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.