Professional Learning Goals

• Increased our personal comfort and ability in using different apps within our learning environments
• Increased teacher capacity at understanding when technology would be most beneficial
• Gained leadership within our school environment and are seen as resources for teachers to access

Activities and Resources

Our team’s activities were to meet every six weeks in person to discuss goals that were set at previous meetings, observations that were made by bringing video evidence, products that the students created and to discuss wonderings to move our thinking forward. The process that we decided on after our first meeting was to create/choose a mathematical problem (modify to the student level) and decide on delivery methods (i.e., paper first, then technology only, then combination of tech and paper). At the beginning of our project we had thought that we would observe and document the entire class, however after our first meeting we decided to choose marker students to focus our learning.

Resources: SeeSaw app, Explain Everything app, Mathematical Mindsets (Jo Boaler), Visible Thinking in the Mathematical Class (Ron Ritchard), Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces (Peter Liljedahl), Accountable Talk (Lucy West), Monograph Spatial Reasoning and Asking Effective Questions (Micheal Fullan the 6 c’s

Unexpected Challenges

Although the process was enjoyable throughout, we did face some challenges and had to be flexible along the way. In the role of SERT, without her own classroom, one teacher had difficulty carrying out the project as designed, but did attempt to use technology when possible to support her students in a variety of tasks. Our goal to monitor the whole class proved challenging, so we chose marker students to follow, and found this much easier to track. Our school board does not have a 1:1 for tech so we do not have regular access to devices, so students are not able to choose tech as their method of communication. As well, we found that there are many teachers unwilling to embrace technology, leading to differences in students’ experiences when arriving in the next grade. As Grade 3 teachers, we noticed best classroom practices are not aligned with provincial standardized testing. As teachers, we wonder about the validity of the test and whether our teaching practices should be aligned with student needs or standardized testing practices!

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

Our project was able to enhance student learning by helping students become more independent, differentiating curriculum so that students could be more successful, and giving students explicit tools to be able to communicate more effectively. We were also able to increase students’ capacity in technology. Although student engagement was increased, we need to carefully consider if this was the novelty of the tool or the actual ability of tech to capture the students’ thinking thus taking more ownership of their learning.

Sharing

Our learning was shared with our peers in a variety of ways. A few Lunch and Learns were hosted, with the goal of sharing and increasing the comfort of teachers in their use of technology in math. Many teachers jumped upon the SeeSaw train, embracing it as a way to capture student learning for assessment, and frequently visited our classroom for tips. One teacher shared the project and our findings with her junior math initiative. Our superintendent of education followed our project through our notes, and provided feedback and encouragement.

Project Evaluation

This project has given us tools that have shaped our teaching practices, and provided us with many questions that we still would like to delve into. We consider our project to be a success in many ways, as we have found that many students benefit from access to technology as a method for communicating their mathematical thinking. We feel that we floundered a bit at the beginning and in the future would put more time into planning key students/teachers to work with.