4MWT term 3 2016

Dean and I decided to go through the middle school today to evaluate our practice against those of our immediate colleagues.

What's happening and why?

Middle School teachers a very consistent with their approach to each subject area. We saw maths and literacy which run in very similar ways to our space. The use of IT in literacy was something interesting to see as this is an area we are really working on in our practice. I think our IT integration is solid in our literacy programme now and beginning to operate at the higher levels of SAMR. Through Google Workspace I have been able to set up interactive but scaffolded tasks to build research and IT skills. I think this is becoming a strength of our classroom programme and it was clear to see today how far our class has come from publishing and 'researching' on wikipedia. The tasks I have created and set up link to many other aspects of our classroom learning and cover a range of reading, writing and IT skills. Through Hapara teacher dashboard I have been able to formatively assess where the children are and how quickly and accurately they are completing tasks. The next step with this area of my teaching is to continue to build IT skills and develop activities that would not be able to be completed without devices. I feel at the moment we are somewhere between substitution, augmentation and modification activities depending on the reading and IT ability of the children.

In the middle school we have been discussing a lot about collaboration amongst staff and children. In our space we have been impressed with how often the children naturally collaborate on activities. In literacy I have been creating tasks that encourage and require collaboration between children to foster these skills further. It was encouraging to see this happening in another space we visited.

What is not happening and why?

Teacher direction of tasks on a daily basis. We saw various forms of must-dos, can-dos and reading 'contracts' where children complete a few tasks and then have 'filler' tasks to complete as can-dos. We don't run this system as we try and plan activities that are purposeful and take the full time. In literacy I have introduced a personal inquiry time for children to investigate something of interest to them. The children are now starting to show initiative around this time and working on these projects when other tasks have been completed early. As a teacher I feel this gives much more ownership to the children about how they complete tasks and what to do when these are finished. I think this is a reflection of our earlier work around mindset and the roles of teachers and learners. The children are now feeling responsible for their own learning and viewing school time as hard work time. This has been a fantastic change in our routines and classroom atmosphere this term and is something I would like to continue working on next year.

What am I going to do to influence what is not happening and why?

Looking forward we would like to replicate the success we have had in reading in other learning areas. Our reading programme has a lot of student voice and variety in which I would like to expand to other areas. While we have included a variety of activities, through IT and collaboration we have ensured the activities are purposeful, authentic and differentiated. I think at the moment the other areas of our practice are very prescribed and teacher directed. Although some student voice is present in writing and students have choice over what they write about at times, 90% of the time is still teacher directed. I would love to set up a more integrated and varied programme in writing and maths. I also feel this needs to be started from term one as this year we only really got stuck in to IT integration and a wide variety of activities towards the end of term 2. On reflection so many learning opportunities were lost due to the time it took to get these programmes up and running. Student IT skills were initially a big barrier however with time and patience (!) the majority of our students can now log in and access Google Drive and Google Workspace tasks independently. I really want to work on this earlier next year and start moving towards a 'flipped' approach to learning.