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Friday 14 August 2020

2020 Teaching as Inquiry - Term 3

 


As a Manaiakalani Cluster School, we follow the Learn / Create / Share pedagogy

We know that
  1. Digital Technologies that our students use Empower Creativity
  2. Creativity Empowers Learning
  3. Sharing Learning is a powerful way to get feedback and feedforward to improve learning and creativity
Background information Our students Learn, and Create DLOs that help them to consolidate their Learning and also help others to Learn from their creations. They share their learning with a world wide audience and receive feedback and feedforward to improve their learning and do better.

We know that Student Design for Learning Links to High Leverage Thinking Practices (From Naomi Rosendale's presentation)

My Hunch: At our school, the quality of Student Design for Learning is providing some opportunities for High Leverage Thinking Practices and promoting amplification and turbocharging of learning.

My Question: At our school, are teachers providing opportunities for students to create multi-modal DLOs that help amplify and turbocharge learning?

My learning and findings will be around 
  • What is Student Design for Learning?
  • Are the DLOs that our students are creating, one dimensional Artefacts or multi media DLOs with pedagogic (learning) potential?
  • How could some DLO work improve literacy (and other outcomes) by increasing students’ awareness of designing learning for others?
  • Are our teachers giving our student DLOs the nudge?
  • Blog comments on class and individual blogs around the student DLOs - their quality and quantity
Sample: Senior Team Classes and Teachers

From Naomi Rosendale's School Leaders PLG presentation







Based on the learning from Naomi's research presentation, my inquiry will be around finding out about our students' Design for Learning that they are creating and to find out if they fit into the MAPIC framework which enhances the quality of the DLOs. Are our teachers enhancing their teaching through amplifying and turbocharging the learning opportunities? 



Saturday 3 August 2019

My reflection of how my Teaching as Inquiry is going and what I will do differently in Term 3

My Hunch: Bridging gaps in Number knowledge and teaching smart strategies
explicitly to solve problems, will make the target group
successful in achieving at their expected level in Mathematics.

Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
Of the 7 students in the target group , one student moved to room 10 at the beginning
of term 2. 4 students made progress by one or two sub levels, 1 student stayed on
the same level, 1 student went down a sub level.

Target group: Rm 7/10 students

Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
The student from room 10 was not part of the target group after moving to Rm 10


Year Level
Beginning of year
Num stage
Mid year
Num stage
End of year
Num stage
Bi
7
5
E6

Ka
7
E5
E5

Le
7
E6
5

Ma
8
E5
E6


Ta moved to Rm 10
Tu
8
E5
5

Tan
8
E5
5


Question: Will deliberate acts of teaching maths (bridging gaps + explicit teaching
of problem solving strategies) to the target group enable them to
enjoy problem solving and achieve at their expected level?

Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
What the target group and I were doing in Term 2

Students were working away from the class as a group
From the beginning of the year assessment data and from what I noticed, there were 
huge gaps in the target group's number and strategy knowledge

I used stage 5 word problems from Ted Bark's resource that has rewindable learning
videos to go to again and again for practice.I had to bridge the huge gaps by doing explicit teaching of the simple strategies to use
to add and subtract numbers in the word problems. We had to revise a lot to reinforce
the strategy learned.The fast pace that I first used at the beginning to push these students did not work.
It was not realistic for these students. I had to slow down for them to really grasp the
strategies taught and to practice them during problem solving.
I also noticed that they needed to improve their instant recall of basic facts and
multiplication facts. We did this through games to consolidate number knowledge.
This took time. We used the talk moves each and every lesson to build these students'
confidence to share how they solved their problems.
I am proud of the ways the students participated in the learning, worked their problems
out methodically and how well they shared the strategy they used to solve the problem.
Even though the students were doing all this, they were using very simple strategies to
solve the problems.
The enthusiasm these students showed to come and learn was amazing.
Towards the end of term two, due to the Cultural festival practices, the lessons
in the last 3 weeks were intermittent and this could have affected how they performed
in the testing.

