Albany Senior High School/Curriculum plans/Mathematics and statistics

Curriculum Plan for Mathematics and Statistics

Vision

London Tube - Canary Wharf Entrance

At Albany Senior High School 

• we nurture each other 
• we inspire each other
• we empower each other 

ASHS students actively seeking challenging mathematical and statistical problems to solve with enthusiasm and confidence. They use mathematical and statistical thinking and strategies, selecting their tools based on a deep understanding of how they work and why.

ASHS teachers modelling life long learning, actively pushing pedagogical boundaries and encouraging and supporting others to do the same.

Maths for life and maths in life.

Values

Excellence in all that we do through:

• Encouraging the pursuit of personal excellence by seeking to be better today than we were yesterday
• Pursuing realistic but challenging goals and actively reflecting on progress and achievements.
• Celebrating everybody's improvements and successes
  

Warm, mutually respectful relationships through:

• Treating others as we wish to be treated.

Families as part of our learning community:

• Communicate with parents and caregivers when students need support in their learning.
• Sharing course outlines, assessment calendars and homework set. issuing recognition cards whenever we ca

Fairness, openness, honesty and trust:

• Listening to others and seeking to understand before responding or making decisions.
• Keeping our promises and meeting deadlines.

Learning together and making decisions together:

• Sharing ideas and information and consulting before making decision.
• Students playing an active role in the teaching and learning in mathematics.

Using evidence and reflection to make decisions:

• Individually and collegially reflecting on the teaching and learning of each topic.
  
• Collecting evidence during the flow of work.
• Using e-portfolios to document the outcomes of our professional inquiries and reflections.

Developing curiosity and enquiry, creativity and innovation:

• Using professional inquiry projects to explore pedagogical innovations in the flow of work.
  
• Encouraging students to contribute ideas and feedback to professional inquiry project.
• Spotlighting interesting or fun applications using OurTube, Bookmarks, Microblogs, notices and displays.
• Students leading and organising a fun mathematics and statistics week which is accessible to all students.
  

Participating in the local community and the world through:

• Contributing to the activities of the AMA and NZAMT.
• Sharing ideas and expertise with colleagues at schools and universities.

Contributing to our local and global communities.

• Encouraging students to pursue impact projects which promote the learning and application of mathematics and statistics
• Helping students make their impact projects more relevant and complete by encouraging and supporting the use of appropriate mathematics and statistics.

Protecting and enhancing the environment.

• Develop and access all curriculum documents on-line.
• Create e-resources such as e-textbooks on wikieducator to replace the existing textbooks at the end of their lives.

Recognising diversity that enriches our learning community.

• Recognising that students come from different backgrounds and experiences that shape their prior knowledge and relevant contexts.
• Embracing the idea of complementary curricula and using real contexts from other disciplines.
  

Honouring the bi-cultural foundations of New Zealand through:

• Incorporating Maori knowledge and insights of the world around us into our lessons.
• Highlighting the contributions of mathematicians, statisticians and technologists of Maori heritage.
  

Expectations

How we ensure students

Know what they are learning and why:

• Indentifying the learning outcomes of each lesson explicitly in the first segment of any lesson.
• Using split screening to highlight key concepts and the mathematical and statistical thinking required to understand solve problems.

Connect learning to real life situations:

• Use real life contexts whenever possible.
• Create and use meaningful educational activities (MEA's) which pose real questions and encourage mathematical and statistical thinking.
• Use practical activities to illustrate and engage students with the concepts being investigated
• Use Vernier dataloggers to engage students directly with the phenomena being modeled.
• Encourage students to make use of mathematics or statistics to ensure success and relevance of their impact projects.

Have multiple opportunities to build on existing knowledge:

• Use formal and informal methods of formative assessment as a basis for differentiated learning, students progressing once they have mastered concepts sufficiently to engage with the next level.
  
• Providing weekly homework which consolidates students prior learning.
  
• Have students seek or write contextual questions which will require the use of the mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning they are exploring in class, and provide worked solutions accompanied by a split screen of the topics, skills and strategies that need to be used.
• Use portable tablets to promote class or small group discussions.
• Students create their own revision resources in the form of flash cards and other representations.
  

Examine and use new knowledge:

• Provide opportunities for students to engage in the exploration of new or interesting topics.
  
• Extend the application of known and new concepts to new contexts.
  

How we ensure assessment promotes effective learning

Formative Assessment

• A range of informal methods will be used including team quizzes, "clicker" response to key concept questions, jeopardy-maths and similar games.
• Use formal methods of formative assessment, such as moodle quizzes.
• Feedforward will be prompt, specific and supportive.
• Key misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge will be addressed immediately.

Summative Assessment

• 30 minute end of topic assessments will reflect the format of the NCEA exams so that students know what to expect.
• Practice assessments will be provided and reviewed prior to all internal assessments. Students can choose to have these marked as official assessments if they are done under controlled conditions.
• Internal assessments will be marked, check-marked and reviewed with the students as soon as practicable.
• Key misunderstandings identified in first assessments will be retaught prior to a re-assessment opportunity.

In an effective 100-minute lesson we will

Cater for difference by:

• Scaffolding tasks and allowing students to select the level at which they work, while encouraging them to extend themselves constantly

Identify and address students at risk of not achieving by:

• Using team based pre and post tests to determine how students performance is changing and how it compares with expectations.

Extend gifted and talented students by providing:

• More challenging tasks within the scaffolding,
• Enrichment tasks
• Acceleration to a level 2 course to Year 11 students who have the desire and ability.

