FOREWORD
By Lester Flockton
A growing number of schools are looking for a mathematics programme that will work well for their teachers and children. Of that growing number, many have taken the decision to put aside approaches that have not served them well and to replace them with PR1ME. They have chosen PR1ME for reasons of a better programme structure, easier teachability, and improved student learning in mathematics.
The evidence is clear. Since the introduction of the Numeracy Project, students’ mathematics performance in New Zealand has been in steady decline. The approach has been shown to carry many risks for schools’ programme structures and has been proven to be detrimental to effective teaching and student outcomes.
In looking towards an alternative programme, schools quite rightly want to be confident that any they might consider will deliver a better programme structure for teachers to work from and, most importantly, lead to improved student learning, progress and engagement in mathematics. Moreover, they want to adopt a programme that can utilise resources and ideas that they already find useful and effective.
Scholastic has previously set out to provide information that can give schools confidence in PR1ME as a solid alternative. They have commissioned independent reviews of the programme and those reviews have clearly affirmed its suitability for New Zealand schools, teachers and children. But now that many of the schools have chosen to adopt PR1ME, Scholastic decided to go directly to them for their honest feedback and assessment of the programme. I was invited to conduct the interviews as an independent researcher.
Eleven PR1ME schools were invited to participate in an interview approach designed to ensure that their voice could be open and frank about their views on PR1ME. The schools ranged from high to low decile, and large to smaller student rolls.
The questions sought information and feedback on:
• reasons for opting for PR1ME and how it was introduced
• children’s responses to the programme and its suitability for a range of ability levels
• the ease with which teachers can learn, follow and work from PR1ME
• how well students are succeeding, achieving and progressing with PR1ME
Many who have heard about PR1ME too quickly dismiss it as a ‘textbook’ rather than a ‘text-based’ programme, with the implication that it is overly prescriptive, step by step and one size for all. Others dismiss PR1ME because it was developed in Singapore rather than here in Aotearoa New Zealand. During the interviews, schools were asked whether they considered such views as valid or baseless.
PR1ME, along with digital technologies and many other educational resources, is of necessity a commercial venture rather than one that is funded and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. A growing number of schools accept this situation for what it is. Their declared priority is children’s engagement, learning and progress in mathematics and a programme that effectively and efficiently supports teachers with their teaching. They have decided to invest their resources according to their priorities.
Those who contributed to this review have a clear, credible and confident voice. I encourage you to read and consider what they are saying.
Dr Lester Flockton is a graduate of Dunedin Teachers’ College and the University of Otago. He has extensive experience in New Zealand’s school system as teacher, principal, inspector of schools, Ministry of Education official, researcher, university teacher, educational thinker and leader. Throughout his career in education he has worked on many national curriculum and assessment committees and projects, including major roles in the development and writing of The New Zealand Curriculum (2007). He has led numerous professional development and learning programmes, made dozens of conference presentations here and overseas, and held office in various professional organisations.
Lester was one of the founding directors of the Educational Assessment Research Unit at the University of Otago, and one of the prime developers and co-directors of New Zealand’s highly regarded National Education Monitoring Project. Lester’s field of expertise combines teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment, and the leadership, governance and management of schools. He has received a number of honours in recognition of his service to education in New Zealand.
SCHOOLS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REVIEW
A range of school types, sizes and locations have chosen to adopt PR1ME as their solution to declining or stagnating mathematics results. The schools featured in the feedback interviews reported here were chosen to be representative of that range: low, medium and high decile, private/public, small rural/large city, and schools concerned for their special learning needs and extension learners. Read on to find what they say about how PR1ME has changed mathematics learning in their schools.
Scholastic wishes to acknowledge the professionalism of all of those who participated in this review and the expertise of Dr Lester Flockton who conducted the interviews. Their willingness to share their experiences and insights through open dialogue is much appreciated.
At the time of printing some of those who contributed to the review have moved onto other roles, but Scholastic would still like to thank and acknowledge the following schools for taking the time to sit down and talk with us about their PR1ME experiences.
Wakaaranga School, East Auckland
A high-decile school with 900 students
Lytton Street School, Feilding
A mid-decile school of 700 students
Bunnythorpe School, Bunnythorpe
A mid-decile sole charge rural school of 25 students
Everglade School, South Auckland
A mid-decile school of 500 students
Hawera Primary School, Hawera
A mid-decile school of around 200 students
James Cook School, Marton
A low-decile school of around 200 students
Mt Cook School, Central Wellington
A mid-decile school of 250 students
Owairoa Primary School, East Auckland
A high-decile school with 900 students
Terrace End School, Palmerston North
A low-decile school with 200 students
Knighton Normal School, Hamilton
A mid-decile Hamilton school of 700 students
Melville Intermediate, Hamilton
A low-decile intermediate of 250 students
What made you choose PR1ME MATHEMATICS?
Four years ago, we noticed that the children in our Te Hihiri Partial Immersion classes were not making any gains; there was no accelerated learning. We wanted to look for something that was not based around the Numeracy Project as we found that after so many years of using it, the same outcomes were happening and we weren’t fixing anything. We put together a proposal for the board to trial PR1ME in the three classes of the unit that spans from Years 1 to 6, so we would get all levels covered. We compared the end-of-year data to the other cohorts, and it was impressive enough to convince the board to trial the programme throughout the school the following year.
