Four Minute Walk Throughs

One of the things that I am focussing on with my TT at the moment is how to gain insight from observing others that can help both them and myself to grow as teachers - as opposed to just taking away a 'cool' game or something similar.  In order to give me some background understanding of how this could occur before our meeting, he gave me a book to have a read of: Four minute walk throughs - seeing through new eyes.

There were some things in this book that I truly agreed with and some that I questioned - I will detail these briefly below.  

The first idea is that Educational change is technically simple and socially complex - all I have to say for this one is  that I am glad I am not the only one who finds it so.

The second is the benefit of using other teacher's practices to critique your own practice.  As a BT, I am lucky enough to spend a day a fortnight outside of my own classroom doing whatever it is that I need to do for school.  One of the things that I am looking forward to is observing other teachers - both those who I perceive as expert and those who I perceive more on being on the same level as myself.  I think there are huge benefits from both when you consider, as this book suggests, that you can critically examine aspects of teaching practice in other teachers without feeling threatened or becoming defensive and that this critical analysis can then be applied to your own practice - both through reflection and physically changing the atmosphere of the classroom and what is occurring within each lesson. 

A statement within the book is that "truth is the one non negotiable element in building a powerful learning culture" - both seeing the truth and talking about the truth.  I think as a BT being observed often this is a really powerful lesson that I need to remember.  If I am to learn all I possibly can from those who have more experience and who have learnt lessons then I need to be open to the truth - recognising what others are saying as something that is helping me and not making excuses for reasons not to talk about the truth.  In saying this, I also need to be confident to speak what I believe to be the truth about certain matters also. 

When others have walked through my classroom previously, especially with walkthroughs done by a colleague last year I have felt threatened - as though I was being judged and would be negatively critiqued at a later date. Through seeing how the 4MWT aligns with the key competencies I am beginning to understand that that is not the purpose of it at all. These are done to: help one manage themselves - ensure that they are offering the best to their students that they possibly can, help with the sharing of ideas, recognising different perspectives and interact effectively with others, create opportunities to connect with others and to allow opportunities to be creative, critical and reflective of our own practice with the guidance and support of others.  In line with this is the statement in the book "A classroom walkthrough is not about judging a teacher; it is about observing and supporting reflective dialogue on student learning." 

The process of conducting a four minute walk through and the reasons behind it are much clearer after having read this book - I am looking forward to learning how to follow the below structure effectively so that I can get the most out of observations, both for myself and for the teachers who I am observing.

Reading through this book also provided some insight into how I am running my own programmes and what I can do to make them look how I want them to look.  One of my goals for this first term is to develop student ownership in their learning and to move myself more to a role of facilitator.  I had discussed with my TT how I thought this could happen and what I could do - and had left it as a pondering.  When reading this book Blooms taxonomy was brought to my attention and I realised that the majority of the tasks that I am setting my students are at the knowledge and comprehension phases. I am effectively asking them to recall and understand information without applying it at a deeper/further level.  This is not a great realisation to have obviously but one that is good to have had at the start rather than at the end of the year.  When students are completing knowledge and comprehension tasks they are not creating, applying, critically analysing or synthesising new information - and without doing this it is difficult for them to feel that they have control over what they are doing and how they are learning. An interesting point for discussion with my tutor teacher would be how I can develop this within the structures and team plans that are already at place within the school. 

Feed back/Feed forward

As part of our on going professional development we have our team leaders come in each week to observe us, provide us with feedback about what they thought worked well and ideas about where we need to next focus our attention.  These get sent through to us after every third observation and there is an opportunity to discuss these notes with our team leader.

Below is the feedback and feedforward I have received about what my team leader has observed of my teaching practice and classroom environment so far this term. as you can see, a lot of the focus so far this term has been around the classroom environment.

The main focus that I will be working on from here is how to use the Apple TV to model work effectively with my students.  It is very different to using an IWB which is what I have had experience with so far and I am looking forward to the challenge.

In addition to having this as feedback and feed forward I have been doing some professional reading about how to ensure that my classroom is a place where I am engaged and ready to learn.  One of the readings that I came across had a very succinct and to the point checklist of the different factors that can instantly effect student engagement and therefore achievement, but also continue to do so in the long run. 

I have attached the checklist and how I will be using this is I will fill it out on myself and I have also asked my team members and team leader to pick it up when they are in my classroom during teaching time and fill in / check off what they are observing - and if they are not observing something happening to provide some advice and guidance to me about how I could get this working effectively for both my learning and the development and growth of my students. 

