Navigating An Unexpected Numeracy Challenge

As I anticipated at the start of this 7 week contract, teaching Maths was challenging. I always felt like I was half a step ahead of some students, on par with other students and even behind some! I hadn't learnt about or practiced multiplying fractions and exponents for probably 13 years, so felt incredibly rusty. I was lucky to have a PE teacher in my office that also taught 8Maths to help me out though. I would've really struggled without him!

I was asked to complete a mini inquiry/professional development plan for the time I was at Plympton. My HOD and her PLG had developed a vocab 'test' for students as part of their PDPs. The purpose of this was for students to demonstrate the key terms/language they understood at the beginning of a unit, identify areas of development (between the teacher and the student) and then complete a post test at the end (to hopefully see progression!). I thought that this could be a great little tool for me and my Maths students. I liked that this would help students to self-identify their next steps and help me to plan for differentiation. See below the table that I gave students 6 weeks ago and again this week.

After the students did all they could on the pretest of the vocab, we went through some of the possible answers for each box as a class. Anything they'd left blank or were incorrect I asked them to add a correct answer in a different colour. This then became their study guide for the next 6 weeks (during class time and at home). The kids could refer to this when they were studying at home or when they were learning/completing practice questions at school. In hindsight I should have come up with a way to make this digital or actually given them glue to stick their now study guides into their books because unfortunately throughout the unit a lot of kids lost them! Nevertheless, there were still many who referred to the guide throughout the term.

Majority of students struggled to make real life connections during the pretest. They struggled to see the connection between the terms and how they can apply them into the world around them. As a result, I made sure throughout my lessons to include a variety of scenarios that applied the terms. We had vineyards, stores, school systems, stationary, orchards, birthday parties and whatever else popped into my head while I overheard the kids chatting and while I was planning. I actually really enjoyed coming up with these scenarios because they helped me to recognise and explain how and why the terms are relevant day to day. I certainly empathise with the question "when am I going to use this in the real world?" So, I tried really hard to answer this question before the kids asked!

Earlier this week the students completed their 'posttest'. I was so proud how many of them took this seriously to see their own progress since I started with them 6+ weeks ago. Conversely, some unfortunately did not take this opportunity with open arms (many of who were also the students who'd lost their pretest). To be honest this process also demonstrated clearly to me the pressure the kids feel when they hear the word 'test'. I noticed several students this week decided that they would rather not try than get things 'wrong', even when this was just an indicator for their learning and the fear of grades was removed! There seriously needs to be a shift away from kids thinking grades make or break them. It was sad how many of them thought it was better to not try, than it was to find out where the gaps were in their learning. I hope in my next gig I can help to change this.

When they'd completed their posttest, I asked the students to complete this mini reflection (they also had completed a similar one at the beginning of the unit for me to compare to). It was interesting for me to see their progression (which I could also send to the teacher who I have replaced over the last 7 weeks), but of most interest was the comments they made. Check out alongside some of the responses the students gave to the question 'What has this process shown you and why?'

One skill I developed throughout this contract was my attempt to differentiate learning. I very quickly realised there was a major difference between the levels of understanding in my Maths class. I was genuinely surprised how far apart the top end were from the bottom end. Although it became time consuming, for most of my lessons I actually had 3 levels of tasks/activities. They all helped students to meet/work towards the learning intention of the lesson but were different levels of difficulty. I organised the physical class into 3 spaces; need 1:1 help with the teacher, feeling ok but need more practice and feeling confident and ready to be challenged. The kids were able to choose where they wanted to go and could move between the groups/spaces each lesson. I've had great feedback from the kids about this flexibility and choice between their activities, and I feel it helped many students to self-regulate, so it's definitely something I will keep in my teaching toolbox!

Overall, this gig has pushed me out of my comfort zone, but this opportunity to teach Maths has increased my confidence to try new things and attempt to include different levels of learning. Here's to the close of another chapter. I can't wait to be a reliever next term as a bit of a change of scene!

