L.A. Matheson Secondary 22-23
OUR CONTEXT
We are excited to be sharing our plan to you on the shared traditional territory of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Semiahmoo and other Coast Salish People(s)
OUR LEARNERS
At L.A. Matheson we believe that building our students' numeracy skills is important as they leave high school. Numeracy is used in our everyday lives and one's confidence with numbers impacts them financially, socially and professionally in life. In developing numeracy skills, our students are engaging in the Core Competencies (Communication, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Emotional). We also believe that self-identity plays an important role in our learners of numeracy and mathematics. We recognize the diversity in our student population, and staff work from students's strengths and background knowledge with numbers. We believe numeracy skills should be fostered in all curriculum areas.
- Our learners value Indigenous ways of knowin
Our students can reflect on Mathematical Thinking
- Our students can connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests
- Our students can use mathematical arguments to support choice
- Our learners can respectfully share and express their ideas in our shared community
OUR FOCUS
We believe that focusing on numeracy is important in developing graduates that can critically and reflectively think. We want our learners to make judgments based on reasoning, where students consider options, analyze options using specific criteria, and draw conclusions. These experiences are vital as they provide our graduates opportunities to make decisions in multiple aspects of their lives. For the past several years we have been focussed on adopting a more holistic approach to teaching and assessing mathematics at L.A. Matheson. This shift ensures we are using modern teaching strategies that are student-centred and assessment strategies that allow students to reflect on previous learning and demonstrate growth.
Our student learning cohort is focused on cultivating our students ability to reason. Reasoning is an essential numeracy skill because it allows us to make sense of numbers and how they apply to the world around us. It helps our students understand the logic behind mathematical operations and how these operations could applied in all aspects of life. Through reasoning students can make connections between different ideas and concepts.
Our learning cohort focused on:
- Using logic and patterns to solve and analyze problems
- Using mental math strategies to build number sense and estimation skills
- Applying reasoning to model scenarios
We believe that explicit and consistent introduction to numeracy tasks will help our ability to think and reason.
The instructional and assessment strategies that were implemented to help with student proficiency in these areas are:
1) Regular practice with rich tasks
2) Use of vertical whiteboards and randomized groups
3) Providing students with unit trackers to help them monitor their learning and their ability achieve proficiency-Research indicates if students are aware of their own learning and assessment they are more likely to be invested in the process and learning will improve.
OUR NEXT STEPS
In our initial analysis of evidence we assessed students ability to reason using the following curricular competencies. This is our baseline data. Throughout the semester students were provided instruction and tasks to bolster the reasoning skills highlighted below. Our data only focused on student proficiency based on the Ministry Proficiency scale as this is our target for all learners.
The data above provided above was our baseline data; Below is data we collected
Using logic and patterns to solve and analyze problems: 10 % increase
Using mental math strategies to build number sense and estimation skills: 25% increase
Applying reasoning to model scenarios: 10 % increase
In summary while we observed growth in all the areas there is still room for further development. Going forward, we would incorporate and organize our tasks as a scheduled event in the course. In addition, using multiple sources of assessment data could provide a more complete picture of student progress.
Our plan for next. year is to continue to introduce more students to these numeracy tasks by expanding our cohorts.
Surrey Schools
Formed in 1906, the Surrey School District currently has the largest student enrolment in British Columbia and is one of the few growing districts in the province. It is governed by a publicly elected board of seven trustees.
The district serves the cities of Surrey and White Rock and the rural area of Barnston Island.
