Mighty Microblog May

Throughout the month of May Andy Milne seeks bitesize blog posts from contributors around the world. These posts cover a whole manner of things depending on what the contributor would like to reflect on or share! This was the fourth year of microblog May and the third year I contributed. To learn more about the month (especially if you are keen to contribute next year!) check out this post.

The microblog posts I have written: - Classrooms should be safe places, right?: A prompt for teachers to consider what their physical classrooms look like and the impact this has on the general vibe of the room as well as the success of the students - Outside of Your Comfort Zone: I discussed my experiences leaping into the unknown to move to Australia and why it's important to be comfortable with the uncomfortable - From Unprecedented to Familiar: I described some of the positive impacts on my teaching that came from the last few years

In addition to the 3 microblogs for Microblog May, I have also been a guest blogger for Andy twice on his #slowchathealth website.

- Te Whare Tapa Whā: A brief description of the Māori wellbeing model based on the concept of a house with four walls

- Mental Health ≠ Mental Illness: Hopefully a helpful explanation of the difference between mental health and mental illness and strategies to support with mental health

I enjoy reading the short posts while I have 5-10 mins to kill or during break times. Much more interesting and beneficial than some of the mindless scrolling I can find myself doing! Here are my favourite posts from this year with a quote from each of them. 

- Finding Their Swish (Judy LoBianco): "We want students to internalise the joy of physical activity and to do that they must feel a level of personal success".
- Informed Decisions (Sarah Hawkins): "The STI National Strategic Plan from the U.S. Department of Human Services shares that 15-24 year-olds account for around 50% of the 20 million new STI cases in the United States each year".
- A More Engaging Pre-Test (Shelby Hosmer): "A written pretest is not my jam".
- Know Your Why (Cara Grant): "Sometimes by changing schools or positions our Why can look different, and still maintain fidelity and feed our intrinsic values as we persevere through difficult times".
- Walking Away From The Stigma (Donn Tobin): "If we are to truly change the notoriety of physical education, we need to continuously address what is considered best practice. Demonstrate what exceptional teaching looks like, how it can be highlighted, celebrated, and keep those to a higher expectation teaching it".
- The Joy of Eating (Nadia Moya): "Food is one of the great joys in life that we can all share. I want students to walk away from health class with excitement and curiosity about eating, and the skills to build a healthy relationship with food".
- Embrace the Goblin (Michelle Rawcliffe): "Goblin mode is when we transition from treading water to floating. In other words, our body and brain pin us down and force our head back on the pillow".

I would encourage you to get amongst Microblog month next year, even if you don't contribute there are heaps of great posts to peruse!

Closing One Chapter, To Open The Next

Well, I've had a hiatus from teaching and blogging, but I'm excited to get the ball rolling again. I've moved over to Adelaide in South Australia, and next week I start part time teaching here. I'm looking forward to learning a new curriculum, and being back in the classroom! The New Zealand teaching journey is likely to continue in the future, but for now I need to get used to people pronouncing h as 'haych', and learn the rules of Australian footy! 

Closing the first 5 years, 2 schools and country of my career encouraged me to check out which posts had the most views. Although this blog is a place for me to store my reflections and an artefact for my teaching evidence, it's also for me to share, connect and learn with others. Therefore, I do like to follow the statistics behind how many people view my posts and where they view them from. According to my view count, these are my top 10 most read blogposts to date. I'm intrigued to see what the top posts from my Australian chapter will be!

1) Engaging Students From Afar!

2) We Like to Move it, Move it!

3) A Seesaw, A Wheelbarrow and An Arm

4) Co-Teaching Celebrations

5) Lockdown Learnings

6) A Day In The Life Of A Learner

7) Assessment - More Than A Test!

8) Student Opportunities To Respond

9) Keeping Up With The Teacher Load

10) Restoring Relationships Through Restorative Conversation

Dissertation Done & Dusted!

