Manunui School
Lesley Murrihy is leading curriculum change and fostering contextual numeracy skills at Manunui Primary, a decile 1 school on the main highway a few kilometres outside Taumarunui.
Culturally responsive teaching
One of our big focuses has been on culturally responsive teaching, recognising that, as teachers, we come in with a dominant perspective, and being able to recognise that and begin to change.
So we teach increasingly from a perspective of acknowledging that we all come from a whole variety of cultures.
Culturally responsive teaching is about responding to the needs of our students whatever cultural background they come from, and by culture I'm not just talking about ethnicity.
Culture is often defined as 'the way things are done around here'. Students come from particular cultures in their homes, and the way things are done in their homes may actually be considerably different to the way things are done at school. And so it's about closing that gap and developing a school culture which is inclusive of the different cultures students belong to.
We would increasingly take the view that if things aren't going right, then we need to look at ourselves, and we need to change what we are doing, and we need to ask, "What can I do for these children?"
Accelerate learning
The actual village we are in is really very small, and so most of our students come from the town. Very few actually live in Manunui itself. Our school population is 80 percent Māori.
We are a decile 1c school, which means our students largely come from quite a low socio-economic background. They are coming in with very low levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy. A number come in with oral levels, for example, of two year olds. This results in us being really concerned to accelerate learning, because what we see in our baseline data is that students start very low, and it takes them quite a while to be able to establish themselves in the curriculum areas. Once established, they start to rise quite dramatically.
We want to accelerate learning early in the junior school. We want students to be showing good progress early on, and at the moment that's not happening particularly well. So, what we want to do is become really strategic about how we teach maths, and we want to focus on the things that are going to create the greatest difference for students.
We want teachers to identify activities that are going to create the biggest change for students, and maximise their learning time. Hopefully through that, we can have much more intensive learning at every maths session and so accelerate learning that way.
It's certainly been a movement away from whole class teaching. Just about all of the maths session is done in a group. If you walk into, for example, the senior classes, every time maths is being taken, you will see a teacher on the floor working very intensively with a group of students.
It's also about very good planning and teachers being very familiar with what they are going to be teaching students. And we are moving to being very clear about teaching points, and learning intentions, so we know exactly what we are wanting to teach, what we are wanting kids to understand. We have developed success criteria for that understanding.
I think it's about really purposeful teaching. It's about having students grouped in need groups, so their specific needs are being met, the gaps in learning are being filled, and students are working at the level they need to work at so they can move on really effectively.
It's about teacher knowledge and about teachers knowing exactly what they need to teach for students to learn.
Great expectations
Many teachers have a low sense of their own ability and that is a problem for maths programmes. If teachers don't actually think they know a lot about maths, then it's difficult for them to have high expectations of a student's achievement.
We've been involved in the Great Expectations Research Project with Waikato University, which is funded by the Ministry's research funding pool. With five other schools, we are working with some academics to explore aspects of our practice. It's called Great Expectations because we are looking at how we develop high expectations in our students. This is an action research project over two years and last year was our first year. Teachers go into symposium up at the university where they are sharing their experiences, and the plans they have to create change.
I think I've got a greater understanding now of what high expectations really is. And I don't think that I actually knew what it really meant till last year. It is about saying that all kids are capable of being presented with a challenging curriculum, and that all students can learn challenging stuff.
Tracking achievement
We had great success in achievement across the school last year. Our reading and writing achievements increased quite dramatically over the year, as did our maths achievements, and we put it down to more purposeful teaching.
Teachers are increasing their own knowledge about the curriculum, and are much clearer about what they need to teach.
The whole process of gathering data, and being aware of where your students are at, almost in itself, without putting specific strategies in place, seems to improve achievement.
In the numeracy project we are doing NumPA (Numeracy Project Assessment) testing right across the school, and we are doing that twice a year. We were very thrilled with the results that came out at the end of last year.
We sent them to Vince Wright, (advisor at the University of Waikato), because when he was in the school earlier in the year, he was incredibly impressed with what our seniors were doing, and he was keen to use our school as a case study.
He invited us to become part of a case study that he was presenting to the Ministry to show that the numeracy project was working for Māori students.
We collected our data and sent it off. He sent us a copy of the case study which showed that our year 6, 7 and 8 students were performing well above the national norms in relation to particular maths strategies. Nationally, 10 percent of students were achieving at the highest level, but we had 25 percent achieving to that level.
Learning to lead
When I began my principalship, I had this idea that by presenting teachers with powerful ideas, that would create change. I presented powerful ideas to teachers through the literature, and through discussions around education theory, but I discovered that that didn't create change.
Perhaps the biggest learning I discovered is that you need to work alongside people to create that change, and to actually help them put that change into practice in their classrooms.
While I was an International Research Associate at the National College of School Leadership at the University of Warwick in England, I became really aware of the role of monitoring and coaching.
When I came back to New Zealand there was quite a dramatic change in terms of how I lead. One of the things that I set up was a coaching structure. The purpose of coaching is to help teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice. Coaches work alongside teachers, and assist them through reflective questioning and reflective processes, to create change in what they are doing.
Alongside that, we increased the amount of teacher monitoring. Monitoring is a process of setting priorities, and helping teachers to be able to do the things that they know they need to do, and they've actually appreciated it.
Leadership
I think the leadership journey is never dull, and it's continuous. As a leader I have learnt how important it is to keep abreast of the latest research. I have found out how important it is to engage children in learning and then to let them help us, to help them, to become lifelong learners.
When children tap on the door because they want to share a piece of work with me, it's a special moment. I see the look in their eyes, the pride that they have when they are able to come to the principal's office for a positive thing, and it really perks me up immensely. It gives me a sense of achievement that we are heading in the right direction.
Leading learning
I've also discovered as a leader, that if you wait for people to do the things that you think they need to do, it often won't happen. There are times when you have to make it clear that certain changes are a priority.
That was quite a big learning for me. At times I had to say that I know what's important, and to put things in place to ensure that these things were integrated into what happens in the school.
So I think it's a balance between collaboration and being slightly more coercive, because it is my responsibility to make sure that things change, and to make sure that students do learn.
What I'm doing as a leader is trying to recognise the strength of others, because as a leader it's very easy to think that you should be an expert in everything. That certainly is a failing of mine and something I have had to learn.
