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...

 

  

Wow, I Really Have Learnt A Lot!

I currently have a Pre Service Teacher under my wing, and she asked me some questions to ignite her thinking. They actually encouraged a lot of reflection of my own practice, and really demonstrated over the last (nearly) 5 years how much I have actually grown as a teacher, especially reading through my blog posts I have written. 

The questions asked were;

- When you teach your HPE lessons how do you get your students to demonstrate student agency (choice and ownership) of their own learning?

- How do you encourage students to problem solve and critically think?

- How do you acknowledge students' prior knowledge and experiences?

- What interesting learning activities/experiences do you provide when designing a unit plan?

- How do you embody/apply the principles of inclusion and/or biculturalism in your teaching practice?

- How do you include digital technology in your teaching practice?

I would encourage everyone to take the time to answer these questions irrespective how long you have been teaching. They really got me thinking, and shows me the knowledge I have developed over the last 5 years, and helps my student teacher!

Classroom Management: More Than A Waiting Game

Over the last three years, I have volunteered for Physical Education New Zealand, specifically the Auckland branch. See more about this in an earlier blog post. Usually we (the Graduate Mentoring team) run three face to face sessions for beginning teachers throughout the year, but this year have held off and decided to host two online sessions. On Monday, our session was focused around behaviour and classroom management strategies, using the below scenarios to create discussion. 

Although the session was designed for new teachers, it was a great reminder of all of the different tools and strategies we can use in the classroom, to help with behaviour management. Put yourself in the 'walls' of these classrooms, and think about how you would respond. 

- Do you think your response has changed the longer you have been teaching? Why/Why not?

- Do you think your response would be the same if they were Junior students or Senior students? 

- Have you considered restorative practice, before jumping to punitive measures? (See this post and/or this post for information about restorative conversations)

- Should you respond to the scenario immediately, or a little later? When? Why?

The inspiration for this post came about when I met my student teacher this week, and we were discussing her goals for her practicum. One of the Learning Outcomes is to Apply a range of strategies to manage student behaviour, clearly aligning with the scenarios! So I have given these to my student teacher, for her to reflect on how she would respond now with no teaching experience and then once she has some teaching under her belt, we will have another look. I think this simple activity will ignite great reflection and discussion, and is an activity any teacher could do regardless of their experience.

I found the below visual which explains some strategies that can be used in the classroom, here. In addition to these, there are sooo many other strategies/tools that can be utilised such as; 

• Tone and/or volume of voice
• Physical placement and proximity to students
• Countdown verbally and/or with fingers
• "I've noticed you aren't yourself lately..."
• Observations of students in other subjects
• Whistles
• Music
• Differentiated learning activities
• Student choice
• Challenge and competition
• Discussions and plans made with other teachers
• Activities including student interests/hobbies
  

Ultimately, every teacher, every class, every student and every situation is going to be different. One day one strategy may work and the next day it may not. But that's the beauty of teaching - we have to be flexible all the time!

Online Teaching & Learning: It's not all bad!

I cannot believe we've already been online teaching for 5 weeks (and home for nearly 7). But to be honest, despite missing the kids, I have really enjoyed the experience. I've got a newfound appreciation for face to face learning though, that's for sure! And I have absolutely hated staring at a screen answering myriad emails.

There have been so many positives of at home teaching though. I thought I would post some of the highlights for me during this period so far.

Creating rewindable video content for students

Setting at home challenges for my Ako class and watching the videos they've created 'together'

Students engaging/commenting in the chat box of Google Meet during video calls 
(I honestly think this learning environment has given the opportunity for more students to have a 'voice' than when we are in a standard classroom setting, it has been great to have people share, who usually don't speak!)

Seeing the creations from my Topic class (integrated)

 

Lino-it brainstorms with my Year 11s

A shared Google Slides resource my Year 12s all contributed to


Having 1:1 chats with my Year 13s about their internal 
(They were more organised than when we have these chats in class, as they feared awkward silences!)

As much as I'm looking forward to getting back to school, back into routine and back to connecting with colleagues and students, I've tried to take the positives out of online teaching. Hopefully only one more week to go, but I'm quite happy not having a commute and enjoy having an extra couple of hours sleep each morning!

Engaging Students From Afar!

