Zones of Regulation

As part of my behaviour management of a student in my class, it has been suggested that I use the Zones Of Regulation as a way to modify behaviour and support this child in the whole thinking process. The more I have learnt,  I have come to realise that this will work for more than this child in my class and am looking forward to the coming term to put into practice some of these ideas.

The "ZONES" has a framework that provides strategies to teach and support children to become more aware of and independent in the ways they control their emotions and impulses, manage their sensory needs, and their ability to problem solve conflicts.

The FOUR ZONES: 

RED ZONE: Is an extremely heightened state of alertness and intense emotions. Trigger words for the children are mad/angry, terrified, yelling/hitting,elated,  and out of control.

YELLOW ZONE: Is also an heightened state of alertness and elevated emotions but the child has some control. Trigger words for children are frustrated, stressed, worried, silly/wiggly, excited, and some loss of control.

GREEN ZONE: Is a calm state of alertness. Trigger words are happy, calm, feeling OK, focussed, and ready to learn. This is the zone where optimal learning occurs.

BLUE ZONE: Describes a low state of alertness. the words used to connect are sad, tired, sick, bored, and moving slowly.

Using the colours of red, yellow, green and blue can be compared to traffic signals. Green being a 'green' light for learning and everything is good to go. A yellow sign indicates caution and maens be aware. Stop for red which is the outcome you need. Being blue usually is a sign for re-energising or rest.

Everyone experiences all these states of emotions and are very normal, the framework will enable me as an educator, to empower my students how to recognise and manage their zone based on the environment, its demands and the people around them.

Where to next? What implications will this have on my teaching? How can I manage this so that it becomes part of 'the way of being' for my current class?

Where to next?

• Make resources such as posters, needed to scaffold the thinking for my students. 
• Create a space in the classroom where the children can refer to to assist each other. 
• Plan for time for the explicit teaching and role playing of the ZONES and what strategies we can co-construct for everyone in our class. 
• Create a classroom toolbox, as place for "things' that can be used for sensory support, card of yoga poses for calming techniques.
• Ensure that I have a bank of resources such as, music, movement games, breathing techniques that I can access at short notice.
• What sorts of resources will I need to source to empower and engage my Maori learners? Some research maybe needed to ensure that this covered.

So some work for the term break but hopefully in the long run it will be worthwhile.  Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come. Dwayne Johnson

Clarity, Share and Understand Learning Intention and Success Criteria

What is the aim of learning intentions and success criteria? It is not to help the students complete the activity - it is help them learn.

I was given this reading of Chapter 3: Embedding Formative Assessment and it has made me rethink how I use WALTs and Success Criteria. Also I have been thinking about using a whole class approach and this reading has given me some scaffolding for what these lessons will look like.

Here are some pointers from the recap -

• I may not know exactly where the lesson is going - it is the experience rather than the outcome.

This has happened when I gave the class a maths problem I thought they should all be to work through if they worked within a small group. The problem was too hard and I realised the children were unable to recognise the patterns of 3/4 digit numbers - how these break down into smaller workable numbers. This was good as it gave the children loads of questions regarding what they needed to learn and therefore the writing of their learner pathways was way easier.

• Keep the context of the learning out of the learning intention.

I have always struggled with WALTs and how to create them, during my observations of colleagues, I discovered the importance of keeping the context out and how it makes the learning more transferrable for the children to apply the learning. This has happened more since using a whole class approach and asking the children at the end of the lesson what they have learnt. 

• Start with samples of work rather than rubrics, to communicate quality

Using Notice, Think, Imitate and Innovate has given more scaffolding to my class lessons. By using 'good' exemplars the children have become more aware of the standard they are trying achieve and where they need to go with their learning. It has changed the way the children 'think' about their learning, and what steps they may need to get there. The children are beginning to show this in Seesaw when they realise what they have learnt.

