaching perhaps wasn’t the most effective way to teach maths,’ explains Wendy. ‘We’ve just been taking it very gently and making sure they feel like they have ownership, but with us as the drivers behind it.’

Working as a team also meant they could share the responsibility of training and supporting the other staff and putting the program into practice.

‘Going as a team was really useful because we could chat right then and there about how our learning could be implemented at school,’ says Wendy. ‘You can start to gather ideas as you’re actually learning, which is just so much more worthwhile and effective.’

Particularly powerful for Narissa was the course’s focus on evidence versus data, including the importance of analysing a broad range of evidence and understanding the learning needs and interests of both teachers and students in order to develop a more customised program, rather than just relying on data.

‘Particularly as a principal, it can be very easy to just think NAPLAN data is the be all and end all, whereas Bastow talked a lot about evidence collection ... it is much more about discussion and interviewing students from different classes and using that evidence to find out what’s actually happening in our classrooms – NAPLAN data doesn’t tell you what a maths lesson actually looks like,’ says Narissa.

Both Narissa and Wendy knew the school had to switch from maths being taught differently in every classroom to a more consistent approach. With the new program, the whole school now spends three weeks on the same numeracy topic.

‘For example, we are just about to start multiplication, so every teacher starts with a pre-test in multiplication and then they use the data from that to work out exactly what they need to teach and what the students already know,’ explains Narissa. ‘We also meet to discuss the approach, including sharing readings so everyone has a common language on how to teach multiplication effectively.’

For Wendy, the key to this new approach is the way it builds the confidence of students and teachers. She is convinced that having a clear structure in place for each lesson and the knowledge that everybody is teaching the same topic makes everyone feel more comfortable and in control.

‘It’s about the kids actually thinking ‘I can do maths’ and watching the teachers become really confident in their own abilities.’

According to Wendy this consistent and strategic approach and the importance of prioritising maths lessons is vital.

‘The teachers really want to be in the classroom because they see value in the kids receiving that one hour of maths every day,’ she says. ‘It’s made such an impact right across the board – from the students, to the teachers, to how the whole school feels about maths.’

This impact can also be felt in the way the teachers interact at meetings and their enthusiasm about the new program.

‘Everyone’s keen to learn more about maths and do more reading. There’s this feeling in the school that this is what’s expected now. You do the reading and you improve and you learn more. That’s the culture that is developing,’ says Wendy.

Pictured: Wendy Walsh with student

Consistency is the key The new numeracy plan that Narissa and her team have introduced involves teaching each numeracy topic in threeweek blocks across the entire school. During each block, they have a weekly staff meeting dedicated to improving teachers’ content knowledge and access to resources to support their teaching of the current topic.

‘It’s totally changed how teachers teach in the classroom,’ says Narissa. ‘The general consensus from the staff is that they’ve gone from worksheets to a much more hands-on system. They’re now asking: What are the effective ways of teaching the topic? What resources do we have to do work with?’

At the end of each three-week block they have a post-test to see the students’ growth and then they meet again to look at the pre- and post-test data, the effectiveness of the unit and what could be done differently, including what impacted negatively or positively on the students’ growth in that time.

All this data for each class is collected on a spreadsheet so everyone can see the individual growth for each child and the patterns.

‘We can see now over a few units which students are growing and who’s going backwards or not learning much,’ explains Narissa. ‘So then we can customise learning for them. It’s so different to 12 months ago.’

Wendy is convinced this is the ideal way to teach this subject area because everyone is involved in the development of each student and can see what’s working, what’s not and how to improve.

Bastow | Leading Numeracy

Teaching the same topics at the same time encourages teachers to have in-depth discussions about what’s happening in all classrooms and to think deeply about how they’re teaching.

‘The teachers now have the time to really understand what they are teaching and that’s been critical – they realise how everything interconnects,’ says Wendy. ‘It also means students have time to grasp concepts, are really clear about what they are learning and feel comfortable asking for assistance.’