Last night I attended a webinar called Supporting student motivation and engagement when learning from home, facilitated by The Education Hub and Harry Fletcher-Wood. If you are wanting to watch the recording of this webinar, you can access it here. This webinar was good timing for two reasons; I'd already been looking into motivation and engagement (see blogpost here), and we are back into online learning after one week before the holidays. The two things I left thinking more about, and two things I could put into action immediately, was that less is more, and to use the chat box to encourage students to share - give them opportunities to respond. 

We are using Google Meet with our classes. For the most part, I'm keeping myself available at the beginning of lessons for 10-15 minutes to give instructions and answer questions and then again for the last 10-15 minutes if students need further help or to have a debrief. This morning though, I wanted to have some deep 'discussion' with my Year 12s, in an attempt to replicate what we'd do if we were at school.

We started to discuss gender and sexuality stereotypes. I would ask a question such as when you think of male or masculine occupations, what do you think? Then students would post into the chat box what they were thinking, and as their comments came through I would read it, and then ask follow up questions. Even though I was the only one talking, the students were actively engaging in 'discussion' through this chat box - it gave everyone a voice, and to be honest there were WAY more voices heard (obviously not literally) than if we were in the classroom!

Secondly, we keep getting reminded that less is more, that we can't expect students to be able to meet the same expectations and complete the same amount of tasks as if we were at school, that we need to prioritise key learning we want the students to retain. After the stereotypes discussion, showing them a prerecorded video I'd made (which included reading a picture book!), and then an adaptation of a human continuum (displaying numbers on their video (could have just used fingers) to represent their opinions on a statement I gave, such as it's embarrassing for males to cry in public), I'd had 26 students actively involved for an hour. I was absolutely stoked!!! So, even though there was still half an hour left, and I had another activity planned, there had already been rich 'discussions' and I felt the students had learnt a lot, so I called it there and told them to go and have a cuppa! I decided to stay on if anyone wanted a general chat, and for half an hour 6 students stayed and conversed with me and each other about their isolation experiences so far!

As we navigate this unusual time, we are learning a lot as teachers, as partners, as colleagues and a lot about ourselves. In addition to these two considerations, remember to maintain your connections and relationships with your students, don't try to recreate the wheel, and help the students to develop study habits/ a routine!

Teachers, A Tip: You Can Always Be Better!

This week during our department meeting, we had a rapid PD on 'reflective practice'. This article delves more deeply into what reflective teaching actually is, which I recommend reading whether you are a student teacher, or you've been in the profession for years! Spalding describes reflective teaching as "a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing a teacher's thoughts and observations, as well as those of their students, and then going on to making changes". According to Dylan William, reflective practice is important because every teacher can improve. 

I feel confident I am already quite reflective, but I enjoyed and appreciated having the time in this meeting to briefly dissect and discuss our integrated curriculum so far. I plan on writing a more detailed reflection on Topic 2, the integrated course I was part of creating and am now teaching, in a couple of weeks.

The task we were given, visible below, was to identify possible gaps in students' learning, what helps and stops student learning and finally strategies moving forward to support these students. The overall consensus of our discussion was that the integrated curriculum is positive, but naturally there is some fine tweaking to be addressed, such as the need to increase student self confidence, reduce students feeling overwhelmed and the balance of student centred learning and teacher-directed learning. I have identified and briefly described three strategies I am going to try implement into my integrated topic, in hope to address some of the tweaking aforementioned!

Supporting Māori Students, As Māori

New Zealand teachers are required to maintain their full registration status every three years once fully registered (this occurs generally after the first two years of teaching). When I moved from being provisionally registered to fully registered, there were 12 criteria I needed to provide growth and evidence for - now there are 6 standards (see further information about the criteria here). 

I have often had stacks of evidence for most of the criteria, but standard 1 I have had little to support my growth (evident from the lack of labels on my blog, and from my final appraisal discussion with my appraiser this year). Standard 1 is about demonstrating partnership to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi), and commitment to tangata whenuatanga (the history and connections of where we come from). As a result of this gap, I knew I needed to complete further readings and start to develop greater strengths in this area throughout 2020, so thought I would get the ball rolling. 