Understanding Dyslexia

Re-reading my previous posts after undergoing a quest to find out more about how to teach children with dyslexia effectively this sentence really stood out to me:
"One of my goals for this year is to ensure that all of my students have numerous opportunities to celebrate who they are and to experience success in all areas of their learning.  In order to do this effectively, and in order for this to become a smart goal I need to have a deep understanding of who my students are and what influences their lives. " 
At the time of writing this I was not aware of the extent to which a number of children in my class suffered from dyslexia - and this has just become all the more relevant with this knowledge. 

I have met with a number of teachers in the school regarding dyslexia - both the ESOL teacher who also commonly works with dyslexic students and previous teachers of the dyslexic students.  The advice I received from these ladies lined up with research that they directed me to on the subject.  I was given suggestions such as:

• Use pastel coloured paper to print worksheets on.
• Make sure the writing is large, bold and is in a basic font such as Comic Sans or Arial.
• Encourage the children to do lots of thinking and discussion first so you gain insight into their understanding - often they understand but it is the transfer from ideas to recording them that troubles them.
• Use lots of post it notes to help students be able to organise and rearrange their ideas, especially in writing.
• Use technology to assist students when possible - for example - in writing have students plan their ideas on paper but move to writing their story/argument/essay on the computer.
• Play lots of word games that allows them to become familiar with words and different parts of words in a fun environment where they are able to experience success.

Interestingly, when I talked to the students themselves, they also suggested the ideas in italics.

One website that I was directed to which I found extremely informative and insightful was http://www.4d.org.nz/edge/ 

The following areas I explore are all based around concepts I have explore on the sight and my understandings of them.  I loved this picture, as for me it allowed me insight into how dyslexic children might view what in my mind is a simple word - and therefore how daunting some of the tasks that I have been giving them might seem.

* If you get it right for dyslexics, you get it right for everyone.  This idea is explored in more depth in relation to differentiation of learning styles, the type of feedback you provide students and the way that the classroom is displayed.  

* Stepping back into the classroom, problems often arise when teachers equate weak basic skills with some sort of inability to think. If students are put into groups that are appropriate for basic skills but not for their thinking levels, they can quickly become frustrated and act out.  The solution is about placing students in thinking ability appropriate groups while supporting them with basic skills. This empowers them to develop high level subject knowledge and skills while their basic skills are catching up. All this requires a flexible approach to teaching.

This certainly provided a starting point for how I can potentially immediately change my teaching practice.  Whilst at the moment all students, including those with dyslexia, are placed in thinking ability appropriate groups for reading and maths I am not 100% sure that I could say the same with writing.  In writing, our assessment of students is based on what they can record individually within a set time frame.  In formative assessment with these children though I notice the discussion with them that I am having is often at a higher level than what I see them recording, and at a higher level at times than others in their group.  I wonder whether I should be moving these students so that even for writing they are being exposed to more extended and abstract concepts even if they are not able to transfer these into their writing - this is something I will need to discuss with other staff members and ponder.

* The website talks in extensive detail about the 'notice and adjust' philosophy - which read in consideration of the New Zealand curriculum is effectively what every teacher should be doing each day anyway - providing differentiated learning activities and a range of tasks that best suit the learning needs of each individual child. They explore a number of ways of doing this:

• Set clear lesson objectives. Write them on the board and refer to them frequently during the lesson, and especially at the end. Students need to have a purpose for their learning and will respond better when they know why they are doing something.
• Fortunately, this is something that we do effectively at our school and something for which support is continually in place for so that we can provide the best understanding of what they are learning for our students. 
• Differentiate to provide opportunities for success, and differentiate by outcome as well as task. By outcome means setting different activities based on levels of achievement. By task means setting the same activity for all students but letting them choose how to demonstrate their learning.
• I constantly differentiate by outcome within my programme, however differentiating by task - and letting the children choose how to demonstrate their learning is not something I have considered or experimented with - however is something that I would be interested in looking into exploring with my TT. 
• If board work is needed, use black or dark markers. Avoid red or green as many students find these difficult to read.
• At the moment I use all four colours frequently with little thought as to when I am using what colour and why - this is an easy fix and something that can be changed instantly that will make a difference to the students. 
• Encourage the use of colour to help organise notes.
• Since working with my release teacher who has dyslexic tendencies I have come to appreciate the importance of having this in my programme for the children and am continually considering different ways that I can do this and that I can allow my students to do this. 
• Technology can be a dyslexic student’s best friend, enabling them to use visual strategies or overcome handwriting or spelling difficulties. A laptop to word process work and reinforce numeracy skills, a dictaphone to record work, and phonetic spell checkers can enable learning.
• The use of iPads, and class PODs should hopefully help out these students tremendously - my challenge will be finding a way to use them that engages and challenges the children keeping them on task rather than just providing the students with the tools and no instructions for how to use them. 
• Link learning tasks to previous knowledge. This is about creating ‘building’ blocks which show how new things relate to previous lessons. Dyslexic processors often require additional exposure to new learning to make these links and retain understanding so that they can retrieve information and apply to other settings and tasks.
• This is a big aim within my programme anyway, but is something that is good to know to focus on.
• Emphasise strengths of student’s work, with specific praise.
• Something that I aim to do with students individually each day through conferencing, but again a big thing to keep in mind and to ensure that I am constantly doing.
• Empathy is the key. When a student feels understood and supported they can be encouraged to take learning risks.  Even more debilitating than having difficulty with basic skills can be an accompanying feeling of failure or low-self worth. 

