Friday 24 February 2017

2017 PES Maths Inquiry

This year, the teachers at Pt. England will be receiving Maths focused Professional Development.  In addition to this PD, we will be conducting our own personal inquires into our own teaching practice of maths.

My 30 (Year 4) Maths students range in ability from NZ Curriculum Stages 1-early 5.  The majority of my students are working below or well below grade level expectation.  

I have decided to focus my inquiry on investigating which method(s) of rewindable learning will be most beneficial to achieving accelerated learning with my below and well-below students.  I will also be inquiring into the best ways to build student confidence and understanding of basic maths knowledge in an effort to have accelerated learning take place by the end the school year.  


clipart prof de maths

Monday 20 February 2017

Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher

Today was our first day meeting as the Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) cohort.  We had a wonderful day meeting together at the Spark building in Auckland, NZ sharing what we have defined as a problem that we are going to inquire into.  We also spent some time identifying possible hypotheses as to why this is a problem area for our students.

Problem Defined:
How can we extend prior knowledge and critical thinking in an effort to promote dialogic conversations in year 4 students who are reading at/above grade level?

Possible Hypotheses:
Students have not been given the freedom (in earlier years) to explore further on their own into aspects of their text/topic that spark interest.
  • Students are not equipped with how to further explore a topic of interest from their text.
  • Students need to be taught how to manage their time appropriately in order to complete learning tasks.
  • Teachers are not definite on when to shift the focus of learning from decoding to reading for content and formulating deeper understanding from exposure to multimodal texts.
  • Teachers are afraid of the time commitment needed in order the plan for extended reading lessons that go deeper for understanding.  
  • Teachers are unsure where to look for age appropriate reading material.

Planned Innovation:
What would be the best way to compile a cross-cluster database to house texts linked by topic according the reading level?

Evidence of Need:
According to the Wolf Fisher Research Centre, our students learn by talking about what they are learning (dialogic conversations).  These conversations are mostly effective when students have a deeper understanding of a topic from being exposed to multimodal texts.  

Data Gathered:
  • Student PAT and STAR results-Nov 2016 
  • Student PAT and STAR results-Feb 2017
  • Running Records-Nov 2016 
  • 2016 Teacher OTJ-Reading
  • Reading previous student Blog posts 
  • In class micro group discussions

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Manaiakalani Teaching as Inquiry Framework

My 2017 CoL Inquiry Focus:
“Extending prior knowledge and critical thinking, while promoting dialogic conversations with students who are reading at/above grade level.”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2017 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge: 
3. Lift the achievement in reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Māori students (both genders), years 1-13

The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.

The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.



Throughout the year, I will be labelling my blog posts to reflect our Learn, Create, Share structure.


LEvidence
Learn - Gather Evidence
CPlan
Create - Make a plan
SPublish
Share - Publish
LScan
Learn - Scan
CTry
Create - Try new things
SCoteach
Share - Co-teach
LTrend
Learn - Identify Trends
CInnovate
Create - Innovate
SModel
Share - Model
LHypothesise
Learn - Hypothesise
CImplement
Create - Implement
SGuide
Share - Guide
LResearch
Learn - Research
CReflect
Create - Reflect
SFback
Share - Feedback
LReflect
Learn - Reflect


SReflect
Share - Reflect