Aquatics Unit, An Awesome Experience

Last year I queried why there wasn't an Aquatics programme at TC, especially as there is a pool 100m down the road. No one had taken the lead, so there hadn't been any opportunities for the students historically. So, I developed a water safety site and shared a short screencast showing what I had created. The purpose of the Y10 unit was to increase student confidence in, on and around the water, as opposed to a swimming unit. 

I worked alongside a representative called Mark from Drowning Prevention Auckland (formerly Water Safe Inc.) to create my programme and website. When it came time to delivering the unit late Term 3 this year, Nicky, another DPA representative supported myself and the other 10PE teacher. She was incredible. Very organised, very passionate, and really increased our confidence to teach water safety. She took the lead for the first couple of lessons, and then Doris and I took over once we felt more confident.

NICKY'S FEEDBACK

• "This opportunity that you’ve provided them may make the difference between a bad decision around water and a safer decision as through the theory you’re getting them to think critically about their behaviours and attitudes around water."
  
• "Your enthusiasm and dedication to get this programme going will make learning so much more authentic to those who did participate in the water but also those who were “non-participants” could still learn and also see that the lessons were less about ability but more about confidence and being safe in the water."
  
• "Those who didn’t get in the water but were still there, some were still engaged and helpful and were good at answering questioning – think in reflection that will be a key thing, including them more with station cards or whatever it may be so they can take responsibility for some of the learning."

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT/TAKEN AWAY

• As this was the first time I was the Teacher in Charge of an EOTC activity, it was also the first time I created RAMS forms and was responsible for Health and Safety. I was blown away how much I needed to do and know, and how many people I needed to facilitate with. However, this was a great learning experience for me, and I look forward to more EOTC events!
  
• The unit demonstrated having theoretical and practical lessons was effective for student learning. I was able to see the progression in confidence and knowledge when students were present in both students and reflected on their practical learning. Therefore, although we had some difficulties encouraging students to bring their togs and get involved in theory lessons, this unit was a great start.
  
• Following on from this, the site I created was a great teaching and learning tool within the classroom. I found there weren't enough current articles on the site though, so I would like to add a page which I can continue to add news articles to. This would ensure the readings and clips are as up to date as possible. 

STUDENT LEARNING

This Google Form was used at the start of the unit and the end of the unit. Students' answers were recorded in a Google Sheet, which I analysed to determine where students' confidence increased, and still potential gaps. My findings included;

• 4/61 students at start of unit identified importance of water safety as keeping safe around water, prevention of drowning and to keep safe. This gave a good starting basis to build from, and encouraged an emphasis safety in on and around water, as New Zealand have high drowning statistics, especially for Māori and Pacific people.
  
• 22/61 students were unsure what the red and yellow flags were at the beginning of the unit, which is also a place many of the students identified as a place they swim. So, there was an emphasis on beach safety in the second half of the unit. At the end, 8/30 students were still uncertain what the flags meant, therefore there needs to be more exploration and discussion about beach safety next year. I think this would be most effective if a day was facilitated with Surf Life Saving New Zealand as a beach day.
  
• At the beginning, majority of students identified lifejackets as a flotation device but by the end other flotation aids were identified including noodles, the HELP position and floating on your back. These are important for students to know if they were underprepared for the water, or are bystanders for others in, on and around the water. Many students were surprised how much they could do as a bystander! 

STUDENT FEEDBACK

The table alongside shows the increase in student confidence from the start of the unit to the end of the unit. Students were asked to rate their confidence from 1 to 5 (1 representing the least confident) before the unit, and again at the end. These percentages demonstrate a large increase in confidence. Of particular interest was no one rated themselves as 1 at the end, and only one person rated themselves as a 2. For future water safety programmes, I would like to aim for 75% of students to rate themselves as a 4 or 5, and the remaining 25% a 3 or higher, to have a greater impact on student safety and learning.

