Class learning sites

Happy New Year.

Winding up into 2019, I have put together a new website for this year's class. It is a new look and different way of thinking for a class site from what I have done in the past. Removing or ignoring the header section of a website in favour of a large icon or linked image has allowed me to reduce clutter on the landing page while keeping it functional. What follows is how I came to that realisation.

One of the aspects learning websites need to consider is how quickly children can access their learning tasks and/or the information they need. Back in 2014, when I was part of the first Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA), a "3 click site" was suggested as a rule of thumb. This means a site that takes three clicks from the landing page to any piece of information that is needed. The reason for this being that the longer it takes for people to get the information they need, the less likely they are to engage with it... to make a long story short. An example might be if a child needed to do reading, they might start at the landing page, click on a reading button, click on their group button, then click on the link for the week's work.

I have always tried to reduce the number of steps for anyone to get to the information they need while keeping with trends in website design...or at least the trends that work with children's thought processes. In 2018 I developed a "1 click site", thanks to advances in Google Sites. I was able to quickly make a clone for my 2019 site. It wasn't till Robyn Anderson asked for help developing her comic theme idea for a class site (splash below) that I realised I wasn't happy with my own site.

Robyn's site combines the landing page splash with the menu system to cut down the scrolling caused by a site header.  Another colleague asked to hep create her website for which I developed an icon to represent her class. The icon's shape allowed me to remove the header from her site as well, which lead me to how to make a landing page I was happy with.

Place Value...a teaser

EDCURRIC 714 Exploring Mathematical Thinking taught by Gail Ledger at the University of Auckland is a great paper for learning about how humanity has thought about how number systems work and how the place value system came about. The practical values come in understanding where to start developing the concept of "one" or a single unit and building that into the concept of place value among other mathematical concepts.

Follow this link to the University of Auckland calendar website.

As it happens, the next weak spot in my groups' understanding to work on is place value. I used the idea of teaching the Ancient Egyptian numbers and numeral system last year to teach place value. The kids enjoyed it. Whether it helped them further develop an understanding of place value, I don't know. This coming term I'll be doing something similar, but a bit more 'hands on' and a bit more localised...

Ancient Egyptian numbers. Source: Grauberg, Eva (see below).

Now, time for the obligatory declaring of evidence that I have done some reading on the topic and not just pulled these ideas out of thin air. There are many texts on place value and ancient number systems, but here are a few (no, I'm not using any particular format e.g. APA).

Place Value:

• Elementary mathematics and language difficulties; a book for teachers, therapists and parents (1998). Grauberg, Eva.
• Children's Developing Understanding of Place Value: Semiotic Aspects. Maria Varelas and Joe Becker. Cognition and Instruction, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1997), pp. 265-286

Number history:

• Numbers through the ages (1989), Written Numbers pp. 76--130. Flegg, Graham.
• The Beginnings of Arithmetic, The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 12, No. 177 (Jul., 1925), pp. 401-414. L. N. G. Filon

Ancient number systems:

• Ancient Egyptian - see above sources
• Chinese -
• Joseph, G. (2011). The crest of the peacock: non-European roots of mathematics (3rd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Pellatt, V. (2007). Numbers and numeracy in Chinese culture, language, and education : the social substratum of the development of mathematical thinking.

IKAN results... a small ray of hope

My pupils were tested on their knowledge earlier this term. Generally in New Zealand, this involves the IKAN test. My pupils however often need to be retested on the JAM (junior assessment for maths) to get a clearer idea of what they know as opposed to what they can hear, read, parse, recall, then write down within 3 seconds.

After seeing the results, I had a sense of a general increase in certain domains of maths, especially fractions. I have put it to the test and made a comparison.

Colour coded IKAN shift for 2018

With green being the code for an increase in level, this screenshot of my spreadsheet shows that there has indeed been a general improvement in the Overall Level out of the pupils present for both tests (there is one coding error for pupil #28, which made no overall change). IKAN's Overall Level though, is taken from the lowest score within the domain scores, so it doesn't necessarily show improvement. The large number of increases in fractions demonstrates this phenomenon.

