Whanau Conferences (Term 1, 2017)

This afternoon we had whanau conferences. This event is designed for parents and teachers to meet, and share the next learning steps for students. 

As this is the first year I am in my own class, it was my first time doing this event by myself... It went great! I had almost 80% of my students turn up with some kind of family member (parent, sibling, aunt, nana, etc). 

Over the past week or so, we have been preparing student goal sheets to share with the parents. 

For example, Viliami and Grace. 

My class also prepared bookmarks (e.g. Syraiah-Lee,  Amon) which included QR codes linked to their learning blogs. I showed the whanau member how to access their childs blog using these codes, and they seemed to be excited about an easier way to view their blog. 

I made a concious effort to keep the goals simple and achievement. Yes, there is some 'teachery talk' on the goal sheets, but after reading each sheet through with the student, I would summarise their goals in everyday words so whanau members could understand.

Most of my students had learning their times tables as a goal for maths, and using more specific vocabulary in writing, among other goals. The whanau members understood how the spelling homework I have set supports this writing goal, and could see evidence in the classroom of how we are working towards it together as well.

It was also lovely to receive a gift of flowers and home-grown tomatoes from one of my students parents. 

This event was a great way to make connections with parents of my new students, and build on the existing relationships I have with my year 5's (who I had last year as year 4's). 

PB4L PD - Active Supervision

Linda from PB4L came in today to talk to use about our programme. We are currently a Tier 1 school. I loved how she explained that PB4L is somewhat based on the Whare Nui. She talked about how in each Whare Nui, the tukutuku patterns are reflective of the local peoples and their history. In such a way, each school should make PB4L reflect their own people (students) and its own history. It is not a cut and paste programme, it should be moulded and made your own.

Part of PB4L is the triangle model.

Tier 1 (green) - 80% of school population - Most of the school population responds to the standard initiatives implemented across the school. 

Tier 2 (yellow) 10-15% of school population - these students need extra focus as they are not responding to what the 80% responded to, possibly because they are on behaviour programmes, learning support etc etc.

Tier 3 (red) - 1-5% of school population - These students are then referred to agencies because they don't respond or can't fit within the school system anymore.

The first thing we did was look at a map of our school, and use post its to reflect on 'problem' areas - where incidents happen, what happens there, who is typically involved, why we think this might be happening etc.

Active Supervision

Pre-correction - front loading expected behaviour before students they even go outside. Encouraging desired behaviour. This only works when done often and consistently - yes, those children who fit into tier 3 might need 1:1 discussion about this, but everyone needs to be on the same page.

Active supervision is moving, scanning and interacting.

Movement should be constant, unpredictable, planned/purposeful, targeted, designed to increase contact opportunities.

Scanning techniques

- target both appropriate and inappropriate behaviours

- target known problems areas, activities, groups and individuals

-uses both visual and aural cues

-extends ability to supervise large areas

-increases opportunities for positive contact

Interacting

- positive greetings should be non specific in contact e.g. "hi everyone, its good to see you" rather than "gidday guys, what are you making there?" (these get you stuck with that group, hindering your ability to move and scan)

After that, Ottilie and Sally talked to us about how PB4L relates to our school values, and what expected behaviour we have for our students related to those values. Here are two values -

Overall it was a great session and I definitely learnt a lot. Thanks Ottilie for sharing your knowledge about PB4L! 

Digital Immersion/Annual Hui (Term 3, Week 5)

Today the MDTA's were invited to the Manaiakalani Annual Hui, held at the Panmure Yacht & Boating Club. It was a great day, with lots of different speakers having their bit, all coming together to share the message of the work Manaiakalani has done over the past year. 

First up were the student ambassadors from each of the 12 schools. They each shared part of their learning which demonstrated use of digital affordance, the learn create share pedagogy, amazing teacher creativity or student creativity with their blogs. 