On reflection
It made me wonder if withdrawing them from the class was the best thing to do.
This meant that the students who are more or less at the same level were depending
heavily only on my teaching and they were not learning from other more able peers.
Hence, I discussed this with the classroom teacher and I decided that may be,
if the students stayed in the class and I went there to support their learning, these
students would also learn other strategies used to solve problems from their teachers
and, from their peers.

My revised Question:
Will deliberate acts of teaching (bridging gaps + reinforcing strategies taught
to solve problems) the target group enable the students to enjoy problem solving,
and help them learn from their peers and get better at problem solving?

My hunch and my Inquiry question still hold good. The only thing different I will be doing
is providing these students explicit teaching of the strategies that others may have used
that they don't understand.

My being in the classroom enables these students to get the same teaching from
the classroom teacher and more clarification and reinforcement of the various
strategies with my support.

I expect the students to move to the next stage and be more confident in solving complex word problems and talk about how they solved the problems.

Time Frame: 2 terms (Terms 3 and 4 until assessments)

Measurable by doing GLoSS testing each term.



Friday 24 May 2019

Digital Fluency Intensive #9

PLD - 2019 Term 1 - Session #9 - Digital Fluency Intensive


Dorothy’s presentation about “ubiquitous” was good for us to know that
children learn anywhere, anytime, anyplace and from anyone.
Again ‘It’s not just a tool!” was reiterated so all of us focus
on the Manaiakalani Kaupapa.


Computational Thinking
The session with Zoe and Vivian was mind blowing in a good sense.  
Deep Dive
  • Intro to the future of tech and what it means for our tamariki
  • Ethics and Morals of machines.
Was interesting to listen to and digest.


Chalk ‘n Talk:
  • Intro to the digital technologies curricula and structure
  • Intro to the ‘Discipline language’ of Digital Technologies
Was very interesting to listen to and learn.


The need for all teachers to explore the digital technologies new curricula
is important.
The awareness of what the future will look like and be, is really exciting for
our students and the way we teach.
I still need to explore the website https://kiatakatu.ac.nz/ to sign in
and see what is available for PLD.


The brainstorming of ideas around Barriers, Time, Attitude / Confidence,
Resources, Skills, Needs, Strengths and Next Steps around
the Digital curriculum was enlightening.
I am sure we as a CoL can meet this challenge of the government
with ease with the expertise and enthusiasm we have around the cluster.

The DFI course was very valuable and enabled me to understand thoroughly
the Manaiakalani Kaupapa and fully use all Google apps more efficiently.
The PLD I acquired through the 9 weeks is immense.

I am now confident I can share this Professional Learning with my colleagues at school.
A big Thank you to Dorothy and Gerhard for enabling us all in Cohort #1 to
Learn / Create and Share, just like our Tamariki do.

Friday 17 May 2019

Digital Fluency Intensive #8


PLD - 2019 Term 1 - Session #8 - Digital Fluency Intensive

Today’s session started with the “empowered” part of the Manaiakalani L/C/S pedagogy.
The fact that students and parents are empowered from the way we teach our students using devices is invaluable.





Dorothy's "Empowered" video

Doing the Google Certified Teacher exam was a good experience even though it was a
time pressure test.
This definitely made me understand how to use Google apps and use them well to
teach our students.

A good session on how to bling blogs by Gerhard helped us make our blogs
inviting to the rest of the world.

Tuesday 7 May 2019

My Teaching as Inquiry - 2019


My Hunch: Bridging gaps in Number knowledge and teaching smart strategies
explicitly to solve problems, will make the target group
successful in achieving at their expected level in Mathematics.


Target group: Rm 7/10 students


Year Level
Beginning of year
Num stage
Mid year
Num stage
End of year
Num stage
Bi
7
5
E6

Ka
7
E5
E5

Le
7
E6
5

Ma
8
E5
E6



Tu
8
E5
5

Tan
8
E5
5


Question: Will deliberate acts of teaching maths (bridging gaps + explicit teaching
of problem solving strategies) to the target group enable them to
enjoy problem solving and achieve at their expected level?


Time Frame: 2 terms (Terms 2 and 3)

Measurable by doing GLoSS testing each term.

I expect the students to more to the next stage and be more confident in solving complex word problems and talk about how they solved the problems.