Be Comfortable With The Uncomfortable

My fiancé and I will be moving back to NZ mid year, so we decided that I wasn't going to take a full time gig this year. We knew this would give us greater flexibility to travel and I would have less stress and pressure being a reliever. The last few weeks we have been skiing in Japan to start these travel adventures. As we were heading to our last chairlift of the trip last Thursday my phone started ringing from a random Adelaide number. It was Plympton International College and they wanted me for a 7 week contract starting today!! This was super unexpected and I was actually looking forward to being a relief teacher for this term, but I decided to jump into the deep end and take the gig. I am very out of my comfort zone because I have been given a Y8 Maths class (certainly NOT my strength!). I'm nervous about this new curriculum area but I am hoping it'll give me new knowledge to have greater numeracy connections in HPE in the future, and develop new skills/teaching strategies. 

Today was my first day and it was awful. I really didn't feel supported and I was expected to be teaching 10 minutes after I had arrived even though I had just been given my classes and I hadn't stepped foot in the school before! I was assuming I would have a couple of hours to have a tour, check out the notes from the teacher I was covering and some prep time for my lessons. Thankfully I was able to wing my way through the day but requested to have the day tomorrow, which was thankfully granted. I left today feeling very rattled, frustrated and like a lone wolf. I left feeling like I made a mistake taking this short contract, so I really hope that changes over the next week or so! This really highlighted to me the importance of support - I would love to become a HOD one day and support will be a major priority!!

Even though I've come home today feeling flat and uncertain about this change, I have reminded myself about the importance of stepping out of my comfort zone and that this is another opportunity to develop my resilience. Yubing Zhang's below Ted Talk is great food for thought with regard to getting to the edge of our comfort zones. A question she posed that you could ask yourself is: "What is it that you are not doing because of a fear of failure?"

9OUED Units: What Did The Kids Think?

I asked my 9OUED class for some feedback about each of the units in the form of ratings as well as general feedback. Initially they were hesitant to share their thoughts. I think this was because they didn't want to offend me or hurt my feelings if they didn't enjoy something. However, after some prompts and reminders that this is a genuine opportunity to adapt the course for future students and I would actually be disappointed if they didn't share how they were feeling, they opened up a bit! We actually had some great discussion. 

We went through each of the 4 units and discussed 3 areas for each; their overall enjoyment throughout, their experience and thoughts of the excursion/camp for that unit and the skills and knowledge that they learnt (how much and how interesting). Students were asked to rate from 1-4 between the 4 units (1 being the highest). For example, I could have said that I enjoyed the ecology unit the least and the rock-climbing unit the most. As a result, I would have given rock climbing a 1, bushwalking a 2 or 3, group dynamics 2 or 3 and ecology a 4.

I have created the alongside graphs as visuals to show what the students said (unfortunately some units have less feedback than others because we had students join us partway through the semester and/or they didn't come on the excursion(s)). Some of the clear pieces of feedback from the quantitative data (alongside the in-class discussion) include:

- Bushwalking in general was clearly the most enjoyed unit of the 4 but less than half of the students actually enjoyed the overnight bushwalking camp experience. Chatting with them though, it wasn't necessarily that specific camp, just that they realised they don't like bushwalking. 

- They clearly learnt the most skills and or knowledge throughout the ecology unit. This didn't surprise me but was great they were able to recognise this! Despite learning the most though, the excursion to the beach was their least favourite of the four throughout the semester. The general consensus was that there was a lot of talking from the people facilitating the microplastics experience and not enough hands-on. I agreed with this and as a result there will be some changes next year (such as borrowing the equipment and the teacher running the session). 

- Generally the rock climbing unit was enjoyed and the experience of actually rock climbing was positive for many of the students. I observed lots of positive involvement in the learning around the safety considerations and preventative measures in the outdoors (both at school and at the rock climbing wall). I started to include some more specific scenarios to break down/discuss after attending the fatality prevention PD and the students were really engaged in these conversations.

I have enjoyed creating this 9OUED course this year and felt so lucky to be able to teach the first groups of kids. Using the kids' feedback and my own reflections, I have created a semester unit plan with all resources and activities for the teacher who will be taking over next year. I'm proud of this and know it is a great place to start for anyone who may take over the course (and can't wait to see how it develops over the next few years). This brings me to the end of my time teaching OUED for this year. I have learnt lots and have really been pushed out of my comfort zone. Here's hoping in the future I have more opportunities to teach OUED! (Will certainly need a lot more development though!)

