2017 Appraisal Goals
#1 Communicate at least twice a month with target student whanau, through a variety of different methods, about student learning, needs, progress and/or next steps.
Over the year I have used a range of methods to communicate with target student whanau, this has included
- text messages
- home/school books
- facebook messenger
- phone calls
- Seesaw posts
- notes home
- face to face conversations
- emails
While whanau enjoyed hearing from me, they have really enjoyed seeing their student's work and progress via the Seesaw posts. Some parents make comments and some don't, however it is shared with parents and a great way to keep them up to speed with what the students are learning. It has been the best way to not only communicate with whanau but to also collect evidence for making OTJs, to see progress over the year, and for student's to show off their progress that they have made.
In 2018 I would like to continue to use Seesaw, while also trying to ensure that more whanau are connected to Seesaw.
#11 Use, record and collate evidence in Reading and Writing, in conjunction with the literacy progressions, for making Over All Teacher Judgements.
Term 3 2017
There have been many things to adapt to since having Rikki leave. Erin is acting principal, and we seem to be ticking along nicely. My classroom is ticking along well too and the change to have a Maths, Reading and Writing day has worked really well and I am getting through my workshops much easier. It is funny how you have to change and adapt things each year, sometimes each term, to make it best work for the current classroom.
I have been trialing using digital modelling books for reading, with the hope of using them for maths and writing too. It is very much early days for me with this, trying to see how to make it work best for me and my students.
Students have been set up on Seesaw, and I have at least half of my students parents linked into it so that they can see what their children have been learning about. Seesaw is included in the students learning schedules and students have to post at least 5 times a week. This will be a work in progress, and students will need to ensure that they are posting posts to an acceptable standard.
Term 2, Week 5 2017
I have made a big change in my classroom programme. I have now changed to have a Maths, Reading and Writing day. Today I started with this so I saw all my Writing groups and they then have 2 days to complete the follow up, before they see me again. Tomorrow I will meet with all my Maths Strand groups and the same thing will happen with them, they will have 2 days to complete their follow up work. I am hoping that this will work and will ensure that I am getting through all of my groups regularly. Will see how this will go.
Term 1, 2017 holidays
The last few weeks of term 1 were so hectic and so these holidays have been a much needed rest for not only me but for all the staff. It is has been interesting to see that not many teachers have been in over the holidays, and this has been pleasing, as we all worked so hard in Term 1.
While I had the great plan to have everything sorted in week 1 and then have a good rest in week 2 this hasn't really worked to plan and with 3 days out I am feeling like I have a heap to still do.
Buffy has made a start on digital modelling books which is one of the things that I had as a 'takeaway' from the VPLD hui last year. It has been great that she has made a start on these as it has given me the boot up the bum that I needed in order to get it sorted for my class.
I have decided that in Term 2
- I will be giving my class independent learning schedules and will give them a go at planning their own day and learning.
- I am going to give a new weekly Reading plan a go
- I am going to do a similar Science plan each week (starting week 2) to the Reading plan or similar to the Digital modelling books for Maths that Buffy has started
- I would like to try a similar thing for Te Reo Maori as well
- I need to get my testing timetable going better than it did in Term 1
A few things that really need doing, which I must get onto quickly, and hopefully will do before the end of the holidays are
- Report comments into a google form
- Parent booklet to go out at the beginning of the term
- Gala mufti day letter
- Complete my planning
- Team 1 calendar
I am excited about something that came out of our literacy PL that we had yesterday. It was a Accelerated Progress tracking sheet. I have decided that I am going to use it for 5 of my students in Writing and see how that goes. 2 of the boys are my target writers and then I would also like to focus on a few more students. We will be sharing 1 of these at a staff meeting in Week 6. While I am excited I also just need to get my head around how I am going to make it work.
I have been pleased with the interaction from parents through See Saw, most of my target student parents are now accessing See Saw and are regularly commenting on their child's work. I am going to upload their testing so that their parents can also have access to this.
Lots to do as always but we will get there.
Bring on Term 2!! (Hopefully not to soon though haha as I need to still get a few things done).
Term 1, Week 8, 2017
Wow how time has flown by. Hard to believe that we are in to week 8 already.
So far...
My class is working well and there is a good buzz in the classroom.
All my students have their own learning progressions and goals booklet and we have identified goals that they are working on and have even been able to sign off some goals and LIs that have been set and achieved already. I am excited about using this as it will be of great assistance when doing OTJs and will be great to use and pass on to other teachers for the following year. Rose and Kylie are also going to be using a similar booklet so there is starting to be some cohesiveness throughout our team.
