Guided reading = Instructional reading

Apologies I'm not going to be explaining what this is or isn't.  Rather I hope to draw your attention the beginning of our reading PD journey @pes for 2020.

This was a point raised...we have different names for often the same thing in NZ around reading!  One myth we've put to rest is that my title here - are different things.  Moving forward at PES we've decided they are one in the same.  We're going with INSTRUCTIONAL READING to describe what some teachers have been practicing as guided reading.





All teachers have a target group to observe closely.
a. What are these children doing when they come across an unknown word?
b. What behaviours do you notice while they are reading?
c. What strategies do they have?
d. What do you do to help next?

These are some of the questions I will be exploring with my group of 4 students.  3 of the 4 are year 7 boys, 1 year 8 girl.  Here poses another challenge.  What texts do I select that will be appealing to 3 very active year 7 boys and a very mature year 8 girl.   Looking forward to this challenge.

So far I've noticed the following:
Student A: is nervous to try out new words, knows his limitations and does not know what to do with a new word
Student B: very confident even though says many words incorrectly, will read through any word and not stop until asked to, continues without concern for making meaning
Student C: confident reader, knows to break up word to try and sound out new word.  Will often give the words others in group are stuck with
Student D: seems confident however any word will appeal to the teacher for support. No other strategies.
All students do not practice reading from beginning of sentence or earlier/on after to make meaning of an unknown word.

I need observe more and research what to do next in terms of teaching strategies to these year 7 & 8 students who are reading at the 9 and 9.5 year level.

Devices: DFI day 7. It's more than a tool!

Devices:  this day focuses on the devices our young people use and we will experience Learn Create Share using Chromebooks and iPads.

Fiona Grant has kicked of our morning with a great overview of our cyber smarts! Commenting, a special focus for success is the promotion of positive language. Don't assume it's already there for anyone. It's something us as educators need to be very aware of along with our learners. In the past the learners feedback was very limited if not absent. Now with the use of blogs students are encouraged to give feedback. Initially I noticed as an educator students were focused on the mistakes made - spelling errors etc, this was telling of what they observed of us! EEK! This act of commenting positively has brought about a real mind shift for students AND teachers!

Smart learner, footprint relationships have become the key elements of smarts with the others being more of smarts that are then linked into. This focus is intentional for the first three terms of learning year.

Part of this is the confidence in which the students use their device to achieve learning outcomes. Ubiquitous - learning is accessible at any time/place by the learners. Again if the three smarts of learner, footprint and relationships is embedded then ubiquitous learning will be successful.

Connected, when designing learning we want it to engage our learners. Using positive language to capture our students. Think about what images, text we are presenting? Does it promote positive and helpful - this needs to be our default our norm.


Hapara Teacher Dashboard: Sharing work
Some don'ts...don't ask children to share their documents with you. Do not ask them to make folders. When you do this you disempower everyone involved as you it goes against the workflow that has been set up for the learners AND teachers.
Always have children making documents in the folders they already have. This is where there are will be found by teachers and no issues of lost files 'can't find it Miss'.

Gmail: a good place to see at a glance if students have opened up your email.

One-to-one devices:
The Treaty of Waitangi was a fundamental in our decision to go one-to-one.
Partnership: our fist point of action what to partner with our families, to talk with each other about the possibility of having one-to-one devices. What it would look, sound and smell like. So many of the small but important details that make up todays kaupapa around the use of one-to-one devices in our schools.

The Chromebook Experience: normally at this stage we'd all be given chromebooks to work through this lesson. A great way to experience what our learners do. We gave a 'Digital Dig' tasks a go. This is a really good activity to re-visit every start of year to re-focus the learners on key skills/functions they will need for learning.

iPad learning journey. After a lot of testing of various tablets it was found that iPads were the best for our learners, our junior learners. 1-1 ipads are set up very intentionally in comparison to a blended learning area. Well before the school year gets on the way, the set up of the iPad is very important. They are the same in every way possible to support classroom teachers.
Kawa of care for our learners is key also at this young age, this includes the care of their stylus.
Explain Everything is an enabler of students and teachers to create learner artefacts. We had the chance to look at this programme. Gerhard made a point again to use the actual names of the tools. It makes good sense as students like us will use this foundation of tool naming to launch from when we move onto using the correct names of tools. We had another explore session to experience some of what our junior students and teachers experience.
1. Try and create in EE
2. Import pre-existing learning activities onto white board
3. Explore what learners have created on EE

SHARE: Blogger tips from Kerry was the last session today.   Kerry took us through a quick lesson on how to add a page to your blog.  It's a good idea to have an 'About me' page for your audience.  