Earlier in the year, Hana O'Regan presented to our cluster of local schools. Hana mostly spoke about her own experiences, and the experiences of others she knows, growing up as a Māori in New Zealand. She explored some of the common stereotypes and educational challenges that exist within our education system, that are consistently reinforced. We are surrounded by statistics about low achievement rates for Māori students (here for example), and we are constantly placing labels such as 'priority learners' onto our Māori students. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have an unconscious bias, and this bias is often shaped by what we are surrounded by. Associate Education Minister Tracy Martin comments that this unconscious bias, and racism, plays a significant role in the gaps in Māori achievement. 

Hana encouraged me to think about my own biases, and be more actively aware of my words, expressions and mannerisms in the classroom, and how small things may come across as rude, disrespectful or racist. The kids are a product of the environment they are brought up in - and unfortunately many have preconceived ideas about what it means to be Māori, negative ones, and consequently believe it of themselves, internalise these ideas. Māori are low achieving, Māori are naughty, Māori are drop outs - stereotypes which many students believe they need to conform to. Being more aware though, we can begin to challenge and interrupt the discourses, and educate our learners as to why they are not factual and definitely not written into their futures. (Sidenote: if you would like to read more about Māori ontologies/tikanga, I would suggest reading Rachael Dixon's post).

The Education Hub have suggested seven principles to support Māori students, as Māori, as outlined/summarised in the infographic I created alongside. I would recommend reading more of their posts related to this topic, such as this post and also this post (both more specifically about culturally responsive pedagogy).

After reading these posts, creating the infographic, listening to Hana's presentation, and reflecting on my own experiences, I now need to put into action some of the alongside principles in 2020 (some I feel I already do, but implicitly). I look forward to learning more, to see how I can further support my Māori students in particular, but all learners!

Highlights & Challenges: A Visual

Throughout the year I have volunteered again for Auckland PENZ, helping with the Graduate Mentoring Programme supporting beginning teachers and undergraduate students (see last years post here). At one of our sessions, Sarah Loomb from Alfriston College showed us this reflection tool - draw 9 things that have stood out for you so far this year including highlights and challenges. I thought this was a great idea for an end of term 3 reflection, and a great visual. I ran a session with the first and second year teachers at Orewa, with the focus around the practising teacher criteria and registration, then used this to discuss what criteria it may give evidence and reflection for. So what do they mean to me?

Snow Camp

I was lucky enough to attend one of the Level 3 Outdoor Ed trips to Mt Ruapehu in August. I learnt more about risk management, including preventative measures and responses when things do happen. On our first day up the mountain, there was an avalanche that made the news and we went into lock down with kids as a precaution. This is a once in a lifetime experience, and one that I will never forget. The biggest thing I took away from this trip was the importance of everyone being prepared for the outdoors and to stay calm!

Associate Teacher

As previously blogged about, I was an associate teacher earlier in the year. This was both a (positive) challenge and a highlight, because I learnt a lot about myself but found it hard to leave him to do his thing! Trying to teach someone how to teach, but also ensuring the students were still learning/achieving what I wanted them to achieve was difficult, but great for my own development. 

Integrated Unit

I am getting very very excited for the 2020 integrated curriculum. I think it’s going to be incredible for the kids, but I’m also starting to feel a little anxious about how everything is going to pan out! Creating a unit with 5 other people has been hard. Very hard. We all want what is best for the kids, and our subjects, but sometimes these wants don’t align. The group I’m part of though, have all been quite flexible and accepting of these differences and tried to make it work. We are quite lucky we are somewhat compatible with one another! 

The one thing I don’t like about this process though, is that we aren’t guaranteed to teach the unit we’ve developed next year. There will be 75 students with three subject specialist teachers - but these teachers could be anyone from the department! So it may not be the other person or I in our integrated group, which will be disappointing after investing so much time and effort into creating the unit.

Teaching with Adam 

This year Adam and I share a Level 3 PE class. We don’t co-teach like I did in first year, we have half of the periods on the timetable each. I was really nervous to see how this would work for a variety of reasons; Adam and I teach quite differently, he is much more experienced than me, Level 3 students may be hard to motivate and the time we would need to plan together. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been hard, but not for most of these reasons (the kids have certainly been hard to motivate!). I believe we’ve worked well together, trying to find a balance between what we both want in the lessons as well as what we want the students to learn/achieve. Our communication between each other has thankfully been our strength. 

