Focusing Inquiry: Know your students
What literacy knowledge and skills do my students have in Mathematics?
Use multiple sources of information to determine the focus of your inquiry – student voice, assessment information, diagnostic tasks.
- Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning e-asTTle
This is a norm-referenced online tool for assessing reading achievement relevant to levels 2–6 of the curriculum. It provides national norms of performance for students in years 4–12. You may wish to discuss the implications of asTTle results for your learning area with the Literacy Leader in your school.
- The Assessment Resource Banks
: are collections of classroom assessment resources in English, Mathematics, and Science from Curriculum levels 2-5. The username and password to access the ARBs is available from your school.They are intended to support classroom assessment for learning within New Zealand schools. Examples of resources with a literacy focus that may be suitable for use in Mathematics include:
- WL2612
Students read a table on international aid and answer one selected response and one short written answer question
- AL6166
Students interpret distance-time graphs for a number of scenarios
- AL6160
Students interpret distance-time graphs that show a car's movement and draw their own graph from given statements.
- ST9361
Students interpret a tree diagram to answer questions about the probability of selecting certain combinations.
- Subject resources related to NCEA assessments
are available - click on the relevant subject page.
What literacy knowledge and skills need to be developed?
- The Literacy Learning Progressions
describe the specific literacy knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students draw on in order to meet the reading and writing demands of the curriculum. Teachers need to ensure that their students develop the literacy expertise that will enable them to engage with the Mathematics curriculum at increasing levels of complexity.
Teaching Inquiry: Planning to meet student needs
How can literacy learning needs be addressed in the teaching and learning programme?
- The Guidelines for Effective Adolescent Literacy Instruction
provide teachers with a framework for literacy inquiry and outlines the principles of effective literacy instruction.
- Making Language and Learning Work 1: Integrating Language and Learning in Secondary Maths and Science is a DVD that shows how teachers can effectively integrate content-area teaching and language learning. Copies of this DVD were sent to schools and further copies can be obtained from Down the Back of the Chair
. Facilitation Notes
accompany the DVD.
- Measurement Years 9-10:
This unit of work from ESOL Online outlines how language and learning can be integrated.
- Units/lesson sequences
based on Mathematics (and other) curriculum objectives, designed or re-designed for English language learners.
How does research inform my inquiry?
- Content-Area Literacy: Mathematics
By: Carol Lee and Anika Spratley (2009). This article outlines some of the challenges when reading in Mathematics and the importance of Maths language and logic.
Examples from Practice
How will progress be monitored?
Your inquiry will determine the ways in which progress should be monitored. For example, you may decide to monitor progress through student writing, oral responses, research skills and/or presentations.
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.
Teaching and Learning
The Guidelines for Effective Adolescent Literacy Instruction
outlines the principles of effective literacy instruction.
Learning Inquiry
- What happened as a result? Assessment is the process of gathering, analysing, interpreting and using information about students' progress and achievement to improve teaching and learning. Refer to Assessment Online
- What are the next steps?