• Use big ideas, learning progressions and staging posts

As part of the team planning, we are unpacking each big ideas and finding all the learning progressions needed to solve the problem. It is rich learning because each child is able to take what they need and this in turn build more student efficacy, which is what we after for 21st learning.

Being an Across School Leader for Eastern Kahui Ako

Theory for Improvement Document

As part of my role for Accelerating Literacy and Mathematics across the Eastern Kahui Ako, I have been working with my colleagues to create a mandate for the 5 schools and their staff to improve the learning for their children. This attached document is approximately 50 days work after our discussions with teachers, principals, and unpacking the data that we know so far.

My reflections on this journey so far

• Initially it was very unsettling as there wasn't any scaffolding of what our COL would look like.
• Feeling of excitement to create something new for our Community that could bind us more together - create a community.
• Having a clearer 'big' picture of the schools by unpacking the relationships between the 5 principals and their staff - has been key to our approach to the individual schools.
• Understanding the individual school's cultures has assisted in the data - both with the response to our questions and the results within the data and the range.
• Amazement - that there are still teachers who are teaching who are more worried about the workload as apposed to the children's progress and what it takes to improve their learning.
• Sense of pride - of what we have achieved in a small amount of time especially with this document.
• Science - and how you teach it and how it underpins all - reading, writing and mathematics.  It is what has been missing in our curriculum but  with this Theory of Improvement document there is a way ahead, especially with the approach.
• Grateful for the opportunities as I have been able to work with other passionate teachers who are willing to make changes in their pedagogical approach and that of others.
• Keen - to make change in my community, school and my class to improve the learning.

Where to next?

• Get PACT into the other schools so that they can be passionate about teaching.
• Make the most of my time in the role.
• Create a start point for the future for our schools.
• Be more present for the other schools, principals, DPs and their teachers.

Dyslexia Staff Meeting

The first activity involved the staff discussing their weekend and then writing about it for 1 minute. After the minute, there was a word count. the next part of the activity was to discuss favourite take away and why you liked it for 30 seconds.  Another minute to write, but this time to write using the less dominant hand. This was a quick activity to show us the problems that children in our class have processing writing in an every day situation.

We were asked to share our feelings -
- frustrated
- too slow
- too hard
- messy
- poor quality
- distracting
- putdowns

This activity was to help us to walk in the shoes of the individuals in our school. I realise that I need to cater for my dyslexia in my class more.

What does mean for my class?
I need to enable my children with dyslexia by:

• Getting a 10 minute unassisted writing sample and then type this to have a screening as part of their file.
• Use memorized words of singing - from Production as a regular part of the week.
• Use clapping games to build memory
• Use funny rhymes to help the build spelling memory
• Use colour to help these children recognise words and ideas
• Repeat ideas
• Be patient
• Seat the child fairly near the teacher base so that I am available to help if necessary, or they can be supported by a well-motivated and sympathetic classmate.

Dyscalculic children are already spending a lot of mental energy trying to understand the maths, the last thing they need is to have to memorise the instructions at the same time.

I need to enable my children with dyscalculia by:

• Giving children own set of work to complete, which is at their level.
• Allowing extra time - even with problems they can do, dyscalculic children are much slower.
• Using written rather than verbal instructions and questions. 
• Focus on understanding (especially of quantity)
• Use concrete materials to help link mathematical symbols to quantity
• Start at a level which the child is comfortable at, so that they experience some success, and slowly move to more difficult areas
• Provide a lot of practice for new skills/concepts
• Reduce the need for memorisation, especially initially
• Ask a lot of questions to get the child engaged and thinking about their own thinking
• Make learning as active and fun as possible - a positive experience

Reflecting on Leadership

I have nearly completed one year as team leader at Lynmore School and as the time came up to reapply for these positions, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on all I have achieved, what I still want to achieve and my philosophy of leadership. 

When I think about what pushes me to do my best as a leader, I realise that I am influenced by wanting everyone to achieve at their personal best and know that I will do whatever I can to help them achieve it.  I was looking up quotes about leadership and this one rang true to my leadership style

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches but to reveal to them their own."

