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1. Speed and accuracy results per class
2. Speed and accuracy results whole cohort
3. Survey (Year 7 cohort)
4. Survey results

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Q8. Was there any 'tweaking'? If so, what and why? 

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Q8. Was there any 'tweaking'? If so, what and why? 

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As we became more familiar with the program we discovered new tools that were set up to increase the engagement of students that we introduced part way through the use of Numerical Acumen. The use of “Challenges” provided the students with more competitions amongst themselves which increased the interest of some students.

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The below graph shows a sample from one year 7 class of their pre and post test results (time to answer) for Adding Near Tens. The blue represents their pre test times and their red represents their post test times.

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Q7. What was the impact of your strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/program on student learning, engagement and outcomes? 

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Q7. What was the impact of your strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/program on student learning, engagement and outcomes? 

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Through early observations, students found it hard to fully engage in the program as the set of the website didn’t offer a lot of excitement compared to other programs used.

The strategy that involved explicit teaching of the specific topic, allowed for students to discover new strategies to mental arithmetic prior to working on the topic. This strategy has shown improvements in student outcomes from pre to post tests on each topic.

The main improvements in student results has come in the time it has taken for students to complete the pre test compared to the post test. Along with the decrease in time of the students there has also been minor improvements in the accuracy of the results.

The constant review of the new strategies in class allowed for students to continually practice the new approach, which has lead to the improvement in times as students have become more confident in their mental arithmetic.

Students who started out with a high time in the pre tests generally showed the biggest improvements in their post tests, however students who already had their own strategies in how to complete the questions (low time), didn’t show big improvements as they didn’t have much room to move.

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Q4. What evidence did you chose to measure the effectiveness
of your strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/ program on student learning/
engagement and outcomes? 

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Q4. What evidence did you chose to measure the effectiveness
of your strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/ program on student learning/
engagement and outcomes? 

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Through running pre-tests, post-tests and observing student scores and speed, we have been monitoring how explicitly taught addition strategies are impacting on student learning. This data helps us in assessing the usefulness of explicit teaching of mental arithmetic and the effectiveness of repetitive practicing. Students have been engaged with Numerical Acumen as they are practicing their skills every lesson using an online game style program that they have access to at home as well. This provides repetitive practice games played individually or with other students as well as set class challenges. Students have been challenged by questions with varying degree of difficulty. The program provides students with the flexibility of choosing the level of difficulty of the problems. Since the results for all the games attempted are logged, we have been able to monitor student improvement and the types of questions completed.

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Q3. What was your research question/ hypothesis? 

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Q3. What was your research question/ hypothesis? 

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Research Question: To what extent does explicit teaching together with the use of repetitive practice improve mental numeracy strategies of year 7 students?
Hypothesis: By teaching explicit addition strategies and providing repetitive practice experience through use of Numerical Acumen (an online program), the speed taken for students to solve mental maths will improve.

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Q2. What readings informed your Action Research?

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Q2. What readings informed your Action Research?

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Four articles related to our area of action were read and discussed . Three of these articles were referred to by the creators of the Numerical Acumen program and the fourth is a different study conducted in the area of mental maths. Overall previous research highlights the importance for efficient mental maths strategies. Each article is referenced here with key points specified.
Hartnett, J. E. (2007). Categorisation of mental computation strategies to support teaching and to encourage classroom dialogue.

>Stresses the need to teach explicit strategies.
>Issues arising from some teachers are not competent in teaching these strategies.

>Created a framework of 5 strategies - one strategy per term. Pre-test, mid progress test and post test for each strategy.

>Students had to explain how they used strategies in tests.

McIntosh, A. (2006). Mental computation of school-aged students: Assessment, performance levels and common errors. Developing and researching quality, 1-10.
>In everyday lives, ¾ of our calculations are mental..therefore necessary to make mental maths part of the curriculum.
>Biggest problem area was addition and subtraction of whole numbers - procedural errors were made (as opposed to conceptual). >Should be checking what procedures students are already using and directing them away from inefficient strategies.
>Difficult to define and measure the strategies that students are using.
Price, G. R., Mazzocco, M. M., & Ansari, D. (2013). Why mental arithmetic counts: brain activation during single digit arithmetic predicts high school math scores. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(1), 156-163.

>The mastery of arithmetic at a young age has significant implications for the success of later mathematic achievement.
>Schools need to focus time on developing mental maths skills
Rogers, A. (2009). Mental Computation in the Primary Classroom. In MAV Annual Conference (pp. 190-199).
>Dedicated time should be given to the teaching of mental computation from prep.

> time pressures on learning mental arithmetic can be detrimental for students who have not grasped the concepts properly.

>the concept will be committed to memory more strongly through mental and written practice.

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The area chosen was ‘Improving student learning and outcomes in numeracy’. Our PLT comprises of the Year 7 Maths team so it was beneficial to us to focus on improving the Year 7 students’ ability to “solve problems and check calculations using efficient mental and written strategies”  Acara Numeracy Continuum (2106). This focus was discussed as being a crucial skill for students to have as they progress through their education and navigate maths in the real world.

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Q6. What strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/program did you implement?

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Q6. What strategy/ pedagogical approach/ practice/program did you implement?

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THE APPROACH
The approach involved spending some time introducing and teaching students strategies that would develop speed and accuracy with respect to adding and multiplying numbers. After a strategy was taught and discussed it was then reinforced by repeated mental maths questions provided by Numerical Acumen. Numerical Acumen provided different levels of difficulty. The choice of progressing through the levels was to some degree partly the decision of individual student and partly influenced by the teacher

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THE PLAN
Our plan was twofold:

i) to try to improve basic numeracy skills in the areas of multiplication and addition with the help of the online program "Numerical Acumen".

ii) To analyse the efficacy of the approach provided through use of Numerical Acumen in developing strategies which lead to improvements in speed and accuracy in multiplication and addition. (P.S. Fraction skill development was another area of focus provided by the program but was not the subject of attention in this trial)