Reading Observation- Renee

Today I observed Renee with her two lower reading groups. The focus for both groups was on evaluating- one group focused on evaluating a character while the other focused on evaluating events and why they occur in the story.
Renee only stopped to ask questions about the text if they related to the specific learning intention- this meant that the reading of the text was quick and more time was available to spend on the follow up task which the group would do together.
As a group they completed the follow up task together. The students then practised this same task indepedently but for a different character/event/story.
Renee said that she will normally use the same text for at least a week and will vary the activity that they do.

What does this mean for my practice?
The biggest thing I took from watching Renee was how she had a clear focus for the lesson and did not stray. This would help the students to have a clear understanding of what each strategy is and also keep the lesson on track.
Doing a follow up activity as a group and then doing it individually is another good idea as it will give a true assessment of the student's understanding. They will have had the activiity modelled to them properly.

Using web 2.0 tools

I believe that ICT is a huge driving force for students and if a computer is in front of them they will be engaged no matter what the task. The other week I was doing a CSI reading lesson which linked well with my writing topic. The follow up activity was to create a venn diagram. I had a look and found an easy venn diagram template online which the students would be able to type directly into and then embed on the class blog.
The engagement of my students when completing the task was fantastic. They worked in pairs and every single student was on task. Students took half the time it would've taken them if they had been doing it in their books or on a piece of paper because they were so focused .

Maths Teacher Inquiry- Dinah

Dinah led a staff meeting on using our data to come up with our next steps for teaching. She wanted us to think about how are we going to teach better- not how is that student going to get better.

We had to choose a target group in which we would start a mini teacher inquiry. This had to be a group of students who have made little or no progress all year. I have one student who has moved in strategy this year but has not moved in knowledge all year. She is my focus.

Dinah suggested my first step be to give her a stage six knowledge test even though she has not yet passed stage five. This has allowed me to identify what she knows and what she doesn't- and I can start targeting the things she doesn't know first. I am going to be setting aside ten minutes at the start of maths everyday where I work one-on-one with her in order to fill her gaps. She will be given extra homework and practise to reinforce the learning.
I will also have to find suitable materials to use when working with her- these will form an image which she can refer to when solving the problem.

Maths Observation- Dinah

I observed Dinah with a group of stage six students and some stage seven students.
Dinah's focus was on giving students number problems in non-number contexts. Students should be able to apply the strategies they have been taught into problems which do not specify what they need to solve.

The stage six problem:

The majority of students struggled with this problem because of the way it was presented to them. All they had to do in order to solve it was 144 divided by 8- which had they known, all students could've easily done.

The stage seven problem:

The students ability to solve this problem was similar to that of the stage six one- they couldn't apply it due to the wordy problem where an equation is spelt out for them.

Once the students shared their answers (without the shame of getting it wrong, or the pressure of it being marked) Dinah used equipment so the students could replicate the problem they were given. For stage six, it involved making the triangle out of a rectangular piece of paper, and for the sevens, it was constructing three different coloured squares (to scale) out of popsticks.

By giving them the equipment (even if they didn't even really need it) the students were able to get a visual image for the particular problem which will mean that next time they can associate that image with a similar problem.

Dinah maintains that when we rate students at a strategy stage then they should be able to apply the specific strategies in a range of problems, and it makes sense. How often in life are we asked to solve a direct equation? Instead we have to problem solve, to come up with an equation ourselves based on the information we have.

What does this mean for my practice?

It is clear that while I rate students at a stage where they can confidently use particular strategies, they are not necessarily able to apply the strategies. This was evident in my stage eight studnets who were unable to answer the stage seven problem.

I am going to aim to implement this way of thinking into my maths problem. This will involve providing my students with a rich questions which seem like they are targeting a strand, but are actually addressing number strategies. An idea is maybe to have a problem of the day, everyday, in which they are solving a number problem in a non-number context.