Enabling Access- Sites. DFI Day 6

Connecting with cohort:

This was a good opportunity to check in with our Auckland cohort on how distance learning was going. Positive reports on all fronts. A key theme was the act of teachers to provide for learners regardless of how many students tune in. Schools are already communicating with whanau to work out what the needs are to get students connected online. Good thing we have hard packs and the learning channel there to support distance learning!

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Dorothy

Pedagogy and Kaupapa

Visible connected learners

Act of sharing causes connection. In this time of distance learning sharing and connection has been made through camera and mics on devices. Where cameras haven't been able to work I've found it hard to get a sense of whether children understand what I'm teaching.

Twitter is the domain that pulls from all our blogs - really simple syndication! Our students across Manaiakalani and outreaches across Aotearoa have been blogging a whole heap! Impressive stats are being collected in this time of lockdown. Our students are certainly sharing and connecting via their blogs.

In our own local blogs - specifically year 7 & 8 children have refined their sharing on blogs to grab the attention of their audience. Our age group are well into blogging and if you are not intentionally teaching/reminding students to be mindful of audience the blog can just become the old 1B5 that they 'work' in and that's it! This has been a huge plus of this lockdown time. The parts that make up connecting learning.

Maria: Visual appeal - shop window!

User experience - easy to locate ‘stuff’ (2/3 clicks)

A chance to visit sites to check for the above. A really good chance to not only visit sites but more so to reflect on how my own is set up...is it appealing?? User experience??

High school sites are as expected very different to that of primary schools. The various levels, range of class levels etc is reflected in high school sites. Having children myself who have completed college the site I saw from Karen at Tamaki College is really helpful. To be able to go back to review the standards/expectations/example of tasks would have been a great support to my children!

Local team site sharing time!

Really appreciated this time together to simply share what we work out of daily as educators and the other hats we wear in our school community. I am impressed the wonderful range - multimodal provisions in the sites that were shared. The familiar faces of teachers doing fun things like reading a big book, notices and reminders etc. Rewindable learning is key in our sites. The familiar 'What do we do again Miss'...our sites support this well! We had the chance to hear from the site owners for couple minutes at a time then we gave feedback via a form.

Some feedback I got from sharing our Team 5 site that all teachers for year 7 & 8 have their own pages. Hope my team get to see this as it's the work of Team5@PES.

• Awesome!!!
• Such a well thought out site with tons of intentional planning to ensure the success of your tamariki! Responsive to current climate with limiting the links too!
• Excellent site! Easy to follow, love the faces of teachers that match the group, has their names as well, so everyone knows where they should be. Like the visible timetable so everyone knows what's happening. Like instructions next to the slides. Great job!
• Brilliant organisation. Lucky kids

Blogger tips with Kerry was a good reminder for me! I found my blog list had students over quite a few years still sitting there in my class blog. Needing to get onto this pronto - adding students from my class this year! You'd think I would have had this done.

A great big thanks to Dorothy, Gerhard and the great team of leaders today!

Another productive day!

DFI: Dealing with Data: DFI Online FRIDAY 2020 session 4

SHARE is the theme for today!   Hasn't this been the focus these last two weeks for us all!
How relevant is it for us today!

After farewelling Team 5 this morning I jumped straight onto our DFI for our fourth session.   Blogger is where I have begun today!   Blogger was selected years ago, today it is still highly functional space for our children. It looks after us legally too so thumbs up all around!
WARNING!  Don't be swayed by the latest look/app, stop and check that it's safe legally, systematically secure.  Blogger still wins this hands down.

AUDIENCE: you want an audience?  We need an audience!  Blogger promotes celebration of completed tasks, the effort to share what you can with your audience!  As an audience we have a role to play too!
Our well being is very important!  Hauora - our students hauora right now is being supported by our ability to interact through comments on their blogs and google meets etc.