I have taken the small win in fractions and have moved on to improving basic facts for the remainder of this term (since about Week 7), and next term I will focus on place value.

Basic Facts Boxes

Basic Facts... a gap in knowledge that I never had when I was growing up. A gap in knowledge that prevents or hinders improvement in most areas of mathematics. How can Basic Facts knowledge in children, who are in some cases quite far behind expected ability, be brought back to average and boosted further?

Here's something I developed to give it a go.


This Google Sheet populates boxes with random addition and subtraction problems to solve. On entering an answer, the sheet checks the answer and gives immediate feedback. Another sheet in this Spreadsheet does the same for times tables and the corresponding division facts.

I tested the first version of this on my own pupils to limited success. The positive is that many of the kids wanted to keep going until they got everything correct. The negative was that they didn't take screenshots of the boards that had errors, so there was no record of their improvement.

A colleague, Robyn Anderson tested version 2 (without the times tables) with her class. You can read about her success and outcomes I never expected from this tool on her blog post.

The inspiration for this tool came from two places. The first being a Japanese tool for memorising basic facts and the second being Monty Jones's (Tāmaki College) spreadsheets for practising maths problems at secondary school level.

Feel free to copy it, use it, attribute it, and tell me about the successes and challenges you have had.

Maths Vlog

In another attempt to encourage learners into speaking about maths and develop their understanding of maths, I am trialling a task I'm calling Maths Vlog...again until I can think of a better name. This task involves learners creating a stack of objects in front of them and talking about the objects in relation to the concept being learned. This monologue is recorded then embedded into a Google Slide as if creating a vlog.

As can be seen in the example, the task is reusable (unlike worksheets), realia based (unlike many apps), and has some basic scaffolding to aid in learning.

The idea of Maths Vlog came from the success of SSR Selfie for promoting reading and FlipGrid for talking about maths. Hopefully this will be as successful as SSR Selfie in engaging learners with their basic maths concepts and provided the much needed mileage in using maths verbally.

Less than? Before? Minus one? What does that mean?

Observation of learners over the past years have shown that children in the tail end often have severe limitations in their vocabulary and understanding of basic concepts in size, order, and direction among others. Concepts need to be taught and repeated before internalisation occurs and application to problems can happen. How can I do this while meeting the demands of a full schedule? I know about apps, but frankly many are naff or incomplete for my needs. The many resources available from teachers around the world are often too babyish for my year 4/5/6 learners because these concepts should be developed in kindergarten or the first couple of years at primary school.

My solution is a series of semi open-ended tasks dubbed "Knowledge Cards"...until I can think of a cooler name. These are used with maths materials or other realia around the classroom to reinforce concepts in the learner's mind. Learners are also supposed to describe what they have done aloud in a Maths Vlog to aid in both reinforcing concepts and learning how to use the vocabulary verbally.

So far there has been a positive response to the cards I have developed. There are still some cards that I would like to make for both simple and more advanced maths concepts such as dividing/sharing items and part-whole number relationships.

Talking about capacity using Flipgrid

Capacity. What is it? How can it be measured? How is it usually measured? These are some questions for a maths concept that can develop some much needed language skills. But this is maths, how does one get children talking about maths? FlipGrid to the rescue.

In these lessons about capacity, children learned about containers and different ways of filling them up to find out how much they held. Children then learned how to talk about the comparative sizes of containers and how to measure exact capacities using a measuring cylinder and millilitres.

The capacity and verbal components to this lesson were very successful. The learners enjoyed using water and scientific instruments to find out about capacity. They also enjoyed sharing their learning by talking about it and using a simple video response recording system.

Problems arose with the word problems I had developed for them based on the learning done in the lesson. There were two main problems, both of which could be foreseen with knowledge of my learners. These problems were the inability to comprehend the problem despite being written in a simple and consistent format, and a lack of basic facts knowledge.

In subsequent lessons I structured and walked through how to understand, respond, and answer these problems with some success. I will need to continue scaffolding responses till learners become reasonably proficient before dropping the scaffold.