NPeW

We looked at student voice and how that had shifted over time. Student agency: How do we build student agency?

• students can choose how to present work/topics
• co-construct learning
• effective questioning
• planning together
• useful tools - goal/peer/self assessment
• modelling and lots of practice.

We also looked at devices in school and what students felt they had access to in class. In my class there are one to one devices.

How do we link student agency and online learning.

• show models online - let students find their own models
• SC /LI can be transferred across documents
• learning conversations - google classrooms/feedback online/real time
• blogs - learning displays/information
• videos/online information to immerse students in topic 

This exercise has enabled me to see what I already do well and areas I need to improve. I think I need to use Google classroom more effectively.

UBRS

This course went over two days at Lynmore School. Initially I thought it was about changes to constraints, but it was about classroom management. The videos they showed made me realise that I do react appropriately towards students and this made me feel a lot better about the situation I am in at the moment. I hope to begin the year in 2018 with a new approach.

PB4L

Listening to the PB4L discussion and identifying minor and major incidents made it clear that many incidents can go between the two depending on the severity of the issue. I went away thinking about how I can change my own attitude - come to school positive and see if that works. I feel that I do start the day anew and I do not hold grudges so that is a good start.

Mindlab - cultural practices

Through Mindlab I have been reflecting on how I can improve my practices when working with Maori students. I found that at the school I am at now, half the students are Maori which puts me in a prime position to see what I can do to improve how I build relationships and teach students. The first thing I noticed was that I had to earn the students trust, fairness was important, and pronouncing Maori words was important to the students.

I read Russell Bishop's work around cultural responsiveness and the student voice was very clear. I am trying to make connections with Maori culture through texts, and also by asking questions and listening to the students when they share their whanau heritage.

It is early days, but I am going to plan using real contexts for students, and also to link this to their own backgrounds. In Term 2, WWII is the focus and I think that I will also focus on the Maori battalion in order to make real links for students.

PACT Reading

I engaged in PACT reading development today. It was good to see the progressions and I found that I was easily able to identify the sets, especially the top two thirds of the sets. I found the lowest few more challenging but that was probably because I have less experience teaching at the lower levels. The PACT tool identifies more areas of reading than what is generally focused on. This will make more aware of what I need to teach. My next step us to slot the sets into my planning to make sure that I am covering all aspects.

New School, New Learning

I started a new school two weeks ago and I feel as though I have started at the bottom again. It has been really challenging going into a school with intermediate aged students. I am going to give myself to the end of the term to settle in and not be too hard on myself in the process.

Maths PD Honor 16.5.17

Today my team had development around PACT and how to use it as an assessment tool. For me, this has changed the way I have to think about assessing maths as this tool is not against stages, but against big mathematical ideas. It also uses sets and I have to be really aware of the progressions within each set in order to assess which set each child is working at.

Effective Pedagogy in Mathematics - this resource is about best practice in the world - that is to say that if the 10 ideas are used, then maths lessons will be much more effective.
Book 3, pink numeracy book - has always indicated that mixed ability grouping is best.

Accelerated Learning
Learning in the Fast Lane - book that many are using to inform practice. This book has a list which can be used to make sure our priority learners make accelerated progress.

• give students who are struggling, problems as well, just as high achieving children get
• use mixed abilities
• use talk moves

Positive Norms to Encourage in Maths Class by J BAKER

Need to build culture of making mistakes is fine, no maths anxiety (timed tests)

I think it is best to give mixed ability groups a problem at the beginning of the week, find those who need more help, identify the best strategy, and repeat this throughout the week - and build up the numbers.

How to teach maths as a social activity - you tube video to watch

Capacity Building Series - Special Edition#21 (2011) Ontario

Learning in the Fast Lane by Suzy Rollins 2014

This reading has clear steps for accelerated learning. I will use this in my class. I need to work on building vocabulary - I think we are working in the fast lane and we need to slow down.