Materoa Collins, Knighton Normal School
Our National Standards data hadn’t been moving. We were low 50s and I decided we needed to do something different. We had done quite a lot of professional development with the Numeracy Project from the Ministry and that hadn’t made a difference. At that time I stumbled upon a report written by the New Zealand Initiative Group, an independent think tank, and they had evaluated the Numeracy Project and were critical in their analysis. PR1ME was being advertised at the same time, and so we decided to give it a go.
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
Taking on PR1ME was a big decision as it was such a shift in the teaching content and programme from what we had been using, but we found that the Numeracy Project wasn’t working across our school. We have a high Asian population, and we didn’t feel that it actually met the mathematical needs of our learners. PR1ME gave us the progression and clear structure right through to the end of Year 6. It was very clear for the teachers to follow, and better met the children’s individual needs.
Caroline von Sierakowski, Wakaaranga Primary School
Towards the end of 2016 we were noticing the same patterns in our data year upon year and we couldn’t seem to get that much traction teaching with the Numeracy Project. We had heard about PR1ME through another school, and we went to see it in action. We were a bit dubious about leaping in fully so we trialled it in two classes. The results were fantastic, and we now have PR1ME from Years 4 and up.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
We were going down to sole charge at the end of last year, so we wanted a maths programme that was going to be really manageable for us. We had 24 children, and teaching 5-year-olds up to 12- to 13-year-olds needed to be managed in a really good way. We found that PR1ME better allowed our children to work at their own individual levels.
Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
We found that our children were getting worse at maths. The results were showing that they weren’t retaining anything, the children were getting confused because the Numeracy Project made them learn so many different strategies, and their overall knowledge was shocking. We liked PR1ME because it starts from the basics, and builds upon itself as you continue through the programme. PR1ME is very consistent and it widens the children’s perspectives rather than the very narrow curriculum that we had been doing in the past.
Claire Findley, Owairoa Primary School
We started our journey on trying to improve maths about six years ago, with extensive staff development, lots of talking with teachers, and lots of work based around the Numeracy Project and a school curriculum that drew from many different books. Our growth was pretty static. Our kids were coming in, but they weren’t making very good gains or huge progress. We could tell that we really needed to improve. We weren’t drastically below, but we were not where we wanted to be.
I then got the opportunity to train as an ALiM teacher, which was working with the kids who were just below the standard, but this really only improved the look of our statistics. Following that, I trained as a MST [Mathematics Support Teacher], with Bobbie Hunter, and while that was amazing for me because I could work with small groups of kids, I wasn’t seeing anything different in the classrooms. I would go in and model activities, but it was too easy for teachers to revert back to boring, unstimulating mathematics that made slow progress and was slow learning for our kids.
At this time, Scholastic was hosting a workshop for PR1ME. We gave it a brief run in a colleague’s class, and she really liked it. She was very enthusiastic about it, about the structure it gave her class, and how engaged her students were in the problem solving activities. I had written our previous curriculum, and I saw that PR1ME came with all of that, consistently across all the levels, something that would have taken me weeks to do and decided that PR1ME was the way to go.
Michelle Patterson, Melville Intermediate
We felt that the Numeracy Project wasn’t meeting the needs of all our children, that there were lots of gaps in their knowledge and their understanding of mathematics. We also knew that we needed to build our teacher capability. Like most schools, we had teachers who were at all different stages and knowledge, so we needed something robust. PR1ME was a new programme on the scene, and we did a bit of exploration and looked at other schools that were using it, read some research, and actually thought this is probably the best thing for us to try.
Brya Dixon, Marton Primary School
Our achievement in maths was really low at the time. Not dire, but it was in the 60% range, and for us, that wasn’t good enough. Our PAT results weren’t great that year and we knew that our children could achieve higher. We were on a journey looking into maths and different approaches. We found the Numeracy Project wasn’t robust enough, it didn’t have the depth to it that we needed for our kids, it didn’t incorporate measurement and statistics and all the other strands. We needed something that would give us the whole package for the kids.
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street
We weren’t very happy with some of the research that was coming out around the Numeracy Project and establishing stages for all our children based on strategy teaching. We liked that PR1ME was streamlined, as we could easily see how our children could move forward. It had the ‘Let’s Remember’ to look for back teaching, and a focus on learning only one strategy. We also felt that Scholastic would be able to provide us with support throughout the journey.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
We were concerned about the lack of curriculum coverage in maths. We weren’t satisfied that our children were getting everything that they needed. We were also really concerned about the amount of time teachers were having to plan and hunt out resources - they were spending an inordinate amount of time doing it. PR1ME has all that covered, and is a more comprehensive straightforward programme. It was the right way to go.
Sandy McCallum, Mt Cook School
One of the critical points in children’s enjoyment of learning is that feeling of success throughout their learning. There is a whole motivational theme where they want to learn more, and in fact the greatest deterrent to progress is when kids are frustrated and don’t feel like they are succeeding. How have your children responded to PR1ME? Is it a programme where they are finding success? Is it a programme they enjoy?
They really love their books, we’ve just done a big school mass evaluation with visits and walk-throughs, and so many of the kids would say that they liked it, and when we asked why, it was because they could go back through their book and see the stuff they’ve done. Their engagement in maths is higher than it’s been for a long time.
