Teaching students to become reflective

Today I read a blog by Simon Scott who reflected on the impact sharing had on young people and how sharing learning made a difference in writing. I enjoyed the post as he talked about 3 different steps to writing a thoughtful, positive and helpful comment on someone else's blog. If the children could follow the template then it stopped them from writing basic comments like "good work" "nice writing" to a more in depth and thought provoking comment. I like this strategy as it is teaching students to look more in depth as to what has been done well and what they then could do later. I would like to trial this into my learning space as not just a way for students to comment on learning but ways to give feedback and feed forward after their writing. 

The Acceleration of sharing

Sharing has changed significantly in the last 100 years. With sharing changing from speaking on phones and searching through google. To now in the last 10 years instagram, twitter, snapchat and iphones creating new ways to share and be involved in online learning.

In my role the change in sharing has made communicating with whanau and other schools more accessible. It has given me the opportunity to make connections through different media that whanau use and is easiest for them.

From having a outreach facilitator I have learnt some new learning around explain everything and blogging. It has been useful when sharing with my students as it is easy for them to use aswell.

Reflection and Evidence

Professional learning
Use inquiry, collaborative problem solving and professional learning to improve professional capability to impact on the learning and achievement of all learners.

Chosen evidence: Literacy and etap Leadership overview

One piece of evidence that I feel strongly relates to one of the Standards is my leadership overview. This year I have taken up a leadership role of leading literacy, etap and sharing my findings and data to the staff and BOT. I was required to prepare for staff meetings and lead teachers through PACT, PAT, Writing AsTtle and assist where needed when they needed help with any of these areas. From being a leader around this area for the 3 terms I have become more confident in front of the staff and I believe because our staff is so approachable and positive this has made presenting and teaching/learning with them easier for me.

I found that I have learnt a great deal from having this leadership role as many of the areas like PACT, PAT and AsTTle I needed to teach myself and find ways around problems that arise. One instance was when I was required to transfer the data from etap on AsTtle. I really had no idea where to start and my first instinct was to ring Elise and get her to tell me or even do it for me. But I decided that as it was now my role, I stepped up and began to problem solve around this. Etap communications I have realised are very fast at replying to any questions and instantly helped me solve this dilemma.

Literacy data has been very exciting to plot and track as I have gone in depth with what different aspects are required and this has made my teaching more meaningful. I found it very interesting to be able to track our target students and look at their progress throughout the year.

Along with teaching and being in charge of literacy I also decided to take up a Mindlab course around digital and collaborative learning. Initially I really enjoyed this course as it was about ICT and different ways of using it in your teaching. But because of the high workload a teacher has, I was ready to complete this course as it was no longer something that I enjoyed. Although I did not feel like I enjoyed it as much as others I still do feel that I learnt a great deal from it. Learning different styles of leadership and collaboration also helped when I was required to present data to the staff.

Kapa Haka

Kapa Haka
In our school all of the teachers are required to be in charge of an area of leadership around the school. As Kapa Haka has become such a big area our lead teacher needs another teacher to help with managing juniors and seniors. We have decided as a staff that each term a different teacher can take up this job to help out and also learn the songs, movements and help to improve general Te Reo Maori knowledge.
I feel that this will help me with my standard around Te Tiriti o Waitangi and help me in getting some more evidence around these areas

• Understand and recognise the unique status of tangata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Understand and acknowledge the histories, heritages, languages and cultures of partners to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
• Practise and develop the use of te reo and tikanga Māori.

Leadership around literacy

Today I presented our literacy data to our staff. The data showed great comparisons around our schools writing data from the start of Term 1 to the end of Term 2. This data showed that for our Year 3 and Year 7 targets they had made a great shift in both their spelling and structure of their writing.
It was good to present this data to the staff first before the board of trustees next week as it is great for us as a staff to see our students progress and what we need to work on next.

It was also a good time for the staff to discuss and talk about any questions they had around the data and the students that needed some extra help. I was there to explain the data and answer any questions or confusions that will be asked. Next week I will be presenting this information to the BOT and hopefully they will be impressed as we were with the data from today.