#6: Form hypotheses about teaching actions likely to accelerate student learning.

My thoughts after student feedback, talking to other staff and doing a little bit of research, here are some things I could do:

If students were connected to their learning then they would not less be distracted and more engaged.

• Provide highly engaging relevant lessons with variety linked to what they know
• Create enough down time to do their own work.
• Let students select music which helps them to learn.
• Offer opportunities to do group work and peer work as well as one to one.
• Bring in experts who are engaging and relate to the learning.

If we develop student capability of perspective-taking then we will increase understanding about the relevance and importance of our local curriculum.

• Find and use templates to enable structured perspective -taking
• Design lessons to allow students to engage with relevant perspectives
• Bring in guest speakers to provide authentic perspectives.

If we develop and improve access to local curriculum knowledge and learning then we will increase engagement and a sense of care for the community.

• Design field trips to inspire learning and to connect with the community.
  

If we increase engagement and connectedness, then students will take action to take care of their community.

• Design ways to link the learning to the student and their sense of well-being and identity.

#5: Factors that might contribute to the problem of student learning.

#5. Describe the main hypotheses you developed about factors that might contribute to this problem of student learning (e.g. particular features of teaching or out of school practices that were not as effective as they might be).

Initially the biggest barrier to learning that I identified when surveying students, reading research and literature and talking to staff was that students were easily distracted.   

After digging deeper into why this could be I’ve identified one of the aspects that might impact these distractions could be the disconnectedness students have felt to their learning and to each other because of the pandemic.  This has been especially difficulty for our Maori and Pasifika students who have been ‘harder by the pandemic’ in education.  After two years of uncertainty kids are missing consistency and connectedness in the classroom.  Each child brings their own learning experiences and building a sense of belonging and unity has been difficult. 

When I have reflected on the opportunities that the Aotearoa Histories curriculum allows us, I am mindful of what students need to know at the end of year 8 through the learning progressions.  But I wonder if these need to shift or be modify to cater for the lost time in teaching and learning over the last 2 years.  These progressions are still important to measure success in some way. 

A barrier to learning for my year 9’s is understanding what a perspective is or essentially how to see something from another person or groups’ point of view.  When learning about how people feel about our land for example, kids find it hard to connect because they often don't see themselves in the context.  They also find it difficult to relate to something that has happen a long time ago.  The learnings in the resource 'Rich Learning Opportunities Tool Guidance' have suggested the need to teach essential capabilities such as perspective-taking which helps to 'understand complex issues in our world'.  

My initial hypothesis is: If students were connected to their learning then they would not less be distracted and more engaged.

Because of further research, the hypothesis has become:

If we develop student capability of perspective-taking then we will increase understanding about the relevance and importance of our local curriculum.

If we develop and improve access to local curriculum knowledge and learning then we will increase engagement and a sense of care for the community.

If we increase engagement and connectedness, then students will take action to take care of their community.

I think these are a starting point and may shift and change as I continue on their inquiry journey.

Professional Reading #4: Rich Learning Opportunities Tool Guide

 

"It's about everything that a child experiences".

When I am trying to understand how to build a connected curriculum for my year 9’s, the Ministry’s series of resources to support local curriculum are rich with tools and stories to help with implementation.  I love the visual and how it connects all important area of learning for our ākonga.  

“Rich opportunities to learn are carefully designed to increase the breadth, depth and complexity of the learning experiences with which ākonga engage as they progress along their learning pathways. They are designed to support ākonga to contribute to their communities in ways that build on and strengthen both community and ākonga capabilities” (Rich Learning Opportunities Tool Guide, pg 3).

An appendix to the tool guide is Dr Rosemary Hipkins report on 'Weaving the coherent curriculum: how the idea of ‘capabilities’ can help' (pg 29).  

A barrier to learning for my year 9’s is understanding what a perspective is or essentially how to see something from another person or groups’ point of view.  When learning about how people feel about our land for example, kids find it hard to connect.

"Perspective-taking has been shown to be essential to understanding complex issues in our

world.  Again, doing so contributes to building and strengthening the key competency of

participating and contributing. It supports the New Zealand Curriculum vision of educating

our young people to be and become actively engaged members of society" (pg 31) 

I really want to engage Mana Whenua in understanding deeper their narratives but I need to be sensitive in how to approach this.  My approach is to talk to Matua Harley, our school expert and develop a relationship of trust and understanding to ensure that my learners can hear their stories.  I have enjoyed reading about some of the strategies suggested and I hope to create a unit and/or curriculum that is rich in local experiences and knowledge. 

