Knowledge enables Success

Having settled into my new classroom and gained an understanding of my children I have noticed that there are two large areas of need that require focus.  These are their maths knowledge and their writing - a large number of students are working below and well below the standard.  I have been thinking carefully about how I can address both of these and which one of these is most pressing to address.  

I have completed a mini inquiry around developing maths knowledge during the time when we are doing statistics.  In order to develop my own professional knowledge around this I have read the following research amongst others: 

Using music to increase maths retention

Maths Teaching Knowledge

Making it count - strategies for improving mathematics

As a result of this mini inquiry my knowledge sessions are now varied for the students and include a range of interactive websites that offer explanations, teaching hot spots around certain knowledge areas, interactive games for students, games that students are able to share in with a partner, the development of sheets that allow students to see where their knowledge gaps are and to choose how these can be filled using a variety of different texts and materials and the opportunity for students to use songs and music to help them retain their knowledge.  This seems to have worked so far and is proving successful.  Within the last week of term I will retest these students using summative assessments and be able to use evidence to confirm my observations and formative assessments.

The inquiry that I have decided needs to be largest focus is around writing and develop within these students knowledge around where they are at and knowledge around what tools that they can use to help them progress and achieve their ultimate end goal of working at/above the standard by the end of the year so that they are ready for high school.  Within my class I have students working from between a 2a level and a 4b level with the majority of them sitting around a 3b level.  I have decided to focus this inquiry on these students that are classed as sitting well below as they need to make hugely accelerated progress in order to be where they need to be by the end of the year.

Key findings that I have noticed so far from the students who are working well below:

 - Students are not planning their work

 - Students are not confident editing their work

 - Students are not comfortable knowing when to use basic or complex punctuation

 - Students are still developing the ability to recognise grammatical errors

 - Students do not know what they do not know, and therefore are unsure how to improve.

The one that stands out to me the most is that these children do not know what they do not know - they are not aware of how they can improve and they are not aware of what their errors are.  In order to help students with this, they have been provided with requirements that have them working towards the national standard at each sub-level of the curriculum. They have now identified within their sub-levels the goals that they wish to work on and we have co-constructed success criteria for these goals.  The other findings will be discussed and explicitly taught over the next term across a range of contexts so that they can be understood and applied within a range of contexts - however through having developed goals, students are already far more motivated and are already noticing areas in which they can improve and are wanting to learn.

The challenges around student centered learning - and overcoming them

Inquiry, curriculum integration, thematic units - these words were tossed around interchangeably when I first took up my new role at this school nearly nine weeks ago - however throughout this term we have begun to make changes around what our school curriculum looks like and how it is played out in action.  This was due in part, to the leaving of both the previous principal and deputy principal within a short time period.  As a result of this, lots of questioning is happening regarding the terminology that is used and what it actually represents.  Through discussions and readings around inquiry and curriculum integration we have decided that as a school what we are currently doing is a thematic approach to learning, rather than true curriculum integration - and that true inquiry where it is led by the students is something quite rare within our classrooms and something that has not traditionally happened.  This has aligned with the minimal focus that has been placed around student voice and student led learning that is future orientated due to other huge factors that have influenced the staff at the school.  The students that I am working with came to me with quite a fixed mindset about what they could and could not achieve and it has taken eight weeks for them to begin to be at a stage where they are able to talk about their individual goals and their progressions towards these.

As year 7 and year 8 students, I think it is highly important that these students are introduced to, and confident working within, an inquiry style of learning both within the "core"/national standards subjects and all other subjects that make up the New Zealand Curriculum.

In order for me to provide my students with this opportunity I have done research over a wide variety of areas - regarding what inquiry is, best practice for student centered learning in areas such as maths, reading and writing and the benefits and challenges of true student centered learning.  A lot of this has overlapped with reading that I did last year around the POGIL styled programme that I was teaching and so this has been most helpful to make comparisons with.

I know that as these students do not have a student centered learning background it is important for me to give them appropriate tools so that they are able to understand and talk about their learning in order to be able to have more guidance over the direction of it.  An interesting reading that I stumbled across today The Benefits and Challenges of Student-Designed Learning talks about true inquiry learning (within a high school context) and letting students have complete control about the direction that they take with their learning and how they present their learning.  It emphasises that from a student point of view, whilst it was exciting to have control over their learning at first it became difficult when they did not have any guidelines.  It also discusses the importance of students having goals when directing their own learning and how this was helpful to them.

This has helped me to have confidence that I am on the right track with these students and developing them to be students who can work within an inquiry style of learning.  At the moment there is both clear guidelines about what skills and knowledge they need to be developing, they are presented with a range of ways to do this which is helping to allow them freedom over the style of learning that works best for them and they are consistently setting and achieving mini goals whilst working towards their bigger goal which is allowing them to achieve success along the way.

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.

Authentic Audience

As a teacher of writing, the importance of having an authentic audience for the students has become extremely clear to me.

The effort that goes into writing and the enthusiasm and excitement levels about writing directly correlate with whether or not the students in my class believe that someone else is going to read, and care about, their writing.  When students realise they have a purpose for their writing, and that they are portraying a message through their writing that is going to be heard they want to do their best, not to impress me as their teacher, but for themselves.  They want to write something that they will be proud of and that they know their friends and families would be proud of also. 

At times it can be difficult to ensure that each child always has an authentic audience for their writing with the crazy timetable that comes along with being in a Year 6 class. However, none of my students are out on Friday mornings and so we have now dedicated a time on Fridays to celebrating and sharing our writing.  During this time each child reflects on whether or not they have achieved their writing goals during the week and leads discussions with me if they believe that they should be/want to be working towards a new goal as well.  Once this reflection on our success is completed, we share our writing using the two stars and a wish model. Each Friday each child finds a new partner to share their writing with and discuss in pairs, and then in groups of four what they thought was successful in their partners writing that week and what they believe their partner needs to work on.  I find this a very successful way to ensure that feedback and feed forward is not coming solely from me, and my students absolutely love it.

Last Friday the students asked if they could make a film about it to share with their families and friends and so we have put together a short film with some students discussing what they have been doing and why they like it.  Please enjoy and comment and let me know your thoughts about how I can continue to develop an authentic audience for my budding authors.

Room 3 - Writing - Goals and Two Stars and a Wish

Student Voice

In order to maintain an open growth mindset I have asked ten of my students to provide me with honest reflections about their experiences of being in my class.  They were asked to answer the following five statements and questions:

1. The way that my teacher helps me the most is...
2. One thing that challenged me most was... I overcame it by....
3. I enjoy being part of Room 3 because...
4. The thing I am most proud of this year is...
5. One piece of advice I would give to my teacher is...

Below are videos of these students reflections.  Please enjoy and leave a comment to let me know your thoughts.

Student Reflection on being in Room 3 - 2014