Next up were the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers, sponsored by the SPARK Foundation. They each shared about the research they have been conducting this year. I created this sketch-note to help myself remember key things that different people presented that I thought were awesome/inspirational;/thought-provoking. 

After morning tea was the team from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre presenting data collected from the 12 Manaiakalani schools and introducing the next set of ideas and goals to work on. Again, I created a sketch-note to record my thought process while they talked.

After this, Russell Burt, prinicipal of Point England School, put things very simply. We know how to move the 'bottom' students to the 'middle', and only some of us are doing that, and now the team from Woolf Fisher had just told us how to get the 'middle' students to the 'top'. Russell's message - JUST DO IT! It is for the benefit of your students. You as a teacher choosing not to do the things we know will work because you don't like them, agree with them, whatever, is to the detriment of your students, so get over it, and do it for your kids.

After lunch, Dorothy talked the crowd through the Manaiakalani Outreach clusters. These are groups of schools around the country which want 'our recipe' for success with low decile low achieving students. Although it is not that simple, these outreach clusters are now on a fast-tracked 3 year programme modelled from the Tamaki cluster so they can accelerate their students as well. 

I created another sketch-note the record snippets of the discussion as it went along.

Overall, it was an awesome day at the annual hui. I learnt a lot about Manaiakalani (when I thought I knew everything... ha!) and definitely got some food for thought to reflect on for my own practice. 

Kia kaha Manaiakalani!

Making a tivaevae

This week is Cook Island Language week! 

To celebrate this, my class learnt about Cook Island Maori words for our family members, and then made our family trees with labels. 

We are also making our very own tivaevae! 

"Tivaevae or tivaivai (Cook Islands Māori: tīvaevae) in the Cook Islands, tifaifai in French Polynesia, is a form of artistic quilting traditionally done by Polynesian women. The word literally means "patches", in reference to the pieces of material sewn together."

First, we looked at a movie made by Te Papa about the origins of tivaevae. Next, we looked at different designs for tivaevae, check out some examples here and here.

I gave the students some examples I had printed out, and gave them instructions to design their own 'patch' for our Room 6 tivaevae. It tells the story of our class - each of us has a unique contribution to make. Even if we used the same pattern or idea, we may colour it differently or use it in a different way to portray ourselves.

Here is my class designing our tivaevae this afternoon -

Will post an update on how it looks when we collate them altogether to make our class quilt!

Digital Immersion #20

Today I used my 'wild card' and skipped the Digital Immersion day - to join my class on a trip!

We went to the Pumphouse Theatre in Takapuna to watch the stage show of Badjelly the Witch (based on the book by Spike Milligan).  We chose this trip as our inquiry unit was 'Reading for pleasure, writing for leisure'. 

It was a great show!

Class photo by the lake

My wonderful class walking down to the theatre.

TPS filling up the theatre.

A junior student hugging Lucy the cow!

Meeting the actors!

Archana and myself on the bus ride back.

When we got back, we had lunch and then whole class assembly. As it was Maori language week, we learnt a poi dance/song and made headbands using Maori patterns. 

Check them out!

End of term 2!

The same as last term, I sent my students a survey to find out their thoughts and feelings about their learning this term.

It becomes obvious who really thought about the questions and who just wrote anything. 

You can read their responses here.

For a quick overview, I have taken some screenshots.

For the questions 'what was something Miss Ashley was really good at?', and 'what is something Miss Ashley can get better at?'

Things I was good at - soccer, growth mindsets, helping, reading with the students, helping them with maths and teaching them how to tell the time. 

Things the students think I can better at - learning other languages (this has been a focus this term and I always say "I'm trying, I'm only learning!" when pronouncing other languages). Discussing with Archana, we think the students didn't really understand what this question was asking them, but that's alright.

It was awesome to see most of the students thinking hard about what they have learnt throughout the term. Lots of students learnt doubles, how to group numbers (i.e. 2 lots of 3 is 6, which is early multiplicative thinking), what a half and quarter is, equations with blocks (using physical materials to help him solve problems), skip counting and times tables. Yay!