Michelle Patterson, Mellville Intermediate
The kids really love PR1ME. Some love that they can charge ahead, or those kids who are plodding along can plod along. But there’s enough collaboration and peer pressure around for most of them to want to be keeping up with their peers. Our parents like it as well and the Board chairman is particularly enthusiastic about it because he says his kids just love it.
Sandy McCallum, Mt Cook School
For all our students, they are engaged. I walk into the class and I feel a buzz. And their level of agency is higher, they’ve got so many different places they can go: their course books, their practice books, each other, they are sharing ideas and collaborating so much more. They just enjoy maths.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
Our kids love it. If we let them, they would sit on the deck at lunchtime and playtime and do their PR1ME books. Their books are really important to them. The parents also seem to be very positive because the kids are always talking about their PR1ME books. They’re quite besotted. It’s like having something special that’s just theirs. I think for a lot of our students, if you asked them ‘What’s your favourite subject?’ they would say maths. Before PR1ME, I don’t think they considered that maths could be a lot of fun.
Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
Our students love the structure. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in the juniors or in the seniors, they know how the maths lessons are going to play out. They understand what they are doing and so the kids are just humming. They are more confident, and can teach one another as well. There’s a huge amount of student voice in the classrooms, the kids love talking about their learning.
Nazli Jeftha, Hawera Primary School
I’d never go back to not using PR1ME. It’s just making such a difference to our kids. I actually asked the children on Friday at the assembly how many liked maths, and they all, apart from one or two, put their hands up. That’s never happened before. The engagement is fabulous, for them to be hooked in that way. The way it helps our teachers develop professionally as they teach makes it just so effective. I’d never go back.
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
The kids love it, it’s actually a novelty sort of thing. They like having the book, they understand too, that it’s been bought for them, so a huge majority of them really look after them. They get really excited and learn the routines really quickly. PR1ME is motivating them to learn maths.
Debbie Forrester, Knighton Normal
Our Maori students are the same, loving it. We considered translating the books at the end of last year, but took a deep breath and thought that that job was probably too big and can wait. It’s still in our bilingual rooms, but using the course books and practice books as modelling books more so they can teach PR1ME in Te Reo.
Materoa Collins, Knighton Normal
We had a student voice survey done last year, where we asked the children what they thought about the PR1ME math programme. They loved the fact that they had visual representations in the form of a book, they loved that the book belonged to them, and that they could take it home at the end when they completed it. The Year 3 children also liked the fact that we cross grouped. They could have different teachers, and weren’t stuck in one class and moved around based on their progress.
Shumba Govender, Wakaaranga School
It’s very positive across the school. They love having that sense of ownership of their practice book. I wondered, to be honest with you, how many of our Year 6 children would engage with the practice book and whether that would appeal to them at that level. I was in one of the Year 6 rooms the other day and they didn’t want the teacher to take them outside and do some exercises because they wanted to work from the practice books more. I was quite taken aback by that, but they really do have that sense of ownership and pride.
Caroline von Sierakowski, Wakaaranga School
It’s fair to say the kids have to like what you are doing for it to work. Our kids weren’t that motivated in maths, and our teachers weren’t motivated either. We felt that we really needed to inspire in maths, and now, with PR1ME, the children just adore it. They love it. They love having their own practice book. They like the fact that they are working together, and really like to see the progress they are making. It helps with that sense of achievement when they complete a task from the practice books.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
Some schools, when they adopt another programme, are reluctant to go all the way, and end up with a lolly bag full of different programmes and other bits and pieces. Where are you with that? How was PR1ME introduced across your school?
I started talking about it a lot in the staff room, and making all the books available, pointing out things they could try. Everybody had the opportunity to have a look at it, and you know there were a few saying “Oh, I don’t know,” but in the end we said “We are going to try this, we think it’s important, and we want that whole school consistency.” I took it to a board meeting, and they were very supportive and have fully funded it for two years. I believe they are going to fund it again next year as well.
Michelle Patterson, Mellville Intermediate
We started from Year 3 and up. We just felt it was easier to do it all in one go, instead of in bits and pieces. At the start we struggled a bit because our interpretation of the programme was that it felt very prescribed. And then once we actually worked with a new member of the PR1ME staff, who came in and just knew the programme really well, and also was an incredibly good math teacher, we actually realised that there was a lot of flexibility around the teaching. Once that was lifted, our teachers really settled in to thinking it was great.
PR1ME is our base maths programme. What our teachers do in some cases is put in a few more hands-on activities, or problem-solving elements, or extra practice, and it’s important teachers trust their own professional expertise in that way. There is room in the programme for that flexibility, and it helps you better meet the needs of your children.
Sandy McCallum, Mt Cook School
We started it as a trial in a Year 3 class and a Year 5/6 class. Our Year 5/6 teacher was our lead maths person, and she’s very competent in math. She was desperate to give it a go, but we wanted to try it in Year 3 with someone who would openly say that math was not their strong point, as we really wanted to see if PR1ME was going to be able to make some shifts. The results were fantastic, and not just for the children but for that teacher in particular, in terms of how much more supported she felt and confident about what to teach and how to plug gaps.
