Looking Back

This evening I was going through my google drive having a look at the work that my students have been doing on google slides creating pick-a-path stories when I came across this video that the students at Pt England made me when I finished working with them as a student teacher.  It was just too adorable, and so I have posted it here so that I can remember that even on days where we might not feel subject matter has been as effective as we would have liked, we are still teaching little humans life lessons all the time - and they appreciate all of it.

Point England - Room 4 - Student Voice

Exploring New Inquiry

As the term progresses and the children have developed a high quality understanding of POGIL and it is working effectively, I have found a need to change my inquiry slightly - to cater more effectively for the needs of all my students - specifically the two children in my class who have dyslexia.  As POGIL is quite a student directed style of learning there is a lot of reading and writing - which does not suit these children all of the time.

We are conducting student led conferences at the moment and one of the mums of the dyslexic children in my class sent me through the following article Dyslexia Daily - 17 ways a teacher can support a student with dyslexia before coming in for her student led conference.  I thought it was quite relevant and pertinent at the moment and so have explored some of the ideas in it.

I have taken the following things from this reading that I can change and implement in my programme immediately:

• Talk regularly:  As these students often work with the teacher aide, when they have problems or are confused I often trust the teacher aide to help them out.  I will change this so that they have opportunities to talk to both myself and my teacher aide when they are stuck so that they feel valued and that they can come to me at any time when they are stuck.
• Watching carefully:  Within this student led style of learning, the children are often in charge of talking to other students before they see me if they are stuck - and so I allow them time to find a solution to their problem before jumping in to help.  I do the same with my dyslexic students and believe that this is the right approach however I feel that I may need to provide more explicit modelling for these students around how to find help from other students - as often they are probably focussed on paying attention to what they are being asked to do and so may miss out on the more subtle hints and modelling that is occurring.
• Visual Clues:  Providing visual clues is one thing for dyslexic student that automatically makes their day so much easier.  The dyslexic students in my class have visual clues in their books to help them alongside the written text but I will try and incorporate more visual clues around the classroom rather than just having it all written.

As a result of reading this, and of my ongoing thoughts around my inquiry, my next focus for my inquiry is:  What strategies and processes can I put in place that directly support my dyslexic learners within the POGIL style of teaching that is occurring in my classroom.

Feedback from peers

I have recently had a colleague through my classroom specifically to view POGIL.  This is the feedback that she gave me.  

Hi Sarah,

Thanks again for the opportunity to see your maths programme in action on Thursday 4^th June.

All the students in your class were on task and engaged in their learning. The students I spoke to could verbalise their learning and the reason for this.  They explained to me that following a pre-test, they then identified their own learning needs; learning that needed to be reviewed and new learning, in the area of Patterns and Relationships. They explained that POGIL was fun way to learn. A group of students I spoke with agreed that they could support one another with their learning in a group situation. They enjoyed the autonomy provided by the POGIL way of learning, as it gave them greater ownership. They could reflect on their learning using the 4E’s and explained what each of these meant.

Next for me is to trial this method of learning  in my classroom!

Kerryn

I have found it really helpful to have feedback from a person who does not usually see this programme in action as it has reaffirmed for me that I am on the right path.  My next step for my inquiry is to look into how I can effectively help my learners with dyslexia within the POGIL programme.

Reflecting on Reflections

Every day, I encourage my students to express their learning in a variety of ways and discuss with them why and how it is beneficial to do so - however I have found myself not always doing this since developing this blog.  In a recent staff meeting we discussed the difference between wondering, pondering, journalling and reflecting - how these are all based around different things - and that reflecting should be based around certain criteria and around our children and their learning.  In class today I was working with a student on Wordle and realised just how well that tool can sum up the main ideas of something simply by how often they are repeated.  I decided to place each of my recent reflective blog posts in Wordle so that I could get a true representation of what it is I am focussing on - with Wordle the words that are repeated the often (and therefore the largest focus in the reflection) are the words that are largest.  I was happily surprised with what I saw and it was a timely reminder that I am on track with my reflections.

 

NZCER: Styles of Learning

As part of questioning my planning of POGIL I have been doing some research into future orientated learning and the different learning styles that this teaching style caters for effectively.  This is a reading that I found interesting as it simply restated what the different learning styles are and how they fit within a future orientated pedagogy.  A timely reminder.

NZCER reading about learning

Back to the drawing board.

I find it is always just as you feel like you are finally starting to get on top of things - that something knocks you side ways and makes you question what you have been doing.  Today that something is a whole mix of little things - colleagues planning, professional reading and feedback from my students.

My children love POGIL, and they love to tell other people how much they love POGIL - they are extremely confident and familiar with their learning - and I am beginning to wonder if because of that they are starting to let their guard slip - that or we are in Week 8 of an 11 week term - or realistically maybe a mix of both.

As I am the only teacher in my school currently trialling POGIL styled learning across all subjects my planning, and how I have presented it - both to the kids and as a professional record - has changed each week as I try to find the best way.  I was sure I was finally starting to see the light with what I had done when the kids mentioned that it is difficult for a reliever to come in and pick up my planning and for the programme to run as smoothly as it does when I am in the classroom - which is natural with the style of planning that I do as it leaves a lot of room for student direction.  The problem here however is that I have a release teacher in my classroom once a fortnight for PRT release.