Some comments at the start of the unit to describe the rating they gave included;

1 - Last time when I was swimming (Probably a year ago) I almost drowned, I can only put my feet in the water now as Iam scared

2 - Because I'm confident in the pool but not the beach

3 - Because not pretty sure how to get out of rips & how to save others when in deep waters

Post unit, some of the descriptions for students' self ratings included;

3 - Because I'm confident to go in the water but then the people that make fun of others distract my confidence of the lesson.

4 - Because I now know if I was stuck in a water situation I would be able to know what to do.

4 - Because I am confident to help my self if I need help.

Therefore, the water safety unit was a great first step for a new initiative within the school. I hope the programme continues to grow, to increase student confidence further to support their safety in, on and around water. Most importantly, I hope future water safety programmes help to reduce the high statistics of drownings in New Zealand waters.

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. 

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.

PE Teachers in Action

Over the past couple of months I have enjoyed completing observations of other teachers in the school (e.g. a couple of Science observations and an observation of Learn, Create, Share in action). I have found these observations incredibly useful to reflect on strategies which I do and don't use within the classroom. 

As I had completed 3 observations of other subjects, I decided to complete 3 observations of PE teachers and classes. I observed Brenton with his Option Y10 class, Doris with a compulsory PE class and Alex with his 13PE class. I was looking for different things during each observation, but walked away with some similar ideas and reflections. These are the key things I have taken away from the observations to think about and implement further;

• Although saying 'good girl' may be positive, without explaining what is actually good, this isn't actually feedback. Feedback (and feedforward) need to be specific to the task/activity, such as good explanation of this topic, however you're missing an example. When I heard comments like good girl, the student appeared happy for the few seconds post, but some were still confused or became offtask.
  
  
• 
  Across the observations there were opportunities for the teachers to ask open-ended questions. The use of open-ended questions may have reduced some confusion/lack of understanding from students, as the teachers were checking in to see whether they understood what to do. I have been trying to break up teaching points with questions along the way to keep students engaged, and to determine what their level of understanding is. I am struggling to do this in a way which encourages the quiet students to speak, so sometimes I may think the class is ready to move on, but only the vocal students are.
  
  
• Two of three of the teachers used countdowns to bring students in/gain their attention (one in the gym and one in the classroom). I realised that I used countdowns regularly last year, but hardly used them this year, and I am unsure if I have ever used them in the classroom. This could be a useful strategy for getting students' attention, something I am currently waiting a long time for.
  
  
• Rather than having discussions and/or drawing attention to students when they are late, give them their activity quickly so that they can get on task. Once they're on task, a quiet conversation with them later on, is likely to be more successful than asking right as they walk in the door. I have found recently many of my students have been coming late because of legitimate reasons, and it is difficult to determine what's the truth or not. By waiting to have the conversation later, I think this may encourage students to be more truthful about their absence.
  
  
• Overplanning ensures there are plenty of activities for the students to do, and is likely to reduce boredom or disengagement. I noticed during the observations if tasks weren't challenging enough (or too challenging), or didn't take students very long to complete, then some students would start to become offtask as they were trying to entertain themselves. So, by having extra activities available in case students complete activities quicker than expected, ensures the learning continues. This also relates to the importance of differentiation within a class, something I am trying to work on at the moment (as it is difficult with so many on period per week classes).

Overall, I enjoyed these observations, and am looking forward to completing an English observation to focus on literacy strategies as well as an observation of Health. I will now need to think about, and put into action some of these takeaways!

Substances Have Been Explored

Throughout Term 2 in Year 10 Health, I taught an exploring substances unit for the first time. I enjoyed the unit, especially trying to include more technology into the learning activities. At the beginning of the unit, students completed a short Google Form with some key questions for me to gauge student understanding. The answers (which were collated in a Google Sheet) highlighted the topics students had gaps in their knowledge, so this is what I based my planning around. Please see my unit outline here. I also asked students to complete this Form at the end of the unit, to see student growth in understanding from the beginning of the unit (i.e. summative assessment).