In 2017 we rolled into the whole Year 4 team, because the Year 3 kids were moving into Year 4, so we wanted to carry them on. We are quite keen to talk to schools who are using it in their junior areas of the school to see how it’s working for them at that age.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
We started with our Totara, which is Years 1 to 3, first. They worked six months with PR1ME first, before we integrated the next level of kids into it, so that we could get a feel for the programme and work out whether this was sustainable for our school and our teachers. We then introduced it to the whole school, who have now been doing it for just over a year.
Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
We trialled it with two senior classes initially, Year 5 and Year 6 to begin with. The results were promising, but I knew I would need to convince the Board. It was a huge decision, this moral dilemma, when you’re facing kids’ futures. The Numeracy Project has been the be-all-end-all of everything, and so I had to be very brave and justify why I wanted to roll it out across the school.
We then had a parents’ meeting where I introduced them to PR1ME. I talked to them about the report that I saw from the New Zealand Initiative Group, about how you [Lester] had reviewed it as a critical reviewer, and how our data had changed with our trial. After the introduction we broke up into groups and each teacher guided the parents through demo lessons. The parents thought it was wonderful
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
We started with Years 2 and 3, and that was really because at that point the PR1ME K books weren’t out. We thought if we started at Year 2 and 3, we could progressively go through year by year, through into the senior school. The two teams we introduced it to are very capable teams, with very strong teachers, and they wanted to be a part of the trial. I think the experiences they shared, and each of them working through the different challenges that were being presented sort of spread the word to the staff. Each year we’ve grown, and now it goes right through the school.
This year, each team has an inquiry focused on PR1ME Maths because it’s a big area of learning for people, so they have a lot of collaborative discussions around how they’re teaching PR1ME in their classrooms. I’ve spoken with the newer teams as well, heard what their challenges are and we’ve talked about it a lot. It’s a continual journey and we’re sort of responding as we need to.
Caroline von Sierakowski, Wakaaranga School
Early on we were full-school PR1ME, however, our assessments spanned across numeracy as well so we were doing IKAN tests, GLOSS tests, etc. As we got more comfortable with implementing PR1ME we identified assessments that were necessary for us to show how they had progressed, and dropped the rest. As far as our programme delivery goes, we are still full PR1ME, where probably 60% of the rotation is PR1ME. Groups that are not with the teacher might be working on Prodigy, or maths games, or other activities to keep their number knowledge up.
Patrick Hurly, Terrace End School
When we first started, we had two extension classes so we wanted to try it with them first to see how it went, and then we just worked our way down. We dropped it down to Year 4, then down to Year 3. Last year we started in Year 2, and now we’ve just introduced the Kindergarten books into two Year 1 classes.
Claire Findley, Owairoa Primary School
In a typical classroom you have a range of abilities. How do you differentiate for the individual learners’ needs using PR1ME?
We have chosen to stick to ability grouping with PR1ME Maths. I know there’s a lot of things to say for social grouping, mixed ability grouping, to help expose slower learners to higher concepts, but I see it as the teacher’s responsibility to pitch their lessons to the appropriate level, including that exposure.
In the Year 4 classes, they all have maths at the same time, from nine to ten o’clock, five days a week. That’s their math time, so they can cross group if and when they need to. Cross-grouping has some people for it and some against it, but as long as the teachers are happy to collaborate and work together and share responsibility for all the kids together then it works well. Our students are used to moving classes for our spelling programme, so this is not an issue for them. With the other classes, they managed it between them, but there were still those outlier groups of highly capable children. I work with those children once a week, and they are slightly more self-directed in their learning.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
We predominately ability group, though inside their groups there is a lot of peer work involved as we share a modelling book between two students. For our day-to-day teaching we went through the PR1ME placement tests, and cross-checked them with their PAT results. In each whanau [team] we cross-group the children, with the teachers taking on different levels. The teachers rotate their levels so they are always learning in PR1ME too. We have support teachers who work with our lower students to help them more as they normally just need a little more teacher time.
Michelle Patterson, Mellville Intermediate
PR1ME is still differentiated. It is differentiated group teaching, where the kids are working on different books depending on where they’re at. The children progress at their own pace, and that’s one of the things the kids really love about it.
Sandy McCallum, Mt Cook School
We haven’t had any problem with what levels to put our students on, but at one point this year we had three students that joined us and we found that after a little while that what we had given them in PR1ME was a little too far ahead for them. So we talked about that as a staff and even though they appeared to be a long way back from where they should be at their age and level, we were better to keep them there and fill in all the gaps rather than put them too far forward and have too many big gaps. It worked well because it was like they were on their own individual journey. Sometimes when students have plateaued at certain levels, we’ve found lots of examples from other places so that they can consolidate their learning. That doesn’t happen for the majority of students though, as PR1ME moves at a speed that’s just perfect.
Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
During the week we do four days of instructional teaching, where they are grouped and follow differentiated programmes, based on where they are on their PR1ME levels, but then on the Friday we do collaborative and social groupings. The kids end up teaching one another, but they are teaching them the same strategy, at more advanced levels, and it’s clearer for them. When you ask the students, they say, “We understand what we’re doing. We can see the patterns.” It’s very positive.
Nazli Jeftha, Hawera Primary
If I taught my own home room, I would be working from at least five different books, which isn’t that manageable. So what we chose to do in our senior school, which is seven classes, is we cross-group. Within each of our classes we are teaching from two books, but we still do have a wide range of ability even with this set-up.