DEALING WITH DATA

Google form helps us to collect data!  We had a 15 chalk and talk session with Gerhard.  forms.googl.com is a way to get there.   Great idea is start with a black template rather than a themed form.
In sandpit time I've created a survey I will send to whole of team to find out what our students want for the weeks of distance learning ahead in regards to regularity of meets for various learning groups.  Part of this will be their need around social connections for Hauora - Well being.

Google MyMaps
So much opportunity here to support teaching and learning for literacy and numeracy.
Google Earth has many great functions - 3D imagery, embed html content, does not yet allow importing of spreadsheet.

Google Sheets
A lot of cool tips here for admin involved in teaching AND the teaching and learning we provide our students, whanau and school community across regions.

Blog data case studies - using spreadsheets and google draw to analyse blog data.
We had the chance to hear from Robyn from Panmure Bridge School.   Her sharing was around a case study on a Mele - a student in her class.  The idea of setting goals for blog posts and children planning using statistics to work out how many blog posts per week/month/year.  What is a realistic goal and how it can be achieved.  Along with this I imagine that students will also refine the quality of posts not just the quantity!

We had sandpit time to create our own graphs and analysis of a blog and it's data re posts etc.  That's the image I've posted right at the top!

So what you gonna do with this all Mrs Tele'a?
I will plan a lesson like that of Robyn and Mele's sharing today to support student goals and motivation during this time of distance learning.    I will send out the google form I've created to support our teacher planning.  Also refresh my own plans around rostering when and where to be giving feedback via blog commenting.

Thanks to the DFI team from across Aotearoa for such a productive day.
Ka kite Ano.
Le Atua i lo tatou vā

Andrea

Day 3: Distance learning. Teacher findings so far

Kia Ora to teachers of Aotearoa and around the globe! After 2 days of go go go via google meets and further online interaction with our students we had a chance this morning to catch up.

Here's our notes from our meeting, hopefully it'll give you some insight of our journey so far. We hope you find this encouraging as you navigate your next steps online with your own learners. Your connecting with  tamariki and whanau is so important!




Our chat went something like this...

1. How we all doing on the home front?Teacher 1: working at remembering the time to check, going ok wifi at home.
Teacher 2: wifi home is going good, can see that kids pop on and off. Home end going well
Teacher 3: wifi good. Recorded up at parents place last night to post and back home. Maths class got to see the dog so bit of distraction there - kids loved it!
Teacher 4: Going well, wifi seems to be going well have some moments but maybe it's the kids end?

2. What's going well for your literacy and maths meets with students?

Teacher 1: 8 - 10 students: Maths is consistent group, all tuning and on time. Always asking about the tasks that I’ve sent
Literacy: 2 this morning, 4-5 checking in daily more about connecting right now not so much school work.

Teacher 2: Literacy, had few more kids pop on today who were not at school on Monday and shared presentation how to access a book from TC online library. Keen to start reading. Good questions from girls today.
Maths: been more like coming home to mum - mostly home class children. More of social interaction rather than maths. Saying they don’t have enough so directed them to pages of other teachers in team.

Teacher 3: Literacy has about 10 kids everyday, playing game until others join. Do karakia and himene together before moving into literacy which a great way to connect with each other to start the day. When unmute we can communicate well.
Maths: most have been turning up, feels like too many at times. Cannot unmute here to discuss as 25 kids! Too many kids to let everyone have a turn! About 20 expectant of a maths lesson.

Teacher 4:
Good attendance at literacy
Maths going well too.
Internet band is not best at times for kids.
Getting through the work, have genuine questions. Have a good chat catching up. Trying to keep it short and sweet. Notice in maths kids are wanting more.

3. What improves our distance teaching and learning? Tips for the team
Teacher 2: make a list of 2 - 3 things to discuss / teach children in each session or else ending up awkward smiling lol!
Teacher 3: do a kahoot, did one on language features - could sense a great sense of community. Great for building morale. Check out blog - beyond the blackboard.
Teacher 1: similar to teacher 2, need to be very clear about what teaching points I will cover with students
Teacher 4: Getting students to present their work, student showing a bar graph...taking turns. More than talking heads. Today was a reading in literacy, student googled and presented it. Giving children the opportunity to lead learning using the presentation tool. Making a good example of those completing tasks, they get to lead too!