I tried to put myself into the shoes of the dyslexic children in my class and realised that at times they may feel, that due to finding it harder to be able to complete some of the tasks given, and other students recognising that they are struggling, disheartened or as though they are failing.  On my student blog I have set up the following link - Appreciating each other's differences - that I will explore with them over the coming week looking at how everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, the importance of working as a team, and how even though something may seem tough at first, it is so important to keep on persevering if we want to achieve success.

I know that I am barely even scratching the surface of dyslexia and would love to find out more about this interesting topic, how to help my students learn and how to teach ALL my students effectively - if I am getting it right for dyslexic students - I am getting it right for everyone.

Dyslexia

I have a child in my class this year who has quite severe dyslexia.  As I have not worked with dyslexic children before my first challenge is to understand how I, as the classroom teacher, can most effectively support his learning within the classroom before seeking outside assistance.

In order to do this I have at the moment made contact with his previous teacher and the Dyslexia specialist teacher within the school.  I have had a chat with the student himself to see what will help him and at this stage we have decided that I will make sure that any work I set for him is written in bold, that it is printed on a light blue piece of paper and that he has a way of communicating with me when he is stuck without having to have him put his hand up all of the time.  I am interested to find out both what last years teacher had to say and also the advice I will receive from the specialist teacher.

Planning

Planning Week 2

One of my goals for this year is to ensure that all of my students have numerous opportunities to celebrate who they are and to experience success in all areas of their learning.  In order to do this effectively, and in order for this to become a smart goal I need to have a deep understanding of who my students are and what influences their lives.  I gained some knowledge of who my students were from a range of factors within the first week: results from last year, poems where they identify their wishes, dreams, and fears, ice breaker activities such as two truths and a lie, and conversations with both the students and their parents.  However, I felt that I still did not know who my students were and how I could help them achieve this success across all areas of their learning.

As we are likely going to have 1:1 devices within our class this year I thought that it would be a good idea to introduce the idea of video diaries/working with web 2.0 technologies to my students.  Each child was provided with some time to brainstorm who they are and to discuss goals with their friends - the only restraints on these goals were that they had to be smart goals and that they had to have a goal that related to school and a goal that related to their personal lives/home.  The students quickly came up with goals that reflected who they are and their priorities, both within the school environment and within their home.  We then videoed the students recording their goals to make them accountable to these, have made an iMovie out of them and will be sharing them on our class weekly.  I have one student who still needs to complete this and then will be posting this up on our class blog - www.sarahssuperheroes.weebly.com

The fact that the student's set these goals before we worked on targets together was quite important to me as it allowed me to gain insight to where these students believed that they are in their learning/schooling without having any adult input/direction.  These goals will be evaluated during this term and the children will set some more goals - these will probably be more learning orientated as after two weeks I can already hear my student's making comments along the lines of areas in their writing and maths in which they believe that they can improve.  It is interesting to note, in reconsidering this, that we have been asked to do exactly this also - set our own goals and be prepared to discuss these and share how we can achieve these with our deputy and associate principals during specifically set aside release time towards the start of this term.

I am meeting with my tutor teacher this week to discuss my own goals and I am interested to see where my goals lie before and after my discussions with him - and how they reflect both my personal learning journey in regards to teaching and my professional learning and development and how these align with the school.  I am sure that the insight that I gain from this will be just as interesting as the insight that I gained when my students set their goals.