Clear message vs Mixed message

I have struggled immensely for the past week to write something positive about teaching and learning in my NCEA L1 maths class, so instead of highlighting all the poor choices that our learners have been making which is preventing them from achieving to their potential, I decided to pause......................

I noticed two weeks into a five-week standard, that there was an unusual tiredness and lethargy amongst some learners, so I decided to make a call to skip a few activities which were part of the gathering evidence part of the programme and go straight into revision test-type activities.

We revisited a template to help learners channel their evidence and completed one activity collaboratively. We then broke up the standard into key parts and I had a stopwatch timing their efforts for each part. At times we deleted evidence and rewrote it keeping in mind the keywords that needed to be used for success in the standard.

That created a buzz of excitement and a renewed zest for learning which was evident in the quality and quantity of evidence being shown and I now have learners making remarkable progress. A few have indicated to me that by week 3 they will be confident enough to sit their assessment and one student gave me permission to keep his cell phone for the double period so that he could focus on his learning with minimal distraction.

I hope that I have sent a clear message that success comes from hard work and not a mixed message that we can skip learning activities when learners show a lack of interest.