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