Mindlab Activity 3: Contribution of Teacher Inquiry topics to my Communities of Practice

Create a reflective entry where you critically reflect on how two potential and inspiring digital and/or collaborative learning related teacher inquiry topics would contribute to your Communities of Practice. Your reflection should be based on a reflective model of your choice.


My two possible teacher inquiry topics
1. How can I use the digital technology I have to promote and support whanau engagement?


2. How can I use my Ipads more effectively to engage learning and not just be a time filler or a task in a rotation?


I have chosen these two inquiry topics as they are two areas I need more development in my practice. I feel that they both involve student agency and also relate to getting whanau more engaged in students learning so that they can be successful.


My first possible teacher inquiry topic I chose is about building whanau achievement. This is very important at our school as we would like for families to be more engaged and involved in their students learning. I currently have Ipads one to one in my classroom and have the Seesaw app set up.  But I have noticed that I don't have many families signed up to this as I would like. I have chosen this inquiry topic to investigate some other ways to engage whanau using digital technology.


My second possible teacher inquiry topic is finding ways that I can better use the Ipads in my classroom learning to engage students. I feel that at the moment I use them during rotations with learning but they are not personalising the learning for the student and they are often a time filler or just a task that needs to be completed. I would like for my students to be engaged and using 21st century skills when on the Ipads and for learning to be more personal.


Using the model identified by Wenger I have identified communities of practice that would support my teacher inquiry topics my principal, colleagues and students/whanau. I believe that both the principal and my colleagues would help as we often have informal conversations and daily reflections on learning (Jurasaite-Harbison & Rex, 2010). I regularly discuss with colleagues about how we can get whanau more engaged with students learning and we all agree that it is an area that our school would like to improve on.


I believe that getting students and whanau involved in the learning and part of the inquiry makes them feel more involved and is personalising learning. Having discussions informally with whanau makes them feel more relaxed and is more a joint enterprise where teachers and whanau can collectively develop a shared understanding about what the inquiry is about (Wenger, 2000).


I am currently also involved in other communities of practice that can be linked to both of these inquiry questions. Within my school we are involved in a CoL (community of learning) which focused on using data and raising student achievement. We are also involved in Manaiakalani which is using digital technology to enhance and engage students to be successful. Through studying with Mindlab I am also involved in another community of practice with the teachers that are also studying.


By being involved in different communities of practice they have helped me to become more informed about different viewpoints and helping me to analyse what I want from my inquiries and what I need change or do differently. I can change what I learn from each of them and reflect accordingly. "One makes a judgement or a choice among actions, or simply integrates what one has discovered into a new and better understanding of the problem." (Jay and Johnson, 2002, p.79). 


Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.


Jurasaite-Harbison, E., & Rex, L. (2010). School Cultures as Contexts for Informal Teacher Learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 267-277

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Activity 2: Reflecting on changes in my future orientated teaching practice

I have chosen to focus on the theme of "Personalising learning" as I feel that the Mindlab postgraduate course has changed this a lot through my own teaching and practice. Personalising the learning is when you specifically cater the learning around the individual. (Bolstad et al., 2012). Making sure that their needs are being met and the teacher knows what the students enjoy, like, know and what they need to work on. Within my own teaching I have made sure that I cater to individuals and make sure that I am working on catering to their specific learning needs. Some examples of this is that I have drawn on a variety of data from both summative and formative assessment. I know the learners and feel like I know what they need and how they learn successfully. I then make sure that I am using this information to help me plan and effectively teach. I feel like prior to the postgraduate study I was trying to personalise the learning in my classroom. But looking back at this I feel like I was just using data and doing the same things that I normally would do thinking that I had personalised learning but not taking any risks or trying different things like using ICT in innovative more creative ways.

Thinking back to my learning journey, it has changed a lot since I started out. I am really impressed with not only myself but seeing the progress in the students. I feel that they are becoming more independent and more confident with their own writing. The routine is fun and they understand what is needed from them. (Spillane, 2006) It even makes it easier for me to discuss with them what they have done well and what they need to work on as they understand what is needed in their writing to make themselves successful.