Accelerated Learning in mathematics (nzmaths ALiM)

Religious Education PD

Today we heard from the leader of the Catholic Diocese who spoke to us about our role as catholic teachers. We are at the forefront in our classes relating everything we do back to being the eyes, face and hands of Jesus.

This made me think about my role in the classroom. Prayer time is a sacred time and I always am part of the prayers, often contributing myself to show the children that I am also taking this seriously. I know we are always challenged to keep RE as first in our curriculum but the MOE also put so much pressure on that reading, writing and maths come first. I guess I have managed to get around this by integrating subjects such as RE and writing.

Since I am leaving a catholic school and moving into a state school, this will be very different for me. It will challenge how I teach and just how much I can now refer to Jesus and the catholic values.

Literature Review

Week 17 OverviewThis week is focused on understanding the roles that research can play in education. It introduces the concept of education research and outlines various types of research in education.

You will also be exploring the principles of Kaupapa Maori and how they relate to research in education. You’ll find all the content from the Class Notes -tab.

Relating Practising Teacher Criteria

12(i). Systematically and critically engage with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine practice

12(iii). Critically examine their own beliefs, including cultural beliefs, and how they impact on their professional practice and the achievement of ākonga

Week 18

Using Research as a Practitioner: Finding Relevant ResourcesThis week is focused on understanding how to search for and locate educational research and how to critically interpret and evaluate research reports and findings.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the different types and formats of education research
• Know how to search for and locate education research
• Develop skills to interpret and critically evaluate research

Practising Teacher Criteria

12(i). systematically and critically engage with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine practice.

Week 20

Practising Teacher Criteria9(ii). select teaching approaches, resources, technologies and learning and assessment activities that are inclusive and effective for diverse ākonga

9(iii). modify teaching approaches to address the needs of individuals and groups of ākongaThe first week that I  worked on my own (with the two in my group) and away from the Wednesday meetings and support that Mindlab offered was initially a relief. However, it was very easy to forget to do the tasks for the week and as I am so busy at school, the time flew by and before I knew it, another week had passed. We met regularly and most of our meeting were about getting the assessments done. Every time we finished another assessment, we were really relieved but we couldn't relax as there was yet another assessment to be completed. As time has passed, I am wondering if I really want to continue with more post graduate studies when this finishes...I'm not sure.

Literacy PD

27th April

Working as a COL

Effective Pedagogies and Practices

Accelerating Literacy Achievement

AKO - Student Agency

Progress and Progression Tool (PACT)

Acceleration (below where they should be) making more than 1 years progress within a year

This will be those working below NS, but also those who are at the NS but can do better.

Everyone needs to be checked to see that they are reaching their potential.

What makes a difference?

Principles of effective instruction to motivate and engage

• Motivation and engagement
• Growth mindset - metacognition -children knowing about their learning
• Think aloud
• Authemtic audeiences
• Demonstration
• Students co-construct tasks fit for purpose
• Multiple and varies opportunities to learn
• Quality talk - TPS COMPARE (think, peer share, compare)
• Think share think - task I made
• Think, peer share, compare and explain why
• Keep writing interesting and varied  - also to engage boys
• Metaphor: Learners in the driving seat - Chris Watkins

Need to know how to spell otherwise children will only use easy words

Note taking and summarising are great skills

Motivation - Learners in the driving seat - main ideas for student agency

• You need to know what writing is
• What good writers do
• Learning goals
• Exemplars
• Check in to see if still on focus

Main reasons for Motivation

• Attitude - your feelings that predispose you to avoid writing -How well do you like to write?
• Interest - a positive orientation towards writing - what do you like to write about? What forms of writing do you like to write?
• Value - your beliefs about the usefulness, importance, and enjoyment of writing - Is it important for you to be a good writer?
• Self efficacy - your judgement of you ability to accomplish a task - how well do you understand to write?
• Self concept - self perception of yourself as a writer, your sense of competence - how do you think of yourself as a writer
• Goals - your reasons for writing - why do you write? Can you improve?