Student's time management

Yesterday I got very upset with a number of my students who had not completed tasks I had told them they had to get done in their own time, because they hadn't finished them during class time.
What am I going to do to ensure they get this done, and that they are motivated to get work done?
No computer until maths tasks are done- computer maths games are to be used for students who are up to date.

Using maths equipment

My maths goal is to use equipment more regularly when teaching my students. Yesterday I was focusing on a knowledge gap- decimal place value and ordering decimals. My students were given decimats and we watched an equipment animation off www.nzmaths.co.nz to introduce them to how a decimat represents decimal place value. I then got the students to show me various numbers by shading in parts of their decimats.

Today I followed on from that lesson but introduced decipipes and decimal arrow cards. The decipipes were fantastic as the students were able to actually see the worth of the number I had asked them to create. They were able to look at numbers other students had made and tell me if it had been made correctly. Once the students seemed confident with the decipipes, I introduced the decimal arrow cards to give them an understanding of how to order decimals. The students were all very engaged because they were able to manipulate the equipment and there was enough cards for everyone to get a few and play with. I noticed a lot of students talking to themselves while they moved the equipment around, and it was a great way of me understanding where they were at with the concept.

I will definitely have to continue to use the various equipment with my lower students as I know they still struggle with decimals.

My research on Formative Assessment

From: "Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom" by Connie M. Moss & Susan M. Brookhart, 2009.

Six elements of the formative assessment process:

• Shared learning targets and criteria for success 
• Feedback that feeds forward (next steps)
• Student goal setting
• Student self-assessment
• Strategic teacher questioning
• Student engagement in asking effective questions. 

For my development, I will be focusing on the highlighted areas to start off with. I am going to start using formative assessment in my writing firstly, because writing is our team focus and I have had some PD in writing conferencing which is a form of formative assessment. 

Learning Targets and Criteria for Success

Example: Students are to write a book report. The learning intention is not "to write a book report", it is "read and comprehend the plot and be able to make a personal connection with the story". 

She will instruct them to: "Write two paragraphs- the first should summarise the story so that someone who has not read the story will know what happens. The second is to tell the reader what your favourite part of the story is and why." 

This teacher has given clear directions. She has also started to share the learning intention. 

This, however, is only the first step. While the students understand what they are supposed to do, they will have different ideas of what the paragraphs will look like. 

Showing students good quality examples, at various levels, and then comparing them, will help them to understand what is expected and how they can achieve the learning intention.Students should also be given a rubric with specific descriptions so that their understanding is clear. 

Feedback that feeds forward

Effective Feedback...

• Observes where the work did a good job of meeting the criteria and where it did not. 
• Suggests ways the student could go about understanding the reasons for these observations, building on strengths and improving on weaknesses. 
• Shows students how to look at their work using criteria from the assignment, and thus, by modelling, helps teach them self assessment skills. 

How well did the feedback...

• Compare the student's work with the learning target?
• Describe what the student did well?
• Suggest a specific strategy for next steps?
• Arrive as soon as possible after performance?
• Match the student's developmental level?

Student Self- Assessment

The biggest part of self-assessment is involving the students when developing the success criteria. Question them or prompt them to clarify their thinking "why?" "explain that" "tell me more about..."

End of Term Review- from the student's point of view

What have been the highlights of the term?
technology, reading around the world challenge, making ginger beer, cross grouping for maths, cross country, CSI, run a thon, making lolly cake and oobleck, Big Day Out, inquiry/science, Matariki, applying for jobs, sneaker art, goanimates, ICT, mult/div unit, show don't tell writing exercise.

What haven't you enjoyed? 
cross grouping for maths, not enough PE, science, lack of art, dance at assembly, running training, procedural writing, not doing enough writing, too much transactional writing and not enough poetic, whole class spelling (too easy for some), some work being too easy, the behaviour cards.

What would you like us to do next term?
silent drawing, write chracter descriptions, more silent reading, homework, regular art, more sport and sport challenges with other classes, free writing time, fitness, individual projects, more buddy class, reading in front of the class, more experiments and better experiments, cooking, group points, regular rewards, academic competitions/quizzes.

