TOD led by Anaru Morgan

Anaru showed a short video - The Legend of Birds and shared a number of karakia he has written which relate to a variety of birds and their differing environments.

He then shared Pepeha o te Kura - explaining the links to HES school and whenua

Ko wai koe? Where are you from?

It is especially important that Maori students know where they are from, and I think as equally important for everyone to have that sense of identity and belonging.

Whakapapa Celebration - Anaru highlighted the need to help students walk in two worlds - Ka Hikitia and to celebrate everyone's roots…. In order to grow a sense of  “who Í am” Ko wai au?

Korero tuku

Resources to note

Maori maps - put in area, will show marae, give hapu, iwi etc

Te Puni Kokiri - Te Kahui Mangai - iwi maps

% of Maori died in land wars  - was more than in WWI - Te Takanga o te wa - Maori history (refer doc)

Role Models - displayed...Maori, Pasifika, all cultures, future focus

Something for us to think about how we would like to include in our classrooms in 2019 is:

The Classroom Paepae (child led)

Tchr - Kia karakia tatou

1st Karakia/prayer/blessing

2nd kaikorero - pepeha

All sing waiata - roll…

As well as to use that time to welcome any new students, a welcome waiata (remembering to involve family who can introduce their child, child to speak)

This followed by

Pippa’s pepeha

Turangawaewae Planning

Nature trail - protected space

Art Exhi - Maori & Pasifika T3

e-asTTle

e-asTTle

This year I was introduced to the e-asTTle online learning and assessment tool as a form of assessment to assess students’ achievement and progress in writing. I’ve always been interested to see what e-asTTle was as I had heard good things about it from other teachers’ who I consider to be experts in literacy and writing.

The main drawback I was concerned about is that I had read on an online teaching site that many teachers found that it took a long time to mark, and there also seemed to be frequent problems with entering data and information being lost and frozen.

Our school has administered the e-asTTle assessments twice, once in Term 1 as a test run and then in Term 2 as an assessment to be formally entered. I can appreciate the way that the e-asTTle is a measure of what students can do independently without teacher scaffolding and support.  I agree that E-asTTle is a good way of measuring student progress over time. While we often make an OTJ based on student work, I have often wondered to myself what about what students are actually capable of…..by themselves. I feel that this tool is more of an accurate assessment of student’s ability and capability when determining what they can do independently.

However, I did find that it took me a while to mark. The first time I marked a class lot I did a few at a time over a few days,  then later on I wondered if my own OTJ levelling was the same over a period of time! While the second time I marked a class lot, I did it all in one go (and yes it did take me hours) but I still found it better than dragging it out. Also, I felt that my assessments were more on an equal par. I also probably added to my workload by making the marking take longer as I tend to write Next Learning Steps on the sample itself, as I find this helpful for informing my teaching as well as when it comes to writing individual student reports. I haven’t experienced any problems with entering data or logging in.

So while I may find it time consuming to mark, I still feel that it is a good tool to measure writing by. One aspect of our writing assessment which I don't find as beneficial is highlighting Reading and Writing progression forms per student twice a year. Not only is it time consuming, but I believe that I know the Literacy Learning Progressions enough to know if students' are working towards, at or above standard and that it adds to my workload with highlighting individual forms. Feedback from other teachers has been that my OTJ's and NLS's which I often list on the forms are what they have found to be more valuable. I like making my own judgement and not necessarily following the previous teacher's highlighting. Another good benefit of e-asTTle samples is that they are easily moderated within the team and across school levels.

I am still deciding whether I think e-asTTle results link that well with the Writing Standards and Literacy Learning Progressions regarding curriculum levels. However, it is good that it takes into consideration students' ideas in writing and it does serve to highlight individual student strengths and weaknesses. The Progression sheets place a lot more emphasis on phonological spelling issues while the e-asTTle has it as one area out of a number of areas.

IT in the Classroom - Chapter Chat

Class Twitter @ PonderersRoom8

A primary focus for my teaching inquiry this year has been to introduce IT more into my teaching and to the students in my classroom. In Term 1, I started a new reading project called Chapter Chat. Chapter Chat is a Twitter based book club for New Zealand kids. Our class follow the Year 3 & 4 Chapter Chat group. What happens is that each term a chapter book is selected and during the week I read 3-4 chapters aloud to my class according to a set reading schedule. At the end of the week, all the Chapter Chat classes that follow each other come together to discuss the chapters. Questions are posted on twitter every 10 minutes for students to tweet answers to. I keep up to date with reading activities through a shared teacher Facebook and Twitter group.