Know about our students prior knowledge by:

• Having the students construct mind maps at the beginning of topics to determine what they already know.
• Introducing topics with interactive split screening to determine the facts they know and the concepts they already understood.
• Posing a practical problem which will be of interest to the students and giving them a chance to solve it as best they can before providing appropriate support.
  

Key competencies

These are a means and an end.

Thinking

• Teach critical thinking by making the P2IC2 model explicit in our split screening and discussions.
• Ask challenging and interesting questions in real life and theoretical contexts, which encourage students to use mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning to develop appropriate strategies and choose relevant tools for finding solutions.

Using Language, Symbols and Texts

• Use multiple representations as problem solving and communication tools for both making sense of information and presenting results.

• Use CAS, graphing and statistical analysis software to facilitate the use of multiple representations.
• Use split screening to highlight the links between representations and explain any conventions, symbols and terms used.

Managing Self

• Expect students to set personal goals, reflect on their achievements and develop action plans to improve.
• Record goals, reflections and action plans along with summaries of achievement and exemplars of work in mathematical e-portfolios.
• Students will be given opportunities to work independently on tasks of their choice from a differentiated selection and encouraged to select tasks which will constantly extend them.
• Students will be expected to complete tasks and assignments properly and on time.
• Students will also be expected to lead, follow or act independently on tasks as appropriate.
  
  

Relating to Others

• Make use of team learning to help students learn when to compete and when to co-operate.
• Contribute to shared e-portfolios of notes and worked problems.

Participating and Contributing

Extend cooperative learning by using team based learning ( http://tblc.camp9.org/ ).  Use impact projects to promote cross-curricular learning and awareness about how mathematics and statistics impact on and are used by the school and wider community.

Curriculum design

NZ Curriculum Achievement Objectives

[[Image:ASHS Maths and Stats ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES 2011]]

Details of the courses offered can be found through the following links:

1MAT    Mathematics and Statistics

2MAC    Mathematics with Calculus

2MAS    Mathematics with Statistics

3MAC    Calculus

3MAS    Statistics

Quality assurance

Course Information
When starting the course, students will be given copies of the course booklet which contains:

• A summary of the standards available in each semester.
  
• The course outline showing the order of topics and the dates of assessments,
• The relevant standards and "I can do ..." lists,
• Student assessment guidelines,
• A summary record of grades and credits for students to fill in and track their progress.

NZQA Internal Assessments Preparation

• Assessment and re-assessment papers and marking schedules will be prepared prior to the start of the topic.

• The papers and marking schedules will be checked against the relevant standards and moderator's reports to ensure compliance.
• A pre-assessment meeting of teachers will be held at the beginning of the topic to review the paper for clarity and to ensure they are aware of, and can communicate clearly to students, the nature of the assessment and the requirements for achievement at each level.

NZQA Internal Assessments Delivery

• Students will have the opportunity to do and review a practice assessment which is similar in nature, and style to the actual assessment.
• Students may choose to have a practice assessment or equivalent activity done under controlled conditions and decide at the end of it whether or not it will be marked as an official assessment. Otherwise, assessments will be done by students on the day(s) designated for that assessment.
• Resubmissions will be provided for students who have shown that they are close to or are capable of a higher grade.
• Opportunities for a single re-assessment will be provided, to those meeting Albany Senior High School policy requirements, at a time which is convenient to the department.
  

NZQA Internal Assessments Marking

• The marking process will begin with the team marking of a selection of papers from each class by those teachers involved in the course and the Curriculum Leader to ensure the marking schedule is working as expected and delivering results in line with the achievement standards.
• Marking symbols and protocols will be in line with those used in the NZQA external examinations.
• Papers where the evidence is ambiguous or requiring a holistic evaluation of grade, will be referred to the Curriculum Leader for a decision to ensure compliance and consistency.
• Any further changes to the marking scheme or holistic judgments must be endorsed by the Curriculum Leader to ensure compliance and consistency are maintained.
• At least one paper of each grade from each class will be selected at random and check marked by the Curriculum Leader prior to grades being finalised and papers returned to students. Written commentary will be distributed to all teachers and where appropriate the papers should be remarked in the light of the commentary.
• No papers are to be returned to students until the checkmarking process is complete, unless students are advised clearly that these are interim grades subject to review and change.
• Students will sign the front of the paper or a grade summary to confirm the grade is correct.
• Records will be kept of all document preparation and review meetings, reasons for resubmission, special considerations and check marking.

NZQA Internal Assessments Moderation and Record Retention

• Student grades will be entered into KAMAR within a week of their being finalised.
• Each term a student will sign a printout of their academic record to ensure that the correct grade has been entered.
• Papers with their signed marking summaries and the signed academic records will be stored until at least the end of the next academic year.
• Original papers will be randomly selected and sent in for NZQA moderation in accordance with their requirements.
• Papers sent in for moderation will be stored upon their return and used to inform future teaching and assessment preparation until that standard is selected for moderation again.
  

Self review

Numeracy

• NCEA Level One students' numeracy status based on achievement standards will be reviewed twice a term to determine if they need to be given the opportunity to achieve numeracy through the numeracy unit standards.
  
• Students who are identified as being at risk of not achieving numeracy via achievements standards will be referred to Learning Support.
  
• Teachers will work with Learning Support to help students achieve their numeracy through the the numeracy unit standards.
  

Internal and External Assessments

• The grades for internal assessments will be summarised and compared with annual targets.
• This comparison will be used to inform future curriculum development, any decision by the specialist subject leader on reassessment opportunities and reporting to the board on the results and proposed actions.

Pedagogy

• At the end of each term the team will share the successes and challenges they have had on the implementation of this curriculum plan based on the evidence they have incorporated into their e-portfolios.
• This review will be used to refine both the curriculum plan and individual teachers personal goals where appropriate.