Throughout this year, as previously posted about, I have been completing research to write a dissertation. Simplistically, I was investigating the potential for blogging within Year 11 PE. On Monday afternoon I handed in my 32 page dissertation and it felt amazing! The past two years have been intense teaching full time and studying part time, but I'm glad to get through. I learnt a lot about myself, my practice and technology within the classroom. If anyone would like to read it, you can access it here!

The staff at school were encouraged to reflect on the Manaiakalani cluster-wide pedagogy Learn, Create, Share, as well as the core of the cluster. I decided to write my reflections based on one of learners from my study, as this has been at the forefront of my mind. The study demonstrated the potential blogging has in education, particularly in specialised disciplines like PE. The students became more reflective, their literacy (traditional and digital) increased and there was more peer to peer teaching. When implementing blogging within my teaching and learning in the future, I need to provide a structure for students, ensure they understand the purpose of the blogging, and encourage students to provide further feedback and feedforward as comments on blogposts for their peers (evident from my research and literature).

Overall, it has been really difficult reading dozens of academic articles, writing late at night and including a pedagogical tool I only knew about from writing my own posts! But, my inquiry/dissertation has shown me how powerful writing blogs can be for learners, so I hope to include in future classes. In 2018, I am interested to explore literacy in Health and PE as my inquiry. I have noticed many of our NCEA assessments are evidence towards literacy credits, but some of the students struggle to write. Although their content may be correct, sometimes I struggle to read the students' assessments as they have poor spelling or grammar, or a lack of paragraphs. Therefore, although one hurdle and challenge is over, I am looking forward to more challenges next year!

The End Is Near

How is today the first day of Term 4 - this year is flying past?! I feel I have grown so much this year, not only as a teacher but also as a person. I have faced many challenges and been given many new opportunities, and now the end is near. I am most looking forward to spending tomorrow with my Year 11s at Snowplanet, a 2 day High Ropes course at the end of the year with my tutor class, and developing new relationships and building on relationships during the Jumpstart programme in a few weeks.

A quick reflection post Term 3 on my 2017 goals:

1. Schedule time for me:

Until these holidays, I am proud that I have not said no to any social event or activity that I have wanted to do. I have enjoyed having this two hours each day at the back of my mind and when there are busier times, I have been making up the hours I may have worked through. I had lots to juggle in Term 3, and trying to maintain a balanced Hāuora is incredibly important, not only for myself and my whānau, but also for the students. 

2. Read educational blogs:

Unfortunately I did not give one hour per week, but tried to give one hour fortnightly last term reading through blogs. I tried a different approach; rather than focusing on the same blogs I had been, I tried to read through all posts I saw on my Twitter feed. I regularly tweet links to my posts, so found this to be a great way to read different blogs, with an array of ideas and topics. I am so thankful I got introduced to blogging as part of MDTA, as this has been a reflective journey for myself, which I have been able to share with others!

3. Experiment with more digital tools

I was light on the inclusion of more digital tools this term, but used some Google Expeditions to revise the Skeletal System (see detailed description in previous reflection). Rather than using more digital tools, I was trying to build on my confidence of the inclusion of the GAFE community, and trying to use them in different ways such as hyperlinking to a variety of websites and encouraging students to use these websites to answer a series of questions or create a digital artefact. 

4. Attend more extra curricular activities

I made it through the basketball season! I will be writing a blogpost later this week, once the photos from our Sports Awards are released - such a cool night. I have also signed up to assist the one day Waka Ama tournament in November, as many of my students are involved. I am really looking forward to a day in the sun with them, learning about a new sport!

5. Include blogging into 11PE

As reflected a little in a previous post, I am currently bringing all of the pieces of my dissertation together. I spent the second week of my holidays writing a draft of my dissertation. This has been a difficult process, but I have learnt a lot about the blogging process and started to refine how to include blogging within my classroom next year to benefit my students. I am really looking forward to this hurdle being over - roll on the 20th of November once it's handed in!