I have decided that the best way for me to do these reflections is by relating each aspect of my job description to this quote and to how I have achieved these in relation to this quote over the past year.

As both a teacher and a leader I believe in the importance of three way relationships for helping children to achieve success, both within my team and across the school.  As a result of this throughout the year I have personally kept in contact with the whanau of children within my class and have encouraged my team members to also.  We have done this in a variety of ways and these include: blogs, emails, phone contact and through meetings such as the parent evening for accelerating literacy learning.  In addition to making contact with these parents I have also valued the expertise that they can offer my team - whether this be on school trips, coming in to provide feedback/feed forward for students learning or through providing their children guidance through student led conferences.  Through these learning conversations with parents across the team there has been the development of parent led initiatives where they develop kits alongside their child's teacher that fully develops and supports what their child is learning within the classroom. 

In addition to this, across the team we have provided appropriate and engaging support for special needs students that allow them to become included within the everyday classroom programme whilst still having their educational needs met.  Individualised Educational Programmes have been discussed with parents, whanau, the special needs co-ordinator and teacher aides that work with these students to ensure that all students are provided with the opportunity to experience success. Through  working with family and whanau I have helped both students and whanau realise the riches they can and do bring to the educational journey.

In order to be a good leader I think that it is important that I first ensure that my classroom environment is representative of what I am asking others to do also.  As a teacher I consistently vary my teaching approaches and methods to ensure that I am meeting all of my students learning and cultural needs, this is done through providing students with an environment where they feel comfortable asking question about, and making suggestions to, their learning.  I provide learning opportunities that ensure children are intellectually engaged in challenging context and that all children have had appropriate modelling to help them achieve at the top level that they are able.  Within my classroom, there is a culture maintained where students encourage each other to step outside their comfort zones, knowing that they are in a psychologically safe environment in which to do so.  High expectations of all learners and relationships between student and student and each individual and myself ensure that this culture occurs.  Both within my classroom and across the classrooms of my team members there is consistently strong learner influence, engagement and achievement - this has occurred through students having input into their learning, and through providing learning opportunities that are relevant for students at the time that they are learning - sich as conducting a social studies integrated unit that aligned with the celebration of ANZAC 100 years and using the Rugby World Cup for students to do a statistical investigation on whilst it was being played out on the world stage.

I have in depth curriculum knowledge, sound pedagogies that influence the way I teach and why I teach that way and I consistently use formative assessment to enhance the learning opportunities provided to my students.  Formative assessment is used regularly in order to diagnose evidence of learning for individual students and this information is married seamlessly with existing planning.  In addition to formative assessment I also use summative assessment to evaluate where students are at as a cohort and to help myself articulate with clarity what each students needs are and how I can provide pathways that enable students to meet these.  In regards to my teaching, planning, reporting, classwork, classroom environment and attending extra curricular events I am a positive role model for my team.

As a leader, I have helped to ensure that all teachers in my team are clear about where their students are and can provide evidence about this also.  I have worked with members of my team consistently throughout the year in order to ensure that there are pathways in place for all learners across the team and that there are planned approaches to respond to the individual needs of these students.  Evidence of this is through assessment folders and analysis of all assessment, completed both as a class and as a team.  Through analysis and assessment, I have ensured that as a team we have identified out most pressing priority learners and addressed them with fast and best fit solutions - evidence of this is present in the ALL work that we undertook as a team when we identified that over 30% of our students were well below in their writing after our first team writing moderation.  This analysis of assessment is also supported by professional discussions at team meetings each week where teachers have the opportunity to engage in professional discussions about where children of concern are at and how we can continue to move them along.

When I consider professional dialogue and how I have and can continue to engage teachers in dialogue about their practice I reflect on the fact that each teacher I am working with has excellent knowledge, practice and capabilities and it is my job to ensure that they make the most of these.  I have done this in a variety of ways throughout the year.  Making observations of my colleagues and providing them with feedback and feed forward has allowed me to help them identify their key areas for development and next steps whilst still acknowledging what they are successful at.  Through minutes of meetings and notes of my observations I also pass these onto the senior leadership team so that they are able to support me in my role of supporting the teachers within my team and can provide me with advice and guidance.

