End of Term 3 Reflections.....IPC

At the end of our first IPC term, we held an art exhibition showing all the learning and hard work students and teachers completed over the 9 weeks.  This was the culmination of the children's research and understanding of our active planet - volcanoes, and earthquakes.  Also, the production of visual arts pieces that were integrated or added to the unit.  It was great seeing so many families visit our school-wide exhibition. Here are some pictures of the children's work.

The first reflection would be how it surprised me how engaged and motivated the children were around the big idea and concept of "our active planet."  Being a believer in student agency, choice and inquiry learning I didn't think the structure, the knowledge and research components of IPC would engage the children, but by golly it did! Notably, children who would not necessarily engage with the curriculum otherwise.  It calls to question, do children want and need more structure in our classrooms?  Do they want to learn knowledge?  I think the answer is a balance of this - may be some of our teaching pedagogy has swung too much to independent, self-directed learning?  

I also wonder if the engagement will carry over to a different unit?

The second reflection would be that we now need to think about moving to an integrated curriculum.  IPC should be taught daily throughout the day, not as a one-off, one hour lesson each day.  The problem is resourcing particularly in the area of leveled and suitable reading material.  It takes a lot of time locating and finding IPC resources suitable for our children and their needs, so it is difficult to see everything being taught through IPC.  Writing can be successfully integrated, however, there is little mathematics (some strand) but additional lessons would need to be developed so number could be focused on.  Could the school build reading material up over time?  Do we have the budget for 2019 to buy reading material for all levels across the school?

Thirdly, I have enjoyed planning and assessing collaboratively with my co-teacher and teaching in this way.  The biggest challenge has been having over 50 kids in a single-cell space when delivering IPC through co-teaching.  The noise is challenging even when it is on-task discussions or group work contributing to the noisy environment.

I look forward to making changes that Megan and Mary suggested from their observations and interviews of our children in term 4.

End of Term 2 Reflections....

Term 2 has been an extremely busy term with reporting, extra school activities - colour run, Elgregoe, religious education, RTLB referrals, and meetings, set up of an APD unit, Digi-Awards, book week, swim week......the list goes on.  

The highlights have been the successful implementation of an APD unit for a child with auditory processing difficulties and seeing her engage with the curriculum at a higher level and greater participation in learning.  Also, the increase from 40% to 60% of our year 3 students achieving at the curriculum level in reading.  Lastly, a successful 360 leadership appraisal for term 2.

The lowlights would be writing mid-term reports (especially end of year reports already for our year 3's) and I look forward to the implementation of LincEd for more relevant and in-time reporting, rather than the antiquated system of mid and end year reporting that we have at the moment.  The challenges of supporting a diverse range of year 3 students and their learning and behaviour needs within the classroom.


Next steps and challenges ahead are implementing IPC (International Primary Curriculum) pilot program which is both exciting. interesting and challenging in terms of it being the beginning of our journey, giving it the justice it deserves given time constraints and teaching foundation skills.

I look forward to getting out of the classroom like we did in term 2 for our Emergency Services visit and visiting the Ashburton Art Gallary to rotate through art, science and a library visit.  These outside the classroom activities are important learning experiences for our children which they engage with.

Here's to a positive, busy term that lies ahead!

Matariki

This year we celebrated Matariki through storytelling, waiata, and visual arts and crafts.  Here are some of the art we created to celebrate the 7 stars of Matariki and the Maori New Year.

Matariki Stars

Year Matariki Night Skies

Student Centred Leadership

After reading Viviane Robinson's Student Centred Leadership it has clarified what the 5 dimension Dimensions of Leadership are.  The dimensions tell us as leaders what to focus on to make an impact on student learning and teaching practice and the 3 leadership capabilities tell us how to do this (the important knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to work in the school context).

Leadership goals for me include:

Capabilities:  Applying relevant knowledge (increasing pedagogical knowledge & curriculum understanding so when completing appraisals I can provide meaningful observations and evaluations that are aligned with quality teaching and learning, especially around our identified goals).  As part of building trust (with staff), having open learning conversations when dealing with performance or conflict.

Dimensions:  Dimension 3:  Ensuring Quality Teaching:  I would like to ensure what we are doing involves maximizing the time students are engaged with and being successful in the learning of important outcomes - opportunities to learn.  I, therefore, want to use the 4 questions/aspects of opportunity to learn with teachers and the conversations we have as we review lessons particularly around our inquiry (Storytelling, Daily 5 including reading and writing):

O2L #1:  The importance of the outcomes being pursued - questions to ask:  What are the intended learning outcomes for this lesson or unit of work?  Why are they important for these students at this time?

O2L #2:  Alignment of the activities and the resources with the outcomes - questions to ask:  How are these resources or activities intended to help the students achieve the anticipated outcomes?

O2L #3:  The behavioural and cognitive engagement of students - questions to ask:  How did these materials and activities build on the relevant prior knowledge, interests and experience of these groups or individual students?  How well were the students focused on the big ideas in the lesson?

O2L #4:  The students' success on the outcomes - questions to ask:  What do you know about how the students understood the big ideas?  What information do you have about how they achieved the intended learning outcomes?  What are their remaining misunderstandings?