Reflecting back I know that this is very positive in my classroom as the students are more confident in their writing and they don't just come to me and ask what do I do now. Which is what I used to get a lot. Students are making sure that they use the models both on the walls and their self checking strips so that they can edit and re-craft their writing. I've noticed that I no longer have a line of students who have finished their work. Sometimes I do notice that students are not correctly ticking off their self checking strips and just doing it fast so that they can be finished. But majority I think are doing this task and it is successful. My teaching has improved from this as I am becoming more reflective and noticing what is working and what isn't. It is also great that they are sharing their work onto the Seesaw App for their families to see, as this is really important for their learning. (Gonzalez-DeHass, Willems & Holbein, 2005)

In conclusion I feel like the changes I have made have been very beneficial both for myself and the learners in the classroom. Students are becoming more confident and routine shows that they enjoy knowing what to do next and when they finish. As a class we still need to work on our feedback and feed forward to others but that will come. We have continued to do this throughout this year as I am noticing it is very beneficial and the students enjoy going through the editing process independently or with a buddy before they come to the teacher. To improve this in the future it would be great if they could feed forward to each other specifically what they need to improve on and then go and make the changes. As most of the time they do not like changing their writing or adding things because it is more work.

This change has shown students what they need in their writing and that although they may have finished writing it does not mean that the writing is done. Students are more independent in their learning and are becoming more confident when articulating what they need in their writing. I believe that this change has been a huge success as parents and other colleagues have commented on the work and that it is great to see the students so positively engaged in their learning in writing. I feel that this change could also be implemented through other year levels so that it progresses and students can continue with a pattern they are familiar with. I feel that I have become confident when personalising learning and think that this change was a success in my class and  know that reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experience. (Finlay, 2009)

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf


Gonzalez-DeHaas, A.R, Willems, P.P., & Holbein, M. F. D. (2005). Examining the relationship between parental involvement and student motivation. Educational psychology review, 17(2), 99-123.

Spillane,J.P. (2006). Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Mindlab Activity 1: My Reflective Practice

 My reflective practice in relation to Jay and Johnson's model is that I feel I am very confident and consistent when reflecting about the first phase being "Descriptive". I am confident when keeping notes and short reflections about what is happening in my day to day practice, is it working and how am I feeling it is going. I feel these reflections are great as you can quickly notice if lessons have gone well and you can easily look back to have evidence of your own practice and teaching. These quick reflections are very helpful as you can see where to go next, what worked and what didn't.


I feel like the next phase in the model about comparative. I often feel that I am not comparing or critically analysing my reflections in depth enough to get deeper features of why things are happening and how my reflective process is going to inform and renew my new practice. I also rarely if ever read professional or academic resources to critically evaluate my own practice. It is important as a teacher to be reflective and knowledgeable about what is happening and why.


When I first started blogging it was just brief sentences and ideas about what I was doing and what I could do next. At this time I felt I was being reflective but looking back I feel like it is just defined as Rapid reflection (Zeichner and Liston, 1996). This is just immediate, ongoing and automatic reflections about what is happening.

Zeichner and Liston

(1996)

Zeichner and Liston

(1996)

After these realisations I have become more confident and I am still beginning to grow how I reflect on aspects of my own practice. I am trying to read appropriate literature to assist in my reflections so that I am being more critical about my practice.


https://www.colorado.edu/education/sites/default/files/attached-files/Zeichner&Liston_Teaching_Student_Teachers_to_Reflect.pdf

Observation on Donna Barry 15.11.16

Observation of Donna Barry

15.11.16

Writing lesson

Focus- how does she engage students and structure lesson.

WALT- write a story

We will: use some fast words in our story.

Teacher; where are our fast words?

Gets student to point at some fast words. T can use our alphabet cards. T asks what fast words can you think of.  T writes up fast words.

Good praise from teacher.

What do I do when I first start writing a story?

Think about a story. And I want to use some fast words. T what do I have to do when ive thought about my story.

Plan

So we need to draw a picture.

Is there some fast words in my story.

“Here is my scary butterfly”

Gets students to point at the fast words that have been used. T gets class to read story with her. And each word she gets the students to point at the words she is using. Lots of positive praise to the students. T gets students to read the story with her and she gets the students to write the fast words on the board. Very involved.

T gets students to sound out scary with her.

“Looking eyes, listening ears”

T reads story with class again and asks if she has used some fast words in her story.

Ticks the fast words that have been used.

Eye spy glasses on and find your books.

Feedback: Quick short lesson that was engaging and most students were all looking and listening. There was lots of praise and I liked the way that you kept reflecting back to the learning intention and making sure that they knew what to do.

Great lesson Donna J

QLC on Margie

Feedback on Margie's phonics lesson.