I feel overall, that the unit was reasonably successful, however there are still many parts to adapt for next year to be even more successful. I feel proud of the unit I created, and the learning opportunities the students had, especially when there hasn't really been anything like this before! As I am more confident with the content and key ideas I would like students to take away, next year I will be able to differentiate between the classes, as this is my greatest weakness. Because I teach 6 classes, and the teaching is all new to me, there is very little differentiation between classes. As a result, some classes had in depth discussions, and completed more activities than other classes, and some classes felt rushed. With more thought into extension activities or how to cater for the lower literacy class for example, this may enable greater understanding and application of knowledge for students. I would also like to possibly focus on less, but more in depth, rather than scraping the surface.

Throughout the unit, there were lots of different activities, to try engage all learners. There were posit-it note activities, mix and matches, think, pair shares, student presentations, human continuums, online games, and research tasks. I tried to include a huge range of activities, so the students were learning in a different way each lesson. As a learner myself, even though I like to have routine and know what to expect when learning new things, I know I am most engaged when I am involved in different and new learning tasks. I found majority of students to be most engaged when they were in small groups, and able to discuss their ideas, and when they were off of their netbooks. I think that technology has an important place in education, especially in my classes, but there are times where the students like to step away from their screens, as their tasks are regularly on their computers in their other subjects. This is something I am actively thinking about for their current Sexuality and Relationships unit.

The most memorable activity from the unit was when we completed a Google Expedition inside the lungs. I first learnt about Google Expeditions (a free app) at the Google Conference earlier this year. Our lesson focus was about the effects of smoking tobacco on the body, one being the effect on the lungs. The Expedition begins with inhalation and travels from the trachea, through the bronchi to the alveoli in the lungs. As the guide of the expedition, the app gave lots of suggested questions to ask the students, which started some great discussions and encouraged students to think. I was surprised how interested the students were looking around; they were so engaged! After these lessons I had a look through the other various expeditions available and have found some which could be used in PE for anatomy, which I will definitely utilise next year! There are lots of expeditions available for all learning areas, so highly recommend others to look into it.

I am really enjoying teaching and leading Junior Health this year, even though it has been incredibly challenging trying to create engaging lessons. Next year will be great, as there will be foundation lessons to make better for future students. I am currently enjoying teaching a sexuality education unit, and am impressed by the response from the students so far. Bring on the next challenge, whatever that may be!

Planning is Not Set in Concrete

As part of my beginning teacher mentoring programme with Cheryl, we focused on Criteria 9 of the Practicing Teacher Criteria in our last meeting. Criteria 9 suggests fully certified teachers respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga.

As a group, we broke down the criteria using The Education Council's Self Assessment Tool. This is a great resource to really reflect on the criteria, to identify my strengths and weaknesses! After our PCT meeting I felt criteria 9 was an area of weakness I needed think about further. Although I know I have a lot of evidence for each of the criteria, sometimes I struggle to show, or put into words what evidence I have. One of three parts of Criteria 9 asks;

Am I flexible in my teaching approaches?

I feel I am constantly adapting my plans to suit my learners in front of me, particularly my Year 11 PE class. I wrote an outline of lessons for the first few weeks of term, and I have already changed this multiple times! As this is a Senior class, I want to ensure students have ample time to really understand the topics, so they can effectively explain and apply their knowledge. Sometimes this means spending twice as long covering a topic than I had initially planned for.

Last year I co-taught Years 12 and 13 PE. We realised throughout the year how so many of the students had gaps in their knowledge from their previous years, especially for anatomy, biomechanics and exercise physiology (which is the most difficult unit for most students). As a department we realised we needed to be increasing student understanding at a deeper level in Year 11, to better prepare them for Year 12. Therefore, although the suggested time to spend on anatomy, biomechanics and exercise physiology is probably about 7-8 weeks, I am planning for about 12 weeks. I would rather the students have a greater understanding this year, in prep for next year, than try to smash out more units. Quality over quantity. This can be quite difficult, because we obviously want our students to achieve their NCEA, but I would prefer they achieve Merits and Excellences and less credits, than more credits at an Achieved (or Not Achieved) level.