Debbie Forrester, Knighton Normal
After we had tested and placed our kids, we cross-grouped them across the whole school. We had our whole school doing maths at the same time every day. It became a little complicated, especially as we grew bigger. We were going through a rebuild and remediation, which meant classrooms were out of action. Some kids had to walk long distances, so we went back to crossgrouping across teams, and that is working well. Inside those teams, the children are grouped by ability, but on Friday, it is problem-solving day. So on Friday they can work in social maths groups where they might do a whole class problem or they might do independent or individual or small group problems.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
There is an aversion amongst teachers to anything that resembles a textbook. A number of people said, “PR1ME? That’s a textbook programme.” With the connotation being that it is a programme that you slavishly follow, this page today, tomorrow do that page, and the book is the teacher so to speak. Has that been your experience? How do you respond to that?
Yeah, it’s not the textbook that you sat down with in the fourth form and did page after page, it’s not like that at all. It’s not a textbook where you have to follow through from start to finish. A good teacher still stops, goes back, deviates and skips parts based on the needs of the learners in front of them, and PR1ME is really good at helping teachers learn how to do this.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
Yes and no, it is a programme that we follow because it makes sense. Teachers who either don’t know how to teach math, or don’t like teaching math, follow it more closely, but we all use it as a resource. We use modelling books and materials, and often we learn something, and then straight away you can go into the modelling book and show them a different way, or the students come up with a different or better way, so it’s very flexible.
Nazli Jeftha, Hawera Primary School
We were a little concerned about that to begin with, but we certainly haven’t felt like that, and the response of our children to PR1ME has been huge. They absolutely love it. It’s more of a record of their progress, and they can see how they have improved, so that in itself has been a real bonus for us.
Brya Dixon, Marton School
No, its not a text book approach, and it works really well in our innovative learning environments, which were recently completed. We have put a lot of thought into what that actually means, as PR1ME, being structured, can seem at odds with that, but it’s differentiated. If you are setting the work at your children’s level of ability, they will be able to move forward and make progress. This gives room for all of the other mathematics tasks that are happening away from the teacher to be more personalised, and work better in the innovative learning environments. These tasks are more purposeful, and related to the data we collect from our assessment. It is working a treat for those teachers! Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
I guess you could implement PR1ME as a text book, but it’s clear when you use it that you should still have a learning rotation with groups of children. Yes, you move through the book in sequence, but sometimes you might stay in one spot for a long time or take a side path and do other things for a bit, because it’s taking a long time for the children to get it. Other times you’ll move through really quickly. During the sequence the learning is revisited, and each thing builds on something else so it makes sense to follow it. The children notice the pattern too because when they’re doing the reviews, they say, “Ooo, I remember that!”
Debbie Forrester, Knighton Normal
Some of our teachers have found it a challenge to sink their teeth into PR1ME and I think one of the barriers for them has been because they have been looking at it as a textbook telling them what to do. If you look at it from the surface, you do just see the books. People automatically react to that, but I think once you understand it and see it in action, that’s not what it is about There is a lot of hands-on use of manipulatives and representational materials. It is something that we did have to make clear, PR1ME is a programme with progressions that teachers can feed into as well. We’re not asking them to throw out everything they have done in the past. PR1ME presents us with the progressions and the coherency as a school for our maths programme, but you as a teacher can still build in all your other mathematical teaching knowledge. Caroline von Sierakowski, Wakaaranga School
There is quite a lot of evidence to show that maths is on a serious decline in New Zealand, and the beginning of that decline interestingly coincides with the introduction of the Numeracy Project. When this notion is brought to the fore, the Ministry’s researchers have said, “Well, it’s not the project; it’s actually the teachers who are the problem.” It seems to me that if you know that’s the problem, you’ve therefore got to get a programme that is actually going to support teachers. Is PR1ME a programme that supports your teachers?
Absolutely. We use PR1ME as our base because it supports our teachers with their development and content knowledge. We are going to develop some of the stuff that I’ve learned as a MST teacher around classroom culture, because it’s huge and we’ve done a lot of work in this school on mind-set and Jo Boaler’s work, and that’s made a difference. I don’t think we have a need to bring in outside PD.
Michelle Patterson, Mellville Intermediate
Yes it is! The lessons are so well structured and provide lots of opportunities for the teachers, in terms of the language to use and how to frame up the learning, so for those teachers who were not so confident, they have become much more confident teaching maths. It supports them really well. I think that the more we do it, the more it builds from year to year. It builds layer upon layer in terms of knowledge and also the way that it works. I think just taking it on and then a year later going, “Oh, no, this doesn’t work,” completely defeats the purpose of it, because that’s something you really want to build expertise with.
Sandy McCallum, Mt Cook School
Our teachers have built their maths content knowledge and confidence I think they’re really good. We gave each other enough time to read and absorb PR1ME, and spent a lot of time unpacking it together. The programme lets us do that, because it’s all there.
Michelle Cameron, James Cook School
The biggest benefit for the teachers is that it’s structured, and there’s clear support for where the kids are, what the concept is that you’re trying to teach, and then where to next. If they are not ready for that concept it shows you how to plug the gaps. There are many teachers in New Zealand that will openly say they’re not confident in teaching maths, but PR1ME is something that actually provided more support and structure for our teachers to be able to deliver a good programme.
