Curriculum Refresh Teacher Only Day

 SLIDES from TOD Curriculum Refresh

Deliberate Acts of Teaching from Staff Meeting today

Today at staff meeting, Linda (as CoL leader) asked us to reflect on Deliberate acts of teacher. See Slides..

DELIBERATE ACTS OF TEACHING

TAKE AWAYS

The importance of open-ended questions that encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.

To actively listen to students' responses and ask probing questions to deepen understanding and spark further discussions.

Significance of creating a safe and inclusive classroom environment where all students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Adapting questioning techniques based on a student’s age, ability, and cultural background is essential.

Participating in ongoing professional development by providing additional resources, such as books, websites, or online courses, to further enhance questioning skills beyond the activity.

DMIC PLD at Today's Staff Meeting

 Arahina - facilitator acknowledged our karakia.

Arahina asked us about connecting with children’s thinking. Children of all ages and levels are able to think and reason informally about mathematical ideas.

Making Mathematical Practices Explicit.pdf

Are you pushing the mathematical practices? What tools will you use to really understand what students are doing?

Look for misconceptions. 

Complex listening

• Evaluative: Listen for something

• Interpretive: understand another’s thinking

• Hermeneutic: interpretive or explanatory

How can children’s talk support learning? Helps clarify and organise their thoughts, facilitates personal and collective sense making, supports building connections between representations and multiple strategies.. 

Productive talk tools - revoicing by teacher and students, teacher asking student to repeat another student’s response, turn and talk, wait time, teacher request students to add on, teacher elicits a student’s reasoning (do you agree/disagree? Why do you think that?)

Empower students by highlighting a strength before directing them to where to next.

Value Mistakes!, value persistence and perseverance.

Reflecting: Talk moves - develop communication and promote active participation, help teacher gauge understanding, helps to reinforce and clarify new concepts.

We need to regularly use mistakes as learning tools, so students know that we appreciate mistakes!

Take

Pepeha: Arahi

Making a Writing OTJ

At today's staff meeting, we analysed writing samples to correlate Pact and Asttle.

It is a good reminder that we use several tools when forming OTJs.

Target Group Maths Term 4

Following our Team Collaborative Inquiries, we decided to workshop target students in the same room every day Monday to Thursday for the first half hour of maths. Feedback has been positive in that we feel we are starting to make a difference for those below N.S. in maths.

See planning example

Pact PD

Today we investigated the different mathematical areas for PACT. Fleur and I focussed on Geometric Thinking.

Pact Presentation from Staff Meeting

Room 3 Performing Arts - Mission Possible

My Class performed a play for their parents this evening. It was based around our topic - Mission Possible. A big focus was myths and legends so we re-enacted the Maori Creation Myth. They performed drama, songs and dances.

29 out of 32 students came along with parents who watched. This was great team building for Room 3 and they feel very proud about it.

Literacy Observation

Literacy Observation from last Thursday 23 August

Maths Observation

Term 3 Maths Observation 2018

Student Agency Breakout at ULearn

As well as doing one day of "Changing Spaces" on Tuesday 10 October, I am doing three days of ULearn (11-13 October)

Here is the slideshow re. Student Agency, a breakout I've just attended. There were some great discussions about how to do this authentically! Looking forward to furthering this with my team this term!

Target Girls' Group Writing

Today and yesterday the girls have been learning about adverbs. They went back over their exciting verb writing from a few weeks ago and added adverbs. Here is some of the work:

Target Boys' Writing Group

This term Jody and I have combined our target boys and girls and we alternate teaching them each week. I took the boys this week and they worked on using exciting verbs. It has been successful in that it has been specific, achievable and timely. The work below is what they have all done independently.

Religious Education Observation

Here is my Religious Education Feedback from Noreen Meikle (DRS)

2017 RE Observation

Today's CoL PD around Mentoring and the Spiral of inquiry

Here is a Padlet of teachers' hopes and fears from our CoL journey so far.

Spiral of Inquiry Complete

Today I assessed target students using e-asttle and there have been positive shifts.

TM: Was asttle writing level 2A, this writing was 3P. I don’t think 3P reflects what she can do independently most of the time (usually below that), but she is clearly hitting Level 3. What made the difference for T with this writing was conferencing and making her accountable (high expectations). She has also been focussing on the “We like writing that..” checklist which lifts her writing to a Level 3 standard.

NL: Was asttle writing Level 1, this writing came out at level 2A. I am thrilled to have him move a whole level (accelerated!) from well below national standard to the below range, but he will have to reach level 3B by the end of the year to maintain this range. He as shown improvement across all areas.

PM: Was asttle writing level 2P, this writing came out at 3B. The main improvement was in his structure and language. P should meet national standards in writing by the end of the year.

NH: Was asttle writing Level 2P, this writing came out at 3B. I don’t believe that it reflects what he achieves independently most of the time though. He is still very much a level 2 writer. The significant improvements that came through in this piece of writing were in his organisation of ideas and punctuation.

