End of year goal reflection

My 2016 Appraisal goals are:

#4: demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice	Develop and maintain an ongoing reflective blog with evidence of target student learning in reading, writing and maths that can be used for ACET application
#6: conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme	Work with students to integrate and explicitly plan authentic, purposeful learning experiences (integrated planning template)
#11: analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally	Analyse assessment information and use student e-portfolios to show the ongoing progress and learning needs of students in reading, writing and maths.

#4 Reflection 

I feel like I didn't complete my ACET application to the quality that I would have liked to.  Feedback from the ACET team was that I needed more evidence.  I struggled to collect evidence over the year, not because there wasn't any, but rather remembering to collect it.  Some areas I had excellent evidence for, however there are areas that I needed and need to ensure that I collect evidence.  I would like this to continue to be a goal for me in 2017.

#6 Reflection

We did work with kids to gather their ideas about what they would like to learn.  However, the original thoughts of planning a unit with the students didn't happen like we had planned.  

#11 Reflection

Buffy and I did a lot of analysing of our data and finding next steps and gaps in our students' learning.  e-portfolios started well however our 2016 students were not as independent as past years and they needed a lot of guidance with their e-portfolios.  I would still like to continue with using e-portfolios in 2017.

Term 3 Observation reflection

Following my Term 3 Observation where I worked with a small group on speech writing and revising and editing what the students had already written, rather than teaching a new skill or strategy.
The lesson went well. I had smaller groups than usually and it was more like working one on one with a student, setting them up, then calling another student, and checking in on the other students. I believe this was necessary for the students to do in order to proofread and edit their writing, as well as adding more detail to their writing.

These are my reflections following my observation:

PROMPTS FOR REFLECTION:  

• Why you chose to do this lesson?

This is what we have been doing in class with speeches and I wanted to see if this was an effective way of working with the target students.

• How did the lesson go?

It felt very repetitive as we have been going through their speech quite a lot over the last few weeks.  I feel that it needs to be repetitive for these students though.  There is a lot of guidance given and a lot of oral discussion that has to take place.

• What things worked for the children?

I think that the students benefited from us both having access to their writing on docs.  Going over how to give more detail and elaboration using the keywords - the students are starting to understand this.  

• What have I learnt about these students?

There is a lot of guidance needed.

• What are my next steps?

Continue to work with the students and go over the rest of their piece of writing to ensure that they have elaborated on their ideas.

Then work with the students on the presentation of their speech.

Identification of extra target student for Team Meetings

In a recent team meeting we had to identify other students in our class that we would consider to be target students (apart from those identified at the beginning of the year) and say how these students are being monitored.  We have a number of students that we would say are targets.

Taken from team minutes...

Here’s What, So What, Now What

Let’s go over Writing and Reading - see below and we will discuss these as a team.

We have our targets from the beginning of the year, who else are targets and how are we monitoring them? (These are the students who the teacher identifies as extra targets)  

Teachers to have a look and think about the extra targets and will write in here who they are for Writing

Room M: Brie, Mackenzie, Danielle, Shannon, Kapua, Nathaniel, Styris, William, Alex K, Justis, Nicole, Paige,  Dylan, Kane, Lance, Warren.

Here’s What :

based on current OTJ this students have been identified as being at risk of not meeting the end of year standard.  Within this cohort, there are students capable of meeting the standard.

So What:

A number of students are hindered by a poor attitude to writing.  There are a number that struggle with identifying and using deep language and structural features of different text types. Some students have limited awareness of text types.  Our classroom time constraints are a barrier as well.

Now What:

Continue to use daily scribe time to increase writing mileage.  Analyse and discuss a range of text types to increase word knowledge, identification of language and text features to support students to use in creating their own texts.  

Explicitly teach conventions.  For example, sentence structure.  Subject + verb arrangement.  Use of comma.  

PB4L Conference 2016

It was great to be able to attend the PB4L conference again this year.  This year it was in Wellington and the breakouts that I attend were all really awesome.

Some key things that I took out of the conference were
- look at WHERE in the classroom that problems are occurring
- Ask kids to come up with the rules for each area - and how they fit in with AROHA
- Decision flowchart - what should we as teachers handle and what needs to go to the office?
- Referral form is not a punishment - it is data. What is the consequence for their behaviour?
- New students to school to go through an AROHA programme to ensure they have a full understanding.

These are our PB4L Conference 2016 shared notes that we all contributed to.