Top Ten Teacher Traits!

Aaaand the Seniors have officially left for study leave! Even with an extra two weeks with them, that time has passed so quickly! Before they left, I asked students, as well as a couple of colleagues if they would like to give me some feedback on my teaching this year. Across the comments, there were 10 themes that came out. These are in no particular order. 

Enthusiastic, Energetic, Positive Vibes

I certainly give my best to keep positive during my lessons, as the students clearly feed off the energy I give (or lack!). I often find myself quite mentally exhausted from the acting that may be needed, especially on those not so great days. I do think I have become much better at expressing to my students when it's not a great time though, once those relationships have been established.

Critical Thinker

When I was growing up, like many young people, I always wanted to know the why, and wanted to challenge people's ideas and understandings of the world. I'm glad that this was picked up from a few students, that I'm trying to bring this criticality into my teaching. I want students become more aware of different perspectives, so they become more assertive but also more open-minded towards others' thinking.

Goes The Extra Mile

Well, don't all teachers? The kids definitely recognise if you go above and beyond, or if you rinse and repeat!

Constructive Feedback

I was pleased to see this come up frequently throughout the comments, as I have been trying to develop the skill of giving feedback (both written and verbal). I definitely learnt a lot through the Assessment Essentials Course, but also have gathered confidence in my ability to give feedback due to more experience. Having regular checkpoints, including 15 minute 1:1 chats, has been really helpful for me to monitor student progress, as well as adapt future lessons to support their learning. 

Prioritises Wellbeing

Goes without saying really. Hāuora comes first. If their whare is about to collapse, there's no way they are going to learn!

Holds Students Accountable

From meeting deadlines, to following school rules to completing what the work they said they would - there were lots of comments around accountability and the use of time. I found it interesting how many found this positive for their learning and personal growth. To be honest, it really grinds my gears when teachers don't follow through with their word or the expectations that were set as a team/department... but I can only control what I can control!

High Expectations 

I genuinely want the students to achieve to the best of their ability, always teaching to an Excellence level. I've reflected multiple times around the value of high expectations in the classroom, and it's nice to hear the students recognise this.

Long Term Planning

Thinking back to the 'why' I previously mentioned, each lesson I ask myself why are we doing this activity, why am I using this resource and why am I structuring the lesson this way? This helps to increase understanding for myself that I can share with the students around the bigger picture of the learning. Not only right now, but also where we are heading next and how these skills/knowledge are useful long term. 

Positive Relationships

Need I say more?

Push Students out of Comfort Zone

Despite having a Senior Health class with majority of the students having high social anxiety, I really encouraged the students to step out of their comfort zone. We discussed several times the importance of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. The importance of trying new things, taking small risks, especially talking with and in front of others. I hope to reflect a little more about anxiety in general, in a future post. 

So there you have it, Dougherty's top ten teacher traits according to my colleagues and students!

We Like to Move It, Move It!

As we are adapting our Junior courses into an integrated curriculum next year, we also need to consider how we are going to adapt our methods of assessment. Rather than giving students grades that are inconsistent across departments and within departments based off of Achieved, Merit or Excellence (which can be subjective even with a marking criteria), another major shift next year will be assessing students based off of levels of the New Zealand Curriculum. This is going to be a challenge for us, and for the students, especially when we are going to need to design the rubrics for these levels for each of our integrated units!

As practice for this method of assessment, this term we utilised the NZC levels to assess our Year 9 Movement Education unit. The purpose of this unit is to encourage students to step out of their comfort zones and to learn some new skills for dance, gymnastics and parkour. This new method of assessment the students are unfamiliar with, hence we started by co-constructing what these levels actually looked like in action, see pictures below. 

Once we had discussed these levels and the purpose of the unit, I asked my students to select one emoji to represent them throughout the term. We regularly had mini discussions about what level the students thought they had been demonstrating throughout the lessons and why. In addition, students moved their emoji to the self assessed level. See alongside the progressions from the beginning of the unit to the end of the unit - it's interesting to see how many students fluctuated, but also great to see so many students sitting at or above the expected level of a Year 9 student! 

