Newsletter - W/E 12/02/2021

HYPI was so pleased to see so many of our students involved in the Hurunui Youth Project and to see Samantha Wayne on the Youth Council this year. This is a great leadership opportunity for our students to access and learn from. I know Ward Shearman the co-ordinator of this initiative is always looking for new volunteers and is in the school most Wednesdays for students to make contact with.

Let’s Talk about Maths! Before you read on please note the following views are my own and although I stand by them, I accept there are other viewpoints out there! Last week we confirmed our place on the Ministry professional development programme called ALIM (Accelerated Learning in Mathematics). Maths has taken a bit of a beating in the media in recent weeks due to the historical roll out of the Numeracy project nationwide and deservedly so.

I did feel somewhat vindicated as the reports came in as I have always been uneasy with the Numeracy project and have steered away from it preferring to take inspiration from a different type of expert such as Dr Audrey Tan who is an advocate for using consistent algorithms, whole class instruction and not being afraid of big numbers at an early stage. It is not that the Numeracy project was inherently bad indeed some of the resources and activities were great. It was the fixation from those that led Mathematics in this country that it was the ONLY way and that we needed to throw out the baby, the bathwater and take out the plumbing to boot. An overemphasis on multiple strategies to reach the same answer has in my opinion led to students who lack confidence in their abilities and an inability to move from basic to more complex mathematics. Personally If I know how to do something I am far more likely to be open to learning a different way to achieve it so teach me one way that works first please! This issue was exacerbated by an awful lot of private contractors making rather a lot of money rolling this out to teachers and schools. Surely these were the experts? So schools and teachers cast aside their doubts and gave it a go!

In a previous life I taught students mostly from an English as a second language background. The maths problems they were presented with in standardised testing were more about the ability to read and comprehend than any mathematical ability. These are good skills to learn and should not be discarded but when I pulled out the actual numbers from the war and peace monologue of a question and put this into an algorithm on the board the faces would light up, the confidence would return and the students could see they could actually do this maths thing. Maths problems presented as a narrative have a place WHEN the students are able to unpack the maths within and WHEN they have the skills to do something with the numbers that result. The numeracy project alone was not up to this task.

The point of this opinion piece is to say that when we are allocated our facilitation team for ALIM we will be having a good conversation on where they come from philosophically and what evidence base are they working from before we let them loose on our teachers and classes. We are open to improvement as there is always room for that but we are wary of fads and trends that will not stand up to the test of time. The Numeracy Project was just that!

Kia Kitea Toikaka James Griggs Principal  

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Well done to our year 7/8 Cricket team who travelled to Cheviot to play their team on Thursday. By all accounts you were a great bunch to take away. Standout performer was Pippa Ussher who took 3 wickets (and nearly a hat-trick). Huge thanks to Johnny Ussher for driving the vanload and Grant Barbara for meeting the team there to help manage. Lucky to have such fantastic parent support.

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Please note that the Hanmer bus is very full and individual requests to use this bus for students who do not live on this run must be cleared through the office and may be declined. Please do not assume there is capacity when making your plans.