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
One of the things I really like about PR1ME from a leadership perspective was that it provides its own professional development. Nazli [Head Maths Teacher] would take breakfast meetings and they would have them once a week and teachers would identify areas where they needed the work and Nazli would follow that up. We find we don’t need to send them off for courses, there’s a huge capability in our school around maths at the moment.
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
I think when we first started there were some teachers that were more in favour of the Numeracy Project, but I think more were keen to try PR1ME than not, to be honest. Once we got started and saw how much easier it made our life that quickly changed. PR1ME has all the planning done for you, so the time spent on planning can be spent on making your other resources better. I think there were some people a bit unsure about how scripted it is in the teacher’s guide, but you can use as much of that as you want for your lessons. I feel far more confident with PR1ME and more confident in what I’m teaching the kids than I was during the previous five years of teaching the Numeracy Project.
I work with our BT, this is her first year and she loves it because it helps her learn how to teach maths properly, and the right language to use. She was just saying the other day that some of her friends in other schools find it a real struggle because nothing really guides you through the Numeracy Project. But even for those teachers that are really good at maths, sometimes it can actually be really hard to break it down into language that the kids can understand, and PR1ME helps there too. I would be gutted if we stopped it, my workload would probably triple.
Debbie Forrester, Knighton Normal School
What I found for me personally was that the PR1ME maths programme actually grew me professionally in my teaching knowledge of maths. At the beginning I needed the support of the teacher’s guide, and my lessons were longer. The teacher’s guide was giving me my professional learning at the same time, and now I don’t need to go back to the teacher’s guide as often.
I’ve also been trained in the Numeracy Project, and I’m not saying I’ve done away totally with the Numeracy Project, but I’m able to marry that programme into the PR1ME maths programme. I feel that has made my maths lessons a lot more enjoyable for the children.
Shumba Govender, Wakaaranga School
For us, it has certainly supported our teachers, just in terms of seeing teachers’ ability to ask much deeper questions of the children and being able to get down to the nitty-gritty of what they need to understand in terms of concept and skill, has certainly improved. Teacher confidence is also high because they’re so well supported with the guidance in the teacher’s book. There are elements of any programme that are going to suit some people more than others, but for our school it has been a good programme for us to adopt.
Brya Dixon, Marton School
I think teachers are always going to have areas that they haven’t got strengths in, that is just people. We have brilliant behaviour management practitioners in our school, we have brilliant literacy people in our school, and we have really great maths people. We need a programme that goes all the way across our school so that all our children get the same advantage. This is about equity
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
Our teachers are fairly confident in teaching maths now, and very positive about teaching PR1ME. They have found it very user-friendly, and much more so than the Numeracy Project, where you had to dip in and out of different books and things. The teacher guide is very clear and has it all laid out for them. It has been gold for our beginning teachers, because it has taken the guess work out of how to teach certain skills.
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street School
PR1ME is great for our teachers. Everyone felt supported straight away. They don’t have to go and find a whole lot of resources to support the outcomes that they want the children to achieve. It’s all there in the book. The planning, layouts, the specifics of how the teacher might ask questions for deeper understanding. It’s very relatable, but also quite specific with its direction. We wanted to change because it wasn’t that they struggled with the Numeracy Project, it was that we felt that there was a lack of support there. So, personally I think that teachers are looking at the course books and teacher’s guides now and they think, “Oh. So I’m doing this right anyway,” a lot of the time. I think it gives you a bit more self-belief in the teaching. It seemed common previously that teachers were concerned and started to question their own teaching skills
Patrick Hurly, Terrace End School
I think at the start it was very hard. A lot were thinking “Oh my goodness, this is another tool we’ve got to learn about,” but I think when they see that the teacher’s guide tells them exactly how to do it, it’s good. Even teachers that were not particularly good at maths could actually work their way through it because it tells you step-by-step how to do it, and because it’s an integrated programme we are now getting more breadth to the curriculum. Strand subjects like geometry, measurement and statistics are getting much more time
The teachers are more willing to give things in PR1ME a go because it teaches them step-by-step how to solve it, especially with the bar model method for word problems. That has been a huge learning curve for a lot of the teachers, and we have done some PD in the school to help that as it’s really useful higher up in the school.
Claire Findley, Owairoa Primary School
You hear some people say “Well, PR1ME is a Singaporean programme but we are Aotearoa, New Zealand, how can that work here?” What is your response to this?
Maths is an international language that no matter what country our students come from, or what their mother tongue is, they know the language of maths. From personal experience, coming from Thailand into the system, I couldn’t read or write, but I could do the maths, I had no problem with the maths. And this is the same for our Pasifika students, they have been learning algorithms and they can stand strong. New Zealand is a fluid multicultural society now, our programmes need to be multicultural too.
Sonmai Lightbourne, James Cook School
Wouldn’t it be nice if New Zealand had the mathematical achievement records that Singapore does? Maths is an international language, and there are elements of course that are more Singaporean, but we are a typical multicultural Kiwi school, and our kids are thriving with PR1ME
Anna Powrie, Everglade School
Initially when we spoke to whanau before bringing it in, whanau were very concerned that it came from Singapore. They asked “Why are we going there to bring a programme for us in the unit?” But once they were able to see the learning their children were able to go home with and talk through, they were happy.
