Mathematics-N.Z.E.I Professional Development

On Wednesday 9th August I attended a Mathematics course by Audrey Tan through the N.Z.E.I free professional development intiative. I loved the positive mindset she had about maths-"your brain grows when you make a mistake." Audrey presented us with research that showed how low NZ performance is in maths compared to other countries. I liked this quote "If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn." She suggested a simple recipe that results in rapid improvement. Step 1. Efficiency and accuracy with the 4 basic operations. Step 2 Word problems and applications (instead of teaching strategies). Step 3 Whole class teaching Step 4. Explicit instruction/student practice. I think we are covering the 4 basic operations well in the junior school. We are teaching the children knowledge and strategies through the new Numeracy framework. The children encounter word problems for these 4 basic operations throughout their instructional maths lessons. They have time to practise with 5 questions to prove it afterwards. I really liked seeing problem solving in action on our visit to Hoon Hay School which I think ties in well with this P.D lecture. I am keen to give this a go and would like to start with 'Mrs Johnston's Laundry.' I enjoy both whole class teaching and ability grouped. I think a mixture of both would be good for the students. Mostly our strands are taught as a whole class which does work well. Audrey suggested many ways why whole class teaching is very beneficial in increasing student engagement and teacher contact time.

Writing Inquiry-Professional Reading Reflection

Reflection on Professional Reading

The following is a guide to challenge your thinking while reading professional articles.

Name and Author of the article:

The Overall Quality of Teaching of Writing in Years ½

Evaluation-Education Review Office

How does it link to your goals?

What other writing initiatives can I introduce to increase student engagement?

This article gives me many ideas for writing initiatives that I could use to increase student engagement in writing:

-put up examples of exemplars best practices in writing

-highlighter editing by the children/pair marking

-writing corner to use in children’s spare time

-observe other teachers

-children’s goal in writing (student voice)

-classroom displays showing successful goals achieved

-use objects, artifacts for motivation

-interesting/exciting words chart

-planning: use diagrams and charts

-dictionary lesson: challenge to fix 3 words in their writing

What is this article telling you? Key Issues:

• Best use of writing assessments to inform teaching
• How well teachers in Years ½ classrooms used instructional writing strategies in their teaching
• The overall quality of teaching of writing in Years ½ classes
• Promoting and monitoring high expectations for achievement in writing

What is challenging and interesting?

“Learning to read and write is like being a ‘code cracker’. Writing has conventions that require the decoding and encoding skills of reading and writing letters, words and text. Learners have to master not only the code but also use their knowledge and strategies to get meaning from what they read and to convey meaning through what they write.”

I thought it was an interesting choice of words that would be good to use with the children, motivate them, make it fun. I already use ‘detective’ in my teaching and think this would be good to add to it to explain what they are doing.

What is the writer’s viewpoint? What led them to this view?

That there are many things working well in schools and many that are not from their evaluation. They want to draw your attention to the critical things that must be done to promote high levels of children’s achievement in literacy. The evaluation from the evidence they collected led them to this view.

How valid are the claims the author makes? (Is this article substantiated by quality research?) The claims are very valid coming from the Education Review Office and the evaluation they did with 212 schools in 2009 as part of their review.

What is one thing that you will change as a result of reading this article? The children are not keen to reread their work and make changes. I will introduce highlighters and get the children to analyse their own work against their learning outcomes. I will ask the children what their goals for writing are (student voice) We will introduce peer marking. Look at exemplars together/success criteria

What steps could you put in place to bring about the change?

Use a child’s piece of work (photocopy) to demonstrate how to edit and make changes. Use highlighters to mark against the learning outcomes. Children to share their writing more by reading it to buddies, other classes. Put more of an emphasis on writing for an audience-first sentence to hook the reader in! Teach the children to edit other children’s work appropriately/set up guidelines. Gather together exemplars to show children.

How might this impact on your teaching and the teaching of others?

Look into more exemplars to show the children successful examples of different learning areas. Many ideas to engage the children in writing to try. Work on implementing the things that worked well in schools into my writing programme.

How might you evaluate the degree of success of the change or improvement?

Monitor the evidence from the highlighter marking in their books/editing

Observe children engagement at writing time

Children state their learning outcomes/next steps, refer to exemplars

Synopsis:

Evaluation:

-Terms ½ 2009 ERO evaluated the quality of teachers literacy practices in Years ½ in 212 schools having an education review.

-52% full primary schools, 45% contributing primary schools, 3% composite schools.

