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.

Getting into the Pit

This year is going to be a huge learning curve for me as I take on a new role. I am lucky enough to be chosen as the Community of Learning Lead Teacher for Accelerating Literacy and Numeracy across 5 schools of the Eastside of Rotorua, what a mouthful! This involves being out of my class 2 days a week, working with 3 others in a team, working with teachers across the COL (Kahui Ako) and working in tandem with another teacher for the class.

So far my time outside my class has been building relationships with the others in the team, going and meeting and greeting the Principals and Deputies of the schools and reading the computer screen. Currently the team has been working on addressing one of the identified goals for the Eastside in Science. We have unpacked data, been in meetings with Science advisors, MOE support people and read up on what we as a community can access.

I am feeling a little stuck out on a limb as the other 2 teachers are working closely together on Thursdays and Fridays, I work Wednesdays and Thursdays and the current proposal we are working on is giving them direction and an action plan for the coming year. We have needed to work together on this as one of our first readings was on using the Spiral Inquiry model, which states the benefits of working collaboratively and how inquiry is an evolving practice. My Wednesdays have been in isolation but I have been able to guide and generate ideas for the team and the cogs are full steam ahead on Thursdays. I make the effort to discuss what has happened on Fridays and leave my class during our Friday assembly time to refocus with the team. When I am asked how my new job is going, I'm really struggling to verbalise what I am doing and how it relates to my job description. in the 'PIT' not knowing where to next, but knowing I need to make every effort to make it happen for the COL and myself. Although I am waiting still to hear from some of the schools in our COL what they would like to achieve in 2017.

Being part of the team has also given me time to share the PaCT tool with another COL in another region.  My understandings of the tool have been developed more as I work closely with another colleague who has 'got it' better than anyone else. She is a machine and is this year stepping up to fill a Team Leader position. I am currently in that uncomfortable space where I am letting go of practices and my own procedures for teaching. The PaCT tool has aspects and domains for Mathematics, Reading and Writing. These aspects have big ideas around them and have been worked out to give the teacher an OTJ of where the students sit in their learning. These big ideas can take time to achieve but are weighted depending on the needs of the student. PaCT is a more holistic approach but needs to be backed up with evidence across your practice.

So back to feeling in the 'PIT' so to speak - as part of our practice this year, is to give ownership of the learning to the children, we are getting the children to design their own timetables and opt in to the learning workshops. This has been hard as I want something concrete and what I know has worked in the past, but it doesn't quite work that way. The children are given an assessment, pretest for statistics (this was an area of identified need from PaCT) and then it is marked with the children, then they decide what they need to work on. As I teacher, then design our programme accordingly, no different you say, the difference is the children decide when they opt in to the teaching sessions and who they work with. I like this as it build confidence in those student who are struggling, and they feel supported. My problem is encouraging those to who aren't motivated learners to be focused and meet deadlines in a timely fashion. I get maths and am feeling confident that the learning is happening in Maths.

So initially the plan was to get one area sorted then move onto the next. Writing is going to be a Teacher Action Inquiry focus for our cohort. The way we have begun to challenge the 'norms' is to change to way we use exercise books and enable the children more with devices. The children are working in a creative writing book, a large lecture book and a writing skills and vocab book. PaCT assessments last year in writing came to a crash when through moderation we realised that writing should be assessed across the curriculum and we weren't placing enough emphasis on this.  However, we have began to encourage better writing in all books and make the children more aware that writing isn't just in one book. My assessment of writing this week was timely as the children now have their own personal next steps and are opting in for writing, although this will  make Monday nights all about the planing. I'm up for that especially if the children can verbalise what they want to learn.

Two down, one to go. Reading - how do we assess reading?  Running records is the current practice but is it the best? As I said earlier I am working with another team member in my class with the children, she works the 2 days I am out. Together, we decided that we had 'got' Maths and Writing and this is rumbling along. We decided that we need to have some data to share with the children so we could follow the practice with Reading. Being organised, my off-sider copied the running record sheets and we were up and running. The reading planning was such that we could make use of our teaching time to get our assessment underway.

Our Team Leader then asked us why we were doing running records. When you are questioned it makes you think, freeze, question your judgement and doubt your practice. So in the PIT!!! my next step is to do some professional reading and find out how to get out of the 'pit' and how I can transform my current practice to make learning in Reading better for my children. I know that I will need to ask more questions and work with others to find some solutions.

Learning is about 'falling in head first' and 'getting back up and out'. Time to practice what I preach to my children.