Ongoing discussion and reflection about data and OTJ

Miss Turner and I regularly have discussions about data and OTJs for our students in our class.  With many of our students being below the NS there is a push to see reflection of understanding in their classroom learning and work.

Writing is a real low point in our class and so writing, and writing for a period of time, has and will continue to be a focus for Term 3.  A lot of our students struggle to write for a period of time.  They struggle to generate ideas and get stumped and just don't write.

Further to this we have given the option to our students to either write on google docs, or in their workbooks.  Funny enough a lot of our lower writers prefer to write on google docs and are able to get their ideas quicker and easier than writing it in a book.  This has been pleasing to see.

We have discussed using more of the ARBs and the PacT tool came up for discussion and would be something that we would both be keen to look into.

Our data is not reflecting it but I believe that we are working hard with our students to try and have them make progress.  We have many discussions about the movement from 'with support' to 'independently' and we feel that many of our students although they may make progress are not moving to that 'independent' work, especially our students at year 8 level.

ACE - half year reflection 9/7/16

As a unit holder on the ACE team, we also had to do a half year reflection of how things are going with ACE.  Again, it was a great chance to really reflect back on what we have done and what we still need to do.

Looking ahead to Term 3 and 4, we have highlighted the following areas as areas that we still need to work on

• Continued support with digital technologies through Techie Breaky
  
• Reflection on report format that we have used in term 1 and 2
• Sort projector issues in Room HI and STU
• Inquiry preparation for 2017
• Device classes, device purchases and device allocation for 2017
• MLE PL with teachers going into OPR in 2017
• Revisit the eLearning Planning framework (elpf) survey
• Further Teacher Dashboard PL for Team 1
• MLE and collaborative teaching PL.
• eLearning strategic plan
• Curriculum review (guided by Rikki/SLT)

PB4L half year reflection - 9/7/16

I really enjoy having a half year reflection for our units that we hold as it really makes you think back and identify what you have done and what still needs to be done.

For me AROHA is going well and I hear a lot of people that speak highly about PB4L, however I worry that things may be dropping off in some areas.
Some questions I have are
- do staff understand the Tier II data?
- do we analyse the data effectively for ourselves?
- would staff benefit from getting data sent to them prior to discussions?
- is our PB4L reward system working?

From our reflection from Term 1 and 2 the following stood out as areas that required further improvement

• Ensure explicit teaching of AROHA is done in class everyday
• Reinvent a system to acknowledge staff
• Regular meetings (fortnightly) to look at data
• Regular end of month slot at staff meetings to discuss the data as a whole staff - data sent out to staff prior to the meeting
• Continue with the current reward system
• Include a small AROHA slot in Team Meetings to go over specific items
• AROHA lunch in term 3 and term 4
• Focus on Tier II students that are spiking from the data (mid to high yellow)
• Look at how our AROHA 1 and AROHA 2 team can best work to suit the workload and ‘meeting-load’ of staff

There is a lot to be done, but we can do it. Updates to follow.

Term 2 Observation feedback and reflections - 3/7/16

I was nervous about doing this observation as writing is not a strength of mine, but I like having feedback about what I can improve on.

This was a basic lesson, but it was pitched to students who really needed to work on this in their writing.  I had observed incorrect use of tense in their writing done in class as well as a low score (<2B or 2A) in the sentence structure section of the e-asTTle writing text (these were just a handful).

I was caught off guard as I assumed that they knew what a verb was, however the progression of the lesson meant that I had to spend time on going over what a verb was.  This gave the students a better understanding and had me thinking quickly on my feet for a quick little activity that we could do to improve their understanding of verbs.  I forgot to go back to the ‘ing’ part that I underlined when they gave their verb suggestions, however I will do this in the next lesson as part of their revision.

I had planned to have them work on some other sheets, with a small part being the assessment part of the lesson as well as a small exit card activity.  I will also do these with them in the next lesson.  

Thinking about the lesson and the number of students who scored low in the sentence structure section of the e-asTTle writing test - it would probably be of benefit to all to go over this as a half class lesson and then have follow up with those that need extra help.  

Other follow up activities that I would like to do with this group (and others)

• is have a piece of their writing and look for where they have used tense incorrectly and make corrections
• exceptions to the rules (on the sheet handed out) e.g. swam not swimmed

I think the lesson went well.  I liked how engaged they were.  The thing I liked the most was the change in how unsure Martino was at the beginning to how confident he was in the end.  They were all giving it a go.  I was also pleased that Hamish prompted me to build the SC with them at the end of the lesson.  I had forgotten about it after hearing the bell go and trying to wrap up the lesson.