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

Co-Teaching Celebrations

Throughout the second half of this year I have enjoyed co-teaching our Year 9 PE classes with Alice. We've had three units together; Movement Ed, Fitness and Outdoor Ed, and each had a different Achievement Objective attached to it. I spent my whole first year at Tamaki co-teaching all of my classes, and I really enjoyed it. I felt like I learnt a lot alongside another teacher, and loved bouncing ideas off of one another before, during and after lessons. So I was excited for this opportunity again. 

Alice has a few more years experience than me, so brings lots of great ideas. As teachers, we have similar views, expectations and philosophies. We both have an interest in curriculum and how to integrate curriculum terminology and knowledge within our teaching and learning. We both have high expectations for students, wanting them to achieve to the greatest of their potential. We both like to challenge students to critically think about their choices, their involvement and their opinions. We both prioritise inclusion and participation. 

These similarities between us have been great for the culture we have developed in our class. Questioning students on their levels and the achievement objectives has certainly helped to develop the positive learning culture too. I feel majority of our students have moved away from the expectation that PE is just playing sports, as they initially thought. There now seems to be more understanding about the E in PE! I've also loved hearing other students starting to help one another when they are unsure, and holding each other accountable for individual and class success. 

  

Obviously Alice and I have some slight differences, but they don't have any major impact on our planning and teaching. The only thing we could come up with are slight expectation differences around behaviour and uniform. The stuff that fortunately is minimal due to the class culture!

I really hope that I have further opportunities to co-teach, as it is so valuable. So much can be learnt from having someone else alongside you, irrespective of their experience. I do think it can be very challenging if you don't have similar views, expectations and philosophies - but this provides quite different learning opportunities, more personal growth possibly.

Who knows what the future holds...

 

  

The Shift Has Arrived - Chaos Ahead!

Throughout 2019, we were in groups of 6 to create an integrated unit for 2020. I briefly explained in this post what my PLG's initial ideas were. The last two CallBack Days have been dedicated to meeting who we will be co-teaching with, and getting comfortable with the units we will be teaching. It's crazy how far we have come - we are starting to teach the units next week!! 

Our school is having quite a shift this year, and it's super exciting. Not only are we integrating curriculum areas at Years 9 & 10, the timetable is also changing and we are introducing Mai Time and Ako teachers. Moving from 5 periods days and a 10 day cycle, to 4 blocks a day and a 5 day cycle means we actually see the students an extra half an hour per week (Juniors and Seniors), which is great! Mai Time and Ako blocks are included in the timetable for Juniors - given the same amount of time as curriculum units. Put simply, Mai is an opportunity for students to be physically active and also time to create their own passion projects/inquiries. Ako is a mentoring system designed to support students with self management, how they learn, and progress towards goals (kind of like School Mum!). Later in the term I'll blog more detail about Mai and Ako, as they grow a little more.

The unit my PLG developed comes under the umbrella value of respect, and is the sexuality unit for Health integrated with Digital Technology and English. There are 5 modules (Hāuora, Pubertal Changes, Communication, Relationships, Drugs & Alcohol) throughout the course. Students will have checklists for each of the modules full of resources and tasks to complete. Ultimately, by the end of Week 12, they will have created a 5 page website to demonstrate their understanding of the content/skills/tools within the checklists for all 3 curriculum areas. Throughout these 12 weeks, we (the 3 teachers) will be floating around 75 students to give them feedback and have learning conversations, and host mini tutorials - the onus is handed over to the kids entirely! 

Week 13 we have calendared a 'catch-up' week. As we are assessing against the achievement objectives (see 2019 trail here) frequently throughout the modules, by this point we should have a good understanding how the students are progressing. This week is to encourage students to increase their levels for their achievement objectives (for any or all of the curriculum areas), and to determine the final 5 weeks. 

If students are sitting at a Level 2 - Level 3 of the curriculum, they will be required to review their website pages to increase depth and demonstrate greater understanding. If they are a Level 4 across the board, the students will be given an extensive list of inquiry ideas they can choose to investigate (which will supplement learning in a curriculum area of their choice). Our most academic students who are already a Level 5, will design their own inquiry project. The project will need to be related in some way to one of the 5 module topics previously explored, and the students are required to explain which 2 achievement objectives their project will demonstrate.

I would be lying if I said I am feeling 100% confident. I'm honestly feeling a little apprehensive. What if the kids don't do anything with all of this freedom? What if I clash with my co-teachers? What if there are students who fall through the cracks? What if they aren't getting depth in their learning? Am am void now?? BUT I am also incredibly excited to be involved in this shift, I think it's an amazing opportunity for the students AND the teachers. We will be learning new skills and content from the other curriculum areas, and also further developing skills including collaboration, empathy and problem solving. Bring on the organised chaos!