To achieve this, I have had to have regular conversations with students about their understanding, to ensure they are ready to move on. My inquiry this year is about blogging in Year 11PE, which I have found to be a great way to formatively assess student learning, and adapt my teaching to suit my students gaps. By reading through their blogposts, I am able to identify the parts they're still struggling with, and revisit this in a different way from before. For example, I am trying a variety of revision activities with this class currently, such as Kahoot, mix and match activities and team challenges (I will be writing a post about these different strategies in a couple of weeks, but see some of my observations here). If something works well for some students whom I struggle to engage, or who are struggling to understand, I try to replicate that in future lessons.

Therefore, to continue to feel I am flexible in my teaching, I need to continue to take risks, continue to read students posts to gauge their understanding and continue to seek student voice. In future, I think it would be useful to have more conversations with students about what they thought about the activities during lessons. I often think about the activities, and how I think they went, but don't as often ask the students what they think. I have started to collate some of their responses from a Google Sheet.

Supporting Māori Students Success

As previously reflected/shared, TC staff have been meeting fortnightly with our PLGs at school to discuss our priority learners. Unfortunately I have had basketball games so have missed the discussions which take place. However, I try to keep in the loop by following the agenda and reflection points.

This week the focus was around Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, particularly exploring Kia Eke Panuku (KEP). My group explained CRP as "a way to promote Maori academic success through students, teachers and whanau working together. Authentic connections and a focus on Māori identity are supported by evidence based pedagogies". As our school's demographic is 33% Māori, this is an important pedagogy for us to explore. Please see our Slides from a KEP PD last year, with key reflective questions and discussions we had related to Māori's achievement as Māori. I attempted to breakdown CRP in an earlier blogpost.

KEP is a professional development initiative to build schools achievement and success for Māori, as Māori. The Ministry of Education have developed Ka Hikitia, strategies to support Māori learners success in school too, which my PLG also explored. This resource breaks down critical factors, focus areas and guiding principles for Māori students' learning journeys to be enjoyable and successful, to prepare them for pathways in their futures.

Although there are a variety of strategies and suggestions throughout Ka Hikitia, the part that stuck with me is the need to support Māori learners to believe in themselves and their potential.

"Students with a strong belief in their capacity to achieve are more likely to set themselves challenging goals and put a high degree of effort into achieving them. Research has shown that the most motivated and resilient students are those who believe their abilities can be developed through their own effort and learning" (p. 25).

I have been reflecting regularly about the lack of motivation and self efficacy some of my students have. Although majority of my students are more than capable of achieving, because they feel they are incapable, or they fear they are going to get something wrong, they would rather just not complete something. This has been evident in my 11PE class especially, and was evident in my senior classes last year. A few students really struggle to express their thoughts and struggle to complete their tasks. This is not a reflection of what they're capable of though, but a reflection of how little self confidence they have in their ability and/or little motivation they have to be successful. 

For this reason, I have selected three learners in my 11PE class who have 11 or less credits currently towards their NCEA Level 1 (expected to have over 40 by now), to be my priority learners for the second half of the year. I hope by continuing to try build students self confidence, giving positive feedback and affirmation when they are on track, and reinforcing ako within my practice and classrooms (the two way process of learning), my students' become more successful.

Student Opportunities To Respond

Recently in our RTLB sessions, we have been discussing OTRs: students opportunities to respond. OTRs are strategies teachers use in the classroom, to seek or prompt responses from students. Student responses provide opportunities for the teacher to gauge student understanding, and give specific feedback and feedforward.