In my role I ensure that I make time for my team and asking about what is working and what is not - based on the benchmarks from Tony Burkin.  This has been evident in 'Clarity in the Classroom' and ALL working on ideas together and where to for term planning, we discuss the way the planning is going, how we changed ideas and share resources to aid the learning in our classes.  Last term my team were all asked to share something they had learnt - and lead our own PD around it - items ranged from professional readings, sharing power points, using new resources to teach maths, interactive web 2.0 tools, and blog sharing.

Interlead Appraisal helped me to voice my awe of the expertise within my team and how they have the 'goods' and are making a difference for their children.  Speaking with the music teacher I commented on how he used his 'Measures of Success' - he was full of praise for the process from the 'Clarity in the Classroom' and how it was helping him to create WALTs and gives his teaching more purpose.  As part of the ERO process of auditing our school, ERO met with the other team leaders and myself.  We were asked how we are supported in our roles and what helps each of us - I discussed "That often we relied on each other for ideas and direction and as part of my leadership PD - with the collaborative futures academy that I felt that there was a need for an alignment of our curriculum across all the school."

Also this year, I have been enrolled in a course with Vikrum Murthy - Academy for Collaborative Futures and yesterday I worked with a group of leaders from around Rotorua. At the end of the day I always leave feeling positive and empowered ready to take on exciting new challenges and fantastic opportunities.

I am looking forward to next year still as a Year 5 Team Leader with a new team and 'the world is my oysters' as they say. Roll on 2016.

New Inquiry - How can encourage children to reflect on what they have learnt?

My next inquiry has come from my own reflections from my feedback session for my READING OBSERVATION. The children now understand what they are learning, why they are learning it and how they be successful with this learning. Also as part of my own self appraisal, I have realised that I need to focus on my lessons having a beginning, middle and an end.

This is part of my research into improving my teaching - I found a blog with the title
Top 10 Evidence Based Teaching Strategies for Those Who Care About Student Results.
This unpacked is what I need to do to in my class. Number 6 particularly struck a chord with me - Feedback is the breakfast of champions, and it is the breakfast served by extraordinary teachers around the world.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 1 : Clear Lesson Goals
I need to be clear about what I want my students to learn during each lesson. The research says that such clarity effect on student results is 32% greater than the effect of holding high expectations for every student (and holding high expectations has a sizeable effect). "If you cannot quickly and easily state what you want your students to know and be able to do at the end of a given lesson, the goal of your lesson will be unclear." Clear lesson goals will help me (and my children) to focus every other aspect of the lesson and on what matters most.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 2 : Show & Tell

Start my lessons with show and tell. Put simply, telling involves sharing information or knowledge with my students while showing involves modelling how to do something. I need to be clear about what I want my students to know and be able to do by the end of the lesson, I need to tell them what they need to know and show them how to do the tasks I want them to be able to do. Concise lesson goals!

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 3 : Questioning to Check for Understanding

Use questions to check for understanding during the lesson. Making sure to check for understanding before moving onto the next part of the lesson. By using techniques such as random questioning of group, children showing answers on whiteboards and think-pair-share will help me to check for understanding before moving on from the show and tell part of the lesson, and thinking about what other questions I could possibly ask within the lesson.