Improving Writing for those who are struggling

This coming term, I am looking forward to teaching writing. During our planning day the Team analysed their data for writing and looked at what our needs were for writing in our cohort. There is a trend of content and ideas as well as language features being an area of concern. One of the teachers in the syndicate had found a link in tki about creating success for boys.

After sharing the link with the Team, we agreed this would be a way we could engage our boys and in turn improve the quality of the writing in our cohort. As I read through our planning I am feeling excited and engaged myself...hope I can instill these feeling of enthusiasm with my children.

There are some very important research I need to be mindful of as I teach these struggling writers which happen to be boys.

Except from Story Starters - Teacher Support Materials - HOW BOYS LEARN

RESEARCH
Learners, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, age or any other characteristic only learn when they are motivated to learn and are engaged with what is to be learnt. The evidence is that boys are not achieving as well as girls in reading and writing. The issue then, is how best to engineer learning environments that they find motivating and engaging. There is much research available that provides guidance with this.

The Best Evidence Synthesis Diverse Students1 (2003) was designed to provide a collation of the evidence of what works within the context of diverse classes of students which is the reality for New Zealand teachers. Ensuring that boys learn and achieve as well as girls is one of the problems of diversity that teachers face.

This resource specifically draws on many of the aspects listed in the Best Evidence Synthesis:
• Teaching and tasks are structured to support students’ active learning orientations.
• Students help each other with resource access and provide elaborated explanations.
• Pedagogical practice is appropriately responsive to the interdependence of socio-cultural and cognitive dimensions.
• Relevance is made transparent to students.
• Ways of taking meaning from text, discourse, numbers or experience are made explicit.
• Teaching builds on students’ prior experiences and knowledge.
• Student diversity is utilised effectively as a pedagogical resource.
• Teaching is responsive to all learners • Students have opportunities to resolve cognitive conflict.
• Optimal use is made of complementary combinations of teacher-directed groupings, co-operative groups, structured peer interaction and individual work (including homework) to facilitate learning cycles.
• Tasks and classroom interactions provide scaffolds to facilitate student learning
• Students receive effective, specific, appropriately frequent, positive and responsive feedback.
• Teaching promotes metacognitive strategy use (e.g. mental strategies in numeracy) by all students.
• Teaching scaffolds reciprocal or alternating tuakana teina roles in student group, or interactive work. • Teaching promotes sustained thoughtfulness (e.g. through questioning approaches, wait-time, and the provision of opportunities for application and invention).

Additional research has provided practical strategies for teaching boys that we have used to critique and shape the resources.

An international study by Richard Hawley and Michael Reichert2 examined the narratives submitted by teachers and boys from 18 schools representing the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa of specific lessons and practices that they deemed especially effective.
“The successful lessons fell into the following eight general categories, each of which expresses a dominant feature of the lesson’s reported success:
• Lessons that produced products
• Lessons structured as games
• Lessons requiring vigorous motor activity
• Lessons requiring boys to assume a role or responsibility for promoting the learning of others
• Lessons that required boys to address “open,” unsolved problems
• Lessons that required a combination of teamwork and competition
• Lessons that focused on boys’ personal realization (their masculinity, their values, their present and future social roles)
• Lessons that introduced dramatic novelties and surprises

Nearly every reported lesson included multiple elements, as when a teacher devises a game in which boys form teams to create a product that will be judged competitively. It appeared increasingly clear to us as we reviewed the teacher responses that these lessons had a distinct for-boys cast, a finding roundly confirmed by the boys themselves.” Story Starters is a resource that is specifically designed to be used in ways that tick the majority of these features.

In summary, these resources are designed to engage and motivate boys because:
• Content has been designed by boys for boys
• The content is fun – in a boyish sort of way
• They involve videos that require the boys to address open, unsolved problems
• They involve team work
• They enable teachers to engage with humour with the boys sense of fun and drama So with
• They enable boys to connect with the teacher as relational learners (Wayne Martino, 20083 )

Story Starters is not a panacea for boys’ underachievement but, in the hands of a teacher who is keen to adjust his or her teaching to be responsive and to motivate and engage boys, it will prove a useful and fun resource.

So with this in mind, roll on Monday!!!

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

TAI and ALiM

I have always loved everything about Maths and sometimes have not understood the difficulties people have understanding MATHS.

At the moment my Teacher Action Inquiry is on how an intervention can make a impact for the struggling mathematicians in my class. This has made me unpack what maths is, how it is taught (by myself and the school's protocols) and why don't these children "get it". These children have been failing in Maths for sometime and have been on the radar as children needing help. Of the 5 children in the intervention, 1 was part of an intervention last year.