We were provided with a short article (currently in draft from PB4L and about to be published) breaking down classroom engagement, specifically OTRs. The key points I took away from the reading are;

Students are engaged in activities that are new and exciting, and as a result difficult behaviour is likely to reduce. I am pleased, therefore, one of my goals this year is to learn about, and try to implement a variety of digital tools.

"Frequently, problem behaviours result from a mismatch between the environment and an individual's skills, strengths, or preferences (p. 23)" So, for instance, some of my students have low literacy skills/levels, which may be the cause of behavioural issues - a genuine lack of understanding. This relates back to a previous post about the importance of considering literacy strategies throughout teaching (irrespective of the subject).

Evidence has shown an increased student reading ability from the use of OTRs. Again, referencing the importance of literacy. See our literacy coordinator's blog here.

During our RTLB session today, we broke down some of the verbal and non-verbal responses used in our classes recently. Check out our ideas in the pictures above.

Verbal and non-verbal strategies were also discussed in depth in the reading, and provided me with some ideas to implement into the future. For example, we have mini-whiteboards in the department, which could be used in small groups to share ideas/opinions in class. Or, the use of response cards such as a traffic light system (red, orange and green cards to demonstrate understanding). A couple of tips the reading suggests when using response cards, is that there is a lively pace, specific feedback and a short time between questions.

Finally, I shared with the group some of the OTRs I use, or am learning about, that utilise technology (see Drawing with the links here). This was a great opportunity to share what I have picked up throughout the past 18 months on my MDTA journey! I am yet to try Nearpod and Mentimeter, and will be using Chelsea's blogposts (Nearpod, Mentimeter), to guide me. The others I have used in my practice and are continuing to develop.

I am looking forward to trying some of the OTR strategies I have learnt about in our RTLB sessions. One I am incredibly interested to learn about is peer teaching, as I think this could be very powerful in the classroom. I have discussed with Cheryl, our PCT facilitator the possibility of having a PCT session about peer teaching, and cannot wait to give it a go!

Sporadically Seeking Student Voice

Today, as I was walking between periods, one of my students (Y10) randomly gave me some praise on my teaching. I had just finished teaching her and as I walked past her she said to me; 

"Miss, thanks for encouraging us to be our best. I like how you don't get angry quickly if someone is off task, and you try hard to get them to do their work. I feel like you really care about us". 

Obviously, this made me feel awesome! But realised I haven't randomly asked for student voice for a while, so endeavoured to get some throughout the day. As I'd had one Y10 give me positive feedback (who I teach for Health and PE), I asked two other students from the other year levels I teach. I asked the question - "What do you like about being in my class, or about my teaching?"

Y9 girl (Health): "You give real life examples of your own".

Y11 boy (PE): "Going around checking everyone and if they need help and asking questions if they need help".

I then asked three students (one from each year level), "What is something you would like me to change in my teaching?" the responses;

Y9 boy (Health): "More fun activities, and more talking about the videos".

Y10 boy (Health and PE): "Less instructions, tell us what to do, but don't carry on and talk".

Y11 girl (PE): "Not worry about the naughty people and worry about the people who want to learn".

So, reflecting on this feedback/feedforward some small things I can change are the length of instructions of given (make them short and sweet), the time spent managing behaviour (focus more on the students who are keen to learn), and increase the amount of reviews and discussions of activities in classes (so they make more sense and students feel they are doing something).

At the end of the term I will be asking for student voice about the teaching in learning in their Health/PE class in Term 2, and am looking forward to their responses to see how I can improve further!

Prioritising our Priority Learners

Every second Tuesday we meet in Professional Learning Groups for full staff professional development. Our focus this term is based around our priority learners. These students are identified by the amount of credits they are yet to achieve. Tamaki College expect students to achieve a minimum of 20 credits towards their NCEA each term, so if students did not achieve 20+ credits during Term 1, they were identified as priority learners.

