Liiturgical Music

This year I have organised music for our class masses and collaborated with the DRS for music at School-Assisted Masses. Tomorrow night for our Carol Service, I will play piano, lead singing and help direct the order of events.

Here is the schedule (I've prepared the audio tracks) I also prepared our team's musical item (violins and harmony)

I also helped to prepare the Kapa Haka group - I posted their performance songs on the School Website.

Spiral of Inquiry Term 3-4

Here is a link to a learner agency inquiry I have carried out with Room 5

Term 3-4 Spiral of Inquiry, 2016, M Gallagher-Pile

Integrating RE and Concept Learning

I have been integrating RE and concept around the theme "building the Kingdom of God" which tied in well with the God  strand this term as well as the Olympics. We have looked at how rules and laws come about by the IOC and the importance of fair play (particularly drug-cheating). The idea of covenants, the olympic oath and God's faithfulness have been important aspects of the student's learning. The students have enjoyed the choice element and making connections between God's teaching and playing sport.

I used SOLO taxonomy for success criteria and to deepen thinking and understanding.

Here is the RE / Concept Term 3 Doc

Here is one of the SOLO rubrics.

Student Learning Pathway BLOGS

Today at my Team Meeting, I showed the other team members how to set up student BLOGS.

Here is the letter I have drafted to inform Senior Team Parents

Tuesday 26 July, 2016

Dear Parent/Caregiver,

One of our strategic goals as a school this year is to further parents’ engagement with their children’s digital learning. In the Senior Team we are also trying to promote student self-monitoring of their own learning. To achieve this we require them to know what their learning goals are and to take steps towards achieving them. This involves reflection and evidence of work done towards their learning goals.

This term the Senior Team students are starting their own Learning Pathway Blogs. They will use the Blogger Google App, which will be under their St. Joseph’s login. These BLOGS will be private and so only viewed by you the parent, the student and the teacher. Your child will need your email address in order to invite you to be an “author” / reader on their BLOG. So please accept their email invitation when you receive it. You will also receive an email each time your child posts on their BLOG.

On their BLOG, students will post evidence of work done on their reading, writing and maths goal, as well as learning they are proud of. Please include a current email below so that you can be part of this learning journey with your child. If you have any further questions please do contact us.

Many thanks

Mairéad Gallagher, Ajeshni Buksh, Tricia Kenny & Noreen Meikle

Maths Observation - Measurement Lesson

Judith Fromont (AP) observed my maths lesson. I was teaching the Year 5 group a lesson about measuring angles. Here is the feedback:

Judith's Feedback - Measurement Lesson

Teaching as Inquiry Term 1 and 2

Here are links to my inquiries:

Spiral of Inquiry Term 1 2016

Spiral of Inquiry Term 2, 2016

Literacy Observation

Fleur De Farias (DP) observed my writing lesson today.

Here is her feedback

PLD on Digital Literacy Tues 14 June

Today's PLD lead to some great staff discussion about our digital footprint and the "deep" web which tracks what we search for and our personal information. This is in deed a learning curve for guiding our students to be discerning users of digital technologies. We reflected on what skills students need to be digitally literate - in any class there is a wide range of digital and literacy capabilities. Something I will try with my class is the fake website lesson to encourage them to evaluate internet information critically. Something else I will aim to do more is to encourage children to only use diagrams and images that are "labelled for resuse" in their slideshows and reports. Here are the slides from today....

e-Leaders South Learning Hub Meeting

At today's e-Leaders meeting we explored digital literacy and the skills students need to research and use the internet ethically. I prepared a PREZI around this topic with a group of other e-Leaders. Suggestions for useful classroom tools today were KAHOOT and QUIZZIZ for generating and competing in online quizzes around our learning topics. Angie (our facilitator) will try these with some of St. Joseph's students next Tuesday. Once I trial it I will recommend to the staff as a tool for learning and put on our student intranet.

Learner Agency - self-monitoring in writing

Students will be aiming to achieve their writing goals or to work on next steps by using the rubrics which are up in the wall in Room 5.

Learner Agency

On Tuesday we had a webinar for our staff meeting with Karen Boyes around learner agency.

One thing that resonated with em was the need for more self-onitoring by the students, so I have designed some rubrics - "ladders of success" - for students for this term's maths and concept. I have also shared these with my team.

I will put them on the wall in Room 5:

Mult / Div Ladder to Success

Stage 4 I can do most basic multiplication and division (basic facts up to 10x and 10÷) but still need to improve my speed and recall.	Uni-structural
Stage 5 – E6 I am beginning to use my basic facts recall and my number knowledge about multiplying 10s so that I can use one strategy to multiply for a problem such as 6 x 28, and one strategy to divide for problems such as 43 ÷ 6	Multi-structural
Stage 6 I have achieved stage 5 AND.. I can use more than one strategy to solve mult/div problems such as 5 x 96  or 116 ÷ 6	Relational
Stage E7 I can use more than one strategy to solve a mult/div problem, such as 12 x 25 or 112 ÷ 8 AND I can choose which one works best	Extended Abstract

Earth Science Ladder to Success

I know one thing about each sphere of the Earth.	Uni-structural
I know several things about each sphere of the Earth.	Multi-structural
I know several things about each of the Earth’s spheres and I understand how they interact (rely on one another or affect one another) – making connections!	Relational
I can make several connections between Earth’s spheres and predict how disasters in one sphere impact on other spheres, as well as evaluating and investigating the importance of the relationship between the spheres (what might happen if one didn’t have the other?).	Extended Abstract

Maths Goals

In the next two weeks my students will show evidence that they have achieved their learning goals in reading, writing and maths.

