ANZAC Memorial Service

This term our Inquiry study has been centered on ANZAC and how wars of the past have changed the future.  Students carried out inquiries on everything from weapons to battlefields and the 'ethics' of war.  The literacy development happening within the school was very evident in the caliber of writing students were sharing on their blogs - from narrative to explanation to poetry.  For many of the students studying texts, war was a very distant thing, so reading true recounts and stories based on fact brought home the true devastation and misery that war brings. 
During our ANZAC service students sang the New Zealand and Australian national anthems.  A memorial was created where students had the opportunity to lay wreaths and poppies.  Mrs Kelly and I lay photos of our grandads who fought in the war.  Classes all had turns at sharing some of their learning which included songs they had written, poetry, war facts and inquiry findings. 
The service was very solemn and students were very respectful through out.
It was a wonderful occasion.

Browsing for Gems

I like to keep tabs on people within the Manaiakalani Cluster who share great resources and materials through their blogs and on google+. Today I checked out Karen Ferguson's post on google+ and was linked to her blog. Her blog is a professional reflections/journal similar to mine in that she puts her thoughts, findings and reflections all in one place. Today I found this fantastic gem we can use in our Design Technology class next term. It's focus is on design language and what students need to be able to use when discussing their design. Language acquisition is an area of focus for our students with many of them being ESOL and unaccustomed to the use of specific design language. This resource will be of great use next term, and we'll add our own slant to this, alligning it with specific language to our projects.
Check out her blog: Stuff and Nonsense

Thanks Karen!

Performing Arts Fiafia Night - Y7&8 Camp Fundraiser

On Thursday 10 April we held our first ever Fiafia night at TPS.  We were very lucky to be able to use the Summerville Special School hall, which proved to ample enough space to hold the crowd that came to support the senior students at our school.  The Night was HUGELY successful with $1400 raised to go towards camp this year. 

DATA DISCUSSIONS

This week we spent a day drilling into our data in our syndicates. Each teacher had an opportunity to review their data and identify a target group of students just below standard who would be their control group for this year. These students will be carefully monitored and their data scrutinized as their progress unfolds. The expectation is that these students achieve AT standard at the end of the year. Teachers also discussed how we can improve or enhance the learning of our students through cross grouping - identifying specific needs or abilities and grouped by them. A handful of students will be in classes other than their own for literacy and numeracy. Kate Birch spent an hour with each syndicate reviewing the easttle tool and the usefulness of the specific reports the tool can produce. The console report shows teachers where their classes stack up against the National norm. The most useful aspect of this tool is the indicators at the sides which show teachers which specific elements require further teaching or extension.

Writing Rubric in 'Kids Speak'

Under the instruction of our Literacy consultant, Kate Birch, as a staff we were encouraged to re-create the writing rubric in kids speak to make the criteria accessible by students in a format they could understand.
During staff meeting, we split into groups and were given 1 element of the rubric to unpack.  The exercise was interesting and in some ways challenging.  For many of the new teachers, this exercise afforded opportunity to reflect on how deeply we drill into the criteria of writing in our programme.
All agreed that the outome of the activity was both rewarding and practical for classroom use.
It was my job to collate all of the elements and put them together.  While there is still some tweaking to be done...this is the initial draft.

FESTIVAL OF EDUCATION 2014

I attended a 'chat' session at the Festival of Education called "Inspired and Passionate Teachers: An Hour with John Hattie".  The session was both interesting and to some degree affirming.  It gave me 'food for thought' in reflecting on my understanding of best practice and 'expert' teaching. 

John Hattie opened the chat session by having an 'open forum' where participants were free to ask questions and share their views about teaching, teachers, research and education in general.  Below are notes taken during the discussion:

• Are teachers losing their passion due to the demands put on them?

• How can teachers work more efficiently?

• Systems sometimes add to the problem. How can we get teachers to assess their systems to lesson their load?