Engagement

• Choice
• Collaborative activities
• Authentic tasks - purpose and variety eg, after writng a report, write a quiz using evaluative, inference questions

List most common attributes of a ‘report’ after reading a range of exemplars

Struggling writers need to see the end result, then set goals

Student agency - students driving their own learning

• SC co-constructed
• Teach 3 ways to plan - students choose which plan to use
• Students setting higher goals
• Students evaluating their own work
• More effective problem solving (How might we do this? Rather than ‘do it’)
• Use smiley faces in first year of school, after that it does not work. Does not lead to improved outcomes for student - use 4 point scale. (from ‘wow’, we are not there yet) Give me 2 reasons why you are not a 3, and 1 action to get to 3
• Goal, actions, monitoring
• Groups can read own action plan, check in with teacher, then go off and write their own
• 3 goals written above writing, show evidence in work (number goals and add number on writing)

2017

Student agency

• Time
• Focus
• Resources
• Feedback

Shanahan & Shanahan’s (2008) model of the increased demand for specialisation of literacy development.

1. Disciplinary literacy
2. Intermediate literacy
3. Basic literacy

Hattie - effect sizes

Writing programmes

0.40 is worth considering

0.82 - teaching writing process strategies (preparing to write, activating or/and building prior knowledge, KWV idea, use youtube and readings etc to gather more ideas, brainstorming , composing)

0.75 - working together to plan, draft, revise and edit (think, peer share, compare), Collaborative planning but go and write own.

0.70 - setting clear and specific goals for writing

A successful writing lesson has - Ako - care, motivation and engagement, student agency

Literacy Learning Progressions

Student speak literacy learning progressions

Adapt these for own context

Make progressions available to students, parents and teachers

Publishing: publish my best sentence, paragraph, words

Write a variety of text types

Students select genre that suits

If I control choices, then that does not allow students

Year 7 / 8 Writing needs to meet most of the demands of the curriculum.

Stay working at level 4 of the curriculum, and see what skills you can teach them to quickly reach the required level -  teaching them what they need to know ‘just in time’.

Use IT technology as tools to allow students to reach the demands of the curriculum at the level they need to work at. https://www.grammarly.com/

Unpack the language around analyse, evaluate, generalise etc

When marking writing, use two colours to mark (highlighter), one colour to indicate when they have writing something ‘working towards’ and ‘at’.

Quality over quantity -- it is better to take the time to do things well as then it will stick.

What is the barrier to learning? Teach chunks of the writing/focus on one bit at a time, even though you write the whole piece.

Activity to try: language used in progressions

Science Cluster Workshop

I attended the science cluster workshop in the last week of term 1 2017. It was the first time all the primary schools had come together to share ideas. There were only two schools who actually had ideas to share and those were mainly around working with scientists in the community, which I think is a bit too much for teachers who are just starting out. Some of the teachers looked quite stunned at what we were presenting so I hope they realise that we have been doing this for some time, plus we both had been involved in the STLP which helps as well. I won't get an opportunity to go to one of these meetings again with this cluster as I am moving schools. It has been both rewarding and frustrating working within a cluster that has just been set up. The school that I am going to is also part of a cluster so it will be interesting to see how that works as it has been going to a number of years.

End of Term Reflections

This has been a rollercoaster ride of a term. Camp in weeks 7 and 8 made for a busy first half trying to organise things for the camp. Since it was the first time going to this particular camp and because the parents were worried as there were a number of water activities like rafting and tubing on the river, I felt the first 8 weeks were intense. Since I pretty much organised the camp all by myself, I felt responsible for al classes and did not rest until the last class had returned.

I have not been able to do as much science as I would have liked. The camp took up most of my time, plus setting up a new class at the beginning of the year. I did get the student group up and running and we will make sure there is science in the playground next term. The middles are doing really well with the monarch butterfly project so that helps to keep science happening in the school. I guess I could say that by encouraging another teacher to take the lead helps to take the pressure off me. This year I have not had any release for science so that does not help when I am already snowed under with other things.