What I’ve actually struggled with is the content; what I need to teach to ensure all the kids have the possibility to achieve an Excellence. Adam is knowledgeable and experienced, so he knows the course in and out, but I don’t. Throughout the year I’ve tried to ask lots of questions, and read lots of information, but I never felt like I fully grasped the big picture of what the kids were learning, what the purpose was. As a result I feel guilty that I didn’t give all students the chance to achieve an E, purely because I didn’t fully know how to support them to get there. If I was to teach this course again, with the baseline understanding I have now I feel I could minimise the risk of this happening again.

11PE Class

I have drawn angel emojis because that is how I refer to my Year 11s - my absolute angels. I have been really lucky to have a class that enjoys learning, are actively involved and supportive of one another. I look forward to teaching this class because they are a dream. Many still struggle with learning difficulties and we still have P.E. is not P.A. chats from time to time - but the culture of the class is incredible! To paint a picture - during the last period of term the kids were all working peacefully on their assessment and there was only one passing comment about wanting to have a practical. This felt like a massive win!!

Working with new people 

I’ve touched on this briefly above, referring to snow camp, the integrated unit, and sharing a class. Additionally I’ve been in charge of a course (below), and taught courses alongside some different people and some the same from last year. Without going into too much detail, I’ve found some professional relationships really hard this year. It can be challenging to have some conversations with other teachers, when they are more experienced than you, have been around longer than you and/or have positions that you don’t have. I have quite a loud personality; I’m opinionated and happy to stand up for what I think. This can be problematic. I’m having to learn when to bite my tongue and how to change my tone of voice to ensure my intentions are clear, are positive and are not treading on anyone’s toes. Because every challenging conversation I have, needs to be approached differently.

Strike Day

A momentous occasion that’ll be part of NZ history. I felt proud to be a teacher walking down Queen Street, but also immensely sad how the negotiations played out. This was an emotional roller coaster for me, having to constantly remind myself how I teach for the kids not money, but how overworked and undervalued I feel. The process certainly reminded me why I love teaching, but I also noticed I felt deflated and reduced the amount of time I invested in schoolwork at home.

Teacher In Charge of 12Health

Being in charge of a course has meant I’ve learnt more about moderation procedures, planning senior units, facilitating meetings and adapting the course from student feedback. I plan to write an entire blogpost about this later in the year!

Certificates 

I’ve previously blogged about what the Miss D is proud certificates are here, and student feedback here. This has been a considerable highlight of my year. I get warm fuzzies when I send the certificates home, and look forward to it! I decided to send them on Friday mornings, which has been a great way to end each week - particularly when I’ve had a stressful or horrible week. 

Overall this visual has been a great way to reflect on many things throughout the year, and recommend others to do the same! One term to go...

Student Results, Then Vs Now

As part of one of my inquiries (as blogged about previously here), I wanted to complete a comparison of academic results from 2018 to 2019. Even though these comparisons don't paint the whole picture of what is happening in the classroom, they are a great intro for me to use data to inform my practice. So far, students have completed 2 standards in 2 of my Senior classes; Year 11 PE and Year 12 Health, as below. 

Last year was the first time I taught the performance improvement programme unit and standard 1.6. There is a lot of jargon, and the internal is ongoing over a period of time, so it really took me a while to get my head around the purpose of the unit and what I was actually looking for, for the standard. We also taught this unit at the beginning of my first ever term at Orewa, while I was finding my feet! Therefore, I went into the unit this year with much greater understanding than last year. This is evident in the considerable increase in students passing this year. In addition, I had a much smaller class (8 less students), so I was able to provide students with more 1 on 1 time and individualised feedback than last year. I believe this is why there were more students who passed above an Achieved, 4 of which achieved an Excellence. If I was to teach this unit again next year, I would have checkpoints for students (like in Year 12 Health), where I would provide feedback and feedforward, which may further support the students who weren't quite yet an Achieved (many of these students simply lacked depth or mixed up sections).

This was the first year Orewa included a Self Management unit (assessed by standard 1.9), hence no data from last year to compare to. Overall, the students were consistently engaged during this unit. Their participation within all activities was astounding. Although majority of students passed the internal, not all of them, I feel all students learnt a lot about what self management actually is and strategies they can employ to increase their self management. To increase results further, an optional lunchtime tutorial in addition to class time around the critical thinking questions (i.e. the Excellence level questions), may be of benefit for students to deepen their writing for a higher grade.

