Keeping the Goals on Top

• Use clear, explicit, child friendly learning goals that students understand and can reflect on.
• Increase the use of Te Reo and Tikanga within the classroom.

Update

The term is flying by and it's important to reflect on the many different things that have been done and tried in our programmes. The last few weeks both Tara and I have had a lot of things going on in our personal life. It has made us very tired and stressed which has meant we have not been entirely present in the classroom. I think the fact that everything has continued to tick along nicely is a testament to the way we have set up our class routines and structures.

The students are making great progress and we are really happy with the way we adapt our programme to the different needs and challenges we have in our room. We are now doing a "literacy block" in the middle block where we split our class into two mixed ability groups. We then teach half reading and half writing, before swapping. So far, this has been really effective, as we are no longer stretched so thin in trying to teach reading and writing. It also means less down time/more teacher time for the students.

Writing Programme

Writing has really started to progress. We are starting with a whole class Oral Language session for a few minutes. Developing sentence structures. Today we had a second day of "I like .... because ..." and most of the class could do it. It was really exciting to see many of the students then use it in their writing. Even our early writers were trying quite complicated sentences. I'm still finding it tricky to get the spelling section done during writing as some are still too dependent. However this will improve and we will continue to change the timetabling to make it fit.

He Papa Tikanga

Today I started Kete 1 on my learning journey of He Papa Tikanga.
Here is some of my new learning:
Vocab:
oho - Awake
takato - Lie down
mua - front
muri - back
waenganui - in between
matau - right
mauii - left
kino - bad
reka - sweet
kawa - sour
mata - face
niho - tooth
turii - knee
tea - (another word for white)
kaakahu - clothes
haate - shirt
tarau - pants
tookena - socks
panekoti - skirt
huu - shoes
whaangai - nurture
tohunga - expert
tika - right
pono - true
raupatu - confiscation
take - matter/topic
whakaaro - thought
awatea - midday

Reading Recovery

This term it has felt like it is taking forever for RR to get underway. With testing, short weeks and absences I have one student who has just started lessons and the other still in Roaming. We have had one training session where we discussed how we were going. I asked for some help with what to do with TN as he was carried over from last year but tested at L18. He is still in Roaming and has had poor attendance. His weaknesses are in writing and CAP so I'm focusing mostly on that, with some effort put into fluency and confidence in his reading. Even though he is supposed to be still Roaming I am doing some teaching already.

IYT Refresher - 2/3/17

This week the RTLBs held an IYT refresher afternoon. I was the only one from our school that went, due to the shortage of relievers. Mostly it was really a refresh. It was good to see that a lot of what we learnt about 2 years ago at the IYT course is now embedded in our practise and we don't even really think about it anymore.

Three things that did come out of it for me were...

- Considering setting up a behaviour plan for some of our students who are not a big problem but we could improve the behaviour now before it becomes a larger problem
- Increasing positive contact with parents
- Setting up an AROHA wall in the class which we can add different rules and expectations as necessary. I want the students to be involved and to use photos of them showing the expectation

Writing Goals

Creating writing goals is something that I have tried many times but struggle to keep going. Writing follows a much less linear path than many other learning areas. I also don't want the goals to be too focused on surface features. I have found some goals related to the National Standards that someone has created which are much more focused on the message etc but I think they may be a bit too broad for student goals. So, I am working on creating some smaller sets of goals to break it up a bit and make it a bit clearer for our students.

Spiral of Inquiry

I want to use the Spiral of Inquiry as a basis for my critical inquiry of my practise this year. I think a bit more structure around my thinking will be beneficial. So to start with I am reading the article in Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014 called, A"framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry".  Helen Timperley, Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert

Here are some of the key ideas that have stood out to me.

"In a truly transformational learning system, the focus is on high quality and high equity for every learner, regardless of their starting point." p. 3 

This stands out because it has a huge importance to me and my practise. It is not the high achievers I get the most pride out of. It is the ones who have made the most dramatic shift. Those students who start off with few skills in a certain area, who have to persevere and work hard to make progress, are the ones who give me the most job satisfaction. They may still not meet the government's standard but I am so proud of them and what they achieve every day not matter how small the steps.