Mindlab has been pretty full on as well. We have kept up but I'm glad we are working as a group. It helps to bounce ideas off each other. This finishes at the end of term 2 (11 July).

Additionally, I have been applying for jobs and have had two interviews this term, one of which I got. So now in the middle of next term I will be teaching at an intermediate school, a level which I have been wanting to teach at for awhile.

Maths PD with Honor

Aligning the PACT tool and progressions in the numeracy project. This is about more consistency across schools. Long term planning will be different for us. We should be teaching bits of maths throughout the year rather than chunks of maths. I am not sure if this works as children need to be engaged in the same learning for a length of time to understand the new concept.

We looked at children's work and moderated the work against PACT. In the end we made a new sheet for tracking progressions which aligned with PACT and gloss in easy to understand language. This makes more sense when looking at children's work and having to make judgements on their progressions.

Teacher Inquiry Mindlab

Collecting Data and EvidenceThis week focuses on the different methods you can use to collect data and evidence during your inquiry project.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the importance of collecting data and using this as evidence during an inquiry project
• Become familiar with the different types of data you could collect
• Decide on the types of data collection methods you will use in your inquiry project

Practising Teacher Criteria12(i). Systematically and critically engage with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine practice

12(ii). Respond professionally to feedback from members of their learning community

Learning Objectives

• Recognise the components and steps that are involved in designing an inquiry project
• Know how to design your own inquiry project
• Understand how to involve your chosen community(s) in your project design

Practising Teacher Criteria12(i). Systematically and critically engage with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine practice

12(ii). Respond professionally to feedback from members of their learning community

12(iii). Critically examine their own beliefs, including cultural beliefs, and how they impact on their professional practice and the achievement of ākonga

I joined the webinar and found that there was more to this inquiry than I first thought. However, it dis allow me to think about the question in relation to the literature review that we just completed. I think that our focus can be around boys' writing in year 5 as this is the group that is hardest to shift. I think doing a questionnaire with the boys will also help. The PD I did yesterday with the literacy progressions gave me good questions to ask so the two fit nicely.

Sharing our learning with whanau

One way to bring whanau to our school is for children to share their learning. I found that the children had a goal to complete work to show an audience which made them work to a very high standard. The children were proud of their work and were able to present a range of learning from throughout the term.

I found that this was the best way to get whanau involved in their children's learning. I had 100% turn out of whanau, and the few that could not make it on the actual evening, came on another day.

What is a learner?

At the beginning of every year I spend some time discussing learning with children to make sure that everyone is clear about expectations, asking questions, and the role of the teacher and the children.

This brainstorm shows all the ideas children came up with during the discussions. By laying the foundations for learning, children are clear about their role in the process.

Science Water Testing 2016

I took 10 children to JPC to test the water quality in a local stream. A teacher from JPC helped us with providing some extra equipment from their school. Children used the equipment to check water nutrients and pollution. I think that this was a great lesson as children were able to have a real go at testing water and could see the results. I would like to take this lesson with my whole class but we would need to have transport for this.

Marae Visit 2016

As part of learning about the Maori culture, I took my class (and all the senior classes) to the local marae. We had whanu with us and that helped when explaining about all the interesting bits and pieces associated with the marae. We had a guided tour, had a hangi there, and immersed ourselves in activities like poi, flax weaving and drawing the carvings.

I think by going to the marae helps children to learn better as they actually have a go at things. It also helps them connect with the marae and the community associated with it. Children learnt so much and I feel it is essential to keep this type of ETOC activities going.

NPeW PD

In this PD we were  looking at student agency and how students view the situation/learning. Give students the opportunity to engage in learning in different ways. Creating a focus for an interview - take out emotion in an interview. We used a peer coach in this PD and we used the different levels of questioning.

We practised the reflective interview in pairs and we wanted to get to the level 3 questions. I'm unsure how this connects with what happens in real life but since I missed a meeting last week, I will have to speak to someone about it first. It seems that we are heading towards peer coaching.