Wrapping Up The Integration

For the past month, the Junior school have been learning through an integrated unit about the Olympics, which I previously discussed with reference to my Year 10 PE class. I also blogged about the sketchnotes the Year 9's were completing in SOS about the Olympic values. This week has been about bring the integrated unit to a close.

The students task, was to use all of their knowledge and skills they developed throughout the unit across all subjects to create a website. For some parameters around the site, students had headings to shape their ideas; society, anthem, kai, and an athlete from the country their group was recognised as, and also a description and evaluation of their game they created in PE.

Today the students presented the website they created and explored some of the key knowledge they had learnt throughout the creation of the site. I was interested to see how students collaborated with one another, and utilised their skills/knowledge across subjects, rather than keeping math in math for example. Unfortunately I was sick while the students created their sites, but I was thankful to see some of their presentations.

For future integrated units, I think the teachers need to begin to brainstorm, plan and create lessons much earlier. Possibly there could be overall aims of the unit - what we actually want the students to get out of it (not the final product they produce, but the major objectives), I think this integrated unit was possibly left a little too open, which many of us struggled with. We also need to be clear on whether we are teaching our own subjects, or whether we have daily objectives we all work towards, to create some collaboration and cohesion across subjects. 

Nevertheless, the students generally enjoyed being in the same room for the month, with teachers moving to them, and I learnt a lot along the way for sure. I like the possibly of another integrated unit next term, look forward to seeing how we manage this one!

Balance, Or Not

The second half of our unit with the Seniors, is biomechanics; getting our heads around the biomechanical principles and then applying them to movements. Today's focus was balance and stability. Balance and stability have three key concepts students need to understand and be able to interrelate; base of support (BOS), centre of gravity (COG) and line of gravity (LOG). 

Put simply, our BOS are the points of contact with the ground, and the area in between. The wider this base of support, the greater balance and stability we have. COG is the centre of the mass of the object, this may be on or outside an object depending on the makeup and placement. The LOG is straight through the COG to the ground. If this hypothetical line falls out of the BOS, this is when something becomes unstable and loses balance. Thus, a widened BOS, ensures a lower COG and the LOG is less likely to fall out of the BOS.

This afternoon 12PE replicated some poses with 2, 3, 4 or 5 people, then were asked to identify where the BOS, COG and LOG were and explain why. If they could not replicate a pose, they needed to identify why they weren't balanced/stable and how to increase their balance and stability. We attempted to create a class pyramid, but unfortunately collapsed as I was trying to capture the moment and the bell had gone! So hopefully we can attempt this in the future, as this clearly demonstrates the balance and stability principle. I'm looking forward to experimenting with more of the principles!

If you are interested to learn more about balance and stability, check out this clip. The YouTube channel RBHS PE with Mr Dalton whom created this video, has created various clips that are useful to describe other components of HPE, if you are an educator like me!

Key:

Yellow - COG

Blue - LOG

Red - BOS

The Power of Ownership

Currently, our Year 12 and Year 13 classes are completing an anatomy and biomechanics unit. These topics, and subsequently the internal assessment, is one of the harder assessments to pass, because it is so black and white. The students have to analyse an ideal performance (such as an athlete) for a specific part of their game play (i.e. a basketball jump shot), and then compare the ideal to their own performance. Throughout, students will make reference to the bone, muscles, movements, and biomechanical principles that are occurring throughout that performance.

Recently, both classes have been creating revision resources for anatomy, focusing on bones, muscles, and/or movements, after a few weeks of learning about them all. Unfortunately, a substantial part of the learning for this unit is rote learning, however my co-teacher and I are trying to make the learning interactive and variable, so the students don't just learn what they need to know for the assessment and then forget everything right after. So, hopefully creating something to revise from has helped them to learn without

everything thrown out the window once they have the credits.

Several students created Kahoots
which we will complete as a class

We kept the task reasonably open, so that the students could create something that was going to help them, something they understand. The process of the creation is revision itself, as well as the final product - which we will go back to use to revise and the students work will be shared across the two classes. Both of the classes were slow to start, as there was a little bit of confusion and a little bit of hesitation. 

A group of three boys took photos of themselves to then label and
discuss as they have here using Google Slides.

Some students enjoyed simply
labelling diagrams as this is how
they learn effectively.

Upon reflection, I wonder whether the students aren't offered many opportunities to create something, knowing they will share it. I know we don't create much in PE, due to the nature of the topics, but I am trying to bring more in where/when I can. If they are out of the habit of creating and sharing their work, like many did in primary school, this could be why they were so hesitant. Eventually, though, the students came up with their ideas, planned their creations and on the whole, the creations are impressive. We had wanted to move onto biomechanics much sooner, but as they started to get on a roll and create some amazing work, we kept going with the creations. I cannot wait to see what the students create in the future, as they are so talented!