Having reviewed measurement assessments from last term, a number of children have gaps in this area. I have shared a doc with them into their learning pathways folders on their google drives, informing individuals who need to set measurement or areas within it as their next learning goal in maths.

To help them achieve their goal we will do some class workshops and I will make sure to set measurement learning tasks on mathletics for them to complete in their own time.

Here is a link to the doc I shared with them: Your next learning goal - measurement

Maths Word Problems

Today I posted Maths Word Problem links onto Room 5 BLOG. This was an independent task for one of the maths groups today. It was valuable to apply their mult/div knowledge to real contexts. Also I feel this is something I need to teach better (word problems). So providing practice time is a start towards using word problem-solving more in my maths programme.

Here are the links I used.

Grand Slam Maths

Word Problems with Katie

Maths PD Thursday 12 May 2016 Randwick Park School

Franklin Cultural Festival 2016 I went along to assist and support. I added this slideshow to the school website.

Parent emails (Engaging whanau with children's learning digitally)

Here is the doc I shared with teachers to encourage them to gather all parent emails at conferences next week.

Kia ora

Here attached are the email address of parents from your class, as accessible under “pupil lists” in e-tap.

If you want to access more of them to add, please use etap

and go to your learner hub, then quick lists and then

contact details

Can you please use this printed list at your parent interviews next week to get parents to quickly add their current email address to the list?

That way you can share google docs with them when their children do well and you can email them yourself of course when you need to. You can also create a parent contact group in your gmail contacts.

Please let me know if you are unsure about any of this. I’m happy to help.

Many thanks

Mairead

Assessment for Learning - Writing

This week, having reviewed e-asttle writing tests, it's clear that the target students in Room 5 all have presented with a need around editing punctuation. I have therefore done some professional reading using The Writing Book by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey.

Here are the strategies for self-editing which I am going to implement between now and the end of term. 

1) The first is page 173 - "Read your writing in a quiet voice. When you pause, tap the table. Ask yourself if you have finished the idea. If you have, check that you have included a full stop. If you have not finished, check that you have included a comma and then finished the idea"

2) The second strategy is for my feedback and it's on page 202. The book explains that in order to publish writing, the teacher will have to do the final edit and students are to proof-read and edit at their own manageable level, which I can direct them to do. Here are the codes I can use when giving feedback comments on google docs, highlighting the specific line..

Parent Emails

At today's staff meeting I showed the staff how to locate parent email lists on e-tap. One of our e-Learning strategic goals is to engage parents with their own learning through digital tools.

So I anticipate that once teacher's have accessed parent emails on e-tap, they can ask the remaining parents for theirs at parent-teacher conferences on 12 and 13 April.

Then teachers will be in a position to create a gmail contact group of parents for class notices, to email parents easily to celebrate learning or discuss learning and also to share any google docs or slides created by students with that student's parents.

Hopefully parents will begin to comment on their child's learning using google drive or blogger.

e-Asttle Moderation

At today's staff meeting, we moderated for e-asttle. See video.

Screen Castify Video e-Asttle Moderation

Sentence Punctuation Target Students

Based on classroom writing tasks and last year's e-asttle writing samples, target students are presenting with a need in sentence punctuation.

I created this doc for target students to do online tutorials around sentence punctuation. Here is the template doc for them to record (self monitor) their progress in this area. Sentence Punctuation Tutorials and Quizzes

See my spiral of inquiry for outcomes..

Writing and Spelling Workshops

I have started running workshops based on student needs in writing and spelling.

For the writing I asked each student to write a recount and based on their writing samples I made a group for the next three weeks. Those not in the group will focus on imaginative recount as well as plugging gaps in their recount writing.

For spelling I used an assessment from the Switch onto Spelling programme which identifies specific gaps e.g. suffixes, plurals etc. So this group changes weekly.

See Week 3 and 4 planning below for evidence of workshop planning and groups.

Term 1 Week 3 Plan

Term 1 Week 4 Plan

Blogging Workshop

Lead by Saunil from Cyclone

Today we learnt how to create all of the labels we need for posting about our professional practice. Four of us attended the accelerated workshop at 2:15 and then stayed on for the second workshop to assist Saunil in teaching the process to the staff.

These labels are now all set up and will allow us to easily link our practice to PTCs, goals, areas of responsibility and school targets. Very exciting!

Professional Goal

This is a post to label my professional goal.

My professional goal is to engage with and implement innovative learning practices in order to improve student engagement and achievement.

School Targets

This is a post to create labels for school targets.

2015 EOY Data:  35.4% (28) of our Pasifika Students are not achieving the National Standard in

Reading and Writing.

By the end of 2016 we aim to reduce this to 15 students.

2015 EOY Data: 29.3 % (12) of our Maori students were not achieving the National Standard in Writing.

By the end of 2016 we aim to reduce this to 6.

2015 EOY Data: 24.4% (10) of our Maori students are not achieving the National Standard in Maths.

By the end of 2016 we aim to reduce this to 5.

2015 EOY Data: 34.2% (27) of our Pasifika students are not achieving the National Standard in Maths.

By the end of 2016 we aim to reduce this to 14.

Areas of Responsibility

My areas of responsibility are:

Classroom Teaching
Leader of e-Learning
School Website
Liturgical Music
Kapa Haka Group Support
Social Studies Leader

Label Post #2

More labels for the PTC

Label Post #1

This post will create Practising Teacher Criteria labels for my blog.

e-Learning Leadership

Today I showed the staff our new student and staff intranet on which we will keep our shared docs, resources, daily notices and calendars. Hopefully this will help students to be be more self-managing and to access their class blogs and learning sites easily. It should help staff to easily access shared docs and information also, which is stored in a more robust way than just on google drive.

See evidence attached:

Staff Intranet

Student Intranet