TB: T’ asttle level was 2A and this piece of writing came out at 3B. The areas he improved in were organisation and punctuation.

EN: Ella’s asttle level was 2P (well-below for Year 6) and this writing came out at 2A. Her areas of improvement were spelling and organisation. If Ella can progress to level 3B, she will come in below national standard as opposed to well-below.

RL: R was not a target student for this inquiry. He is ORRS funded. His level was 1B at the start of the year and has come out at 2P in this piece of writing. Great acceleration!

What made a difference to these learners for this piece of writing was a graphic organiser to plan their writing as well as first reading exemplars of quality writing for the genre in question. This will have helped with structure and language features as well as organisation (which they all scored well on). Punctuation has improved for a lot of them, so the self-assessment check-lists and our team punctuation workshops will have helped with that.

The students are also continually being reminded to state what their writing goal is and to focus on this when doing their writing in class. They are BLOG posting to show that they’re achieving their writing goals. This student agency will have helped also e.g. T needs to stop using random capital letters in his writing, which he has done successfully in the piece I assessed. T and N both had a punctuation goal and their punctuation scores went up. TM is trying to make her writing interesting for the reader as well as proof-reading, and she has certainly achieved that in the piece I assessed. E’s goal is to use tools to help with her spelling, and her spelling has moved up a level in the latest asttle assessment. N’s is to take risks and give writing a go, not worrying about spelling and being wrong, and he certainly has done that.

What still needs work? Vocabulary still needs development for ALL of these students. Perhaps this can be part of the next inquiry.

Here is a link to the completed Spiral of Inquiry for Term 1 & 2

This is only accessible to people at St. Joseph's with the link.

Writing Approaches

Here are the approaches I have tried in writing to lift achievement of target students. They are based on boy-friendly strategies as well as student agency.

12/06/17

I am using graphic organisers to plan their writing and continue to use the self-assessment check-list. I am also providing exemplars of quality writing of the genre or the main idea we are writing about. This is done on the data projector or paper copies and we read together and analyse before writing.

Students are continually reminded of their writing goal and posting on their BLOGS to show they are achieving their goals in writing.

30/05/17

We have been using our novel Holes as a writing context (recommended by Joseph Driesson at Boys’ Literacy PD). Students have all been quite engaged with the task and are all giving it a go and risk-taking (yes!!). I am going to try to get students to incorporate evidence towards their second writing goal - which many already have! (as well as self-assessing). I hope that this student agency will bring on improvements in their writing. Evidence will be posted on Learning Pathways BLOGS.

16/05/17

I will ask students to check on their other writing goals. Have they achieved any of these in their writing?

If so, they can use this as evidence on Learning Pathways Blogs.

15/05/17

Two weeks ago the students made a “We like writing that..” list. This is now glued in their books and on the whiteboard.

This checklist will help to enhance deeper features. After a discussion with TM (target student), she has identified that “making her writing more interesting” is her goal and that she can use this check to achieve this goal. She knows that ticking 2 of these means she has achieved it and 3 means that she has mastered it.

Here is the “We Like Writing That..” list (student-driven)

10/05/17

I emailed PM’s mother last night to inform her that he has been working hard on his speech-writing. NH got a certificate on Monday as well for his efforts and attitude.

Students have set their goals which are up in the classroom. Learning Pathways BLOGS  have been set up for students so that they can show evidence of achieving their goals (3 pieces of evidence per writing goal - accountability) 10/05/17

Students have all had individual feedback on their speeches so far in Google Docs 9/05/17

They have a checklist of persuasive techniques that they are working on (Boy-friendly!).

Integrating RE and Science for Term 2

Our team met for planning on Wednesday 19 April. Together we have integrated the Holy Spirit Strand with Science for the coming term. Our focus is quite kinesthetic and links with a STEM approach.

Here is the plan

Holy Spirit / Science Term 2

Bi-Cultural Practice

All students in Room 5 have presented their Mihimihi this term. This has been quite powerful. One Maori boy had his mother come to listen and support him.

Also as part of our home learning, students had this task:

Concept Learning: Standing on the Shoulders of Those Who have Gone Before Us

Watch this video about Maori culture in NZ. Then choose ONE research task below to present in Google Slides.

Sharing will be Friday and each morning next week.

1. Māori Carvings
2. Māori Gods
3. Māori Welcome Customs (such as the Hongi, Powhiri, Mihimihi)
4. Māori Games
5. Māori Kai (cooking and food)

Please do this in your CONCEPT folder.

Has this been completed? YES / NO

Writing Workshops in the Senior Team

This term we are trying to meet the needs of learners in our team through writing workshops.

We did asttle writing Week 1 and based on punctuation results, we grouped students for workshops.

There have been teething problems in terms of a very busy timetable and trying to fit it in.

However, students feel they were able to target specific needs more and wish to try workshopping early Term 2 for another writing area (structure and language next time).

Here is one of my presentations for my punctuation workshops.

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.