Do you think you get enough feedback? What would you like to see happen so you know where to next?
individual conferences about progress in all areas, maybe weekly or twice a term.

• Some of the suggestions the kids made were fantastic, because they had some of the same ideas as me. I am definitely thinking of meeting with every student every fortnight to discuss their learning and behaviour, and see if they are happy with everything that is going on in the class. Some of the quiet students can often go by unnoticed, because I am not noticing them as much.
• I also need to get better at using my behaviour management system, as my students told me earlier in the week that they feel I don't use them enough. They also said that they don't really feel like there are enough consequences for when they get an orange card or a red card. We decided to fine students who get a coloured card with the new teacher buck system I have brought in. 
• I have also decided I need to change my writing programme. I am going to try to straight every writing session with free writing for ten minutes, to get the students into mileage writing and get the brains thinking. I may use writing fun to create some sentence starters to get the kids creativity going. 
• I am going to schedule regular art lessons every week, and continue to run my PE on a Thursday, but also may have a sport game every Friday afternoon when there is no assembly. 

Formative Assessment- MaryAnne

To distinguish between formative assessment and summative assessment.

Formative is to improve- identifies students' progress and next steps during the learning/unit. 

Summative is to prove- shows the students' achievement at the end of the unit. 

In reality, if your formative assessment is extensive, then summative assessment should not be necessary!

Formative Assessment Tools:
Traffic lights: student's identify on a 'traffic light' how they feel they have met a particular learning outcome. Green- great, Amber- not too bad, Red- too hard. These can be on little pieces of paper that students glue into their work whenever they have completed a task.
Thumbs up: similar to traffic lights but students show you how they feel about something with a thumbs up/down/to the side, used on the mat or in group discussion/teaching etc.
Learning buddies: students talk to a buddy about something they have learnt, what they found easy/difficult and something they would like to learn.

I will be starting to use traffic lights in my room by printing out little traffic lights on a piece of paper. Students will colour in the traffic light at the end of any task to indicate how they felt they did with it. Update on the success of this to come!

Assessment

Notes from staff meeting brainstorm.

How do you know your students are learning?

• Student voice, self reflection
• Formative notes
• Exemplars of work
• Classroom displays showing progressions/movement
• Feed forward is responded to by students
• Evidence of self/peer assessment
• Book work showing progress/new learning
• Progressions identified in books (e.g. matrices)
• Students supporting students (passing on the learning)
• Parent voice, feedback

Reflection:

I can say where my students are, but how can I prove this? I need to be able to give evidence to support my justifications. Taking on board the formative assessment tools MaryAnne shared with me will help with this. 

Effective Teaching Practice- Conferencing in Writing

Had a great session with Kara this morning on effective conferencing in writing. Being a PRT this is something I felt I definitely struggled with in terms of how to run a conference and how to plan for them.

Kirsty mentioned something that really made me think. We should run our writing like how we run our reading- one instructional group with the teacher, the rest of the students on tasks that are different. We would never send our kids off to complete a follow up reading activity without doing the guided reading with the text first, so why would we be working with one group writing and the others doing the same thing without any kind of instruction? The other great thing is that doing this will eliminate those lines of kids waiting to conference with me!
I am now going to rearrange the way I run my writing, as it is just as important as reading and maths!

Before a conference, students need to:

• Read their writing and think about the conference before coming along 
• Be prepared with questions on parts they want to focus on (post its- then keep these in books)
• Be prepared to read aloud a favourite part- the conference doesn't have to be on the whole piece!
• Be prepared to tell how the listener can be helpful (e.g. "I want you to listen for...vocabulary/the correct tense/a variety of sentence starters"

The teacher needs to:

• Listen to the student read their writing aloud
• Move the student forward as a writer- sharing a writing model, setting goals, finding gems in their piece, reinforcing strenghts etc
• Focus briefly on technical details- but these aren't the focus
• Ensure that students learn something they can apply to their writing in the future. 