Professional Reading #3: Local Curriculum Design and the Aotearoa Histories Curriculum

Challenge:  Students don’t have the subject specific skills or capabilities to succeed in my subject area and I assume that they should know the basics.  When I am reviewing my course, I need to take into account their learning progressions and tailor our programme to gather data and plan accordingly so that the teaching and planning falls into the 'goldilocks zone'.

Research and reading: 

I have been given the role Professional Development Co-ordinator which is role where I organise and support staff around PLD.  I have been researching how to support stuff in Local Curriculum design and I have found some interesting information which in turn supports my inquiry.

I needed to get my head around how to implement a relevant programme that related to our strategic school focus and decided to figure out where to start by talking to a few people like Viv Hall from CORE education and our across school COL teacher Scott Mansell.  We all agreed that the new Aotearoa Histories (AH)was the best place to start.

The new histories curriculum provides opportunities for schools to own their own stories by providing rich contexts specific to our own communities.  As a SOS teacher, I was excited to hear about the opportunity to about Mana Whenua histories and the perspectives of Maori of our area.

The AH website offers lots of new resources and one of them is the coherent pathways resource.  Here is the blurb:

Further on in the toolkit, it offers a focus for important transition points and year levels as well as capabilities that students should be able to do.  It is like a learning progressions chart.  The cool thing with this particular one is that it shows the stages of knowing, understanding and doing across all subject areas not just Social Studies. 

I think it’s important to know what students at the end of year 8 should know and be able to do as it provides a starting point for our year 9’s.  If I could redesign my objectives, it would be to test or measure whether students can do these things right at the start of the year and the data will be more purposeful and related to real outcomes.  What I will do in the meantime is to identify what we do specifically in year 9 which may help me see where the gaps are so that I can plan a potential intervention around what I know a year 9 student should know.

Professional Reading #2: Impact of Covid on Māori and Pacific learners

In my last blogpost on a research paper, it was clear that the impact of covid created a disconnect for learners from people and place.  As the majority of my students are Māori and Pasifika, I wanted to deep dive into specific impacts to them as learners at home.  I found two pieces of research that link to knowing my learners and the barriers of student learning.

Report ONE

The first report is School led learning at home: Voices of Maori and Pasifika students report:  Experiences of parents of Māori and Pasifika students in the 2020 COVID19 Alert Level 4 lockdown.  This paper reports on a survey that sought the views of parents of Māori and Pasifika students on their experiences of the first week of school-led learning at home. 134 parents responded to the survey.  In the survey, parents were asked about the benefits and challenges they had experienced, and also to provide suggestions for improving school-led learning at home. There were 100 responses by parents of Māori learners detailing their concerns about school-led learning at home during week 1 of term 2, 2020.  

“A significant number of parents were concerned that school-led learning at home did not provide the opportunity for social interaction between children. This lack of connection was identified as having a negative impact on the āhua and wairua of the children. This concern was contributed to by a lack of support from peers when students were undertaking work online.  Parents noted that they did not receive the usual support and assurance they would have received if working in groups or alongside their peers:  Not able to socialise with other children outside the whānau, my children learn from social interaction too and it's great for their mental health and they don't have peers for motivation (pg 20). 

Connecting with peers, whanau and friends is an important aspect for students and parents in ensuring the well-being of everyone is taken care of.

Report TWO

A recent report released by ERO suggested Pacific students' education hit harder by pandemic, but schools addressing issue - ERO (RNZ article 12th May).

After reading the RNZ article, I wanted to read the report discussed on the Impact of Covid on Pacific learners in more detail to see if I could find links to support my hypothesis. 

“Pacific learners largely preferred face-to-face learning.  For many Pacific learners, online learning had not been as successful as face-to-face learning. Learning online lacked the connectedness of being in front of a teacher with their friends. We also heard that Pacific learners missed the practical approach to learning usually achieved when physically at school. They also missed the ability to get feedback as communicating with teachers wasn’t as easy outside of the classroom (pg 24) 

I enjoyed reading this report as it did not just identify barriers that were common with our Māori learners but also offered solutions to show what people/groups/schools did to support their learners.  At school, students and staff have shared the same sentiments and how coming back to school was an adjustment and this has been seen in the disengagement and disconnectedness of our kids on their learning.