Materoa Collins, Knighton Normal
I think we make it our own. Obviously they have a great reputation for maths, so if it’s working there, we can try and make it work for us here. But really, I don’t think it’s that much different, because we’ve been doing hands-on materials in our maths programme for a while. It’s the sequence that I really like; how they have structured the learning to make it into a programme. It goes through the progressions and it’s really quick. I like the way that they repeat some of the lessons but in different situations or contexts, so that the children are getting repetition of the concept. They really understand it before they move on to the next part.
Kirsty Rice, Owairoa Primary School
How is PR1ME working for your priority learners?
We have just gone up to 52% Maori. When we first started we were 34% so the demographics of our school have hugely changed. When we do our subgroup analysis, the disparity between the groups has completely changed. I completed a report for the Review Office on acceleration, because that’s their particular focus at the moment, and it showed a massive leap forward. 56% of our kids across the school showed accelerated progress. Then we looked at our targeted students: 59% of those showed accelerated progress, while 67% of our Maori students showed accelerated progress. When we compared the results to the average scale improvements for PATs, all of them were far more than expected. The progress has been huge.
Neryda
Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
We have 46% Maori and 22% Pacifika students here, so nearly 70% are priority learners. All of our children are responding better with PR1ME. I think that it’s mainly because PR1ME develops the vocabulary early and keeps its consistent structure throughout the whole programme.
Michelle Cameron, James Cook School
Forty percent of our school is Maori. We trialled PR1ME in our partial immersion classes and the results convinced us that we should do it across the whole school
Materoa Collins, Knighton Normal
We’ve noticed that there isn’t really a disparity between Maori and non-Maori students when using PR1ME. I think it’s the consistency of teaching that PR1ME offers our students. Across our school from year to year, there is a clear structure, where number and strand are incorporated in a more logical process. It means all our children are getting the opportunity to fill in gaps in their knowledge and build on their previous learnings.
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street School
Professional development in New Zealand maths has been quite interesting, because the Ministry has spent millions on it over the last decade or so. It has given it a priority status, and some schools have become quite dependent on external professional development. Yet the problem hasn’t gone away, has it? Why do you think that is? Has PR1ME helped in this?
I always felt like I was just drifting in the river a little bit, treading water, because I came through BSM, then onto the Numeracy Project. It was when I went to England and worked there for a year that I think I actually learnt how to teach maths. I came back and incorporated some of that, I did ALiM but still felt like something was missing. I would go to a Numeracy Project training, and we’d learn some particular thing, but I couldn’t see how what I just learned would fit into a bigger picture. How does it link? Where does it follow on to? How can I make this a school-wide programme? Imagine what that is like for a teacher who has just come out of teachers’ college?
As a school leader, I still floundered with all the professional development, especially when I started MST, because I thought “What am I supposed to teach them [my teachers]?” as in, there was no structure or umbrella to hang it all on, no programme. It was ok for me as an experienced teacher who knew where I wanted to take my kids and knew some stuff about maths and how I wanted to develop maths with them. I could incorporate and use those individual plans easily but for my teacher who has just come out of teachers’ college, or shifted year levels, she’s going, “What am I going to teach?” We had a curriculum that said we did geometry for two weeks, statistics for 3 weeks, and so on, but what was she supposed to do with that? The content and structure still isn’t there, schools have to develop that themselves. Now we are using PR1ME, all of that comes with it. It makes my job to manage the curriculum easier.
Michelle Patterson, Mellville Intermediate
We had that similar mind-set from two or so of our teachers: that we needed an external expert to tell us how to do it. “We need someone to teach us.” It can be frustrating because everything is in front of you with PR1ME, it’s already there. You just need to develop that expertise organically from within. Our PR1ME journey has been excellent at developing growth mind-sets for our teachers. Now those teachers are its biggest advocates!
Michelle Cameron, James Cook School
When I was teaching in the old days, I would honestly have to work through those old MSM books, with the textbook approach, and I had to learn alongside the children. In a primary school you are going to have a range of teachers who just get how to teach maths, and others that need to really work at it. PR1ME tells the teacher how to look for proficiency in the children’s understanding, it’s got the content knowledge right there in the books you are using with the children, and it helps the teacher learn it by just teaching PR1ME. It’s a whole different approach for our teachers.
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School
This has been a concern in our school, and probably across the board. We had teachers at all different stages of training and knowledge of the Numeracy Project. We felt that even with our previous training in the Numeracy Project, it didn’t stick. We also felt strand was not being strongly represented, and that our teachers weren’t necessarily able to make effective connections between strand and number.
Brya Dixon, Marton School
At the stage we were looking at PR1ME, we were already doing a lot of PD around reading and writing. We couldn’t really fit in any more PD, and yet we wanted to make sure our teachers and kids were getting a thorough grounding in maths. I really liked how the teacher’s guide walked the teachers through how to check if the kids have the understanding they need to start some learning, and what book to teach from when the children have missed some of that foundation stuff. It lets the teachers pick it up as they go.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
We tend to have most of our PD happen at school, and I organise most of our maths PD. I have meetings with the beginning teachers and those that are new to the school just to go through the programme and show them how it works. I will sometimes do PD on a Tuesday afternoon on things that have popped up from conversations. For example, in our next one we’re going to cover bar models again. It’s going to be a time to ask questions and experiment.