My Reflection:

Changes I am going to make:

• a designated conference area in the classroom so that students have somewhere to sit and conference either individually or in a group
• a chart for display and in the students' books of what they need to do before the conference and some sentence starters/prompts they could use when conferencing
• stop neglecting poetic writing because we are teaching transactional- include a fun writing activity most days to mix it up
• spend some initial conferences focusing on looking at the matrix so students really understand it

There are so many other things to take on board but these are the changes I will be making now. 

Teacher Inquiry- Writing

Here is my progress/overview of what I have done so far:

What strategies have you tried so far in relation to your inquiry?

I have used a variety of exemplars with my students. I have shown my students an example of writing at each level written by the students in the class. From here we have identified what the student can do well, and what they need to do next in order to move up a level. We have focused on structure, impact, language features etc. 

We have also used some exemplars of writing at a high level or at a higher level than them and as a group we have broken down the writing and highlighted the different features of it- this has been particulary helpful with teaching the structure of both persuasive and procedural writing. We have used different colour highlighters to emphasis different features of the writing and this exemplar gets glued into their book which they can refer back to for a constant example of what their writing should replicate.

I have also a few examples of my own writing- this is done through shared writing. 

We have also used student exemplars to edit writing as well- and done this as a class. We have put a piece up on the projector and fixed spelling, punctuation and grammar, as well as looking at sentence structure, general structure and impact. 

We have also started to level writing as a class- this involves giving the students a kid speak matrix, sharing work, and then giving justifications as to what level they think the writing is. I have only spent one session on this but it was very beneficial and I will definitely be doing it more often. 

What impact or evidence has this had on student learning?

Most definitely gluing in the exemplars that have been dissected and highlighted has worked really well because it can serve as a type of success criteria for the students, once they think they have finished they can refer to the exemplar to see if their writing follows the same structure as the exemplar. 

Using student exemplars from our class has meant that the students are generally more interested because they can relate to the writing. I have also noticed that students want to be like the top students in the class and they most definitely see the difference between their writing and other students writing in the class. Using shared writing to edit work and share my example has worked well because students often notice more or have more ideas once they are exposed to a few to begin with. When one student suggests something that 

could be changed or altered it seems to lead on to other things- like a snowball effect. Much more effective than having students work on editing work or dissecting work individually. 

I would say what I have done so far has benefited the lower writers in my class who can see examples of higher levels of writing and what they need to do to achieve them. I feel it does not benefit my top writers as much. 

What have you done to make a difference?

I think I have put a lot more focus on the students identifying good examples of writing as apposed to me identifying the good writing. This has meant that the students have taken ownership and responsibility over their learning and are more switched on to what they need to be doing. 

If there has been no change or difference made, what next? While I can see a difference in my student's writing, it is not as significant as I would like. I think what i have been doing is successful, it just needs to be reinforced for the remainder of the year so students are constantly exposed to a range of exemplars. I would now like to work on my conferencing skills and providing my students with clear next steps because I feel confident that I have achieved what I set out to do, all I need to do now is continue to implement it in my teaching so that significant progress can be made. 

Maths- Dinah Harvey

Dinah came in and modelled how to use equipment with some of my higher students as I find this is an area I struggle with. She first gave them a little assessment, asking them to draw 0-3 on a number line, and then put as many different fractions as they could on the number line. This simple question gave her and myself a huge idea of the student's knowledge of fractions. It's amazing how one good question can give you so much insight into what the students know. Then she modelled how to increase their understanding by using fraction tiles and used this to model how to do mixed fractions, improper fractions, equivalent fractions etc. The students were engaged and learnt a lot in the short amount of time. By giving each student a different size fraction, they were all occupied, all learning, and all seeing how it works with the different fractions. 

At the end of the session she got them to do the the same activity again and of course they all had a much greater understanding of fractions. 

