Fantastic progress in a classroom

Remember the Decile 1 school teacher who attended my NZEI presentation, whose pupils now wanted to do maths above anything else? Well, she got in touch again:

“Hi Audrey, I thought I would catch up with you and let you know how things have turned out in my room. I am astounded at the ongoing desire of ALL my students to do maths. If for any reason we have to miss out there is uproar!! I have attached the IKAN results for my students. I think you will agree it is an amazing document.”

(If you don’t know what IKAN is, go to http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/ikan-forms and try one of the tests yourself!)

Well, my eyes nearly popped out. In April, before my presentation and after two years of input from a numeracy advisor, all students but one were working at Stage 4. In November, five months after their teacher adopted my approach to teaching maths, two-thirds of the class had raised their performance by as much as THREE stages. In each of the four domains, at least a quarter of the class were working at Stages 7 or 8, which is where they should be. And most importantly, the whole class has gone from hating maths to loving maths!

There has been no direct input from me. This was done quickly and easily by a teacher claiming to have no specialist knowledge of mathematics.

“I keep trying to get my head around this whole thing that has exploded in my room since June……. I think I hear your name mentioned most days! They keep asking will she come and see us?”

“Well, why not?” I thought. I was given such a warm welcome and they presented me with some truly touching letters they had written. I was treated to a great performance of McFly’s “Love Is Easy”; I’ve been do-do-doing ever since! I dedicate these modified lyrics to these amazing students:

“If this is maths,
Then maths is easy,
It’s the easiest thing to do,
If this is maths,
Then maths completes me,
Cause it feels like I’ve been missing you,
A simple equation,
With no complications,
To leave you confused,
If this is maths, maths, maths,
Hmm, it’s the easiest thing to do,
Do, do-do-do, do do…”