Presenting our targets and outcomes in our Curriculum meeting #1

As part of our professional development around student centred learning, our HOD's and assistant HOD's were asked to present to our curriculum committee ways our subject areas were supporting students to achieve NCEA level one.

We had four questions to address:

• Who are our target students and what are our desired outcomes
• What will we do differently to achieve those outcomes
• How will we lead that change
• What support will we need

Here is my presentation:

Connecting with whanau to build student profiles #1

Studies show building a connection with whanau and families can support the achievement of a student.  In my efforts to know my learners better, we have our student achievement conferences and I asked the tutor teacher of 9PKr if I could support him in meeting some of the parents of my inquiry group.  My main purpose was to share my inquiry with them, discuss some of my findings, then hopefully set goals with them.  My key focus was looking at reading but if they wanted to know about writing, I was happy to share what I'd learnt about their child with them.

I went armed with the following resources:
* Profile sheets of evidence I had collected
* A blank graph that I had pre-sketched to show the progression of asttle reading results for 2018 and 2019 (and beyond).
* 'The Big Picture' diagram for students to complete
* Strategies for supporting students at home from Dr Jannie and department discussions.

For each student, I wanted to share historical data collected from their primary schools (2017/2018) mainly asttle reading results and compare them to this years two test points (in February and June).  I wanted to explain where they needed to be by the end of year 10 ready for NCEA at the start of year 11.  I am also to sharing ways we could all support their child, through strategies discussed from Dr Jannie Van Hees and in my department discussion.  I am hoping that we could set collective realistic goals.

This morning, I met with two students and their families, and have collated what I will tentatively call a 'tri-angulation' of profile collecting for these students. 

Student ONE:  T1 is a young Maori boy, whose mum came in for his meeting.  I have found that he is a capable critical thinker and is able to verbalise his learning, but can not and will write much and this was evident in his asttle reading/writing scores where he scored 2A's.  I also know that socially, he struggles to fit in with his peers.

Tri-angulation of data and evidence for student T1

After much discussion, I found out that he'd only been speaking English in the last three years and he was the lead speaker at his kura kaupapa when he'd left.  She wants to continue encouraging him in his Te Reo and says he enjoys school. 

Quick reflection:  I was taken aback and said to her I now see him in a totally different way.  I can see now why he was having issues fitting in and I often see him bursting at the seams to answer questions.   I have written some reflection here about my next steps with him that I hope to implement in my theory of action.

Student TWO:  A1 is a young Maori girl whose mum attended her meeting.  She is a highly capable student who scored 4P in asttle reading and 5A in her writing.  She fits in well with her peers and always completes tasks to a high standard.  At times though, I noticed that she was only doing what was required at the fastest time possible and only after I pushed her to extend herself would she actually do it.  She would also get annoyed at the smallest things.

When I asked mum what her aspirations for her daughter were, she was a bit taken aback and said it was a good question (I don't think she was expecting the question). She wanted her daughter to be healthy, safe and confident and to be whatever she wants to be.  I asked A1 what she thought about what mum said and she said yes, I know.  I reminded A1 that her next steps were to continually challenge herself and be a highly critical thinker by digging deeper and finding out more.

Quick reflection:  I am thinking about ways to extend these higher level students in the class and there are about 5 or 6 (mostly girls).  I don't want them to lose momentum and feel that with more support, they could be ready to do NCEA in year 10! 

I am really happy that I met these students and their mums.  It has given me a whole new insight into who they are, how and why they behave the way they do and what I need to change in my approach to teaching them.  I feel more confident in identifying exploring ways to address their needs, it's just a matter of finding the right interventions -watch this space.

Meeting with Dr Aaron Wilson to sound out my inquiry #1

At our last CoL teacher meeting, we were given the challenge to find tools and measures that would support our inquiries in a more robust way.  Because I am a bit slow at processing important information some times (meaning I need some one to one translating of words and concepts lol) another colleague and I, Hinerau Anderson, asked to meet with Dr Aaron Wilson to sound out whether we were on the right track with our inquiries.

