Reflective Practice

  This book has been on my list for awhile.  A colleague gave me her copy and I'm glad I took the time to read it.  It has been good reflective practice for me in how I might have done things differently in the past and what things I will bring with me to the future.  I like the visual representation that I will include here.  I have two other books I have on my desk at the moment.  The One Thing (The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results) by Gary Keller.  I have gone as far as to google this book and I see there are a number of podcasts all dedicated to the cause.  I'm not much of a self help book kind of person but in the inside cover it says if I want more and less I should keep reading.  I will let you know how I feel about this one in a week or so. The last book I have to flip through is Twice Exceptional (Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties) edited by  Scott Barry Kaufma...

I spent my last day of school at a full day of professional development. I could have spent my last day hanging out waiting for the 3 o'clock bell to ring like most of the students and teachers I know. S o a full day of having to have my brain turned on seemed a great idea at the start of the term.    Not many will disagree with me when I say that it has felt like a long year.  If I ever hear the word 'unprecedented' again it will be too soon.  Yet it is the word that most aptly described what was 2020. Covid came and stayed, plans for Canada in May were then put on hold and I found myself applying for a new job.  And that is why I found myself  sitting on a chair designed for the bum of an 8 year old learning why children (around the world) were struggling to learn to read. The day began with the why...statistics and graphs that were unrefutably indicating we are making a hash up of how NZ teachers are trying to get kids to read.  In my head ther...

Our year 5 and 6 syndicate has been trialling flipped learning or blended learning as a way to increase the engagement of our learners. We all found many successes in teaching remotely during lock down that we, like so many other educators around the globe, have decided to bring the best of that approach to the fore of our teaching strategies today. I learned a lot during lockdown and so did my students. Now we are working together to try and co-create a model that facilitates a way of allowing students to Basically this process is just me working with my 29 Year 5 and 6 students to see what works and what we need to change each week to make our learning better. Our team is working together but before we make this a more collaborative effort we have been given the opportunity to try some ideas that we feel work best for us and our learners. Initially we started with something similar to what I had created for our learning@home. These slides were filled with a variety of images, t...

Time, Twitter and Teamwork I used to complain that I never had enough time. Then, like most everyone on the planet, I quickly found myself with an abundance of it but with a new paradigm to confront.  Online shopping was a waste of time with non-essential deliveries at a standstill, so I turned my attention instead to researching good teaching practice and reflecting on how that might look for my learners. (And quite frankly,  it seemed like a better option than scrubbing the watermarks off my shower screen).  Early on in this process,  I read that I should think about creating a digital brand.  As teachers, we all have our perceptions of who we are in our face-to-face classroom teaching...so it made sense that I needed that personality to come through digitally - and I found that using Bitmojis. They eerily represent you for every imaginable situation, in avatar form.  It was a way of placing me on every piece of work even when I wasn’t in a Google Me...

In February this year our staff had the MOE come and give some staff PD.  It involved  whole school staff groups and focused mainly on prevention and de-escalation strategies.   It was a timely reminder of our responsibilities to ourselves and our students.  There were two sessions. Understanding Behaviour, Responding Safely (UBRS) Session 1: How the brain works.  This was not the most informative session I have ever been asked to attend.   Luckily our school went to a day with kiwi speaker Nathan Wallis (that looked into the developing brain the first 1000 days) in 2018 so most of our staff had been previously exposed to this quick lesson in brain development and anatomy.  It certainly doesn't hurt to hear things again - it wasn't interesting but no one died.  And, it was a good reminder of what we have learned previously.   Session 2: Dealing with extreme behaviour. This session was about how schools c...

I have always used chess and cup stacking in my yearly teaching programme - from nearly the beginning of my time teaching in NZ.  Learners of all ages are keen to get in and learn these “games”. The benefits of teaching chess to young learners is well known. But the benefits of cup stacking perhaps not so much. Cup stacking has many benefits for learning in the classroom.   Researchers have found that it targets specific areas of the body and the brain to increase intelligence, problem solving skills and critical thinking.  It is a fun yet and intense game. “What many teachers and educators may not know is the impact cup stacking can have  on a child’s visual processing skills and reading ability. Because the child is moving their hands so quickly, their eyes must also track the cups and the movement of their hands as they participate in the activity. The eyes naturally cross the midline to accomplish this task. These skills are very importan...