This method of assessment definitely required some more prep, and a more conscious effort to embed within the teaching and learning, but I think was a great way to have more consistency of grading and also students had more understanding of the why and how. I enjoyed discussing with students why they were moving (or not) their emoji, because most of them were able to give detailed responses related to their demonstrations, with examples. 

Some stand out comments from some of my students about the overall unit include the following;

"I think it is a very good thing to do it has definitely helped my confidence and it was heaps of fun once I got into it."

"I learnt a lot of new skills and things I couldn't do and I learnt that if you commit to something you can most likely do it."

"The dancing impacted me because it pushed me out of my own comfort zone to try something new and kind of scary. I don't enjoying doing dances in front of other people but it wasn't that bad once I was doing it with my friends."

"My main challenges were in the parkour where I was not getting too involved in the whole thing only one part of it but I thought I should give it a go so I could get up a level and try to enjoy it more and doing that helped a lot."

Moving forward into our next unit which will also use this method of assessment, I would like to have more discussions with students throughout the lessons, rather than just at the end when they are moving their emojis. I found this time I was only able to talk to each student once or twice throughout the unit, and obviously the more often, the greater students can demonstrate their understanding. I think that this is important, as next year we will have 75 students to assess against the NZC levels, rather than about 25. Additionally, I have previously learnt that gamification is a tool which many students positively react to - so I think I need to refer to moving up levels more often as a challenge for students to reach (as the last student voice has suggested).

Teaching Sexuality Isn't That Scary!

This year was the first year I have taught sexuality education. I was super nervous, but also really excited for this unit. I created the unit overview for 10Health, utilising lots of Family Planning resources throughout my lessons, and suggestions from educators on Twitter. I will share my unit outline once it makes sense to others, as I'm busy with my dissertation currently.

I went in with no idea what to expect. No clue how the students would respond and engage with the learning, and no clue how I would feel. As sexuality education is an area I am interested in, and passionate about, I knew I would be comfortable, but I think I was more relaxed than I anticipated to be! I was blown away how respectful my classes were overall. There was some giggling and discomfort throughout, but holistically, the students were pretty mature and interested. 

At the end of the sexuality unit I asked all students to complete this Google Form, asking a variety of questions about the topics the students learnt about across the 10 periods. This summative assessment showed the clear strengths and gaps in student knowledge, as below;

• Some students still had some confusion between conception and contraception, but had understanding of their options and provided examples of contraception. Greater emphasis on the difference is required next year.
• Lots of understanding across the board about safe relationships and consent, which was the major aim of the unit. 70/78 students were able to identify the legal age of consent, and 72/78 students were able to explain why intoxicated sex is non consensual. Some words used to describe unsafe relationships included manipulation, abusive, controlling, dishonest, possessive and aggressive.
• 68/78 students were able to describe changes to the body for males AND females during puberty, some students uncertain about the changes for the opposite sex. I was pleased by this, as many students were uncertain of changes at the beginning of the unit.
• Students were introduced to the sexuality and gender spectrums, to start discussions and awareness of the variety of sexualities and genders in society. Students needed another period or two around the spectrums, as there was a lot of confusion in the Google Form answers. This is likely due to a lack of time spent on this area, as we were pressed for time. About half of the students started to explain the differences between the two and were able to identify what LGBTQI stands for, and 38/78 were able to explain what heterosexual means.
• The result I was most proud of when reading students' answers, was that only 2/78 students were unable to identify where/who they can go to for help, or any questions they may have about relationships, sex, sexuality and gender. Student knowledge of places they can go for help, was imperative for the learning throughout the unit.

Overall, I am really pleased how the unit went considering it was the first time in the school and the first time I had taught it. I really enjoyed connecting with the Nurse, agencies, other educators and stepping out of my comfort zone. The above points, and the student feedback alongside give me lots to work with moving into 2018. 

The greatest success story, was the Y10 dean saying this year the Health Centre had the greatest influx of students asking for help, support or general questions related to relationships, sex and sexuality than any year previously. This is a highlight, and great feedback for me, as this shows some of the learning within Health is encouraging students to reflect on their lives and Hāuora. 