People need to reflect on their own practise without judgement. By leaving emotion out, allows the other person to reflect openly and not what the other person wants to hear. The focus is on the thinking and rationale of decisions rather than gratitude/well done/need improvement.

We collected data from students and teachers on student agency. We looked at having the reflective questioning tool and we made goals around what we will do about student agency and reflective questioning. We are now working on a coaching process around teacher agency in order to improve our practices.

Mindlab First 16 weeks

I have completed the first 16 weeks of the course. I found the contents of the course have made me adjust my teaching by including more collaborative work for students. I have found that when I learn new things, sometimes it makes me question whether I have actually discussed ideas with students. Sometimes I take the time to discuss collaboration with students just to make it clear to them as it has become clearer for myself. I already share the workload at staff meetings and everyone takes a turn at presenting, but I need to think about bring people together to collaborate on science so that everyone takes away new learning.

Overall, the course has made me inquire into my own practice and whether what I thought was the correct way of doing things was actually the best. There are also many things that I am already doing and I have adjusted what I do to improve teaching and learning.

Camp 2017 20-22 March

Camp consisted of Maori culture and outdoor water activities. I found that staying on a marae was a great experience for children and it was easy for them to learn the about tikanga Maori. The water based activities (white water rafting, river tubing, swimming pool) went really well and actually made the camp extra exciting. I enjoyed going with my class but had a few moments when I could have done with having another teacher there so will be thinking about how to make that happen in two years time when we go to this camp again.

Feedback

Feedback to Brigitta Nieuwboer  Across Kāhui Ako teacher applicant.               

The evidence presented and described to support this appointment process lead us to conclude that you model effective practice in your own school and that you meet the criteria for the Across Community of Learners Teacher Role.

The competency based interview and panel members’ examination of supporting documentation demonstrated an effective teacher who even with significant teaching responsibility has led collaborative inquiries in senior mathematics, moderation of OTJs and changing science teaching  and your documents showed evidence of developing practice from learning and discussion. 

Your challenge is now to work responsively with Col leader and colleagues across your Kāhui Ako collaboratively developing capabilities and identifying and addressing problems of professional practice to improve teaching and the learning outcomes for diverse student in your Community.

This will require working with the Community leaders to focus efforts on meeting the Community shared achievement challenges.

As you pointed out in your interview, you lead reflective professional learning with your team, you understand what a powerful tool collaboration can be, that you are capable of changing your thinking and practice when different models are introduced and you make significant effort to ensure a culturally inclusive approach to children’s learning. Your experience and success with current science teaching means you have much to offer as you work collaboratively with others in the Kāhui Ako.

Finally, congratulations on meeting the national eligibility criteria and I wish you every success for the challenges ahead. I am sure you will make a great contribution to the Kāhui Ako.

Prue Kelly

Independent Adviser

New Appointments National Panel

25 February 2017

Using maths PD to change my pedagogy

I have changed the way I think about maths teaching and learning. I now teach at the level that children need to be working at rather than deficit thinking about fixing the gaps. I feel this works particularly well for struggling students as they are no longer in the lowest group in maths and they have a chance to move and accelerate like others.

The way I plan maths has changed as well. I'm not sure that the way we have been shown is the best and have added lessons ahead of time (planned) rather than always looking for resources depending on the previous lesson. This does not work for me as I will forever be planning and looking for resources and I just don't have that much time just to devote to one subject.

Mindlab

I am part of the November 2016 intake and complete this post graduate study on the 11th of July. I have found this study to be beneficial for my teaching as I can relate everything I learn to what is happening in my classroom. I enjoy doing the assessments with my two colleagues as this enables me to discuss learning and takes the pressure off having to do everything myself, especially when working full time as well.

The last 16 weeks will be different as we no longer go to the classes and have to do things ourselves. It has been a little difficult and the readings and tasks are easily forgotten - the weeks just fly by. We have the last big assessment done and have one more we do together, after that I do the last two by myself. This works out fine as I will be at my new school so won't have as easy access for meetings.