She also modelled how to use paper to model fractions to the lower group- cutting them up and getting students to show her how they had come to their answer.

I also got a bonus session so she modelled how to use large dotty arrays to introduce multiplication to my stage 7s. They worked with a partner to break the arrays up to solve multiplication problems such as 16x23. Then she got them to visualise the equipment on a piece of paper and eventually worked the paper down to a small size. This is a perfect way of leading on to algorithms. 

The main things I got out of the session were:

• One good question is enough to gain insight into what the kids know and don't know
• Even paper is equipment- and it makes the children show how they came to a certain answer
• Giving students scrap paper encourages them to take risks. She recommended giving them scrap paper and vivids as this commits then to what they have written and it's easier for the teacher to see- as opposed to a whiteboard and pen where they will be likely to rub it out. 
• Give the higher students equipment to help them understand the concept, then take it away and give them paper, gradually making the paper smaller so eventually they do not need to visualise it as much. 

E share- 20 June 2011

Last night was my third e-share of the year. I learnt a lot about using multimedia in the classroom. Kylie talked about the power of using animation- how it can really show a student's understanding of a topic. She showed us some movie maker animations her students had done on the story of Matariki. They used simple coloured paper to make their images, then took a photo, moved the paper, took a photo, and so on. Each slide changed every second so it made an animation. The students also recorded themselves reading the story to accompany their animation, and they had to adjust the timing so that it all worked well. It definitely gave a great insight into their understanding of the story.
Kylie mentioned she has used clay and plasticine before, but doesn't recommend it. Paper is just as effective. She said the reflection at the end of the animation was great too- as students were able to talk about what they would do next time.
This was most definitely the best thing I took out of the afternoon, and once I have made an animation myself I will most definitely give it a go in my class. The next step will be to make sure whatever I choose to do has meaning and purpose.

Back to basics

So often I try to encourage my student's independence by letting them take control over what they want to learn and do their own thing. An example of this is the Matariki project I have set. This week we are celebrating Matariki at school so I am letting the students choose what they would like to research or do in order to celebrate Matariki. I have told my students that they need to put all writing in their own words. So what do I see? Students that have appeared to directly copy and paste information off the internet and then pass it off as their own. And this is not the first time it has happened. Who's fault is this? Mine, of course. My students lack the skills needed to carry out research- the ones that are copying and pasting are the ones that cannot identify key points, summarise a text, that cannot infer text, and struggle with their comprehension. While I still maintain allowing my students to direct their own learning  is a good idea, they need to have the skills in the first place in order to be independent. Looks like tomorrow I will be working with the majority of the class to focus on research, key ideas, summarising and synthesising.

Fostering creativity through e-learning

On Tuesday I was lucky to attend a fantastic conference. It's focus was creativity through e-learning.
Derek Wenmoth's keynote was great, and out of the whole day I felt I got the most out of his talk. He spoke about how we use ICT in the classroom and how it starts:
addition-
incorporation-
integration-
assimilation.
He asked us to question whether we are integrating ICT into our programme or assimilating it- and there's a big difference. Integration is when you are consciously planning and finding a way to use some kind of ICT in your room. Assimilation is when we do not have to consciously think about using ICT- it is ingrained in the way we teach and in the way our students learn.

My reflection:
Why should I tell my students what program they should use? The other day we were learning to how write a procedure. I told my students to use movie maker to write a procedure. Why? How is it encouraging or stimulating their creativity when I dictate what program to use? At the end of the day their learning outcome is to write a procedure. How they choose to show their understanding should be up to them!

What this means for my practise:
Stop telling the kids to do this and do that- let them have control over what they are doing to aid/demonstrate their learning. By limiting the control they have I am limiting their creativity.

My professional blog

Time to jump on the bandwagon and start a professional blog. I'm hoping that by sharing my thoughts other teachers will have a read and challenge what I say and give me more to think about.
I may end up posting some things I have reflected on earlier in the year, depending on how worthwhile I think sharing them will be.