Overall, I feel I developed great goals for myself, and I'm looking forward to the final 9 weeks of the year to wrap these goals up and make new ones. The important thing for me to keep in the back of my mind, is that although it's the nearing the end, every minute still counts!

Student Voice on Blogging in 11PE

I am currently feeling under the pump, like I'm barely keeping afloat. Not only have I been battling a head cold and it is the end of the term, I am trying to tackle my data for my dissertation. This post is a quick update with student feedback and major findings!

Across the whole class I was interested to know their opinions about blogging within PE, and how/if blogging effects their learning in PE. A quick Google Form showed interesting results. These graphs are a little off, because I asked students to complete the Form at the start of Term 2 and then again at the end of Term 2, so some students responses changed. However, they are good visuals for immediate feedback.

Students were given four questions, 1 representing disagree and 4 representing agree. After identifying their position on the scale, the students were asked to give a brief explanation for their position. 

Enjoyment of blogging:

Half of the class enjoy blogging and half do not. What interested me was that the scale is heavily tipped towards enjoyment though. Some of the comments the students made were:

- "Because blogging is alright and it can help me for my assessment but it can get annoying at times if we do it too much."

- "I gave a 2 because I don't think what we learn in one particular class needs to be blogged to the public for every topic or session of p.e we have."

- "I enjoy blogging because it help me to remember the things we've leant. I also enjoy blogging because I can get feedback from not only the teacher but also from my peers in the class."

Blogging supports learning:

I was pleased to see nearly two thirds of the students thought blogging was effective/helpful for their learning. Upon reflection, it would have been useful to have discussions with individual students about their comments, to determine what students specifically found effective/useful (or not).

- "It helps me be able to explain what we've learnt so far and how to present it to people".

- "Blogging has helped to support my learning in PE because when I am absent I can always check everyone's blog on what they've learnt when I was absent. Therefore I can catch up with the class and be up to date".

- "Because it can improve my writing".

Blogging is challenging:

I think this question may have been too broad for the students, suggested by the variety of their responses. If I was to redo the Form, I think I would break down the four sections with subquestions, to specify what students may have found challenging. 

- "It's hard to see if I'm improving".

- "It can be hard when I want my writing to be a good piece of work and when we have a time frame to complete it in. I find it good challenging but not when I'm under pressure".

- "Sometimes blogging is challenging because there'll be times where I just don't know how to start my blog post, so I'm wasting time trying to know how to start my blog".

Blogging helps with feedback/feedforward

This graph positively surprised me, as majority of the students consider blogging to be helpful for progression of learning. On the flip side, there were also a large proportion of students who didn't think blogging supported their feedback and feedforward. One thing I am exploring a little is how to give effective feedback, a skill many of our students are developing. Then, how to use feedback to grow.

- "Because it gives people more ideas & to improve".

- "Because we can get feedback and feed forward from other people around the world, not just people in our class".

- "Not really because I don't read comments on my blog and no one really gives me feedback or feed-forward on what's on my blogs".

So where am I at now?

I am focussing on three specific students and their comments and blogposts. These are coincidentally the top academic students in my class (these are the students who gave consent for me to use their data for my studies). The major themes/findings of my intervention from these three students are; blogging helps me as their teacher to identify gaps in students' knowledge, over time students became more reflective within their posts, students began to integrate feedback into future posts, and in class discussions/peer teaching increased.

An Attempt to Breakdown Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (or Practice) is something I have wanted to explore for a while. I felt that I didn't really understand what it actually was, and whether or not I demonstrated a culturally responsive practice. 

I thought this would be insightful, for my 100th blogpost!

After our Teacher Only Day on the 27th of March, a couple of readings and additional support and discussions I now feel a little more comfortable with CRP.

Steven Rowe facilitated our discussion about Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for our Teacher Only Day, and shaped most of the session around The Guiding Principles of Ka Hikitia. These five principles (Treaty of Waitangi, Māori potential approach, Ako, Identity, language and cultures count, and Productive partnerships) encompass key aspects of teaching and learning with Māori students. Essentially, these are foundations of CRP, so can be applied to teaching and learning with all cultures. 