Starting out with PR1ME can be a bit of trial and error. Each teacher is different and it’s good for them to work out a system that works for them when using the books. I can show them what I do, but my way might not necessarily meet the needs of their children in their class. So I give them the basics and then they can think about how they can do it from there.
Claire Findley, Owairoa Primary School
PR1ME helps you sort out your whole programme. The lessons are short and pacy with lots of hands-on materials. There is a good flow between the lessons that make sense sequentially. The books contain all your planning, and how you should implement your programme, and it doesn’t take as much time because you don’t have to go around and find all the resources. I really like the questioning techniques in the books. They make you think “Oh, that’s really a good way of phrasing or asking that question.” And then the re-teaching parts of it are there to support you in consolidating the children’s learning. All the professional development is there as a teacher. You just need to bring it all to the children.
Kirsty Rice, Owairoa Primary School
For our new teachers, and those who were stronger in other areas of the curriculum but perhaps weaker in maths, their ability to teach mathematics has increased a lot with PR1ME. So not quite levelling the playing field, but raising the baseline ability of all our teachers. We know if somebody just walks in and runs with a PR1ME lesson plan, we know the children in front of them are going to get a good deal. I don’t think the professional development around the Numeracy Project was really equipping teachers with what they need to be able to do this.
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street School
The acid test is how your children are achieving or progressing by using PR1ME. Have you got the sense that this programme is benefiting? And how do you know the children are progressing?
My class goes from groups at 3A all the way up to 6B. We did PATs at the beginning of the year and we’ve done a PAT recently just to gauge the progress. So at half way through the year, every single one of them has gone up at least one stanine, which is just awesome. Also, being intermediate level and with our children going off to high school, the students who go from 5A through to 6B go straight into the accelerated classes when they start high school. The feedback we’ve got from colleges has been just great as well; our students are problem solvers, they know how to attack problems, they can ask for help when they need it, and they know those fundamental mathematic skills Melanie Morris, James Cook School
We’ve had results that the Board were really pleased with. Our students have just come 14th in the Mathex competition in town. We had to pick a Year 4 to put into the Year 6 team to make up the numbers and we still did well out of the 48 teams, which is really exciting and a huge improvement for us. The Board is very focused on progress and achievement and they could see that there were lots of reasons for us as teachers to need a programme like PR1ME. Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
We’ve always had high maths achievement data that was consistent. We generally have around 90% at or above expectation and we have stayed stable at that level. We weren’t sure if there would be a shift, or maybe even a downward shift to begin with while we’ve learnt the programme. Where we have seen the improvements is clear progressions across the school in mathematical skills and what the children have covered from year to year. There has also been a shift in student voice: they are enjoying the programme, and some of those older boys that traditionally haven’t enjoyed maths are the ones that we’ve really engaged since we’ve started using PR1ME. Caroline von Sierakowski, Wakaaranga School
Well, our results show that our children have made progress when we re-did our PAT test at the end of the year. The block of children who were stanine three, four and five, shifted to four, five, six, seven and quite a few at nine. It’s pleasing to see our ESOL students more able to participate and achieve with PR1ME. I think the concise language helps a lot there.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
It has been absolutely amazing. When I first started, I thought my extension class should be on books five and six and ended up going back to books three and four. I now have children in my class on those higher books, all the way up to 6A, so the children are coming through the school with much more knowledge, and their skills have increased. We’re getting them further along in the programme.
Claire Findley, Owairoa Primary School
Our results have increased over time, and we’ve maintained our assessment schedule so we can really track how well PR1ME has been going. We started with 60% at or above, and now we are at 80%, so a fairly significant advance. We are targeting 90% so we are not quite there yet, but are confident we can get there.
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street
What advice would you give to schools that are looking at PR1ME or thinking of giving it a go?
Go visit schools that have got PR1ME well under way. I think when you see a classroom that has PR1ME working in a really sustainable way, you’ll see just how much more manageable it is for the teacher and students. Seeing is believing for me, and it was a gamble for us to change things the way we have, but it certainly has paid off.
Margie Sutherland, Bunnythorpe School
We’ve held a networking meeting in our hall for all the local schools that have PR1ME, or were interested in it. The korero was the best way; you’re going to want to visit a school and see how it works. We’ve had schools come to us and have a look at what’s going on. It’s the best way. Then you’ve got to be brave. You’ve got to be brave because it’s an investment. We had to be totally convinced that we felt it was going to work.
Sue Allomes, Terrace End School
You would need to visit a school to really see how great it is. The first thing I would do if you were visiting my school is show you the results of our students’ achievement, and then I would get you into a classroom and show you the learning process. You would see that materials are still being used, the children are in small groups, and that it’s not just a textbook approach. You should also spend some time speaking with the teachers and students, as their experiences are great to hear!
Trudi Rei, Lytton Street School
I think if the data is not moving, if you’re noticing there’s a problem that needs addressing, you need to have a look at PR1ME and see if it is something you could take on board. Otherwise, doing what you’ve always done will get you the same results. To take on something like this, you’ve got to do the research, and find out why it’s been successful in those countries. Having someone credible like you [Lester Flockton] review it helps! Don’t hesitate, it is worth looking into. Give it a trial, the engagement you get from that will be enough to convince you
Neryda Sullivan, Hawera Primary School