Overview:
As a teaching team we have these key points to work on to maximise our live time with students
a. Plan what teaching points you want to deliver in this window of time, including feedback from students
b. Create opportunities for students to lead different parts of the google meet by korero/presentation etc
c. Be clear with our instructions on slide show - ensure they marry with our talking heads :)
d. Pastoral care of teacher to student is an important part of our google meets so far.
e. Where numbers are growing towards full class of students, we will need to look at booking 2 - 3 different times for google meet to cater for different needs. Teacher 3's example of having many students for maths - 25. To deliver best it'll be ideal to seperate the google meet groups.


As a team leader I am so very proud of our team. A very short turn around from last Friday where we sat and planned our 'Limiting the links' approach to our site. When Monday's announcement was made our team felt prepared. Farewelling students on Monday 23rd March 3pm, greeting them via google meets  the next day Tuesday 24th 9am. Very thankful!!

Day 2 Distance Learning @ PES

. 

Talofa lava i tou paia ma mamalu! 
Day 2 of distance learning brought about new ideas and practices for both the students and teachers.

We found our numbers increased, possibly due to student to student prompting overnight.  Possibly parents feeling more comfortable in their homes and directing children towards school now that they understand isolation in the home.   Whatever the reason we were delighted as a team to have more children connect live with us via our 2 set google meet times. 

My maths class was smaller today, only 3 students actually but it was a productive session in that the 3 students are close in learning levels and so the competition began! 

One of our teachers had 25 out of 28 students tune in for maths!! Was an exciting but challenging time to work out how to best cater for the range of 28 learners present.  You are reminded of how the google meet is whole class situation so you're thinking on your feet the whole time.

A highlight for my learning today was the noted difference in students.  Yesterday - day 1 of distance learning they were so very keen to simply connect.  Today - day 2, students were ready with matters they wanted to discuss related to their learning.  I also as the teacher was prepared with 2-3 learning points that I wanted to be sure to deliver before ending the google meet.  At present we are meeting for up to 30 minutes.  Any longer and I'm finding that the students are challenged with background noise and whanau needing to share the space they're in.


Learning from today: be well prepared for the 20 - 30 minute google meet with specific points to teach.   Write it down and stick to it alongside any pastoral/housekeeping notices and encouragement you need to give your tamariki.

Day 1 Distance Learning @ PES

Talofa lava to our teachers!    We farewelled our children yesterday afternoon hastily due to the late but important announcement that we were moving very quickly into level 3 then 4 mode to stop Covid-19 from spreading.

During our final korero, I shared with the children that they were heading home no for a normal holiday but rather to go home AND actually STAY in their homes.  The idea of hanging out with neighbours...picking up a mate to go bike riding, hang at the beach, for a feed of fish'n chips etc was not going to happen.  The Prime Minister has instructed us 4 weeks of isolation in our whare's!

We had prepared our children with a few changes made to our team learning site which followed the Kawa of care for the learner from Manaiakalani of 'Limiting the Links'.   So all connections for students were from our front page to their ONE page that hosted daily/weekly learning.  Thankful too that team leader of our year 5 and 6 students - Matt Goodwin let me sit in and observe a google meet with students last Friday along with limit the links site set up.  All helped us arrive at today!

I'm stoked to share here that while some children did not attend the days we shared this new set up - they got online still - Day 1 of distance learning and got to the 2 hangouts - meets we set up across our team of 6 classes.

I must say seeing them pop up to join meet and then hearing student voices across the block of classes was a choice moment!   So good!   A style of learning children are accustomed to BUT this time no teacher body with to them - instead live on screen woo hoo!

Here's a screen capture of one google meet we - for maths.   Had 8 at this very moment on live.  Our team focus for these early days to simply connect with our learners, check in that they're doing ok, chat about how they were coping with the change AND then a bit of maths and literacy.  I know it'll shift into more academic content soon but priority right now is support our children with this sudden shift in life.  I'm pretty proud of our children, whanau and teachers right now!