As any teacher will say, it becomes clear (quite quickly) that differentiated instruction for you class is all but impossible.  Trying to create individual learning plans is an incredibly time consuming endeavor and in my experience is a one-way trip to teacher teacher burnout. To implement said plans a similarly mammoth task.  That being said, the kids in my class deserve to be scaffolded as they require when problem solving.  Vygotsky’s ideas around the Zone of Proximal Development and the subsequent ideas of others working in the social learning discipline address the ideas of diversity within the classroom.  “Design learning is all about trying to meet the diverse and variable needs of all students in your classroom.” ( TKI ) “Planning can incorporate students “in the margin” while at the same time benefiting all students in the classroom. Addressing diversity through the UDL lens helps teachers accommodate individual differences through inten...

Mid-year and end-of-year reports are the worst part of my teaching year.  Written reports are all about how we communicate information about each student to their family and whanau. But there are times when I wonder how valuable these written reports are to parents...or are they just more of a mystery?  Regardless of how I personally feel about them...they still have to be done.  I can’t say my school hasn’t tried to make them more meaningful and less mysterious...  But a miss is as good as a mile. I’m not sure that our parents really understand them. And this is probably due to the fact that teachers are not great at writing them. I spend a great deal of time agonising over writing my reports.  Trying to succinctly say what I tried to teach a child over six months is no easy task.  Trying to write it in ordinary language without parents requiring a B’Ed to understand can be a mission in and of itself.  So after a number of years ...

This year many of the St Mary's staff completed  a "home" based maori language paper through Te Wananga O Aotearoa.  It was nice to have a group of like minded learners working together to complete the mahi. Our tutor was Madrina and she was very helpful and understanding as we completed the set tasks.  The course was an interesting blend of familiar ideas and language as well as delving deeper into some areas of maori that I hadn't yet studied.  There is a certain satisfaction in completing these courses as it shows that as a staff we are committed to acknowledging we need support. The course was very well resourced and the cards and other books were succinct enough that I still use them with my class.  In particular I enjoyed the last module about copyright and how certain ideas that uniquely maori need to be procected even if they are used with the best of intentions. Trying to teach maori in an authentic context with in schools t...

Over the summer I decided to have a look at why I didn't really feel confident about what I should be including in my teaching portfolio.  These photos are the pages of wonderings about my teaching stacked up again the criteria.  My brainstorm to help me make sense of it all. I think as a staff it would be helpful to do more of this kind of practical unpacking work together - at least until we have working example of what would highlight our current teaching against these criteria in combination with what our school feels are the important aspects we are focusing on school wide. When I chat with my colleagues we all seem to have different ideas about what we should include.  Many of the teachers have a closed blog  and aren't willing to share what they feel are the parts that are good enough to share with the Teaching Council.   I don't really understand that either.  Surely we should be supporting each other and in t...

Check out the three videos below to see a summary of my reflected practice this year. Challenge: Can you figure out the digital numbers the students are making using binary in video 2?  

http://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/ERO-17763-Teaching-Strategies-that-work-Mathematics-v7.pdf ERO created a 68 page document in 2014 (see link above)  to identify what schools around NZ did to be effective in accelerating student progress in mathematics.   Honor Ronowicz, our maths facilitator, has been helping to create change in how teachers at our school teach maths.  It came to a point that no matter what PD we did around maths it did little to change the outcomes for our students. This need for more extensive PLD was triggered by my attendance at an ALiM.   The professional development Honor has provided (along with the maths leadership team) to our school is well-planned and targeted for the needs of our staff. This PLD was designed to improve the teaching of maths in our school from year 0 to year 6.  It became a more collaborative approach to how we used to teach maths. That we as a staff had a collective responsibility to improve our...

High expectations is one of the eight principles set out in the New Zealand curriculum document.   "The high expectations principle means holding high expectations for all students relative to achievement. This means a genuine belief that all students can achieve much higher levels than they currently are, and then putting the learning and action plans in place that make sure that students actually get there."  Professor Christine Rubie-Davies Goal setting is an important way of ensuring that I have high expectations of my students and that these goals are created and communicated with/by students and their families. High expectations help to motivate my students’ learning when they are created together with the student and me and their family. “When students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, goal setting is a logical step in the process.” (ERO 2014-ish) My role is to help my students set relevant goals, to scaf...

Last year a number of teachers decided that they required support to help them to more confidently deliver te reo Māori content throughout their teaching.  Our principal was involved in a language based course at a local high school. We expressed interest in getting something similar happening in our staffroom. Instead we registered for a paper based, self directed course offered through the Wānangna o Aotearoa.  I already completed a Maori language for beginners course (Te Ara Reo Māori). What I think I really need is another course similar to that to help me with figure out how to better pronounce māori words with my Canadian accent.  I personally need someone to help me...a language is too hard to do on my own. Although this year’s course is not the confidence boost we can directly use in the classroom. It is a step in the right direction to answering the question “How is the teaching of my class effective for Māori learners?” Course Description: He Papa ...