Term 3 Professional Inquiry

What are the priorities for my target learners? How are they going in relation to these priorities?

Scanning:  Target students are not able to identify what they need to be able to improve their learning. 

Focusing: I would like my students to focus on setting goals within the writing curriculum to improve their output quality.

Inquiry Question: Will using goal setting strategies with my target writers make them able to choose sensible ‘next’ steps. How will the goal-setting look? What resources will I need to support these students to set SMART goals?

Developing a hunch:  

I will need to

• Unpack Level 3 of the New Zealand writing expectations with my students.
• Provide exemplars of what each of the expectations looks like within level 3. 
• Unpack students writing, and identify which areas they need to improve on.
• Encourage students to order their areas of improvement, starting with areas that will make the most impact on their writing.

What do I need to know/learn in order to effectively respond to these priorities?

• Expectations of Level 3 writing
• Exemplars of level 3 writing
• How to set SMART goals with students
• How to unpack the literacy progressions into kids speak with the students.

Therefore what are my development goals?

Taking action: 

• Find ‘kid-speak’ level 3 learning outcomes.
• Display their goals on pencils.
• Kid speak writing progressions from TKI 
• Find professional readings about improving writing outcomes through goal setting. 
• Setting literacy goals and recording progress

TOD - Christine Davies - High Expectation Teachers

Christine Rubie Davies - Teacher Only Day - Research on high expectation teachers and the effects on students outcomes. 

Mixed-ability grouping - provides students with more motivation to persevere with their learning. When students are in ability groups, they quickly are able to identify where in the hierarchy they are. Provide more opportunities for lower-level students at the same level as everyone else.

How can I change my reading, writing, maths groups to allow for more mixed ability learners?

Useful links to support Mixed ability grouping in maths - TKI  and Youcubed

Motivation

Extrinsic motivation - Tangible rewards significantly and substantially undermine intrinsic motivation… there is indeed reason for teachers to exercise great care when using rewards-based incentive systems.

Non-contingent vs contingent rewards - When students expect a reward for their behaviour, the behaviour is less likely to continue to happen naturally.

Benefits of intrinsic motivation -

• Persistence
• Creativity
• Conceptual Understanding
• Optimal functioning and well-being

Benefits of using student interests

• Strengthen students motivation
• Promotes peer communication
• Reduces disruptive behaviour
• Enhance student-teacher relationships
• Promotes active learning
• Increases responsibility for own learning

Setting Goals

• Need to be realistic, achievable, measurable.
• Goals should be focussed on gaining skills, rather than competing with others. 
• Provide feedback 
• based on the learning intentions
• which becomes the basis for setting goals
• based on progress
• Long term goals need short term goals to work towards and needs to be monitored and reset often. 

Key factors of effective goal setting.

• Motivation
• Attention
• Challenge
• Feedback
• Self-efficacy
• Self-regulation
• The proximal versus the distal nature of the goal
• Self-set versus teacher-assisted goals 

Focus for Term 3 - Accelerating Literacy Learning in Writing.

This term I have identified 6 students that need a boost with their writing development. I have never been part of the ALL programme, but with support from my colleagues, I intend to run a 5-week intensive writing programme for these 6 students.

These students have shown that they struggle to generate and develop their ideas. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be reading a variety of publications and resources to find activities, lessons and ideas I can use next term with this group. I will be sharing all the resources and ideas here and will reflect on how they were used during the term to come.

Today I came across the "success for boys" page on TKI. This was recommended to me by another colleague. The first resource that stood out for me was the story starters. These look great.  Students watch an animated short film and then have to write what they think would happen next.  This would great for students to discuss vocab, creative ideas, etc.

Another resource on the Success for Boys page was the "Game of Awesome". I have used this before in my class, but not to the extent identified on the Teacher Support Material. I like how the students are able to plan out their story using the templates provided. Once students get into this game, the next step could be to create their own cards using the templates provided. This will give the students a purpose for writing.

Term 2 Reflections

This term was a bit messy, but I had Mrs Radich and all her skills and experience to make up for it. This term I worked part-time; four Mondays this term I was at Te Hapua, Tuesdays was my day off, and Wednesdays I was with Kerry at DFI. This meant that I was really only .5 and made life a little difficult.