• What is the best way to get visible learning into schools?

• What is it that keeps teachers wanting to come to work?

Many of the answers to these questions John Hattie put purely at teachers feet.  The age old adage of 'working smarter not harder' seemed to seep through the thread of the conversation.  
Hattie encouraged teachers to:   

• be evaluative of our practice to ensure we are not wasting time covering things children already know.

• know your impact - that is what drives us to be good at what we do.  
  
  • Evaluate your impact.

• be flexible and have a range of strategies to meet the needs of students - change tact when needed, evaluate as we go, use the data, ask children about how lessons went.

• diagnose, don't pre-label.  
  
  • Use interventions. 
  • Strategise for the need.

Discussion then centered around high impact teachers in the classroom:

• High impact teachers balance between surface and deep. 

• Challenge students not do their best, do better. 

• Use multiple teaching methods. Have a range of strategies, the few they know work and interchange between them.

• Listen to feedback from students.

• Plan in the light of the evidence of impact.

• Teachers to DIE for - Diagnose, intervention, evaluate

In answer to questions around demands put on teachers Hattie commented:

• Teachers need to investigate how do you get kids to become their own teachers?

• Teachers on average ask hundreds of questions per day to their students...how many questions do your students ask in a day?

• How many questions does a class ask per day?... On average 2. This needs to go up. 

• Collaboration between teachers/schools is imperative to assist with demands.  

• Collaboration ensures expert teachers share their expertise and spreads the expertise within a staff.

• NZ is the most collaborative and competitive country in the world. Kiwis strive to be the best.

All in all I enjoyed listening to what Hattie had to say.  I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said.  He was adamant that everything was laid at teachers feet...achievement was completely centered around teachers and their expertise.  I do believe that social and cultural context play a greater role in achievement than he thinks and consideration must be made in this.  Even the most 'expert' of teachers have failings in their classes.  I know that most teachers are becoming more reflective and evaluative in their practice and this is adding value to the programmes they are teaching in their classrooms.  However I still believe that on any given day, one student can have a detrimental effect on the learning that takes place within a classroom environment.  What considerations are made of these students in Hattie's research?

At Tamaki Primary, I was able to come away from this discussion secure in the knowledge that we are on the right track, we do have 'high impact, passionate teachers' on our staff.

 John Hattie

Hekia Parata - Minister of Education - up-skilling her understanding of teaching.

Ran into an old friend at the Festival of Education - Linda Vagana (ex-Silver Fern) now CEO of Duffy Books

 (Mrs Fepuleai, Linda & Mrs Kelly)

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING DEVELOPMENT - WRITING

The two areas our staff are focusing on this year are Maths and Literacy (more specifically - Writing) and this week we had a week of PLD with wonderful consultants Kate Birch (Literacy) and Lucie Cheeseman (Maths) from Cognition.

Teachers spent a day with Kate beginning with goal setting and collaboratively creating a success criteria to go with our goals.  Through discussion teachers developed ideas on where we are at in our teaching of writing, where we want to go with it and how we are going to get there.  This was most informative and gave us direction as a team of what and how we want to achieve our goals.

Following goal setting, we spent time reflecting on the curriculum "the road" (with the focus on writing), tying this to the literacy progressions "the sign posts".  This reflection/discussion time was beneficial for the understanding  of the link between the two documents, particularly for our beginning teachers

The day continued with the moderation of writing samples from our most recent assessment.  This was great opportunity for us to discuss the writing rubric and to extend teachers knowledge and understanding of how it works.  Through this moderation session we gained an indication of how accurate we were in our judgements using the rubric and were pleased with the overall outcomes of the session.

To end the day, the team looked into the planning and structure of our writing lessons.  Some of the staff were fortunate to have attended sessions last year with Murray Gadd and the aim is that we will be running a fluid group writing programme where children's individual learning needs are identified and met through analysis of data, conferencing and in class writing clinics.