What+we+are+doing+at+the+moment

Assessment

Developing an understanding of where the school is at in regards to 'attitudes' and 'achievements' in mathematics is currently being conducted throughout the school.

Two forms of assessment have taken place. That being a whole school survey and whole school standardised assessment. Students will be 'assessed' again at the end of the year in order to track any changes in attitudes and achievements.

__ Assessment Type __

Pre-Primary - PIP'S Year 1 - 2 - Early Years Numeracy Assessment Year 3 - 6 - PAT Maths

__ Survey __

Junior Primary Senior Primary Staff Parents

Staff St Vincent's is a RAISe school (Raising Achievements in Schools), which is an initiative of the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia. Schools use various tools such as PLC's (Professional Learning Communities), Literacy / Numeracy Dedicated Time, EMU (Extending Mathematical Understanding), Reading Recovery as well as ensuring we implement 'data driven' instruction to help raise the achievements of our students.

We have recently included 'whole school' PLC meetings (rather than jnr and snr clusters) to help promote discussion on what needs to be done, what we have achieved and exploring new ideas / sharing the good stuff with each other. These will be happening on a four weekly rotation.

Staff are also being asked to complete a survey, based on the survey that we were asked to complete during the introductory days we had together in March. The information that we gain from this survey will help to focus our planning for the rest of the year. We are also trying to actively get people to begin thinking and talking about mathematics. Staff discussions, professional development, allowing time for assessment of students etc.

Programming Teachers have been asked to reorganise their current timetables to include a Numeracy Dedicated Time - where they set an hour a day (where possible) aside for mathematics. This is in line with Literacy Dedicated Time. Along with timetabling issues teachers are also being asked to look at how they program for mathematics and looking at the benefits of changing the structure of the program. Benefits have been seen in LDT through the use of small groups where the teacher works with one small group at a time for individual instruction. This style should work well with the idea that Rhonda introduced to us of ensuring that there was a mixture of exercises, problem solving and investigations.

Resources One of the big issues for our staff has always been an apparent lack of resources. This is generally the first problem that teachers will come up with when asked why students are not achieving. Over time our school resources have been kept in an ' out of the way' almost 'remote' cupboard that most staff didn't know about let alone use. One of the first things that we have done is to move this equipment into a more centralised area and begin a check list to see what we have and what we need.