"no one has found a one-size-fits-all solution. Context matters. What works in one setting does not always work in another." p. 4

This backs up my ideas about not following blindly what everyone else is doing. It's about looking at what is in front of you, looking at other ideas and opinions and trying to create something relevant for your own situation.

"It also asks you to suspend judgment on how to ‘fix’ things that are not going well, because we cannot work out more effective ways to do things until we have a clear understanding of what is currently happening and why." p. 6

This idea of not jumping straight in to try something is challenging for me. I struggle a bit to hold off and just observe for a bit. I like action and results and I like to see these happen quickly. 

"The spiral of inquiry takes a different approach. It asks you to adopt a curiosity mindset to identify what is going on for learners and to develop some hunches about what is leading to the current situation, before deciding what to do about it. In this way you can work out what is working well so you can build on it, and what is not working so well so you can make changes." p. 6 

I guess the tricky thing for me at this point is, I don't really know whether what I am trying to fix is important to my learners. And although a lot of research and academics would say it is I doubt my 5 year olds would be able to articulate it. This is part of my issue around goal setting for this age group. Yes we want them to have agency etc but they don't know what they don't know and isn't it our job to decide what is their next step.

The idea of looking for the problem within our own practise is something that I feel I do well. This article states
"Most of us are not really good at identifying for ourselves how we are contributing to particular situations." p. 14
However I don't believe this is true for me. Tara and I are always changing what we are doing and questioning our practise to improve outcomes for students. We don't blame students or their home backgrounds and look at what we can do between 9-3 to support them in their learning. One thing that really annoys me, in fact, is teachers who blame students. Hearing comments like lazy, naughty etc (more than the occasional vent) is a cop-out in my opinion. We need to have accountability for how our practise impacts the behaviour in our class. If there is undesirable behaviour or attitudes it is up to us to do something differently. We are the adults, and the "experts".

"When considering what expertise to draw upon, our advice is to be wary of pre-packaged solutions." p. 16)
This is another thing I think we do well. Although we have taken on aspects of some programmes such as Reading Rockets and SEED Learning. We have very much picked what we wanted and discarded things that don't fit our philosophy or our learners. We do not blindly follow a programme but rather look for things that we think will work well for our learners and re-evaluate as we go.


"Taking action is a team sport – not a solo activity." p. 18
This is something that comes up a bit for me. While I'm enthusiastic about making change for the learners in my room, it can sometimes feel as though we are on our own. Tara and I are always talking about things we can try and are enthusiastic about new learning but sometimes feel that others are not so prepared to make change in their own practise for the benefit of our students.

We often hold ourselves to such a high standard that we do not forgive ourselves of mistakes in our practise. The article talks about how inquiry is making mistakes and how things are unlikely to go perfectly on the first try. We teach our students this so why can't we do it for ourselves. Being observed can be scary and feel threatening but it shouldn't. We do this to students all day, everyday. Maybe this is a good opportunity to think about how we do this to students? Are we doing it to or with? Do they feel as anxious as we do when they are being watched or given feedback.
"It is important that we find ways to make the risk-taking feel less intimidating." p. 19


I thought these questions were really useful and I intend to come back to them when considering what else I can do to improve my practise.

Reading Rocket Goals

For student goals in reading we are using the Reading Rocket programme. We have used this for high frequency words and to guide our own teaching practise over the last couple of years but this year we are trying to make it more explicit for our learners. The correct Rocket goes home in their reading diary and is dated as they achieve different LIs. We then highlight the next goal. Most of them are the same within the group. It helps to remind us to go over them at the start and end of each reading lesson. The goals usually have a visual to match.

The students also have a sight word card each. They are to learn 3-5 words a week and are tested on a Wednesday at the library. They need to be able to read and write the words. We have also created the word cards for the wall to be used in writing time, the same colours as they reading rockets so that they know which colour words they are learning. They practise the words in class time during the writing rotation using magnets and pen and paper. 

Handwriting Student Goals

As part of my personal goals for this year I am working on making the learning intentions more visible for our students. In order to do this I felt that they needed to be visual. I created this as a goal sheet for the students books. The idea is that we will tick off/date each thing as they achieve it and then highlight the next step. The sheet just sits inside the front cover of their handwriting book.