Manunui School
Patricia McGee concentrates on numeracy
Deputy Principal Patricia McGee talks about assessing the progress of students in numeracy.
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Kia ora, I'm Patricia McGee and I'm the Deputy Principal here at Manunui School, and I guess my passion for maths has led me to take on the leadership role in maths.
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I co-ordinate the professional development among the teachers and staff here, and the development of the systems to ensure adequate planning and assessment.
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We use the diagnostic interviews from the numeracy project once a year to continue assessing the progress of our students. They tell us what stage children are achieving at. Throughout the year we use snapshot assessments as well, to indicate where students are at.
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The diagnostic interview takes about 30 to 40 minutes. It's a one to one interview, teacher to student and you work through a range of questions, strategy questions, using maths strategy, and knowledge questions. So it's testing student knowledge in different areas throughout the numeracy strand.
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We are looking at ways to accelerate our junior classes, so that they are achieving multiplication and division at a younger age, at earlier year levels, and are able to move onto multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals, and gain that understanding well before they leave primary school.
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We use the Figure it out books for children to work through independently at a senior level. At the lower levels, after having done a teacher guided session, they work through the corresponding page in the Figure it out books. They are very similar to text books, but they are presented in a far more interesting way.