Time is Passing By Quickly!

I cannot believe we start Term 3 tomorrow. I have completed 18 months of teaching! Time is flying by, so thought I would take some time to reflect on how I am tracking related to my 2017 goals.

1) More time for me

Throughout Term 2 I felt like I had barely any 'me time'. I felt very busy and incredibly stressed trying to juggle everything, especially with a bad back. However, since I started teaching, this has been the most social term I have had so far. I spent lots of time with my friends, rekindling friendships I hadn't spent much time developing last year, and strengthening my relationships with my closest friends. So although my taha hinengaro is a little down, my taha whanau is the strongest it has been for the past 18 months.

During the holidays I read a book about Matariki (see my reflection here), and this made me realise how much I love to read for pleasure. So throughout the coming term I need to spend more time reading and doing things I enjoy - that isn't work related!!

2) Read educational blogs

Due to my regular engagement with Twitter, I have found lots of blogposts to read, which I have really enjoyed. Some posts have made me reflect about my own practice, some have shared resources, and some have encouraged me to explore further. Throughout Term 2 I have tried to leave comments here and there, because I know how much I love when I have comments on my posts! Cheryl and Marc both started working at Tamaki this year, and have embraced blogging, so I regularly read, comment and share their posts within my own.

3) Experiment with more digital tools

Last holidays I attended the Google Summit, and one of my takeaways was Google Expeditions introduced to me by Angela. As part of the Y10 exploring substances unit (resources here), we completed an Expedition called Human Anatomy, Respiratory System - Smoking and Your Lungs. This enabled us to track down the trachea and into the lungs to look at the alveoli then explore what can happen to the lungs from smoking cigarettes (see the below pictures). The students were incredibly engaged and asked lots of questions about the lungs, oxygen intake, cigarettes and other effects on the body. So, this new digital tool was a great success, which I will definitely be including again next year! I am hoping to include a couple of others into my anatomy revision lessons with my Year 11s in the coming few weeks!

  

I have also tried to include educational games into the lessons, as I know many of our students love gaming. These include the alcohol clock game, a cyberbullying decision making game, Anatomy Arcade and Interland. I feel therefore, I am tracking well with this goal and look forward to learning and implementing more tools.

4) Attend more extra curricular activities

I have watched a girls rugby game and a girls basketball game during the term. I was able to make connections with some students who I have struggled to connect with in the classroom environment, and also see some students participate in another part of their lives, which was so great! Last year I enjoyed supporting the First XV, and hope to attend a game or two during Term 3.

Throughout Term 2 I leapt out of my comfort zone and started coaching the U17 boys basketball team. I played miniball when I was much younger, but never basketball, and I have certainly never coached it before! I have had lots of support and fun so far, it's been a great learning journey! I will reflect in a few weeks once the season has finished.

5) Include blogging into 11PE

This is part of my dissertation and inquiry process for 2017. I will be reflecting on this specifically in a couple of weeks, because our next PCT meeting is about inquiry, and so is our next #NZBTchat.

I feel overall though, that for most of the class blogging has improved their confidence and their writing. Others have struggled to post, who I will continue to work with throughout the next term. I have really enjoyed reading through the students posts, and seeing their portfolio building up! 

Bring on another big term, with heaps of exciting things on the way including teaching sexuality education for the first time!

Giving Back to the PENZ Whānau

As previously posted, I attended a Health, PE, and Outdoor Ed conference last week. I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to present twice this year! Before starting presentation prep, I realised that I had never created my pepeha, so this was my first step. A pepeha is how you introduce yourself, related to the community you identify as home and your ancestors, spoken in Māori.

I worked alongside Whaea Melba, our HOD of Māori to create my pepeha, which was an awesome learning journey. I found out a lot about the history of the land I grew up on and more about my whakapapa (genealogy), and became incredibly interested in my family connections to and with the land. Melba asked me to write out my pepeha on popsicle sticks, cut up each word and then match the words to practice putting my pepeha together. I enjoyed this task as I was physically moving the words into place and practising how to say the words at the same time. After a few weeks of practising, I was excited to finally present my pepeha at conference! 