In Term 1, we read Tuesday's at the Castle, and in Term 2, we read Matilda and in Term 3, we are going to read The Sasquatch Escape. This has been my first foray into Twitter. The students' all really enjoy Chapter Chat; they have learned to tweet and respond to other students online. It has also been an excellent way of sharing work and collaborating with other classes throughout New Zealand.

I found the students were engaged with responding to what they had learned through their reading, and the use of twitter appealed to all students. The questions encouraged students to think critically and be challenged by vocabulary that would have been otherwise overlooked. Tweet guidelines need to be followed and questions answered properly in full sentences with punctuation. 

Twinkle are also very supportive of Chapter Chat, and provide free resources to support the reading of weekly chapters. The shared questions and optional tasks mean that resources are easily available. I find that there is total engagement by my class in Chapter Chat. The students are motivated to complete tasks, which are often added to our weekly Home Learning as a optional extra. However, many of the students who may not necessarily normally complete their reading, spelling and math...often complete the assigned Chapter Chat tasks! Often if they don't have time at home they will happily complete these before school or during their recess breaks.

Something that I hadn't anticipated by our involvement with Twitter was the impact of my students enjoying seeing the work which other students and classes have been completing. They are  positive and generous with their feedback towards the completed work of others. Chapter Chat provides an authentic audience to students individual ideas and opinions. We really love it and it has added so much to my reading programme.

Relationships and Leadership

Open-to-Learning Conversations - Relationships and Trust

Viviane Robinson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_l5-HKIR1s

Viviane Robinson talks about the importance of trust when having open to learning conversations with teachers. I agree that trust is crucial to building positive relationships with staff. Teachers trust leaders on the basis of their implicit judgements of daily interaction, doing work, and how they treat people in doing the work. It is difficult to trust those they don’t see as being competent, or those who do not do the difficult stuff.

Viviane refers to education as being a team business, she goes on to talk about goal setting, and strategic resourcing. She talks about the importance of trust. The risks that team members will take is dependent on the way that leaders treat people. The teacher has the most significant impact on student learning, and the teacher is impacted on by the effect of leadership creating the conditions within the school. I think this is a really important point that we as a leadership team should keep uppermost in our minds to ensure we create an environment for positive growth in our teachers and school.

Results based evaluation is an unsatisfactory approach to the evaluation of teaching quality. The bottom line for leaders and teachers is the difference they make to student learning, not the students’ absolute level of achievement (p 89 reading). I believe this is an important point, which of course goes against the government National Standard tick box approach. 

Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck & Susan Mackie 29 August 2016

Today our leadership team attended growth mindset professional development led by Susan Mackie. Before the day we were given some of Dweck's youtube clips to preview.

The Journey to a Growth Mindset: Carol Dweck's Live Keynote Presentation

This year in our school wide PD we have read a few readings about Fixed and Growth mindset, which had primarily been a you are or you aren't. After watching some of the clips it was interesting to see that we are really often in the middle with some aspects. The challenge is to identify areas in which to change one's fixed approach. 

The Science of Character is an interesting clip about ways that we can continue to cultivate our character.

Is what I am about to do a reflection of who I am and what I want to be?

watch your thoughts: they become words

watch your words: they become actions

watch your actions: they become habits

watch your habits: they become your character

watch your character: it becomes your destiny

frank outlaw

In preparation for the day we were asked to complete I WANT TO BE....

My response is that I want to be a teacher who is able to grow and inspire my students!

After taking 8 pages of notes from the day, some of the main points I want to reflect on are

• What are my strengths? How can they be cultivated
• Explore own mindset triggers - how to respond to everyday challenges and demands to help us become the people we want to be 
• How to foster success through growth mind practices - Give back zest for learning – develop abilities through effort, strategies, everybody can get smarter approach

The growth mindset approach is A tool to help students learn and as teachers we have to ask ourselves how to make that journey to a growth mindset successful. We are looking to probe for understanding rather than saying 'try harder'....ask what strategies have you tried? What will you try next?

1.   Learn 

2. Work hard, use strategies, seek help to learn, 

3. Learn from mistakes

Fixed Mindset v's Growth Mindset the Battle Within Us All

Growing Students Growth Mindset

  Change your Words, Change your Mindset

Growth Mindset Resources

Carol Dweck and Susan Mackie

Suggested Readings

• http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html
• http://leaders.edweek.org/a-letter-from-carol-dweck-2016-keynote-speak 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3nT2KDAGOc 8 min clip 

Suggested youtube clips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuq91hqUvBg
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0mgOOSpLU