We have had a real focus this term on making connections between the text and their own lives, using powerful words to describe characters/settings in details, and sounding out unknown words and learning their meaning.

Kiwi-can is an outside provider who comes into the school and teaches students values and some life-skills. A lot of my students remembered learning about integrity, taking ownership of their own actions and being held accountable for their own learning and actions.

I also put in a couple questions to get their thoughts about what they want to learn about next term.

We did a two week unit on plants this term, and myself and Archana want to do the same again next term. I asked the students to vote out of a given list which things they wanted to learn about (green column) and then if they had anything else they wanted to learn about (blue column). 

My students are getting better and better at thinking about their own learning, and they enjoy having their voice heard and being asked what they want to learn - having some of the control back. 

Definitely some food for thought in here!

The feels

This morning I was browsing through the 'shared with me' file on my Drive. I hardly ever look at this folder, as there a million and one things in there that I don't actually have to look at or know about, as everything that gets put onto the shared syndicate server goes there. 

I saw one really long piece of writing that one of my students had sent me, so decided to read it just out of curiosity.

Then my heart waned..

It was written by the newest student in my class, who only started school here two weeks ago. She was writing about her two best friends. 

As I scrolled down, I saw the comments on the side.

The comments are from her friend (one who she had written about), giving her feedback about her writing. 

"grace, you have to spell your words correctly. ask someone if they could help you spell your words correctly."

"grace you need to do capital letters at the beginning from when you do a full stop"

"you need to do spaces before you put the capital letter at the beginning of the full stop"

We have never done this in our class. I never showed the students how to share their work with each other. We have given each other feedback before, but not in this way. Nobody asked S to give her friend feedback. They just did it.. All on their own.. 

And they gave constructive feedback related to their writing goals - not talking about what they had for lunch or what tv shows they liked. 

These kids make me so proud.

Update on Bob!

This week I really tried to change my mindset around Bob.

Due to the success on Monday, I felt so encouraged and motivated that he could change and make huge progress.

As Bob is always saying "I don't know" to everything you ask him, I thought I needed to change my attitude from inwardly rolling my eyes and writing him off as he wasn't listening etc, to maybe he actually doesn't know... Maybe he didn't understand the language I used to explain, maybe he isn't familiar enough with the task he is supposed to do, or the tool he is supposed to use, to understand the verbal instruction given, maybe, he actually doesn't know. 

I decided to change my mindset around this particular student, and the ones who are always with him and whom show similar behaviour patterns. I was going to be more supportive, more involved, show them physically/digitally instead of just explaining with words, guide them onto the right task/tool and explain how to use it, show where to click etc, and work more closely alongside them for longer periods of time than I have previously. I also talked more with them - explained in more detail what/how to do, walked through the steps with them, talked more about the thinking we are doing and why we need to do it, how we can support each other, etc. I made deals with the students, for example if you finish two pages of writing (which I wasn't expecting) you can draw a picture of your story. 

And guess what,

it worked. 

Yes, he was not perfect. I'll be the first person to admit that. He still punched someone (only one person though, which is a decrease on his average), and he and his buddy broke a pair of school headphones in our class. He still got distracted sometimes, he still played around during mat times.
But lets keep positive - it was soooo much better than his norm.

I got him to read aloud with some degree of fluency, to write independently and of his own ideas, to collaborate and share his ideas with friends, to take turns to talk, to listen and answer questions, but most importantly for me - he finished a piece of work. More than one actually.. I don't think that happened the whole of term 1 - him actually finishing something on his own, to a standard acceptable for his age. (i.e. one sentence doesn't count as a story).