Reflect On The Past, To Build On The Future

As we near the end of Term 2, the MDTA have the task to create an interview reflecting on our first six months as a teacher, and as a teacher part of the MDTA. We have been encouraged to think critically about our development and learning as beginning teachers and what has supported us throughout the rollarcoaster, reflect and move forward.

As we have two weeks to complete this task, I am taking considerable time to think through exactly what I have learnt, what skills and knowledge I have developed, and what my current teaching philosophy is. The questions we were provided as a template for the interview are both broad and specific at the same time, because they may have a variety of answers, but making them specific to me is difficult. I don't really know who I am as a teacher to be honest, and I don't think I will know for a long time, when I have had more experience.

However, I have been thinking a lot about the value of self reflection. Although feedback and feedforward from others is helpful for my development, I think deep down, I know in order to move forward I have to accept my successes and failures, and my strengths and weaknesses as a learner, a teacher, a colleague and a person in order to move forward. Accepting one as a learner who requires ongoing reflection, also proves to me the importance of resilience.

The above clip discusses teacher reflective practice, and how lucky I am as a teacher to have the opportunity to continually be challenged, to continually ask why and to continually progress and develop to become an even better teacher. I will be filming and editing my interview this week and at my digital immersion next Friday, watch this space!

Creativity and Critical Thinking

This week my co-teacher and I have begun a new unit in Year 9 Social Studies; Beliefs and Religions Around the World. I have attempted to be more engaged with the planning and teaching of this unit, now I have grounded my feet. I would not say I have been disengaged or avoiding this class, but I needed time to find my feet in the school, the subject, alongside Dot (co-teacher) and the class.

Believing in yourself and what is important to you

Rather than asking students to find definitions of what belief and religion is and write them down (then subsequently forgetting them a few minutes later), I thought we should be a little more creative with our lessons. Reading through my reflections, and considering my observations and understandings of the class, I concluded the students need less time listening, and more time completing activities and creating things they need to think about.

Important to push yourself, love one another

Thus, I have attempted the past two days to include more student centred teaching and learning. Yesterday students spent majority of the lesson participating in human continuums, as I like to call them. Students were given a statement, such as homework is important, and they had to place themselves along the continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Students then had to explain why they put themselves where they did on the continuum. I think this was a great lesson to introduce beliefs, and to understand everyone has different beliefs. The key message the lesson was based around was there is no right or wrong belief, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, thoughts and opinions. Additionally, students were able to open their thinking to consider others' ideas and beliefs, which may be different to their own. Following from that, in small groups students discussed what belief and religion may mean, and tried to distinguish the difference.

Believes he can be successful, would love to be an artist

Following on from yesterday, students' task this morning was to create a drawing. The drawing had two parts; one picture to represent what the students determine belief is, what is important and valuable to them, and a picture to represent what they think religion is. These are some of their creations, which was so exciting to see.

The students were really challenged to consider the difference between beliefs and religions, and they questioned their own. This lesson was a great opportunity for students to actually sit and think "What do I believe in? What do I think is important?". Following on from the drawings, we looked at different beliefs around the world and tied the beliefs to religions. Although the students aren't as respectful and well behaved as I would like them to be, their behaviour and attitudes in class have increased considerably, which makes for a much more enjoyable lesson. I feel like I am finally making some ground with these students, the subject and co-teaching in Social Studies.

Learn, Create, Share is a massive component of Manaiakalani, which I am attempting to incorporate into my teaching more often. Read more about Learn, Create, Share here!

 

Believes it is important to go to church, Understands religion as a group of people we believe in e.g. Christianity

Modern Learning Environment Opportunities

This morning I was fortunate enough to be involved in the Manaiakalani School Leaders Study Tour, hosted at Stonefields Primary School. We were invited to Stonefields to view their modern learning environments in action, as well as provided with ample opportunities to hear both the student and teacher voices, and ask questions.

Today I walked away questioning how I can attempt to implement their way of teaching and learning into my professional journey and school. I think the atmosphere of the classrooms and the vibes from the students was so positive throughout the entire tour, thanks to the supportive, open learning environments the students are immersed in. The students enjoy their learning, as they are able to immerse themselves in learning about whatever they are passionate about, known as Break Through. For instance, some students wanted to make quilts for the Starship Hospital, some created artwork (see right and above) to showcase around school, and one boy worked individually to write a novel. I love how their passion is the focus of their learning, which I want to see more of at Tamaki College.