Keriana Observation 7/6/16

Writing Tumble

Focus- to see how teacher uses a writing tumble and seeing groups

15mins per each activity

Spelling group has a spelling worksheet to work on.

Crafts table- making cards

Free writing

Pobble tasks- there are task cards that are in a box students work through so there are different pegs- Mon, Tues, Wed, Thursday

Teacher has an alarm to signal the change of activity.

Teacher has an Ideas picture on board for what they could write about for their free writing or publishing.

Pobble tasks group change over to teacher.

Group observation-  T what did we focus on last lesson- Describing feelings, character- look like, wearing, what type of character are they.

Group has already written about a character

Teacher gets student to read story about their character.

Students are working on making their writing better. So they are in the re-crafting stage.

Teacher looks at student’s books and works through giving feedback on their work and asking how they could make it better.

Students that are finished their writing from the day before can choose another piece of writing to finish working on.

Students were all asked what they were doing and could all easily explain what they were doing and why.

Alarm goes off then groups change over.

Teacher calls next group down.

Reflection

I find there isn’t enough time to see each student in the groups

All students were fully engaged and on task.  Really impressed was such a cool way of doing writing,

If I was to do a writing tumble I would make sure that day 1 students would work on writing either with teacher or independently then for day 2 they would bring their writing down and re craft it together.

Observation 23/5/16

Observation- Jess to observe Donna (Maths lesson)

19/5/2016

Purpose- Looking at how Donna uses encouragement and questioning to make the lesson student driven.

T has problem for students- she recaps what we do if we know the answer. Show our thumbs

“Roscoes cat had 5 kittens then his other cat had 3 kittens. How many kittens did Roscoes cats have altogether?”

T gets students to try to work it out using their counters.

T writes down all the students answers. 9, 6, 7

T writes equation in modeling book

5+3=

Wati how did you work it out? You have 5 in one group and how many in the next 3? How many have you got all together? Students states 8. T asks if he wants to change his answer from 9 to 8 but he replies no and keeps 9.

This was interesting that the student stuck with the original answer 9 even after they found the right answer 8.

T lets get 5 in a group then we get 3

Now what are we going to do?

Students say count them all

T gives good questioning- giving students lots of time to add up the groups of counters and writing down every answer right and wrong.

What have we been learning to do? Students reply counting from the biggest number.

T has new problem.

T puts 1 counter on top of a paper that has 5 counters underneath.

She writes problem

5+1=

T uses lots of good prompting, and states to them that we are now going to try and figure out this very hard problem.

Roscoes cat had 5 kittens then 3 more.

5+3= all students said 8

5+4= students show their thumbs all said 9

T models counting on to check if they got it right, T puts 10 under the paper then 2 on top

10+2=

T gives each students the chance to share their answer first so that she is getting an idea who is getting it right.

Feedback:

Awesome lesson, was very energetic and teacher made maths very fun.

Was good to see a quick lesson that kept the students engaged and progressing.

Well done Donna loved this lesson and how you progressed through the different problems.

Observation of staff member QLC 3/3/16

Staff Member: Penny
Curriculum Area: Writing

Specific focus for QLC: Getting students to sound out to begin to write independently. 

Agreed success criteria:
- Write a sentence independently and follow the recount structure. 

Feedback:
Good to see you sounding out with the students. 
All students are engaged and seem to be doing the right thing.

Whiteboards are a great idea!!!

Feedforward:
Could use strategy so you get them to tell you what they want to write then use a line under where each word would be. If the student says "I went fishing" Teacher writes __ _____ ______ Get student to point at lines and repeat the sentence until they know what they are writing. 
Lots of modelling of the Teacher sounding out sounds in words on board get them to help.
Could sound out the words like "fishing" f-i-sh-ing" 

Great lesson Penny :)

Observed by Jess Neave

QLC observation-Keri

Staff Member: Keri
Curriculum Area: Writing

Specific focus for QLC: Ideas to check writing-Independently checking writing

Agreed success criteria:
- Want students to be able to individually check their own writing.

Feedback:
All students seem engaged
Nice slow instructions
Getting students to check the adult input on their writing
Good questioning- referring to the writing process
Lots of student involvement and student talk

Feedforward:
Could get students to read their stories to their buddies and get buddy feedback relating to the things that are needed in the story. Self checking strips

Great lesson Keri :)

Observed by Jess Neave