Some of the key things from the principles which helped me to understand CRP are;

• The importance of caring for the learners, their backgrounds and stories
• The need for high expectations of our students, irrespective of their culture (additionally breaking down any possible stereotypes)
• Learning is a two-way street, therefore there is no position of power in the classroom because the teachers are learning from the students too
• Exploring words/terms in other languages can help make sense of the English terms
• Teaching and learning needs to extend into whānau/the wider community

We also discussed a research article/personal account written by Annie Siope (2013). Siope explores her thoughts and experiences as a Pacific person in education, positioned around her understanding of CRP. I found this article incredibly interesting, complementing the guiding principles, and you can see my take-aways from the article here.

Steven also showed us this clip, as food for thought...

An additional article, Te Tiriti o Waitangi - living the values, discusses how we are all including The Treaty of Waitangi into our practice due to the 'three P's', which also align with the guiding principles and Siope's findings; 

Partnership: Working together with Māori whānau/communities at all levels of education, such as feedback from students to improve teaching and learning, or students co-constructing units/lessons with their teachers.

Protection: Actively demonstrating a commitment to the protection of Māori culture and cultural values, such as the normalisation of Te Reo within the school.

Participation: An emphasis on positive involvement of Māori within the school, such as strengthening the home-school partnership.

I have also been privileged to have had presentations from a Māori teacher, and a Tongan teacher about their experiences, as part of my Provisionally Certified Teachers support meeting. As part of the Twitter chat I co-moderate, we attempted to discuss what CRP too (see our discussion here). Therefore, there are considerable resources to help shape our understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy and how we can demonstrate within our practice. 

Tech & Teachers Go Hand in Hand

I am currently completing my second assignment for my Summer School course, which is somewhat interesting. Our task is to find a list of blogs and provide a summary of them,  choose three blogs to compare and contrast, and then determine which of the three I will follow and read regularly (justified and backed up with research). So, I have spent hours skimming through blogs the past few days, and not felt guilty about it as it was part of an assignment! For anyone interested, here is the list of blogs I put together, which I am interested in exploring further. Definitely not to say there aren't more, there are so many amazing educators blogging!

Amongst my scrolling through heaps of blogposts I wish I could engage with and respond to more, I found Lesson Planning for Technology Use in PE (PEGeek). I could not skim past this one easily! Although the layout suggested is incredibly simple, it has definitely taken time to develop, because it is really in depth. Although I would not complete a lesson plan this in depth for every single lesson, as it would be super time consuming, I think I would like to fill out a few throughout the year.

I really like how the plan really makes you think about why you are including technology, whether it is for the students or the teacher, and whether it is something new or something you are including just for the sake of it. I am wanting to include more technology within my practice, especially apps, but I am unsure how and what to include. Alongside the copious suggestions on the PEGeek blog about what apps to incorporate in PE, this lesson plan really encourages reflection as to why the technology is appropriate for the given task, because I think it is important to not just include technology just to include technology (this is Substitution on the SAMR model for sure!). 

Something I had not really considered whilst planning before, was how my lessons were developing students' 21st century skills. The lesson plan offered identifies four key skills students need to be developing in school, which align closely with the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share - they are Critical Thinking, Creating, Communication and Collaboration. Even though it seems pretty obvious we should be providing opportunities for students to develop these skills, I feel unless we actually step back and think about whether they are having opportunities (as the lesson plan encourages), then they probably aren't, at least not as often as they could be.

A final point about my liking of this lesson plan, is the idea of the hook, the engagement. Again, it seems so obvious to draw in the learners, to engage or hook them from the start, but I know I am guilty of not having this hook, and then attempting to reel them back in. I want to have more hooks this year! Which aligns closely with Manaiakalani - The Hook From Heaven.

Very excited to read through more posts, and find more gems like this one!