What I first noticed of these children, was their lack of confidence and willingness to try to solve problems. Even when the problem was at their level they need more encouragement to use what they did know such as skip counting, making tidy tens and counting through 10s, 100s, 1000s. These children said out loud to me, " I can't do maths" "I don't get it" "Is the answer..." " I'm not sure, could it be.."

So how do you get children to take risks when they have always got the answer wrong? The approach needs to be about the learning not so much the answer.

• How will you find the answer? 
• What do you know and how can you use that?

I also decided that these children needed some of the fundamentals of how numbers work, what they look like and the unpacking of the language of maths. To do this I work with these children every day for an extra 15mins after lunch. They are doing the thinking and I am recording their thoughts, and materials to manipulate are used. I have used a range of number knowledge problems as well as taught them new strategies before the rest of the class (front loading) and their confidence has improved. Also at the end of the week, I teach them a game using counters, cards, dice and photocopied and laminated game boards to take home and play with their families and friends. The game reinforces the learning of the week. The children are required at the end of each session to tell me what they have learnt and how they can use the strategy or knowledge in the real world.

As part of the intervention (funded by the Ministry) parent contact is a requirement and the ALiM mentor ran a parent night to informing the parents of why their child had been chosen, what we hoped to achieve and what they could expect during the 15 weeks. I have used my class dojo to regularly inform the parents of the children's efforts and how they are progressing. Also when those parents come to class, I make an effort to reinforce the progress the child is making in maths and asking them what they have noticed.

 I have discovered that the children are now more willing to share ideas with their peers when first challenged with a new problem. They want to record their thinking and will challenge others when they think/know they are wrong. The children are often ready before myself after lunch and want to learn new maths. Also some of the other children in the class have joined in the group as they see themselves not doing as well as the selected group.

My challenge is to sustain the confidence and knowledge for these children for the rest of the year as the problems become more challenging and without the intervention. Maybe I need to set aside time for these children to come for help/ next steps when working with the normal rotations.


Here is the link to my updated Inquiry template so far. SH - 2016

Student Lead Learning - Student Agency

This subject has been on my radar since my appraisal last year and since the new DP has come to our school. Many times this year during 'Walk throughs' with him, I have begun to question my own teaching practice.

Am I moving with the times? What does student lead learning look like in my class? How am I guided the learning? Or am I still driving all the learning in my class? Do my children understand what they need to learn or am I telling them?

A profession development was run in our school early this week,about using learning in the 21st century and the use of Google clssrooms. The first session was full of questions around what will the children who have just begun school, 5 year olds need when they hit the work force and how the technology in the world maybe used and what as educators are we doing to set up these children for success. The presentation was all questions, which resonated with me, made me feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time. Are the children in my class compliant or passionate about learning?

Earlier in the same day I had conducted observations of 2 colleagues teaching Mathematics  with the DP and we discovered a common need in the classes. It was the learning process, parts were missing. There were WALTs and success criteria and the children could verbalise what they were learning but when asked they asked why they were learning the concept, the children were unable to answer. Also where was the application of the strategy and what did they do when they "got it" and how did they know.

The DP has a strong belief that in Mathematics we should start with a problem- solving approach and ask the children to share ideas to solve the problem, then discuss what we did to solve the problem and construct the WALT and SC from there. Once the strategy (Teacher Guided) is shared and unpacked then the children, discuss the why (which would be more evident using a problem to start) and give the children an opportunity to practice the new strategy. During this practice time the children should be marking and reflecting on their progress. If the children "get it" then they should be given a "real life" problem to solve applying the learning.

So as part of my discovery into changing my pedagogy I have been reading about The Learning Pit and learning in the 21st century. My brain is full of ideas, and I am mindful of what the facilitator said that it is a journey, start small and think what is in place already in your class to make this work. Maths is my strength but I feel the children have a better idea of what they need to learn in writing from the assessment I have shared with them. I'm going to try and have go at guiding the learning using a opt in approach- the children will on Monday, plan their writing timetable for the week. I will make time for them to reflect and evaluate their learning after each session. The children will need to understand what their writing needs.

My task now is to create a template of the writing plan, I will need to make provision for those children who will need more support, maybe even a checklist that the children can mark themselves on when they have "got it". So Monday's planning will need to be about using a timetable and about what we as a class hope to achieve. Excited and nervous at the same time!