Connecting and leading learning Attending Leading Numeracy as a team was part of a carefully planned strategic approach for implementing the new numeracy program and developing a consistent language around maths learning and teaching.

‘After each session we would meet with the whole staff,’ says Narissa. ‘We would go through the activities we had done at the course because we didn’t want to just finish the course and then say: ‘Right everybody, this was discovered and this is what we are going to do’. We thought it was really important that the other staff were able to make the same discoveries.’

This also meant that by the end of the six months, everyone was saying, ‘Wow, we need to change what we are doing.

What’s the next step?’

Wendy believes it also made it possible for the team to go back to school and lead the initiative both together and, if necessary, individually.

‘It’s totally changed how teachers teach in the classroom’ .

‘Trying to promote or implement change in any area into a school is really difficult when you are the only driving person.

The team approach is just so much better for the staff because they’re hearing more than one voice, so they want to come on board too.’

Narissa agrees. ‘Buy-in was one hundred per cent. We decided the learning at Bastow was really powerful for us, so the best way was to pass on that learning in the same way we’d received it.’

The course was also critical because it meant Narissa was able to share insights about her plan for rolling out the program.

‘This kind of implementation involves careful change management,’ she says. ‘The course gave us the time to sit down and talk about the strategy and be sure – at school we just never get that opportunity.’

‘We decided the learning at Bastow was really powerful for us, so the best way was to pass on that learning in the same way we’d received it.’

Pictured: Narissa Leung

Pictured: Teacher and students form Campbells Creek Primary School Bastow | Leading Numeracy

‘Our meetings are now all about teaching and learning ... analysing the data and actually understanding, discussing and accepting that the way we are teaching affects the data.’

New conversations As the numeracy program progresses, Narissa and Wendy are noticing a dramatic transformation in teachers’ conversations and the way they interact with each other.

‘Our meetings are now all about teaching and learning ... analysing the data and actually understanding, discussing and accepting that the way we are teaching affects the data,’ say Narissa. ‘Whereas before, it was often the kids – the kids were doing this or they were mucking around. Now it’s actually how you prepare the lesson and whether you’re capturing their needs.’

The new approach means that teachers feel supported, but are also expected to take responsibility for their students’ outcomes.

‘I know initially when I collected the pre- and post-test data and put it up in the staffroom, I think people were a bit surprised and worried about the accountability of having it displayed, but now they realise how effective and how useful it is to get that constant drip of data feedback,’ says Narissa.

She believes the teachers can now clearly see the benefit of taking ‘a temperature check every three weeks’ to make sure they are capturing the needs of all the students, whereas previously it would only be the half-year and endof-year reports.

‘Now even three weeks feels like a long time and we are all aware of just how critical it is to make sure all students are progressing. The teachers are now asking for all subject areas: how do we know we’re growing our kids? That’s been a huge shift.’

Wendy believes the new program has also ‘bumped up the importance of numeracy’ for teachers, students and parents and dispelled the misconception that some children can’t learn maths.

‘When we do the testing, the students understand it’s not about who got a better mark. It’s about looking at how much you’ve grown within the three-week period,’ she says. ‘The kids know what the learning intention is for each session. They know where they’re heading. They know success criteria. They know at the end what worked and what didn’t work and maybe some areas where they might need to improve.’

This openness also works to keep parents informed about exactly what’s happening in the classroom.

‘The parents know if their child is doing division in prep, then the grade threes and fives are also doing division – they’ve got a better understanding of what’s happening and they can watch their children improving and growing in confidence.’

The Leading Numeracy course was reviewed in 2015 to ensure that it aligns with the Government’s priorities for mathematics education, the new Victorian Curriculum and the Department of Education and Training’s STEM (Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Technology) initiatives as identified in the Education State paper. The new course will be delivered in 2016 and renamed Leading Mathematics.

Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership 603-615 Queensberry Street North Melbourne Victoria 3051 t (03) 8199 2900 f (03) 8199 2910 e bastow@bastow.vic.edu.au

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