Within our PLG, we were asked to identify two priority learners, which we could help to 'get over the line'. As a group we brainstormed some plans of action or interventions we could put in place in order to help these learners. The ideas we discussed were:

• Speak to previous teachers
• Observe student in different subject (a subject where he/she has had some success)
• Look to previous years results
• Use a ViTaL/checkpoint approach
• Move away from TKI instructions/education speak. Easy to understand success criteria
• Whānau - might be siblings rather than just parents
• Keep big picture clear as well as current assessment

Moving forward, we described the specific interventions we were going to put into place for our two priority learners, our plan of action. As the Doc includes many names about students and some personal information, see the two interventions I had planned in the screenshot to the right.

At the next PLG meeting, we reflected on what we had carried out as part of our intervention. Please see my previous post about observing one of my priority learners. I attempted to have one on one discussions with my other priority learner, however his attendance has been considerably low this term. You can see my PLG's overall reflections from our interventions in this Google Doc. 

Today we explored and broke down the 'Current Graduate Profile' of a student graduating from Tamaki College, alongside the Digital Age Learner Standards. This ignited many interesting conversations, which are summarised in the below Google Doc table.

After this discussion, we chose one of the graduate qualities and explained how/what we could do over the last few weeks of term to support our priority learner to develop the quality. See below my aim for my learner. I am already starting to see a increased motivation, he is asking more questions, and he is tracking well to achieve 10 credits in PE by the middle of next term! I am enjoying this learning process, and can't wait to hear how my colleagues are tracking with their learners.

Tackling New Vocabulary Strategies

Marc Milford is the Literacy Co-Ordinator (see his blog here) at Tamaki College, and yesterday presented some key strategies for teachers to help increase student's decoding skills of new words for our PCT meeting. We started by brainstorming the strategies we use, even as adults, to attack words we come across which we are unfamiliar of (see right). Marc quickly explained that students do not have these strategies, unless they are taught them, like we were. Therefore, even if we aren't English teachers, we need to be thinking about the texts we ask students to read, and how we are 'attacking' unfamiliar words with students.

See below Marc's presentation notes - we discussed some of the key problems/difficulties students have when attempting to make sense of a text and/or learn new words. One of the most common responses to new words I have seen in class, is giving up. Many of our students would rather give up, than try to break the word down, or to read around the word. As a result, their reading does not progress and they continue to struggle. Therefore, the mindset of a student towards their reading and vocabulary is incredibly important, as well as the strategies they are taught to attack words.

Throughout our discussion, I was thinking about how behind many of our students are, and the real need to accelerate our learners. Last year we spoke about the importance of talking, to be exposed to new words, that talking really does matter. Decile 1 students hear about 30 million less spoken words than their peers from other schools. Hence, the need to increase their vocabulary through reading, writing and discussions. The more students read, the more exposed they are to words, the more they recognise words and the more they put these words into practice. Our job is to help with this process.

As an addition to Marc's presentation and our discussion today, he provided us with the reading "8 Cs and a G" written by Dorothy Brown. Brown discusses her 9 strategies for teachers to support student vocabulary development, see my notes/thoughts about the reading here. I have reflected on the reading and today's session, and thought about how I could implement some of these strategies into my classes. I realised I am already doing many of them, but in different ways! See additional examples for English Language Leaners on TKI here.

Possible strategies moving forward:

- Use of clines for the affects of a drug on the body (short through to long term)

- Use of clines for responses to exercise (acute through to chronic)

- Collocations and clusters can be used to create webs/brainstorms of similar words to the new word, and to link the new word with common words. Could also weave in SOLO hexagons.

- Use of a thesaurus to teach students how synonyms can support with new vocabulary

- I need more 'creativity' - so providing students with multiple ways to learn/revise/apply their knowledge more often, such as Drawings, Slides, videos or essays.

A quote which I loved from the reading I keep pondering is "if the guess was wrong, still an effort was made and that in itself is better than being passive in the learning process" (p. 111). So, as teachers, irrespective of our subject, we need to help with decoding, breaking down and attacking new words to support's student vocabulary!