I shared my thoughts around the difficulties kids had with completing tasks and when it came to writing summaries, students especially boys, were struggling.

The first task I need to do was to find out who was not completing them and how long they were.  Aaron shared that he had worked with a teacher at another secondary school (similar to ours) who was struggling with their year 10 class to write summaries.  When collecting data, he suggested that the best source of data would be copies of summaries they've written themselves.  Once I had evidence of kids work, I could put them into three categories: incomplete, complete, missing.  Using a marking rubric will help me gain a good picture of where the kids were at with their summary writing.

From this, there are a number of hypothesis that could be the reasons for the challenge:

1. Was them understanding instructions
2.  Related to not reading the text (can't/don't know how)
3.  Flow diagram - can read but don't know much about summarising
4.  Not good at knowing the structure of the text.
5.  Some can write a summary but don't see the purpose - analyse and find out what's going wrong

We touched on a number of approaches that could support different students at different stages which I will talk about in later blogs.

Meeting #3 with Dr Jannie Van Hees: Putting the lens on language

At the beginning of each week, my year 9 social studies class usually look at current events that are local, national and global.  We start with a socrative activity, where students have to answer 20 questions about events from the past week and then I get the kids to find an article on one of the events that they found interesting and summarise what happened, when and where etc.  Unfortunately I have found this exercise a bit of a waste of time, because many of the students still leave the classroom not knowing what they had read and some do not complete their summaries.

When I reflect on why this is, I find that they may not understand the language that has been written in the text and this becomes a barrier to their learning.  This then leads to a lack of engagement and a lack of motivation to complete the tasks set.

After discussing this with Dr Jannie, we focussed on designing reading tasks for the students in my year 9 social studies class that could focus on unpacking the language of current event article.  I have recorded our discussion and have written the key points below.  To understand the context, click on the link to the article below, then listen to our discussion video.

The article we discussed was "Man petitions to make 'Aotearoa' official, alongside 'NZ'".

My key takeouts:

• Get the kids to answer 'What's the point ' which is also important to hold conversation.  
• Support students to recognise complex word groups helps to build language capacity.
• In the end we want to lift up language.  If we don't put the lens on complex language, they'll never produce it.
• Although it might seem tiresome at first to slowing down the language, we can work together to inform each other. 
• Don't get too fancy with doing a whole lot with it, but what we do know is that they need re-encounters.   It may just be having students' in groups and at the end, they complete a table with labels such as 'the main was' and 'my opinion was'. 

My next steps:

• Design the lesson and do the lesson with the class.
• Put language on my walls
• Adjust my pedagogy in expecting the kids to have to write a proper summary of what they have learnt in class.

Meeting #1 with Dr Jannie Van Hees: Setting the platform

I have the pleasure of working with Dr Jannie Van Hees this year, who is supporting me and my learners in 'Languaging social studies'.  In our meetings in the past, I have been fascinated with the idea of looking more closely language but have not had the chance to sit down and unpack what that looks for me and my pedagogy with an expert such as Jannie.

At our first meeting today, we discussed language acquisition and what it looked like for the learners  in my classroom.  I talked about how they receive language (mainly from me and each other).

I wanted explore other ways to enable my kids to gain language, here are my notes:

• Young ones adding to their toolkit, their 'kete' of language.  Older ones teaching the younger ones.
• Conversations - language.
• Technology - engagers and facilitators of thinking.

There are 4 ways to enable learners to gain language:

• Acquisition - getting the language
• Development - making it better
• Sustaining - keeping it going
• Transfer - using it across more than one area.

In social studies, conceptual understanding of key terms is important, such as:  Change, society, social issues, values, perspectives.

My key takeouts were that language needed to be more of a focus in my classroom and in my department.  Knowing what this looks like now, will help me understand what the next steps are towards 'languaging social studies'.