2 Amazing Years-MDTA Graduation

Last night was the Manakalani digital teacher academy graduation. We were lucky enough to have this wonderful event at the google offices in central Auckland. Standing there looking out over the city and reflecting back in this amazing journey I felt many things.
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Firstly I felt a great sense acknowledgement, the past two years have been anything but easy. They have been fun, emotional, challenging and filled with new learning and experiences With many momentments pushing my thinking and helping me to grow. I remember walking around the cluster with the other MDTA BTs, Anne, Dorothy and Fiona and this beginning of this journey and seeing many school. Looking back I was seeing the network of people, learners and structures that would support me and that I would support as I began my teaching career.

Secondly I felt a great sense of gratitude. There is a great saying in New Zealand and it goes ‘He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata’ and it means it is people, it is people, it is people. While it is easy to focus on the one or two people you see at the front and centre of a program like MDTA there are so many people who make it possible and to everyone no matter their role I am so grateful that you made this program happen for me as I am the teacher I am today because of you!

Being at the graduation I felt a great sense of enjoy meeting some of the people in the background who had made this possible for me through donating time, money and knowledge to the program. Again I can not thank you all enough.

Thirdly, I learnt of the footprint of my action and that fact that even when you feel like you are trucking along alone in your class making shift and having sooo much fun many people are watching noticing and reflecting with you. They might. Be walking past your door hearing your class engaging and discussing or connecting digitally but in teaching especially in Manaiakalani you are never alone. And someone people see thing in you that you do not yet see yourself.

No matter where my life might take me, I will also be a 2016-2017 MDTA teacher and that fills be with great pride and the knowledge that I have skills and knowledge to draw as I continue to grow as a teacher.

Research

As you will know if you have read my earlier blog post this year I have been working towards completing my dissertation in order to gain by honours degree i
n teaching. This has not been an easy journey for me particularly as the year has gone. However I am so proud of the research I have produced.

Summary:

My research found that in my classroom targeted fluency teaching improved reading fluency for my learners. I also discovered some issues around self-assessment and noticed that this needs to be extremely well scaffolded.

Being both a researcher and a teacher this year has put a critical lense on my teaching and made me more reflective than ever. It is interesting to look back and thing does the outcome match the purpose and if not why. And surprisingly you often find that as you do this additional information comes to light, which then guide your future teaching.

Handing in my dissertation was a big moment for me and I am so grateful to my research supervisor Rachel for all her support and encouragement, but also to all the teachers around me who also supported me in this journey.

Dorothy Burt: Visibility Enables Accelerated Shift

"Visibility Enables Accelerated Shift"

-Woolf Fisher Research Centre

As we head towards the middle of term 4 and the film festival we are privileged to have Dorothy Burt talking to use about the Manaiakalani Kaupapa. It is important that all elements of the Manaiakalani pedagogy Learn, Create and Share are not optional if you want to create this accelerated shift they must happen together to achieve this goal. We also be connected, have ubiquitous, empowered visible learning. 

We can not cherry pick because you can't connect if it is not visible. 

What is the #1 Factor Influencing students Achievement?-Collective Teacher Efficacy!! This is based on a number of researchers including John Hattie. 

At Pt England we have a collective inquiry goal which we all approach in our own ways. By having this shared goals we provided accelerated shift for learner and support teacher practice.  

Evidence and Data provides us with opportunities to teacher better and be the ones the cause accelerated shift. 

-School Inquiry, this occurs at a school, team and teacher level. 

-External Inquiry, Woolf Fisher Research, Auckland University

-Teacher Inquiry, Teacher inquiry 

Celebrating Accelerating Shift for One Learner in 2017 

Celebrating Accelerating Shift for One Learner in 2017

I am so proud of every learner in Room 14 for all they have achieved so far this year. This is one learners amazing shift. I am so proud of her and her achievement. 

Class Site

Term 4 Inquiry update

This year I have thought a lot about the narrow nature of my inquiry. The reason for this has been my research needed a specific focus. While my specific focus has been narrow I realised that I have been using the skills I have developed in my inquiry throughout my reading program and that these have been valuable for my learner. I am excited to link my inquiry to our music theme this term and continue to build fluency but also critical thinking and reflection. 

Moving from skip counting to basic facts

The children were very good at counting in fives. However none of them used basic facts the first time.

They then looked at how they could work this out using 10s. 

They struggled at first to work out how many groups of ten there would be. The either used the same number 10x6=60 or continued to skip count. 

It took a bit of practice but they started to get this idea. They talked about the number of groups being halved. 

Then they did a problems like 7 lots of 5 they then made 3 groups of ten and one group of five. They repeated this with 3s making groups of 6. Then 4s. 

This is a great strategy that I don't use as much as I could. I have been aiming to get them to using timetables that I have not pushed the way they could make different groups. I think this partitional thinking is key to developing a wider sense of how to solve addition problems. The problem that we use get different types of thinking.

Later Jo talked about moving children into solid stage 5 and giving them the basic facts knowledge they need for stage 6.

When we are teaching children multiplication when need to help children generalise by knowing families of facts 1x17 is the same as 17x1=. Then they can work out the easiest ones first 1x, 10x then we start to use the knowledge we have to find unknown facts. 

Math Learning Moving from equal sharing to repeated addition

Jo did some modelling for us develop our teaching practice around moving children from equal sharing to using repeated addition.

First she ask the children to skip count in 2s, 5s, 3s. Then she ask them to identify the written form of fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/3 and 1/10. Some of the children could identify 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3 but done could read 1/10.

She then ask the children to share some counters. She asked them to share them fairly between the monkeys. The children needed support to understand the question. She did not give them the counters. None of the children answers. So Jo asked "How could we make sure they get a fair share if I give you the counters. The child gave each five rather than equal sharing. The children said we can use our timetables.

After identify where the children were at Jo began teaching. She started with two monkeys and 8 counters. How many will each get. Children found it easier and used doubles knowledge. Followed this with adding more counters. Student were good with doubble so they moved on.

They then moved on to 3 monkeys and 12 counters. Students again used timetables and repeated addition. They then discussed what fraction they had and practiced writing fractions and learnt about the denominator telling use how many groups.

They moved on the four monkeys the children said straight away they get 1/4 because the bottom number is how many monkeys there are. 

The way Jo used word problems in the way she talked I do sometimes but perhaps I need to do this more. I also think this reinforced the need for my to continue to do fraction recognition as often as possible. Also the importance of managing children so that everyone gets thinking time. Well this is something that I try to do it does not always happen as they are so keen to share.