DFI - cohort 1 of Auckland, I got to put into practice our learning around google meets, even turned the captions on AND fortunately had Dorothy Burt walk through to give me 1-1 guidance on some things I needed at that very moment!   Yes - bit mā...things Dorothy and Gerard had already told us lol - hand on face emoji right here eek!

Hows that??  3 weeks of DFI then immediately into distance learning putting into practice what we've just learned - phewww!

Looking forward to connecting with my learners today.  9am with our literacy groups then 12.30pm with our maths groups.

Faith, hope AND love

Talofa lava i le au maimoa, au tapua'i o le tatou galuega fai faatasi i totonu o aoga a Niu Sila!

Today I greet you from my role of 'Acting Assistant Principal' - one of three for Point England School.  2 - 3 months old.  To return to team leader of Team 5 end of term 4 2019.

This is a sharing of some of what I have been led to focus on so far in this new role.

I've met a number of professionals that belong to different organisations/agencies.  They have shared important information relating to their specialist work.  The passion and love for their work is obvious.  I've also had many opportunities in my short 3 months to observe with a different lense - the gifted and talented staff we have here at Pt England.   Our management team - wow!

This place is full of those who love our tamariki.  When exchanging or for me mostly receiving information about best ways to support individual students, I have picked up on something that I feel we add to love.  One learning so far:  The act of having faith, hope AND love in our children and whanau.

When there is faith and hope along with love we are prepared to try things again and again, try things differently, ask questions, share information in the faith and hope that things can and will be better.  It's at the heart of what we do.  We have faith and hope that what we plant today will grow and bear fruit.  For me it's been a mixture of seeing the fruit during the time I've had the students in my class and more - later in life as college students, young adults and parent life.

Faith, hope AND love.

What do you want a PES student to leave our school with? We've started!

What do you want a PES student to leave our school with?This is the question we asked ourselves in our very first team meet for 2019!
 Our meeting had us
 a. sharing holiday highlights
b.teacher reflections from end of 2018
c.goals that stem from reflection for 2019
d.what do we want our PES students leaving PES with when heading to college?

 A very productive meeting where we organised ourselves in regards to classroom operations BUT also reminded ourselves of the WHY behind what we do in Team 5. Why we have what we have...why we have all the extensions to the programme like

• school wide values 'Kindness...better together etc'
•  special reading groups
•  sports teams and programmes
•  tech@Tamaki
• recycling and reusing
• student leaders aspiring leaders
• PENN
• school korero
• Te Reo 
• karakia and himene
• class treaty
• ways of talking and listening and so much more.

 These are all part of achieving the goal of having students who possess the traits, values and characteristics stated in our hand drawn images here. Yes we even drew in our meeting this morning! Here's to 2019! Looking forward to working with our awesome Team 5 teachers!

Impact Story: Student access to their assessment data empowers student learning AND teaching!

Glad you've visited my blog to read the impact story behind my 'burst' shared during our 'Burst' session today!
What happened for the learners? 
Empowered learners in the house whoop whoop!!
The group of target learners:
BEFORE inquiry:

• very quiet 
• accepted anything that was presented
• dialogue with each other and teacher minimal in small group time
• almost no questions asked
• focus was not on any specific part of maths learning
• did not have access to assessment results or analysis
• nervous about sitting tests - lack of confidence

DURING and AFTER inquiry in action:

• began to question more with a closer focus on the number strand (IKAN analysis prompted this)
• discuss how they'd found the teaching/learning/testing/results
• identify what areas were strengths and work ons
• went the next step to find support for work ons 
• students were empowered:  I could tell this by the way they asked questions, compared their own data as well as peers in group.    Having access then understanding their data created proactive learners, in particular in the number strand (analysis of IKAN, Gloss results and now PAT in Term 4)

 What evidence do I have for this? 
Please click on above links I've made to blog posts that show or describe this in action.  Also look at these latest results from our PAT tests.  I have gathered specifically data for the number strand.  (All year we had a close focus on IKAN and part on Gloss)

Key:
NS T1 = Number strategy Term 1
NS T4 = Number strategy Term 4
NK T1= Number knowledge Term 1
NK T4= Number knowledge Term 4
A - H: individual students who make up target group.   Where no bar is present this equates to have '0' correct - zero.