Evidenced Based Teaching 4 : Summarise New Learning In A Graphical Way

 Graphic organisers have their place to help my children to summarise what they have learned and to understand the connections between the aspects of what I have taught them. Studies show that it doesn’t seem to matter who makes the summary graphic, be it you or your students, provided the graphic is accurate. Discussing a graphic organiser is a way to finish off your show and tell. I can use this tip to help the children reflect on what has been taught throughout the lesson.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 5 : Plenty of Practice

Practice will help my children to retain the knowledge and skills that they have learned while also allowing me another opportunity to check for understanding. I must ensure that my students are practicing the right things. My children need to be practicing what they learnt during my modelling, that will hopefully reflect my lesson goals - WALTs. I need to be mindful that the practice is not about mindless busy work. Nor is it about giving them independent tasks that I haven’t previously modelled and taught. Finally, research shows that students do better when their teacher has them practice the same things over a spaced-out period of time.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 6 : Provide Your Students With Feedback

Giving feedback involves letting my children know how they have performed on a particular task along with next steps to help  them improve. Unlike praise, which focuses on the student rather than the task, feedback provides a tangible understanding of what they did well, of where they are at, and of how they can improve. In John Hattie’s view, any teachers who seriously want to boost their children’s results should start by giving them dollops and dollops of feedback.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 7 : Be Flexible About How Long It Takes to Learn

The idea that given enough time, every student can learn is not as revolutionary as it sounds. It underpins the way we teach martial arts, swimming and dancing. It is also the central premise behind mastery learning, a technique that has the same effect on student results as socio-economic status and other aspects of home life. By adopting mastery learning, I need to differentiate in a different way. I can keep the learning intentions (WALT) the same, but varying the time I give each child a chance to succeed. This could be a struggle with the time framework for timetables and weeks but very much worth thinking about.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 8 : Get Students Working Together (in productive ways)

Encouraging productive group work within the class. When working in groups, my children tend to rely on the child they believe is most willing and able to the task at hand. Psychologists call this phenomenon social loafing. To increase the productivity of my groups, I need to be more selective about the tasks I assign and the individual roles for each group member and ensure each group member personally responsible for one step in the task.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 9 : Teach Strategies Not Just Content

By explicitly teaching the children how to use the relevant strategies. There are strategies underpinning the effective execution of many tasks that I ask my children to do at school. And, just as with content, I need to tell students about these strategies, to show them how to use them and to give them guided practice before asking them to use them independently.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 10 : Nurture Meta-Cognition

Meta-cognition involves thinking about your options, your choices and your results – and it has an even larger effect on children's results than teaching strategies. By using meta-cognition  my children need to think about what strategies they could use before choosing one, and  think about how effective their choice was (after reflecting on their success or lack thereof) before continuing with or changing their chosen strategy. The Teacher Support Materials with the School Journals have a mega-cognition aspect of each possible learning experience.

Hopefully by actioning some of these aspects I can encourage the reflective practice for my children.

Taking the time to listen

Every Friday I have special time to work with just the children in my intervention group. This morning due to some miscommunication I didn't get to my experience off to the flying start I would have liked. The plan today was to celebrate their writing and to put it in the published work folders and cover their draft books making them more personal.

I decided to put a STAR on a piece of blank paper and the children to get words and letters that describe themselves from magazines. I will put a photo on each start and cover seal them onto their draft books. During this cutting time, the children were conferencing with me on their finished piece and deciding on what their next steps would be.

After I had completed the conferencing with those who had finished I listened in on the conversation on around me. It was all about words and letters, not pictures but the children helping each other to form words, find words and use descriptive language.

The publishing folders weren't done so that's Mondays job and to establish that GOOD feedback using the language of writing. For my next experience I think I will do adjective synonym poetry, to create word banks for our writing tool box.

The Importance of an Audience

Yesterday I decided to "pinch" one of the ideas for our ALL Meeting on Wednesday. It was sharing the children's writing with their parents. A wee girl in my group always has wonderful ideas but the dyslexia and handwriting skills make reading her writing a mission. So pushing the aside the surface features and writing it so you can understand her expression and ideas - I published her writing in an email to her parents and on our class weebly.

Awesome response from her Mum. She immediately emailed back and commented on the weebly.
I will make sure to capture those warm fuzzies  for each of the children in my ALL writing group.

What a simple idea for my colleague - but so effective.