I have quite a few targets this year and I have managed to set up homeschool books for each of these students, I just need to find a system to manage these and see their work regularly. I would like to ensure that these books also have in class learning that has been happening so that they are able to have all their focused work in one place.
I have sent my goals to Rikki to be tweaked a bit, they are based around gathering and collating evidence to assist with making OTJs, and ensuring there is regular contact with my target student whanau.
With Rikki leaving I have offered my assistance with some extra roles. This will hopefully set in place by term 2.
Maths Swap is working well and I am really enjoying it. Am loving how it is clicking with the students and through the use of Learn It, Practise It, Prove It there is some excellent evidence of learning that will assist with making OTJs.
Alongside my reading programme my class will be completing the 40 Book Challenge this year. My students are really enjoying this and completing a Critics Corner sheet has been very beneficial too.
The term will be finished soon and I have a heap of things that I would like to cover before then. My testing timetable hasn't really worked like I would have hoped but I am hoping that I can get this running better in Term 2.
Term 4, Week 8
Testing is all done.
There has been a lot of discussion this term around data and OTJs. To tell you the truth I am quite confused about it all, just when I thought I had a good understanding of it all - such as not just going off one test, taking all things into account etc. Kylie has been great and has been giving us a lot to think about and good readings.
Our data didn't look so good, and I suppose Buffy and I are feeling under the pump about it all. We know that we have worked hard and tried hard to have the kids progress however we feel like there is so much to catch them up on. At year 7 they are to be working with support and year 8, independently. We struggled with our OTJ because we didn't feel that we could put some students at or above. We had a good discussion about this and felt we had to put them where we thought they were based on testing, class work and group work.
Kylie went through her notes from the Change meeting last week, which gave us a little insight, I think we as a school have inconsistencies around OTJ and maybe Buffy and I are being too tough. While I was in team meeting I thought that next year I could continue with the Learn It, Practise It, Prove It and really set up a good system to have their Prove It's recorded - this shows evidence that they can do it (as Kylie talked about in team meeting) and how she explained that they just had to do it once.
Kylie's notes from the Change meeting with Mike Tribe
National Standards and OTJ
Mike Tribe says:
- They can prove they meet the standard
- Show that they have met it in one area
- Motivation / attitude doesn’t matter
- Can apply it
- Cohorts are different
- Be consistent with National Standard data
- Match data to same data, eg. Year 6 2015 to Year 7 2016, same kids
- Take out the new kids to the school
- Translate it other than a test
- Prove it
- Moderation
We will get there - i have definitely enjoyed the in depth discussions we have had in staff meeting and team meetings.
Term 4, Week 3, 2016
Camp is all done. It was a great experience for the kids and a great location!!! The kids were great.
Following that it was into testing and science fair. It was great to do some simple science experiments with the students to give them a better understanding of how to use the scientific method. Looking ahead to next year... I would like to do this more regularly in class so that we don't get to Science Fair term and they are suddenly trying to understand the Scientific process.
Things are feeling very busy right now!!! and it is only going to get worse, with interschool athletics coming up, touch, reports!!!
Term 3, Week 9, 2016
It has been a full on term. With speech writing taking up a bit part of the last weeks of term. To be honest, the speech writing was a real mission with the students and it seemed to Buffy and I that the quality of a lot of the speeches was not to a year 7 or 8 standard. Those that made it to the speech finals and the inter school speech competition did a great job of constructing their speech, however they still needed some guidance.
There has been a real feeling this year of rushing through things, but at the same time I think that we have to go over things in so much detail, and start from the basics for a lot of the students that it has meant that we have run out of time.
One thing that has been working well is the reading and the reading groups that are happening in class. Our students are a lot more focused and giving better answers to questions in reading groups. Students are also enjoying Mathematics and once they have a good understanding of a strategy they are always asking for more practise questions.
Our learn it's, practise it's have been working really well, however the Prove It videos have slipped off a bit and we are really more on their book work to be their prove it. This is still fine. We have more recently had some of the students teaching other groups as a part of their prove it. This has worked well.
Term 4 is going to be just as crazy with camp in week one and then into testing, science fair, athletics and all of the end of the year things.
Term 3, Week 5, 2016
Things are all go!
We had a great Turaki Olympics day, despite the weather it was really neat to have parents come in and support and join in with the day. I love these days and I really enjoyed seeing the students designing their own olympic days. It was a great whole school Olympic day with Team 2 doing all the medals, Team 1 creating and leading modified games, all classes dressing up and joining in. The medal ceremony was neat too, I love these days.