Pondering how we may be able to include more co-teaching and collaborative teaching at Tamaki, there are various ways, but some may take a while to achieve. I would love to be able to teach all our year levels at the same time. This would eliminate having to stream classes, would enable all students to be provided with the same learning opportunities, and more than one teacher would always be present in class. Currently a struggle is the seniors being at different stages throughout a unit, and being taught very differently, but are then provided with the same assessment (NCEA). This is a department work on, but unfortunately due to how a school timetable is manipulated too, which would be the biggest challenge to put into practice co-teaching and modern learning environments - where and how could we find the time with students choosing multiple options.

However, there are ideas I have floating around in my head which are more achievable. I would love to do the same as Stonefields and encourage students in Art or Graphics to create/design creations to be around the school, like these photos. This eliminates teachers creating learning environments which they think are the best for the students, and enables the students to literally create their own learning environments. 

I have heard about modern learning environments within secondary schools, rather than primary, which I would love to go and check out for even more relevance to me. To learn more about Stonefields and the wonderful opportunities they are providing their learners, please browse their website!

Our Fortnightly Sleepover

Kata and I have scheduled a sleepover once a fortnight to work on our lesson planning, as we teach Year 12 Health and Year 9 Health together. Because we are both beginning teachers, we knew co-teaching was going to be a challenge for both of us. However, we are both so thankful we have developed a beautiful relationship not only as colleagues, but also as friends.

Health is a subject we are both not only passionate about, but also really enjoy teaching. To be up all hours of the night, calling each other every few days and continually questioning what and why we are teaching, does not phase us. We are both wanting to increase student achievement at Tamaki, as well as increase student knowledge and interest in Health. Prior to our (mostly Kata's) arrival, Health did not seem to be taught to the best of it's potential, so I am so grateful we have been gifted with the opportunity to create new units such as the draft we completed on Padlet tonight (below).

I cannot wait to see where Health at Tamaki College will be in two years time, and to see how are professional learning journeys as individuals and as co-teachers have developed. To determine progress and improvement throughout our careers, we value feedback, feedforward and reflection of our teaching, learning and planning both collaboratively and individually in order to grow. Many struggle to discuss feedback/feedforward suggestions, but, as Sheila Heen discusses in this TED Talk, there are many effective ways to provide and receive feedback, which are beneficial for teachers and their learners.

Collaborative Teaching 101

This afternoon during our weekly MDTA Professional Learning Group, we discussed the basics of collaborative/co-teaching, which I am still pondering. If you are working in a co-teaching environment, it is important to question yourself and your teaching. 

Without analysing you, and your colleagues' teaching (individually and collaboratively), there is a possibility you aren't providing your students with the best possible teaching they can have, or the teaching may not be working. Ultimately, teaching needs to work for the students, regardless if there is one, two or even six teachers in one classroom. So, ask yourself the following;

Picture located here

What does collaborative teaching look like?

Feel like?

Sound like?

What works?

What doesn't?

Are we working with one another?

Or against one another?

Am I open to feedback and suggestions?

Do I offer feedback and suggestions?

Are we taking risks, trying new things?                       

Or sticking to what we know?

I think asking these questions frequently as reflection, is important to enable the best learning that is possible for the students.

So when is co-teaching at it's best?

My Job is Better Than Yours

A look into what is happening in my classes at the moment. Jealous? You should be!

Brainstorming with 9Health what we will be learning about this year. I took this opportunity to reiterate the importance of speaking up when you have something to say/ask, and to never laugh or mock one another. In schools like Tamaki, the likelihood the students' families educate them about touchy, difficult subjects including sexuality is little, therefore it is crucial the students feel safe and comfortable to freely speak in class, so they are correctly educated.

Teaching the concept of Hauora and aspects of our lives within the dimensions through classroom discussion in 12Health.

9Health critically analysing which dimension of Hauora is mostly impacted during specific scenarios, then we had a classroom discussion/debate - because there is no wrong answer as long as there is justification (which is an important lesson to learn).

9SOS created posters using Pam Hook's hexagon model. Students are given a page full of blank hexagons, then in each hexagon they are to write one word related to a given topic. Once the hexagons are full, students are to cut them out and them place them in an order which makes sense to them, then explaining why they have hexagons linked. An awesome activity to critically think, and also revise content.

11PE and 13PE participating in a volleyball tournament. Easily managed when there are three teachers, one per court. Sometimes, although many would argue this (especially my lecturers!), there does not need to be an aim or objective for a lesson. Sometimes, we don't need to teach anything, but there is still learning. Sometimes learning occurs indirectly, and the students don't even realise it. This was a perfect example of one of those lessons.

Are you a beginning teacher too? Check out some tips on how to be successful... and keep your sanity!