Average of results from Term 1 for Number Strategy in PAT test:
NS T1   NS  T4   NK T1  NK T4

3.25

5.625

2.25

3.875

**The greatest gain as a group - according to PAT test was in number strategy**  This correlates with the inquiry focus that has been on this strand.   

 What did I do to make this happen? 
There are the normal good practices of classroom teacher that are utilised to support my inquiry.  The looking closely at group work through to independent learning on sites was maintained as per normal Manaiakalani classrooms. 

Points of difference to make it happen:

• Building a sense of trust between teacher and student, student to student.  This to build up student's sense of self-efficacy when analysis and discussion of data would start.  Student self efficacy and student achievement relate
• Small group work included 1-2 sessions regularly to simply look at our data from IKAN's and Gloss.  Plotting our results in a graph to show comparative data was hugely motivating for the target learners.  Using colour coding - this seemed to have greater impact that just number comparisons.
• IKAN tests no longer one screen and one run through.  Now on own device with headphones, with the chance to run through test a second time.  
• MARKING IKAN, students marked their own test with the opportunity to circle those that were 'silly mistakes' made in the speed of the test.   
• OPPORTUNITY was continually provided to provide evidence that did 'know' what the question was asking therefore bettering their results when they initiated the conversation and provided evidence to the teacher.
• EXPLAIN READY, a problem with interpreting what was being asked in word problems became evident in mid-year gloss tests.  An additional practice was now to use 'Screencastify' to explain how we were solving problem.  This was analysed along side what the question was actually asking.   These discussions around interpreting the word problem and our screen cast of solution were carried out in groups for support and learning from our artefacts (screencasts).  It became very clear to students AND teacher what parts if not in whole we were misinterpreting. 

Wonderings about what next

1. With those remaining from the target group, 6 out of 8 I need to pass onto 2018 teacher the key actions from my inquiry to ensure this acceleration continues.  
2. More focused planning around other strand areas need to be implemented as most shift was made in the number strand.
3. Collating data in 2018 from these target students to track further progress
4. Creating a 'directory' for students to access once they have analysed their assessment data.   The next step AFTER they identify their strengths and weaknesses, especially a directory that supports them outside 9 - 3pm of school hours.

Fractions to decimals: try this out!

This morning we had the privilege of observing Jo Know in action with some of our target group learners. These students are working at standard 6 in maths. This places just below the national standard in maths. Normally a very talkative group they were very quiet. A number of differences for these students

1. New teacher

2. Not in the normal class setting

3. 5 teachers watching their every step

You can see that it was a hard task for our students to relax at first and get into things. Once they did we learned so much! We could see a clear need to develop language and understanding around the focus of session. This was on converting fractions to decimals and vice versa.

Things we can try:

1. Give students the chance to try the following on their own bit of paper, reassure them it's not a matter or right and wrong. It's a matter of trying out any strategy they have.

2. Have students fold paper strip into halves, lable, the same again for quarters then eighths. This seemed straight forward to our students. However once asking to go back to identify now what 3/4 were AFTER paper was folded into eighths, this really threw them. The became indecisive. The prompt for decision making was made when made to use a scissors to quickly cut quarters with a countdown from 5. This action seemed to plant more understanding, some very nervous to decided where to cut!

Here's how it all started:

Teacher could ask the following (to check where students are at)Can you write 0.27One tenth?Three fifths?Five quarters?One tenth as a decimal?0.27 + 0.2 =?

We discovered a number of work ons and were led by Jo to the following the next steps when in class in next with target group:

** Next step going back to improper fractions

Use double number and more line for this.  3/2….the 3 is the ‘COUNT’ of how many halfs.

Lines would be:

• Whole number line
• ½ line
• ¼ line

Materials, push the imaging

Where they can’t work things out...go back to materials then back to imaging

Below is an example of a number line to develop understanding of equivalent fractions and to work with in use of improper fractions.

Preparing for Term 4 - time to reflect

A neat aspect of our blog posts is the use of our labels. This I have used to reflect with in preparation for term 4. Create continues to be a focus we talk about with colleagues, we create and share whether successful or not so.

