Professional Learning Goals

• an increased sense of collaboration amongst the Teacher-ECE partnership
• an understanding of conducting baseline assessments
• how to create problem-solving tasks that take into consideration language needs and stage of development
• how to use learning trajectories  as  a tool to inform instruction
• creating dialogue amongst educators within the TLC project and outside of the TLC project

 

Activities and Resources

The release time provided really assisted in the collaboration amongst colleagues in the TLC project. The consistent meetings with a clear agenda allowed for the team to discuss various aspects of the planning process, and meet goals.

Reading the text, Learning and Teaching Early Math: The Learning Trajectories Approach Second Edition, and meeting as a team to debrief the research allowed us to be on the same page and apply those common understanding to the creation of tasks and assessments

Conducting a baseline assessment on the senior kindergarten students allowed us to understand exactly what our children knew in terms of content and strategies, which in turn helped us plan developmentally appropriate tasks

 

Unexpected Challenges

Timing was a factor. We needed more reflection time between tasks to tweak student misconceptions or consolidation of a particular topic. Additionally, the condensed timeline for the project as a result of project approval being delayed made it difficult for the children to process their new learnings.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

Using the learning trajectory as a tool to understand where the children are developmentally in terms of their mathematical understandings and plan instructional tasks that are developmentally sequenced allowed children to be successful within their zone of proximal development. It fostered communication amongst students while they shared their thinking during consolidation of tasks. The tasks we chose to complete are applicable to all students, not just our own, as the tasks can be differentiated for students who are both higher and lower on the developmental level for selected learning trajectory.

Sharing

We held an Open House for our family of schools inviting Early Childhood Educators, kindergarten teachers and Grade 1 teachers. The Open House was held on May 6, 2015 from 4 to 6 p.m. at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy. The Open House was also attended by our Family of Schools Math Coach and our Superintendent for ER16.

The Open House was advertised via email through our principal in charge of early years for ER16, Julie Kwon.

During the Open House, we presented our project via PowerPoint presentation and experiential learning in which task kits were prepared for educators to experience and understand the learning our students had been involved in. During the PowerPoint presentation, we discussed the research and each team of teachers presented an instructional task in detail (i.e., the materials used, step-by-step instructions on how to carry out the task, student look fors, and how children’s learning was consolidated). The TLC team circulated during the experiential portion of the evening and answered questions, as the participants used the materials and tried out the tasks.

The participants left with a resource package of the tasks to be tried in their own schools.

Project Evaluation

We felt that our project was successful because we met our project goals. Both teachers and early childhood educators reflected on the collaborative aspect of the project and all members felt that the sense of collaboration in the classroom and as a team had increased. There was a sense of trust and community because we realized we were all striving for the same goal – the betterment of our children’s mathematical understanding.

We conducted a variety of baseline assessments to see where the children were and we felt that we were able to move children along the numeracy continuum. We worked together as a team to develop problem-solving tasks that took into account our English language learners’ language needs so that they could access the mathematics regardless of their stage of English language acquisition.