Dimension 5:  Ensuring an orderly and safe environment:  I want to focus on student engagement and the 3 aspects of this - behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement.  We have had some challenging behaviour from our boys and I feel that we need to work on engagement to try and turn some of this behaviour around.
Questions for me to ask and answer within our syndicate:
Are students cognitively engaged in the task, that is are they thinking about the concepts and skills they are supposed to be learning?  (Note:  too hard or too easy students disengage and become disruptive)
Is the task important to the students, that is are the tasks well-structured and connect with students prior experience and interests?   If yes, then students will be behaviourally engaged.  This includes an element of 'choice' and students knowing how they can be successful and how they are progressing towards achieving this.  (Note:  If students can't relate to the work will become disruptive)
Do we know our students and do they know we care about them?  This will lead to connectedness and emotional engagement.

"When teachers offer active learning opportunities and more student choice, student attendance increases and classroom disruption decreases."

Lastly, inviting and supporting parental involvement in the educational work of the classroom.  I plan on using parent-helps in maths and reading time to build engagement as well as finding out the skills and strengths of our families and community ties and bring them into the classroom to teach.  I want to build educational partnerships.

Term 1 2018 - the beginning and end reflection

As always the beginning of the term started with a nervous flurry of what to expect with a new group of children and excitement at seeing our existing group of students after the holidays.  However I have come to realise that teaching is like riding a bike to a certain extent, with the exception of having to ride different terrain (new students, new needs and challenges) and adapt techniques to ensure a successful ride that doesn't involve falling off and failing (different strategies and programs tailored to our diverse learner needs to ensure we all progress and survive)!

Successful relationships have been built with children and a number of their families.  I think we know our children pretty well.  Some skeptical new parents of our year 3's are now feeling comfortable with the new environment and understand that we are there to do our best for their child.

The biggest challenge is the learning and behaviour needs of our year 3 group.  These two identified needs are intricately linked especially as this age group begins to realise where they 'sit' in the group.

Our boys overall provide behaviour challenges with bossy and mean behaviour especially towards to students who are 'different.'  These boys are deliberately annoying another boy to get that boy to react verbally and/or physically.  Also, boys are playing rough with friends so they are getting hurt when playing. These boys are trying to work out the boundaries of enjoyable, safe play and not get too carried away with their physical play.  Our term 1 inquiry around 'relationships' has gone some way of teaching appropriate skills and behaviour towards others.  The child can explain and say what the skills are that we need to have good relationships and friendships with others but overall they find it difficult to demonstrate this in play (especially free play).

Some of the behaviour we are seeing is linked to low learning, self-esteem and confidence which turns into disengaged, unmotivated students. As we work hard in our teaching inquiry to deliver quality teaching and learning programs particularly in the literacy areas (Daily 5, Storytelling, targetted writing including technology to assist writing), it is still challenging to get these children to give things a go and be positive.  As we introduce technology and an element of choice we hope this changes going forward.  Some children, however, cannot manage choice and it is particularly frustrating that a number of these 'barometer' students dictate the 'temperature' in our room.  Their readiness to learn is questionable.

One area of frustration for me this term has been the high class/group numbers during Maths time.  With 34 very high needs learners, who struggle to self-manage when not supported directly by a teacher, it has been difficult to teach with the off-task noise levels and not giving things a go.  I had tried maths games and open and closed-ended problem solving but the children lack the social skills and literacy to manage these games without support.  It has pained me to return to some worksheet based work and goes against my philosophy.  I am left wondering whether I teach the whole class and problem-solving steps so to save my sanity.

I can see the benefits of Numicon for some of our children and have enjoyed beginning to teach this program.  I feel I have pitched it a bit low for two groups so purchased book 2 and will look at moving the children to the best-fit level for them in term 2.

Also, we have an extra teacher at maths time, so I look forward to reducing group numbers and really giving these children the support and time they deserve in term 2.

One of my goals has been to improve the wall displays of the children's work to make our class special and feel like we belong.  I think we have gone some way to achieving this.

Term 2 will be a term of really embedding and getting all of our programs humming.  We will aim for 2 stories for term 2 in Storytelling as it is evident giving the children the vocabulary and structure for hanging their stories on - the better quality their writing.  I would like to 'see' Storytelling when I walk into our classrooms - displays, including play opportunities for the children and art.

Te Reo & Tikanga in the Classroom

This term I have focussed on using basic commands (e tu, e noho) and greetings (tena koe/korua/koutou, morena, ata marie, ahi ahi marie, kia ora).  I have also began to teach mihi although a number of interruptions on Friday's has not seen this complete nor achieved the success criteria set so I will continue with this in term 2.  We also did a lesson on the Treaty of Waitangi and the concepts of participation, protection, and partnership (the 3 P's) and created our own koro's (integrated Art) to represent these.

Is my practice effecting progress for my learners.....the evidence so far...

Reflecting & Changing Practice; Professional Development; Responding to Feedback from a range of people including students:

Ongoing PD with CORE Ed, supporting us to try new strategies for behaviour management and our teaching inquiry:




Here is an example of our interview with our learners for our teaching inquiry so we can begin to reflect on our practice and make changes to it to enable increased engagement and progress.





I have also been using Flipgrid for reflection and learning - for student agency and also to reflect on and use student voice to improve practice.

Flipgrid

Also, team meeting notes to show collaborative problem-solving to behaviour and learning concerns in our syndicate.




Reflections from Term 1 Appraisal and Attestation with Principal Mark Ellis.





Appraisal and Attestation with Anita Paul, including observation of my Maths program which I was struggling with noise, lack of self-management and the children's high needs.