On clicking on my labels from the 'Create' area we can look at what I've tried out and discovered. It's also very helpful to ensure I start off where I left off!

CReflect - click to see related posts

Focus of most of my reflections have been on my use of language in maths.  In this section key phrases are important for me to be mindful of in my planning.    Being 'explain ready' as a teacher AND student.    This means being prepared with the activities AND language that will promote learning.  When 'Creating' - I am promoting the correct use of mathematical terms and processes to best support my learners.

CTry - click to see related posts

What I have tried is the use of students data to empower learning.  This has proven to be successful in

1. Gaining greater buy in from learners

2. Learners are empowered and feel more in control of their results and data

3. Learners are more reflective when seeing their own data

4. Students are making comparisons and conclusions for themselves around learning and goal setting

CPlan - click to see related posts

The COL staff meeting we led prompted the following thoughts for me.  Am I sharing clear enough steps in my practice here on my blog?  Are they good enough for another teacher to pick up and work from.  If the answer is yes - then my plans are useful as a COL.  Planning for me to date needs to include what key words and phrases I will promote.  What vocab will be best support learners when having to various assessments and working with maths in day to day life.

Labels to be covered more in Create are: innovate and implement.

Data analysis in action - data to empower learners!

We've completed another round of IKAN's and here are our results for our target group.   I have moved one in and another out of this target group.    My target group are made up of students sitting a level below the national standard in maths.

Process:
We carried out the process as explained in previous posts.   Sitting test by going through IKAN twice, on own chromebook and earphones and then our discussion around our new set of results.

Points of difference:
1. Entering data together: 
This time I had the data on the big screen with the group.   I added this months results next to data collected earlier in year in front of the whole group.   Each student shared which stage they were at for the various categories:
a. Number sequence and order
b. Fractions
c. Place Value
d. Basic Facts

2. Colour codes: Green - shift made, orange - same stage, red - back a stage, yellow shifted more than one stage.  Student by student they needed to look at previous data and tell me if it was 'Green, orange, red or yellow'.   All this from the big screen as shown in image above. This meant the students looked closely at the data making comparisons for themselves - some looks of happiness and disappointment.  In reflection all students agreed that it was good useful information to help them.
The adding of colour helped students see more clearly how to track our data as learners and the teacher.

3. Setting the next steps for self: 
From this data analysis students posted on a doc - as shown below of what their problem areas were and how they planned to tackle the learning needed.  You can see some understand the purpose of this workbook others - well I'll need to coach them.   They were directed to say 'How' they were going specifically  try to improve  OR whether they needed help from me.  They attempted this exercise with the answer sheet in hand to see if they could comprehend further their path of error.

We plan to share our own reflective posts soon.  Watch this space!

Manaiakalani COL teachers share teaching inquiries

 

What a great afternoon sharing alongside all CoL teachers!   We all presented in a session to showcase our inquiries at the Annual Manaiakalani Hui.  It was great to share our inquiries with a whole range of people.   The audience I shared with were from a range of places:

• old teachers friends from across the cluster dating back over 10 years!
• core education representatives
• members of the Woolf Fisher Research 
• Manaiakalani Outreach Team
• new teachers to our cluster
• members of our Manaiakalani Hackers Team 

A few standout points for me was finding out from colleagues a common goal of having students AND teachers 'Explain Ready'.  Meaning:

a. students are ready to explain how they might solve a problem in maths.  

b. they are able to interpret what a word problem is actually asking

c. the need for educators to be more aligned in the terminology

d. the need think carefully of  the style of questioning and processing we need to promote.  

e. teacher choice of language and modelling will develop mathematical understanding to the point of being able to transfer knowledge and practice into other strands and curriculum areas.

As I shared in my recent post my inquiry falls under achievement challenge #4: 

Increase the achievement of Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets

Here is the presentation I shared..  I must say it was fun setting up the 3 panelled board - really made me think about what really needed to be shared given the limited space to display.  Thanks to the Manaiakalani team for their leadership in setting up this valuable opportunity for us all.  You are very welcome to visit my professional blog to read and see more.