Literacy Observation

Fleur observed me teaching my accelerant writing group today.

Here is her feedback.

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.

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.

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.

Learning Pathway Blogs: Student Agency

I have been assisting my team in getting Learning Pathways BLOGS up and running.
I have visited Rooms 4 and 6 to lead groups of students in setting them up.

This will promote student agency as students share evidence towards their learning goals (student agency, which we learnt a lot about in Karen Boyes' PD late last year)

Here is an example of one student's post:

CoL PD Cultural Responsiveness

Here is one of the Slideshows from our Cultural Responsiveness PD days with South Auckland COl on 28 and 29 March. This PD was very thought-provoking. We got to explore the surface features of culture and the deeper features. There was a lot of sharing around what the resasons may be as to why Pasifika and Maori learners are not achieving comparatively with other ethnic groups. The Treaty of Waitangi and our country's bilcultural identiity was a huge focus.My take away questions to reflect on are:

1) How will I engage Maori and Pasifika whanau with their children's learning?
2) How does my classroom environment and practice reflect the bicultural partnership of Aotearoa?
3) How can I accelerate learning of Maori and Pasifika students in my team?

Literacy Observation

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

Here is her feedback

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.

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..

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

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.