My first presentation was with my friend and fellow HPE teacher, Mallory Bish. Mal and I moderate a Twitter chat (#NZBTchat) together, and have found Twitter to support our journeys as Beginning Teachers. See more about the chat here, and more about our BT journeys here. Unfortunately, our chats are very quiet currently, and we are struggling to recruit new BTs onto Twitter. So, we presented about the affordances of Twitter both professionally and personally in hope for newbies to join in. Please see our Google Slides presentation below, which also includes my pepeha. We also showed/taught the attendees two digital tools - Plickers (example here) and Lino-It (example here).

I really enjoyed creating this presentation and running the session with Mal, as we have grown as professionals as well as grown closer as friends (check out our costumes below for the conference dinner - the characters from the movie Up!). We were also incredibly blessed to have been awarded together the PENZ award for 'Outstanding New Professional'! I feel so proud of our achievement, and incredibly thankful. I was nominated for the award by Celia Fleck for sharing on my blog and Twitter alongside the moderation of #NZBTchat. Until last Sunday night, I had never actually met Celia before, we had just read each other's blogs and interacted via Twitter - again showing the power of Twitter! So I feel so blown away she nominated me for this award without even knowing me. Please see Celia's blog here.

Other people who have been incredibly supportive of Mal and I, and the development of the chat are Rachael, Carl, Susie, Alex, Hayden, Myles, Hanchen, Stuart, Andrew and Paul. These people have been there every step of the way, and without their help, challenges and critiques we would not have continued to moderate our chat, nor would we have presented at conference! All but one of these people we 'met' through Twitter!

My second presentation was more of a show and tell session of my visible teaching and learning, followed by a Q&A. I showed how my students access my site to see their learning resources, and how my planning is also available for teachers. I also demonstrated some ways to use GAFE applications within teaching and learning, and then answered questions the attendees had about anything I do and know. Finally, I showed how Blogger (and blogging generally) can be used for the learning journeys of teachers and students. Reflecting on the session really highlighted to me how much I do know, and how much I have learnt throughout the MDTA programme over the past 18 months! Shoutout to Dorothy for getting me to where I am today, and continuing to push me to have the greatest knowledge possible. I also found the GAFE conference last holidays to be incredibly useful for educators of any experience with Googley things.

I loved giving back to the HPE community, and hopefully the attendees took away something to reflect on, implement into their practice or experiment with!

Learning in Different Environments

Today I assisted with the Senior Girls at the Eastern Tag Tournament, which was so much fun. One of my goals this year is to increase my engagement with extracurricular activities, namely sports, and this was my first day involved helping out.

As discussed here in more depth, I want to get to know the students outside of the classroom a little more, rather than always in a teacher role. By being a coach, manager, driver, supporter or first aider, I get to know the kids in a different light. Today really demonstrated this to me.

Many of the girls I had not met before, as I haven't taught them, so I was really stepping out of my comfort zone. I was nervous as to how they would respond to my instructions when they don't know me, and I don't know the sport very well. I did, though, make this very clear from the beginning - I was there as support to manage the day and the students. 

Even just asking the students to put their seat belts on in the van I was unsure how the students would respond. As expected, some groaned about it, but I was pleasantly surprised they followed my request. This respect continued throughout the day, so behaviour management was minimal. Today really demonstrated to me how stepping away from the subject learning environments changes students, many positively as they are there because they want to be. I really hope I am creating a culture in my classrooms where students are beginning to feel like they want to come to my lessons, like the students wanted to be playing tag today.

I love how sport offers another learning environment for the students. Today the girls learnt so much about determination, perseverance, encouragement, listening and self control, all soft skills incredibly important in learners. Fortunately, in PE especially we are able to provide students with ample opportunities to develop these soft skills, but I am unsure how often they can develop the soft skills in other subjects. Therefore, today was another wonderful avenue for the kids.

Although I am super nervous and lack knowledge of coaching basketball, I think this will be a positive learning experience for me in the coming months, and hopefully the boys too. I feel more confident after today about the positive impact interacting with students outside of the 'classroom' can have!