We have been using Number Knowledge booklets in the mornings instead of basic facts booklets. They include a range of activities rather than just basic facts. The students have really improved in their understanding over the 5 weeks that we have been doing it. I really like the change that we made with this.
Term 3, Week 1, 2016
It is quite shocking to think that it is term 3 already. As always things are full on and busy. Target students are still very much a focus, and we are doing a lot of gap filling. Although this started out as a real frustration at the beginning of the year, it is what it is now, and ensuring that the students are retaining what they are learning is vital for a lot of our target students. As well as the identified target students there are also others that Buffy and I have also been focusing on.
Speech writing time of the year and the student's really don't enjoy this. There is a lot of scaffolding that will need to be done. The Olympics start this week and the students are excited about the countries they have selected to learn about. The plan is to have a Turaki Olympic Day. We also have Life Education this term and as the end of the term gets closer there will be more camp preparation to be done.
Term 3 has begun!!!
Term 2, Week 8 2016
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the data from our testing. Buffy and I had previously been discussing the data prior to SLT catching up with us about it. The findings from the data were that students in Room M were not making accelerated progress in Writing and Maths. A few questions were posed to us
- What are we doing in class for writing?
- What are we doing in class for mathematics?
- Why are these students not moving?
After further discussion with Buffy we decided to make a few changes to our learning programme.
- Go back to a more structured learning programme. Students can still plan their day, however the students will be directed to the learning area and on completion of the class set work they will then have some extra choice about their learning.
- Reintroduce whole class Scribe Time - 20 mins of writing each day followed by 5-10 minutes of proofreading, editing and reflection.
- Focus on getting the whole class Maths Knowledge up and increase ALL students' knowledge around decimals - this is what is preventing students from moving from Stage 6 to Stage to E7
The initial frustration for Buffy and I (this has been for a few years) is that we get students through that are below standard and then we have an expectation from some parents that we should get them to the standard that they need to be when they go to high school. We definitely work hard to try to get them to where they should be however this is a big ask sometimes.
We had a good talk with the students the other day and explained that they as a whole class are not doing well in Writing and Mathematics and that we needed to work on changing their attitude towards Writing and Mathematics. It seemed to work really well. We are struggling with attitudes toward learning so it is good for them to hear that they are doing as well as year 7 and 8 students should be doing.
We will get there. I like the challenge of making accelerated progress for all the students that are not meeting the standard at the moment. We are working hard to ensure that this happens.
Term 2, Week 5 2016
It has been a few weeks now since I last posted. The dreaded, so much to get through, is definitely hitting us now.
We have almost completed our testing. What has been most interesting is that we posted maths strategy videos on our students Maths Activities page along with some follow up work. We have been busy testing so we have not had workshops lately. Many of the students improved in their maths because of watching the videos, we had a good laugh about it, however on a serious note it is pleasing to see that there are alternatives that we can use during our testing time, and students are able to continue to learn in a different way. Most of our targets are making some progress, it is very slow though, but small steps at a time. The hardest thing is that we have so many targets. We will get there though. We have homeschool books going for most of our targets, fingers crossed this will help along with the time that we spend with them in workshops.
We have stalled on our ART projects as we are now finding that we don't have enough time on a Friday to fit in everything, as Waiata and Kapa Haka take up a large chunk of our day. We will really have to make sure that we get into it straight away on Friday mornings and allow the first 2 hour block to be project based.
John Parsons' PL was awesome and eye opening. On an ACE note we will be looking into the policies and processes. We had a wonderful session that really got us thinking about a lot of things (not only digital).
I spent 2 days at the VPLD conference which was just awesome and I am really gutted that I missed the 2 years prior. I had to do a presentation which went really well and I had a lot of people wanting to talk to me about what I have been doing. It was great reflection for me really as many of them asked me questions about why I did it the way I did, what worked best for, what wasn't working. Buffy and I shared all our resources with them, which is really pleasing for me as I don't believe that people should re-create the wheel, tweak it yes, but if we can start people off down the journey that we have taken it will be a whole lot easier for them and then they can make changes to it to suit their teaching style and their students.
Techy Breaky is going well. To be honest I just love sitting around in the mornings and having that time with the teachers - whether it is to do with techy things or not. We are helping each other now and there is now longer a line to see either me or Nat. Others are jumping in and showing and sharing with others. I just love it. No one is scared to ask, no one is scared to share. Great environment it is. Many have taken the time to use it to update and add to their Appraisal.
My personal focus for the next few weeks is to get started on my ACET portfolio - I am slightly struggling to just get started - once I have started I know that I will be fine. I am giving myself 2 weeks to give it a good go at. Getting it in early is my other goal!!!!