He wrote two stories - one about his birthday (a follow up from the story we read together) and one about a girl escaping a giant (a writing task using a picture prompt). He was so engaged in these tasks, knew what to do, wanted to finish the work, wanted to add his own picture to support what he had written, came up with words like 'whacked' instead of 'hit' to make his story better, helped me fix the mistakes in his story (e.g. capital letters after full stops). It was so encouraging. He definitely felt that I was making more of an effort for him, and I could feel he was more open to me and more open his learning as well. Our relationship changed for the better.

I also noticed a change in his attitude towards learning as the week progressed as well. On Tuesday, he played up during reading because he wanted to do his writing already.. By Wednesday and Thursday, he was bursting to read the story, then write about it, then draw his picture about what he wrote. He wanted to learn. He wanted to work, and he knew he could! 

He began to increase his self-efficacy, which is really what I wanted. 

This kid can work. He can read. He can write. He can listen. He can make good choices.

Now I just need to make sure he knows that, everyday. 

Feedback in the digital age

I can't image how much effort it would have been for a mentor teacher to give feedback on a regular basis on so many different aspects of their BT's teaching life. In the digital age, as lucky as we are to be in, it is sooooo easy! 

Today I completed the planning for next week on my own, rather than doing it with my mentor. It was a bit daunting, as I had to find/make and use templates appropriate for the purpose, find resources, link into so many different places and then link all that into the google site for the students to see, but I did it! (and now that the setting up part is done, next week will be easier!). 

Archana was busy at the time, but has already given me feedback on it. A simple comment on the side of our weekly plan gives me immediate feedback and feed forward.

It is quick for my mentor, quick for me to read and quick for me to respond to... and it can't be lost like a feedback piece of paper! 

Thanks Archana for the great mentorship! I love having same-day feedback and feedforward :) 

What can I do differently?

Yesterday I took a lesson, trying to introduce the thinking hats in a real way.
We used this article as our base, and then explored the different hats about this topic.
I used a bus stop activity (students have done this before) and was surprised when they became loud, disruptive, kept fighting with each other and being silly.
We came back together in a circle and tried to go through what people had written for each hat, but it didn't end well.

They had just finished a great lesson beforehand, the best lesson I had ever had with them.
And now...? At the time, to be honest, I blamed them.

I took away from their learning and lectured them about respect and what to do if someone annoys you instead of looking deeper and addressing the real problem.

Was this activity suited to them? Was it a bit too hard? Did I introduce it and explain it enough?
In hindsight, it was probably hard for some of the students. I definitely could have explained the activity more. We definitely needed to break down the article more and discuss its contents more.
I don't want to belittle the students work documented here, but I know they could have done better.

This is not a pity party, woe is me I screwed up type post. It is a learning moment for me.

For next time, I need to remember...

• are my students ready and able to complete this activity?
• what do I need to consider before launching into the activity (e.g. do some of my lower students have the language capabilities to understand this task?) 
• Have I given the students enough background knowledge to be able to use the thinking hats in this way?
• Do we have a good enough understanding of how to break apart an article to use them in this way? What else could I have used? A video?

Update - during the day, I took ten minutes to talk to the students about this reflection of mine.

Referring to our class treaty, (as per my theme of the week!), I talked to the students about how Mrs Sharma and myself are a part of the room 6 team as well, which means we have to take risks, try our best and learn from our mistakes as well (ala the class treaty). The students and I sat in a circle and talked about how maybe I made the activity too hard, didn't explain it well enough etc., and discussed what I could do better next time. The students gave me good constructive feedback. We then talked about with any activity or piece of learning, they can always give suggestions to the teachers for what to do better next time, just as we do for them. The students responded well to this idea, and didn't seem to realize before I said this that teachers aren't perfect and sometimes need help too.

Talking with Archana later on in the day, she congratulated me in doing this - admitted a mistake, being open and listening to feedback, linking to our class treaty. We discussed how it was an important learning time for the students, as it provided a real life example of how to admit mistakes, ask for help and take on feedback.