-2 overarching evaluative questions guided this evaluation:

*How well do teachers assess, plan and teach reading and writing to children in Years ½

*How well does the school promote and monitor high achievement expectations in reading and writing in Years ½

-ERO collected evidence by:

*observing teacher practice

*talking with key groups of teachers and senior staff members

*looking at school documents relevant to inquiry

*school questionnaire-70% schools responded

Writing: ERO evaluated:

*How well teachers in Year ½ classrooms used writing assessments to inform their teaching

Working well in schools:

-Professional development:more accurate judgements about children’s writing

-Use of  The NZ Curriculum exemplars, literacy learning progressions, Effective literacy practice in Years ¼ handbook

-Share research/literature about effective writing practice, discuss to implement in the classroom

-Observed each other teaching

-Shared successful teaching approaches

-Critically analyse writing samples: Children mastered/next steps/groupings

(within school/clusters)

-Team/School/Cluster meetings:reflect/discuss practices

-Regular meetings to moderate writing samples/children’s needs/children’s goals-monitored through conferences

-Classroom displays:successful goals

-Three way conferencing

-Writing conferences when marking work with the children

*How well teachers in Years ½ classrooms used instructional writing strategies in their teaching

Working well in schools:

-Purpose for writing, familiar experiences

-Used objects, artefacts, books, visual-photographs, computer images of events, learning activities/discoveries -  for motivation

-Big books/texts during shared reading to show link between reading/writing

-Children made choices about writing topics

-Many opportunities to write independently

-Oral language activities promoted discussions before writing

-Effective questioning by teacher encouraged children to think more deeply/clarify thoughts before writing

-Children talked in small groups/buddies before writing

-Teachers immediately reinforced children’s suggestions when they offered interesting/exciting words

-Introductory discussions carefully timed for motivation

-Teacher showed interest/enthusiasm in children’s ideas

-Given ways to improve their writing

-Broke down the skills

-Plan using diagrams, charts and pictures

-Good classroom management/groups-additional help/extension

-Teachers roved reinforcing children’s success with the language features/writing skills

-Children assess their own writing/help peers critique their work

-I can../goal sheets, highlight in work when achieved

-Time to share writing/recognise writing for an audience

-Celebration of children’s writing display

-Word cards, simple dictionaries, highlighter pens for editing, computers

-Displayed books of children’s writing to read

-Writing corners-write in spare time

*The overall quality of teaching of writing in Years ½ classes

Working well in schools:

-Knowledge of the processes and features of writing

-Regularly provide highly motivating opportunities for children to develop and enjoy their writing

Promoting and monitoring high expectations for achievement

Working well in schools:

-Clearly expressed, well-known, well documented literacy expectations, Agreed, written and shared with school community, part of class and school-wide monitoring and review, outlined achievement levels

-Teachers/school leaders used resources(Literacy learning progressions, standardised 6 year net scores, progress indicators-NZ Curriculum exemplars) as reference points to set of modify expectations

-Expectations: challenging/focused on improvement

-Children’s progress rates monitored regularly, identify need for support/enrichment programmes

-High, realistic writing achievement expectations shared with parents/families

-Parents invited to information evenings

-Children expected to make meaningful progress right from when they began school

Teacher’s Questionnaire:

-71% of schools that completed questionnaire reported having  a writing goal/target for Year 1 children, 70% for Year 2 children

-Schools used various tools to explain writing achievement expectation

E.g NZ Curriculum exemplars english matrix, modified matrix linked to asTTle assessments, Level 1b, 1(ii)/1p, 1(iii)/1a, level 2.

Teacher’s Next Steps:

-Use the findings in the report to:

-Reflect on the quality of teaching, assessment and monitoring of writing

-Participate in ongoing opportunities to extend their understanding of the theory and content knowledge

-Develop their capability in using reference points to monitor children’s progress towards expected achievement levels.

Movie-Most Likely to Succeed

I attended the movie night at school-'Most likely to succeed' in April. The part of the movie that had the most impact for me was watching the boy struggling with his part of the project at the end. I wanted to step in and help him so he and his team had something to present on the celebration night. I thought about the impact that night would of had on the boy and his teammates. I was impressed how he didn't give up and eventually finished his task weeks later. As a teacher it is sometimes hard to step back but it can be more beneficial for the child if we do. In our collaborative environments we are teaching more independence and responsibility.

Phonics Course

I recently attended a phonics course run by Yolanda Soryl. I have wanted to go on a phonics course for a long time as I have no formal training in the subject and every school I have taught at was doing a different programme. I really enjoyed the course and was amazed at the amount of information that was packed into the one day course. I liked how she went through each stage and modelled the steps. There were alot of resources she shared and many were on her own website. I have now started teaching from the phonics booklet I have recieved and hope to add into the day many of her word games. I have been watching her utube clips and find them very helpful. Step by step she goes through the lesson with a group of students. I am currently working on stage 4 as this is what I am teaching in the classroom. I feel more confident teaching phonics and excited about trying new ideas with the children.

Yolanda Soryl's Website

Phonics Stage 4 Yolanda Soryl