Week 1 of Digital and Collaborative Learning Post-Grad

 Last week on July 17th I started my postgraduate study. 

Online sessions will be every Wednesdasy 6:30-8pm and every second Monday 6:30-7pm (tutorial).

It's been great for networking so far. I have had some homework - to choose an innovation article from 2012-2023 Open University UK..

I chose one on Social Justice Pedagogy and created a five minute video summarising it and saying why I found it interesting.

Link to article is attached - article #8

Social Justice Pedagogy

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.

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

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 Workshops

This term we have been using Asttle Maths test next steps of students' data analysis, to provide workshops. Students opt in to weekly workshops based on their goals. If no workshop is on offer for their goal, they do independent work on their goals.

This arose from PLD we did around student agency in Term 3 holidays. It involves a lot more collaboration among the team.

I have found this valuable in terms of revision for the students. Students say they feel it is personalised for them, but an adjustment in terms of a different team approach compared with how we did things before.

Here are some Asttle Maths individual learning Pathways. Student goals are in BLUE. They move to RED (GAPS) once they feel they have worked on everything in the blue section.

Challenges for us as teachers are finding time to conference with individual students and finding time in a hectic schedule to fit all of the workshops in. Sometimes collaboration is difficult in terms of communication or teachers not being prepared for what we are working on (just a planning/time factor really as we don't have much "collaborative planning time")

I have really liked how teachers have shifted classrooms too, showing our flexibility and less "owning of spaces"

I feel we could improve on this by planning more for the independent work students do on their goals and fitting more time in for conferencing on their goals.

The other thing I would like to improve on is students reflecting on their goals and showing evidence of achieving them.

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.

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

Improving Boys' Literacy - Here is our CoL Slideshow for staff. We did this PD with Joseph Driesson on 21 March

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.

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....

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

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..

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

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