Teaching Portfolio

Agency is defined by Martin (2004) as the capability of people to make choices and to act on their choices in ways that make a difference in their lives. In education, agency can be seen as when students feel they can influence their own learning and have some control over what is happening around them (Garrity, 2015; Ministry of Education, 2016 and 21st Century Learning Reference Group, 2014). After completing a MindLab assignment around student agency and discovering this blog it has clarified my thoughts around agency. Over the past few years as a school we have been working towards student voice and agency in the classroom. Most of the time this is implemented through a choice-based system or a 'menu of options'. After reading Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey's entry on  www.personalizelearning.com  (fantastic blog!) I was caused to question wether we really are giving agency and choice to our students. Bray and McClaskey include a great infographic explaini...

Collaborative Inquiry Rowing the Waka together - if you're in the waka and not collaboration you may as well be an anchor. Go on the journey together and hear different perspectives on the same issue. When you are working alone you limited what you ask yourself, when working with others in trust you can question and reflect deeper on our actions. Curiosity mindset to identify what is going on for learners and develop some hunches about what is leading to the current situation before deciding what to do about it. Scanning looking at kids from perspective of learning/achievement, wellbeing, engagement - all equally important multiple perspectives - students, whānau, teachers on three different aspects of learning Scanning questions for kids Create team questions - OECD info from slides Reflection: I am very excited about this format of teacher inquiry. I have felt frustrated in the past at only focusing on the academic aspects of children at school thro...

06/02/17 - MINDLAB COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE TASK Self reflection   - Visible to all Edit  |  Delete For a Mindlab assignment I was asked to reflect on my community of practice and how I fit in to my community. This was an interesting task for me as my perception of 'community of practice' was our COPS groups implemented last year. However after reading the research provided in my course I realised communities of practice are much more fluid than our COPs programme. This led me to wonder what COPs would look like this year as last year we were very much in the learning stage of 'doing' COPS. I think if we watched Knox's video as a staff it may clarify how communities of practice work in every day life and reduce some of the anxiety around COPs meetings. My full reflection is below: Knox (2009) defines a community of practice as a group of people who share a passion for something they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better...

Today we went for a walk through in the junior school. What’s happening and why? lots of self-directed activities for literacy small groups for teaching busy and engaged learners inquiry-based feel creativity is valued and promoted love of learning What’s not happening and why? handwriting/spelling focus? lots of word building activities. From a middle perspective children seem to be missing awareness of reversals - how do we balance focus on ideas over surface features. This may happen later in the term as we are only in day 4!! What am I going to do to influence what is not happening and why? creativity lacking in Middle - how can we promote this? I feel quite frustrated trying to meet both the desire to relax the timetable and go with the children's passions and making sure they are 'ready' for senior school and further learning. How can we move this philosophy into the Middle school level? What kinds of activities can we offer? How do we...