Over the weekend I have changed how I do my planning and whilst it is still spread out over a variety of sources for the children these have all been hyperlinked into my main planning document for weekly planning and there is a more detailed weekly overview with opt in workshops clearly marked also.

Teaching is a Journey

Coming out of university I had in my CV what I believed to be comments that spoke very highly of me as a student teacher.  What I of course did not realise was the huge difference between being a student teacher and being a full time classroom teacher in charge of your own classroom.  I had heard it all before from the teachers in my family - give yourself space to breathe, you can't do everything at once, everybody makes mistakes... and every time that I heard it from someone new I got frustrated.  I didn't want to be a beginning teacher that felt like I was drowning and knew nothing - that may or may not however have been the exact impression that I gave off to the principal of my school in the first term.  I would take everything on, and crumble inside - but remind management many, many times that I am brand new at this - it was in a way my excuse for not having everything perfect.  What I didn't realise was that it was perfect at that stage to be a brilliantly imperfect teacher - and through not knowing things, making my own mistakes and learning from the mistakes of others was exactly what I was supposed to be doing - that was the perfect role for me at the time.  I had left university as a teacher, and by mid year of my first year of teaching I had finally reaccepted my position as a learner.  In line with this, I find the following saying very true - both for myself as a new teacher and for teachers who have been in their position for many years and may not necessarily want to learn new things.

Over the following two terms, I relished my role as a learner - and soaked up as much as I could - whilst still learning the ins and outs of the school that I was working at.  This year is where I believe that the change has been for me however.  I have an outstanding tutor teacher who has complete faith in my abilities - both to teach successfully and to fail at teaching (and learn from it).  Having a tutor teacher who has seen me succeed well, and seen me fail (not so well) has led to conversations that are very growth minded.  He knows that I want to learn and grow and that I see myself as a learner - and so he has led from alongside me and provided direction by jumping on the learning journey with me. Working underneath this person has moved my love of teaching students to a passion for developing myself as a teacher continually.  He has helped me set goals, visit other schools, observed me, helped me find professional readings that challenge me - and most importantly allowed me to play around with my own style of teaching.  In my class I have been experimenting with POGIL (as referred to in previous posts). This has been one of the things that I have done as my Teaching as Inquiry this year - and I have fallen in love with it.  Hence the next picture.

However, I am extremely grateful that I learnt the importance of viewing myself as a learner early on in my first year of teaching.  The POGIL style of teaching was slightly chaotic at first and left my team leader making comments about the noise level in the room - and wondering if the students could concentrate at that noise level.  However, as the weeks have gone by and I have adapted the philosophy behind POGIL to my classroom everything has settled down.  The children love their new style of learning and so do I.  They are inquisitive, they have urgency for their work - and they truly are learning because they want to - and for no reason except for that.  They help to analyse their own data and determine what they will be learning and they love it.  The same team leader came into my room last week and commented on how well the kids were working and the programme that they were doing.  As a result of sticking with this, my whole team is now experimenting with POGIL styled mathematics tasks - adapted to the teachers individual journeys with POGIL.

This next picture stuck out to me because with POGIL this is true - my children work so well together that I know that the same depth and breadth of discussion could be happening regardless of whether or not I am in the classroom and working with their group.  I have become far more of a facilitator and guide than someone who issues them with instructions etc.

I feel extremely honoured to work with such a great team at my school - and to have the support of other teachers.  As well as my TT and my team leader I have had a small number of other teachers come and ask if they can observe how POGIL works also.  My students are very keen to share their hard work and I am excited to have these other teachers in my classroom also.  These teachers have no experience of POGIL and so it will be a learning curve for them just as much as it is from me and I am extremely interested to see the feedback that they have given me (My tutor teacher and team leader both have researched POGIL before coming to view it in my classroom).

My final thought for the night is the same thing that hit me half way through last year - the best teachers truly are the best learners - teaching is a journey where we help and support each other, through observations, through sharing readings and resources, through being able to talk things through, and sometimes by having a night off together that has absolutely nothing to do with teaching.  I aim to be a brilliant teacher who can cater successfully to the individual needs of every student in my class - and to do that I need to be a pretty switched on learner.  I am looking forward to continuing on with my teaching journey as a learner - and learning from everyone and everything around me.

PaCT - My Experiences

Today we had a teacher only day where we looked at the PaCT tool and made professional judgements for our students based on the mathematics and writing aspects of this tool.  Whilst this tool may still be considered controversial amongst educators I personally found it to be quite a beneficial tool to use.  The judgements do not take too long at all to make and I managed to get through my whole class for writing in about three hours - not too bad considering that this is the first time that we have used the tool for writing.

Tomorrow we are making our maths judgements - as I have more experience with making Math judgements against PaCT I have found that the aspects in the tool can be quite useful in helping me to plan a differentiated programme within my classroom as they expose maths in a different light to the numeracy project.

Attached is a booklet that I found extremely useful for helping to clarify what the different aspects were in reading, writing and maths when I was making my judgements.

PDF instruction booklet - PaCT