Janeen - Effective Teaching Practise

A huge focus this year through our 'EffectiveTeaching Practice' is to develop further our understanding about 'Acceleration' and to apply best practices and strategies for this in our teaching and learning programmes.  The main focus is to accelerate our students in writing. This lead me to my inquiry question 'How can I develop student agency to help accelerate learning?'  Below shows my thinking to further research to get a better understanding of this.   What is student agency?  My thoughts - the student takes greater control, ownership and responsibility of their own learning.  Students lead their own learning by directing their own learning pathway, setting their own goals, and making their own decisions instead of the teacher directing it.  

Here is our own class 'INQUIRY' action model the students are currently using to support them in their learning to inquire. We looked at a variety of inquiry models on the internet.  This helped us to brainstorm our very own actions where we were able to go from one action to another without any systematic order.   After several weeks of using this we evaluated our class inquiry model - such as 'Did we need to add any other actions?'  Or 'Reword actions?'  Or take away actions as they weren't relevant for us as learners.  The students did add another action 'Collect Data' as they felt this was necessary because quite often they did student voice surveys and graphs to help them plan next steps for their inquiry investigation. The students and I also added help idea prompts around each action to give them (students) even more support and direction around planning next steps for their inquires.  For example some 'Reflection' ac...

According to Pepper Rollins (2014) Acceleration provides a fresh academic start for students every week and creates opportunities for struggling students to learn alongside their more successful peers.  I strongly agree as the maths activity I did with my stage 5 early additive group gave them more confidence to share their thinking and discuss their ideas with their peers when solving problems related to multiplication and division.       There was a need of my Stage 5 students to understand what the actual symbols of multiplication and division meant.  I decided to do an acceleration 'Sorting' activity exposing the students to maths language that also mean the same as the words 'multiplication and division.' This created a lot of engagement as not only was it a fun hands on activity, the students had lots of opportunity to discuss and share their thinking of where to place the 'words' given.  They also provided examples to su...

Jack's group showing lots of engagement in the 'Illustrator' role My year 8 students were already equipped with the tools needed to achieve a literacy circle.   Zoey and I thought it would be a wonderful idea for my year 8 students to model this to her class.  Eva's group using the dictionaries and thesauruses in the 'Word Master' role  Room 13 students knew what the expectations were while another student lead a group and we unpacked the WALT in student language to understand how they will benefit from this. Room 13 students engaged in the learning  All students showed brilliant respect to my year 8's as they were very nervous to start off with.  But after the first group, my year 8's showed confidence and Room 13 students were engaged in each 'role' rotation. Sam's group (back corner) immersed in the 'Discussion Director' roled

Tuesday, 31 May 2016 Literacy : comparing level 3 and 4 of NZC (Listening Reading Viewing) Today in our team meetings we had a discussion about the differences between Level 3 and Level 4 of the NZC (Listening Reading Viewing strand) Our thoughts .. Level 3 - From purposes/audiences to Structure: show developing….developing understanding...Level 4 shows an increasing. Understanding… ·                      Importance of being able to see the difference of developing and increasing. ·                      Examples:  When reading a student at level 3 may refer to images/diagrams to support their reading. Whereas a student level 4  would be referring back to these images/diagrams to increase their understanding of the text eg. Water Bottle Rockets, students wo...

Whaowhia toku kete matauranga (Fill my basket of knowledge) Students enjoyed putting together their kete As a class we brainstormed several things that we special us and what represented us as a school.  We came up with family first and foremost, and also Manukorihi Intermediate - the grey heron.  The students were told a little bit of history behind the bird of why it represents our unique school.   We also looked at what a kete means and why is it important for us as an individual to have one - 'Fill my basket of knowledge' what does this means?