Term 2, Week 2 2016
We are well into the swing of Term 2 now and it has been quite awhile since I posted a reflection and there is a lot to share.
Firstly, at the end of Term 1 Buffy and I looked at the time that we had allocated to workshops and realised that we were really pushed to get through everything in the 15minutes that we had allocated ourselves. So we decided that we would give ourselves 30minutes on the timetable to do a workshop and this would allow time for the students to get to the workshop, and time for us to do the lesson and have some time at the end to do individual follow ups, marking or prep for the next workshop. I don't know why we hadn't realised earlier but we were trying to get through all of our groups in the day.
After sitting down and relooking at it all we each take 2 groups a day for reading, writing and maths, which means in a two day turn around, we see all the groups. This also means that we see each group twice a week. This is working a treat and we have ample time to get through the learning.
This term we teach and run workshops for 4 days a week and Fridays are our project, learning languages, inquiry and art days. This has so far been running very well. Our students selected one or two projects that they want to be involved in and follow a design process. We were lucky enough to be able to meet with our technology teachers and discuss what we were doing and make links when the students go to technology. Students doing cooking will be making fried rice, and students attending wood work are going to be making chopsticks and bowls for our Chinese day. This has been a huge step for both us and the technology teachers, as we are able to make meaningful links to what we are learning about in class. The students are also very excited about it all.
I am worried about how we are going to fit everything in this term, as well as testing and doing reports. Buffy and I are trying to work out a system to do our reports and we are lucky enough to have tech time each week where we will be able to work together on it.
We will see how we progress!!
Term 1, Week 8, 2016
Buffy and I both had IEP's this week. It was good to sit down with parents and discuss their next steps while still trying to build in independence in their learning. It was good to catch up with Frances their Teacher Aide, she now has a timetable that she will add what she is doing with the students as well as any other teacher/teacher aide that works with them. Frances also found a magnetic day planner which will allow them both to have some choice in their learning and plan their days with Frances.
We had a break through in PROVE IT videos and we are now uploading them to our class YouTube channel. Students are developing independence with this and this will be the last step in their learning with their e-portfolios. They will now be able to upload their PROVE IT videos into their Work Sample google presentations. We have some experts that have an excellent understanding. However next week I would like to continue to work on their work samples with some small groups. I am enjoying using the google presentations for their work samples - they are easy for the students to use on their iPads and very simple for all of them to follow.
I am still slowly making steps towards working with students to build their own curriculum. I am thinking that we probably won't get around to looking into this until next term. I would like to focus on what we are doing and doing it well before trying to add something else in. Will get to the end of this term first and will then look at having them develop their own curriculum.
Term 1, Week 7, 2016
OTJ data was handed in today - this will be a monthly occurrence - it is very concerning at this stage with majority of the students being below the National Standard for their learning, it has been made evident the amount of work that Buffy and I will have to do. We are settling into more of a routine in class with workshops starting to run well.
In terms of working towards my own goals, we are slowly developing a better understanding of how to use the learning progressions and linking them to individual student e-portfolios. I don't think that the students will be able to do this independently this term but I am really hoping that they will be able to do this by the end of term 2.
Home/School books
I was able to set up homeschool books for target learners. When I originally started these they were for target maths students to practise strategies at home with their parents. This year with so many targets I will be including little reading and writing activities too. This week students had maths strategy questions and a photo to do some descriptive writing about. It takes a very long time to do these but I do believe that they are very worth while. Time will tell, hopefully they will be a successful strategy like they have been in previous years.
Term 1, Week 4, 2016
Target students
Target students have been tested and data handed in. There are some real concerns with some students not maintaining the knowledge and learning that they did last year. We will have to work very hard to get them progressing again. Good way to see what we have to work on with the students.
Term 1, Week 3, 2016
Students have completed their goals for Reading, Writing, Maths and AROHA. It has been wonderful using the Learning Progressions for them to set their own goals and I am looking forward to working with them and seeing the students' progress through each of them. I was originally worried about the language that is used in the Reading and Writing Learning Progressions that we are using however it is good that the students are hearing and using the language that is used in the curriculum and it is also good that they are asking what certain parts are.
We are making slow progress with our e-portfolios however I am pretty sure that we will have a work sample for Reading, Writing and Maths by SLC time. I am sure that most students will be able to do these independently by the end of the term.
We are slow getting things rolling, it has been hard to get a good routine going with swimming being on.
I had my observation this week and I really need to work on ensuring that all students are participating in the group. I need to be more proactive in asking students and giving reminders about everyone sharing answers. Another way could be to use the whiteboard more for students to all give a response.
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