It's up to everyone

Syllabuses across the curriculum require teachers to develop the numeracy skills of their students. This understanding is the basis for an Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme Middle Years project at Sir Joseph Banks High School.

Using action learning processes, project team members, Paul Endicott (Head Teacher Mathematics) and Kathy Kalachian (Mathematics teacher), have been working with colleagues, across various faculties and primary partner schools, to establish a metalanguage for numeracy teaching, and to identify opportunities for numeracy-based learning activities within class programs

Identifying students' needs

Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program test results, class tests and half yearly assessments confirmed that Year 7 students at the school were performing more at the level of Stage 2 or early Stage 3 students. Paul reflected on the success of earlier whole school approaches to the teaching of literacy and the integration of ICT, and felt that it was time to adopt a similar approach to improve the numeracy skills of students. A survey of each faculty revealed that the areas of greatest student need related to graphs and tables, including how to construct, read and interpret them. To introduce the project to the staff, Paul and Kathy conducted a workshop at a staff development day, in which the concept and language of numeracy was discussed, and ideas about the ways of incorporating graphs and tables into various subjects were presented.

The workshop followed whole school agreement, reflected in the School Plan, to include numeracy aspects in units of work in all Year 7 and 8 classes. Because teachers were used to working with the NSW Quality Teaching model, they found it relatively straightforward to identify elements where numeracy concepts could be incorporated into lessons. Kathy took on the role of advisor and mentor, providing many practical suggestions across a range of subjects.

Benefits of a whole-school approach

Everybody loved the workshop. The whole school approach allowed you to look at your own particular subject area from the perspective of others.      (Jeannette Rairibi)

Paul attributed the willingness of staff to participate in the project to three factors:

1. Teachers could see just how relevant it was to incorporate numeracy learning into their lessons.
2. Everybody was willing to share ideas for learning activities.
3. The staff was not afraid to have a go at something new in order to improve student learning outcomes.

Implementing numeracy activities

English

For a Years 7–8 unit of work, Introduction to Shakespeare, students:

• measured distances between Elizabethan towns
• converted money from pounds to dollars
• constructed timelines
• drew maps
• conducted a class survey on Shakespearean quotations and sayings and graphed the results.

These numeracy activities worked to enhance students' deep knowledge of the Shakespearean era.      (Jeannette Rairibi)

HSIE

HSIE teacher, Cynthia Mikel, in collaboration with Kathy, reviewed Year 8 Geography programs, looking for new ways of teaching about numeracy, especially in relation to mapping tasks. One outcome was the idea of a student workbook that will focus on the skills needed for numeracy based tasks in Geography.

Music

Teacher, Narelle Barker, found it easy to incorporate numeracy into her programs for Years 7 and 8. As she said, Music is Maths! A Year 7 unit on learning to play the guitar provided scope for numeracy activities that included:

• reading guitar boxes
• reading and playing chords
• counting frets and strings.

She also created a Year 8 workbook that required students to complete musical sums by, for example, calculating the value of various full, half and quarter notes, and adding them. To further reinforce this knowledge and understanding, Kathy devised a game that used concrete materials to represent the different values of various notes in music.

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