My enquiry was to improve the learning of the four main operations for the learners furthest behind their piers from Primary school. These learners are given an extra 2 periods in S1 maths, they are all level 1 in terms of Cfe and have a variety of ASN.                                 These pupils are in danger of not gaining basic numerical skills to cope with everyday situations.

This was to be achieved by teaching new methods of addition subtraction, multiplication and division.

The purpose of these methods was to link in with the manipulatives I use to teach and with mental methods.

I was looking to measure this impact by seeing improvements in pre and post-test, a greater rate of progress with the intervention group and an improvement in student confidence through a pupil survey.

I did not manage to complete the second pupil survey due to the covid-19 impact but will monitor this next year.

I would have also liked to share more of my experience with colleagues in the department and will aim to do this when I am back live in the flesh.

One of the measurements of my intervention was a closing of the gap between the intervention group and the rest of the year. As a school, we have created a model to monitor this gap.

I will briefly explain this model before sharing the results.

We plot a coordinate for each student x coordinate( score on the current test – mean score from year group) and y coordinate ( actual score – predicted score). The predicted score is calculated using linear regression from 1000’s of students who have previously undertaken the test in other year groups, This gives a plot like the one below.

The green dots are SIMD 8 to 10

The amber dots are SIMD 4-7

The red dots are SIMD  1-3

Each Quadrant can be interpreted  as follows

We can turn these progress scores into a box plot to see relative progress of different class ( must be interpreted  with caution )

The intervention class (my class) are in light blue at the top of the box plot. This indicates from this model they have made the most progress and closed the gaps on others.

This indicated improvement may be due to a variety of factors (most likely the extra time is given to this class) but it shows that the new arithmetical methods being trialled don’t appear to have a negative impact at this stage.

Better later than never. 

Thankfully before the recent act of God, I had gathered some initial data.

For each of the new methods, I had been giving pre and post-test. Most of these tests are set at level 1/2 Cfe level. Each pre-test was given at the start of a topic and each post-test was given + 3 weeks from the end of the teaching period, this was to distinguish between learning and performance ( was this learning in their short term of long term memory). This has its disadvantages in terms of reteaching areas of weakness but since I operate a strand curriculum with this course I believed the this was correct balance.

Subtraction Test Pre-Test Cfe Level 1/2

Subtraction Post-Test Cfe Level 1/2

These initial results show some positive benefit of the new subtraction method taught but the students are still not at a level I would consider fluency. Some reteaching will be required.

I still have some doubts in terms of subtraction using this method and decimals. I will share some of further data and reflections on future blogs.