ALL Team Meeting

This morning the teachers involved in the ALL intervention, all met to discuss the gems, challenges and celebrations. We are being lead by the AP who is setting us - readings, supporting our ideas, challenging our thinking and helping us to collaborate.

My first thoughts were that this was just a meeting to tick the boxes for the invention. I was pleasantly surprised to sit around the table and share what has been happening for each of us. It first started with the team reporting/sharing what resonated with us from the reading - Gail Loane "I've got something to say".  It was so fantastic that the reading appealed on so many different levels and there was much nodding around the table.

Points made - Everyone can write something
                    - The importance of good feedback (modelled and children using the learning to improve each other's writing)
                    - The children's writing is about their lives/experiences
                    - Reading aloud their writing to share ideas - deeper features over surface features
                    - Taking time to craft ideas
                    - Sharing GOOD writing and other writer's work

So after that we shared - gems, challenges and celebrations. Gems are as the name suggests - moments that needed to be captured. These ranged from using sticky notes to sequence ideas, parking the planning and explicitly teaching ed endings, the children's willingness to write (these children are reluctant writers) and the use of oral language.

One teacher had used the ALL 'experience' time to send emails to the children's parents with a snapshot of what they had written with a personal note from the child. A great way to create an audience for the writing. The teacher was so impressed with the instant feedback from the parents. I need to give this idea a go, so that I have more buy in from the parents.

I shared my challenge for one child in my ALL group who has great oral language but the surface features (spelling, handwriting and lack of spaces between words) make it hard for her to read back what she has written. I realised the wealth of knowledge sitting around the table. From drawing a happy face on a finger, using handwriting cards so she can see correctly formed letters, using coloured paper and having larger lines for her to write on, were some of the ideas forthcoming.

The meeting/sharing was very empowering and has given me more enthusiasm again to do the best I can for these kids. What a journey we on together!

Inquiry - How do I help my struggling writers?

 I have selected 8 children  to work with using the ALL programme. This is a programme where the children are exposed to guided teaching for a period of at least 170 minutes - 200 minutes per week. This will happen for 15 weeks with the expectation that the children will move a year's progress - A JUMP START. The children are exposed to more oral language, scaffolding, any assistance that the Teacher deems they need.

So, after selecting 6 children with advice and knowing that 2 others are on the fringe and would benefit with extra support, I have 8 children in my ALL group. The selected children were given an e-asTTLe writing test - this was a cold sample, a picture cue and time for brainstorming and then writing for 40 minutes and 5 minutes editing. The expectation was the children would write a piece of descriptive writing. Of these selected children 3 are diagnosed with dyslexia, one who wears rose-coloured glasses to help her with visual dyslexia.

As part of the preparation for ALL - the children were all surveyed to find out how they feel about writing and how the feel about being taught writing.

The children are given a special book - a science book where the left hand page is blank and the right hand page is lined like normal. The blank page is for gluing in planning, graphic organisers, stretching and chunking words and practising writing a sentence. The book is set out with a learning goal sheet, Essential spelling lists 1-7 and success criteria for writing. I call the group my writing club.

I have struggled to plan for these children as I want them to have some input as to what to write about. So I started my first session with them today. I first showed them their books, asked them what they what to write about. The children came up with ANZAC (as the classroom is full of ANZAC, as it is our topic study), holidays, dolphins, fantasy & futuristic stories, and animals. I have created a list to use and guide the children. I began talking about animals - Pets and I found out that all the children in the group all have a pet of some sort. Mostly cats and dogs as well as a horse.

This has become my starting point as I want to develop the children's ability to describe when writing and it is always good to start with something they're familiar with. As I needed to work with the rest of the class on deconstruction of the new genre, I sent the writing club group away with a fat strip of paper and the expectation they would write one sentence about their pet.

Tonight I wrote out their sentence using Comic Sans font and the children can use this as the starting sentence for the piece of descriptive writing. Tomorrow together we will plan using a main ideas spider graphic organiser, word banks and write what next step they need to focus on during their writing.

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