Swimming with no lines

My absolute favourite way to exercise is to swim. Over summer we went on a beach holiday to Newcastle in NSW, where I was able to swim every day in the sea baths and I absolutely loved it! 

Something I have always struggled with is swimming in a straight line. If I am not in a pool with lines, I am in real trouble (and I am talking about freestyle here- I wouldn’t even attempt backstroke because who knows where I would end up)!

Newcastle seabaths don't have lines, and the only way I could keep on track was to try to follow the wall- even then I struggled!

This issue has plagued my whole swimming 'career'! I remember in Year 6 I made it into the interschool relay team. I was VERY excited for the race!

It was a 50 metre pool, but the relays were ‘swum’ horizontally across the pool (which was 25 metres). In preparation for the relays the lifeguard had to remove the lane ropes which ran up and down the pool, and then place them across the pool. This was quite a process!

Unluckily for me, my school was placed in the last lane. Our team only had one lane rope-the one separating us from the team to our right, but no lane rope was put on the other side, so the rest of the pool was just ‘open’.

I was the final swimmer in our team, and as my teammate swam towards our changeover, I was a ball of excitement and nerves because we were in first place!

Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending, because in my relay leg I ended up so ‘off course’ that I swam about an extra 15 metres across the pool (in a 25 metre race, that is big difference!) and we ended up in third place!

I felt an awful sense of guilt for letting my team down, but also a little bit of anger towards the lifeguard for causing these race integrity issues! (I have been working through these feelings over the past 32 years😉!).

I was thinking about this race recently, and how my experience mirrors in some way how many teachers feel in maths.

As Mathematics teachers, the obvious lane rope we all follow is the curriculum. However, as we all know, the Australian/Victorian/South Australian/Western Australian Curriculum descriptions provide a very broad summary of the content we are to teach and assess.

The broad nature of the descriptions mean that the ‘unpacking’ of the curriculum is left to individual schools or teachers.  As I mentioned in last week’s blog, when something is open to interpretation… this leads to…different interpretations. In turn, this then leads to variance in the quality and rigour of the curriculum we provide from school to school and from classroom to classroom.

One key to high quality instruction is consistency across systems and across schools. This was highlighted in the recent Grattan report 'The Maths Guarantee' as something that needs to be address in Australia schools.

I think teaching is up there as one of the most demanding occupations. The sheer number of decisions teachers and schools make on a daily basis is extraordinary. So, I think it is important that where we can, we provide 'lane ropes' for our teachers and schools.

The other day when I was working with a school on developing the teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge around Additive Thinking.

We were looking at the curriculum descriptions related to addition and subtraction and discussing the progression of these from F-6.

While the descriptions gave us one lane rope to follow, as we dug a little deeper, it was clear something more was required to keep us 'on track'.

I asked the teachers to consider the following Year 2 description:

add and subtract one- and two-digit numbers, representing problems using number sentences, and solve using part-part-whole reasoning and a variety of calculation strategies (AC9M2N04)

I highlighted the phrase ‘a variety of calculation strategies' and asked teachers to discuss the calculation strategies they would expect to be explicitly taught in Year 2.

The Year 1’s knew the strategies they taught, the Year 3s could explain theirs...in fact everyone could identify the strategies taught in their year level, but no one could identify what was happening in any other year level. This was a snapshot of some of the comments:

'Oh I didn't know Year 2's taught that strategy'

'We teach that as well, that is probably a bit of overkill doing it again'

'Oh, we don't call it 'Friends of Ten' in Year 1- we call it 'Tens Facts' (for the record I prefer calling 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6 etc. 'Tens Facts' rather than 'Rainbow Facts', or 'Friends of Ten' as these names can lead to confusion, particularly if there is not consistency across the school.)

Now some people may argue that it is unrealistic to expect teachers to know every minute detail of what is taught in every year level in every curriculum area. To some extent I agree, but I also strongly believe that the hierarchical nature of mathematics means the progression (particularly in the four operations) needs to be unpacked, discussed and recorded somewhere in the school so it can be used to guide everyone. As we know the achievement 'gap' in any one classroom can be up to 5 years.

So as a school we worked through a process to discuss the additive strategies, I shared my knowledge of how to explicitly teach each strategy and most importantly the language/models that could be used to scaffold students to develop their conceptual understanding of these ideas. We made decisions around when each would be taught and when we would expect students to develop fluency with these skills.

The 'Scope and Sequence' document we created, provided the much needed second lane rope for the teaching of addition and subtraction from F-6 within the school. The process of discussing the strategies increased teacher confidence and pedagogical content knowledge, and the resulting documentation meant that moving forward the school's design of lesson sequences and assessment could be much more focused and clear.

This week I encourage you to think about your teaching of addition/subtraction/multiplication or division. Do you have a good understanding of how these concepts conceptually progress from F-6 across your school, or do you feel like you are a little 'off-course' because you are relying on your interpretation of curriculum to guide you? Start small, maybe just ask other teachers in your year level what they call the 'Tens Facts' (1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6 etc), to get the discussion flowing!

And if you happen to be involved in the organization of any swimming carnivals, please ensure all swimmers are provided with two lane ropes to uphold the integrity of the race!

Have a great week!

Ange 🎲🎓