What worked this term?

Student Blogging

This term I developed a better system for tracking the student blog posts. I have always struggled to keep on top of who has posted and who hasn't. Using a spreadsheet with a colour code made my life so much easier, but was also great for the students to see where they were up to. This gave them some agency on what work needs to be completed, etc.

The students are also becoming more confident in terms of posting to their blog, adding labels, back-dating posts and embedding their DLO's. Term 1 I noticed that the students didn't really know how to leave quality blog comments, so we made this our focus this term for our cyber smart learning. They are not perfect, but they are certainly an improvement.

Class Site

It's really good to see the students using our class site. I have noticed a few times that students would go back to look at previous learning that could support them with what they were currently working on. There are still a few students that will ask where to find certain material, but most students are using this confidently now. The only downside is the fact that I'm part-time this term, which means that the learning they are doing with Mrs Radich isn't rewindable.

Passion Projects

This term I thought I would introduce passion projects to my students. In the past, we have always completed an inquiry together as a class, on a topic that was selected by the school. The students were so excited about their passion projects, and every day I'm in, they ask if they can work on them. A couple of students did struggle because their passions required them to complete a lot of reading, which was a challenge for them. Next time I will be sure to provide more resources for these students, simple websites that could give them the same information, but in kids speak.

Our Class Assembly

I was very pleased with how our class assembly turned out this term. The students didn't have much time to practise but made sure they went home to learn their parts. There were lots of interruptions, which meant that planned rehearsals didn't go ahead. You can read more about our class assembly on our blog.

What didn't work this term?

Reading, Writing, Maths

With me being part-time, I felt it was really hard to get any momentum with my learning groups. We would start something, but then I would be away, and then we would have to pick it up again. I think the students struggled with this also. It felt like we were stuck on the same topic for weeks. It would be nice to be back in the class 4 days a week next term.

Home Learning

This was tricky this term because I wasn't there to check on their progress every day. Most consistency next term will be great.

Class Site

Keeping my site up to date. With being out of class so much, I just haven't been able to keep this up to date. And this is sad, because the students to ask me where our new work is. I will be more determined next term to make sure this takes precedence.

My Inquiry

My inquiry this term hasn't really had much traction this term. This will be a focus next term.

DFI 1, Cohort 2 - Core Business

We've had a great start to the 2nd cohort DFI launch in Northland. The participants all seem positive about the new learning, engaged, asked lots of questions, and happily shared their ideas. It was really neat to see everyone stuck into their new learning and creating DLO's using their new tips and tricks.

Last term I struggled with speaking in front of a group this large and therefore raced my whole delivery. Today I was more conscious of speaking slower, and to ensure to include many pauses to allow others to keep up, but to also as questions.  I had a great day today, and look forward to working with this amazing group of people.

Teacher Strike

Today we strike!
We strike for better working conditions.
We strike for more support for our students.
We strike for easier access to support for our students.
We strike for smaller class sizes.
We strike for work-life balance.
We strike because we need new teachers.
We strike because we want to keep our skilled teachers.
We strike for pay parity.
We strike for OUR students.
We strike for YOUR children!

Stand with us.

My placard.

My daughter's placard (7 years old)

My son's placard (13 years old)

DFI Reflections

It's so lovely to read everyone's blog post and to see how much they are learning and improving each week.  The participants have all been so positive and motivated about their new learning.

I too have some learning that needs to be done.

Over the past 7 weeks, I have been delivering one aspect of our Manaiakalani programme, and I have come to the realisation, that I struggle to speak in front of crowds.

I have been practising the content well before presenting, feeling confident that I know what I will show, and that I know what I'm doing. Except, each time I stand in the front, my words come flying out at a million miles an hour; I get flustered and then can't find or do what I need to do.  It all seems to work out okay in the end, but am concerned that I'm not sharing my knowledge to the best of my ability.

As soon as I'm sitting down with a small group of people, I'm relaxed and can support them where needed.

So I ask this of you, how do you prepare yourself for speaking in crowds? How can I make sure that I slow down when delivering my content?

These are goals I need to work on, as they are not just going to help me with my delivery of DFI content, but in life also!