Unfortunately, as evident below, there was a large decrease in students passing the 2.2 resilience unit. This is not a reflection of their learning and engagement, but entirely teacher error. This year I am in charge of Level 2 Health, therefore complete all the paperwork and prep behind the scenes. As we were marking the internals, I realised that we (the other teacher and I), had not made clear one section of the assessment, one section that essentially determined whether or not the student would pass. After looking into this further, this section appeared to have been taught and assessed incorrectly in previous years too. So - the below cannot actually be compared, as the results from last year are likely to be inaccurate. This really highlighted the importance of double checking and triple checking every single time something is taught - not simply rinse and repeat!

Feedback from my 2018 students about the 2.3 Health Promotion unit last year, was that they felt like they didn't have anything to work towards, no end goal. So after the completion of their projects I added in an exhibition - students made a display and set up during a lunchtime a stand to further spread awareness about their health issue. I feel that although this exhibition needs greater advertising next year, it helped students to have the end goal which was missing previously. As a result, more students were engaged throughout the 9 weeks, and more students had critical discussions to an Excellence level. Contacting home throughout the process, and having checkpoints for students also resulted in  a greater number of assessment hand ins than last year (albeit similar results). I think this was a good step forward.

Overall, even though the classes are completely different across each year, I found it useful to look at these results. I have been able to identify possible strategies to increase student grades next year, and distinguish any possible patterns. I will complete another comparison like this, later in the year (and will reflect on my other inquiry shortly too).

Planning Trips - Not Yet My Cup of Tea

Last year I attended a play called Yes, Yes, Yes. This play followed the two stories of two couples, addressing issues around consent, or lack of. There was lots of student voice included within the performance around their relationships and things they wish they knew about. I thought that this would be a great learning opportunity for my Senior Health students, to start discussions. So immediately I started planning! 

This was the first trip I had planned before. Up until now I had helped supervise on trips, but never actually needed to complete the paperwork before. To be completely honest, I can see why many people are put off - there was soooo much admin! Between permission letters, trip approval, booking buses, budgeting, risk management forms, medical reports, play tickets, relief and chasing up kids it was certainly a learning curve. I learnt a lot along the way though, and thankfully I had months to get everything sorted.  

On June 18th I took 22 students to see the play, hosted by Auckland Live in Aotea Centre. I was very nervous I had forgotten something or that something was going to go wrong - but I was literally getting on a bus, going into a theatre and then bussing back, so of course there was little chance of anything happening (I am trying to be less paranoid!). The kids were actually incredible, so well behaved and really respectful towards me and members of the public, which made the day smooth sailing. 

We were stoked to get front row seats, which also meant we were super close to the stage! During the show, there were a few opportunities for students to stand up and speak one of the character's parts. I was really proud when two OC students volunteered first out of the 100 odd people there, and they represented us so well!

There were two 'pauses' during the show. These pauses were an opportunity for members of the audience to share how they were feeling, what they were thinking about and any questions or concerns that may be running through their minds. This was such a great way for the students to reflect on what they had seen so far, and a simple yet effective way to demonstrate that many of the audience members were feeling and thinking similar things.

Once we got back to school I debriefed with students and we had rich discussion about some of the messages that came from the play. The overall consensus was that the play was fantastic to accomodate the learning and discussions we are having in class around consent, pornography, pressure, sexuality and gender, highlighting some of the issues but being very careful and inclusive in the process. Please see alongside some of the comments the students made.

Despite the lengthy admin trail to get the students there, I am so glad that I did. It was certainly an experience some of the students have never had before and the learning they took away from the day was worth everything to get them there. Assuming the play is performed again next year, I have put into our course outline a course cost so that the play is included in the course, rather than an optional trip, so more students can have the opportunity and experience.

I look forward to finding more cool opportunities for the students, not only for their learning but also mine about trip planning!

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).

Student Data - More Than A Summative Grade

In addition to my goal of wanting to increase connections with whānau, another goal this year (and my inquiry), is to reflect more regularly on student achievement and data within my practice. This is something that was discussed in my end of 2018 appraisal, as well as my first term appraisal this year.

A couple of simple things I have already implemented are checkpoints for my Year 12 Health class and offering lunchtime tutorials. The checkpoints have definitely helped so far to hold students accountable, but to also start discussions with them about how they are going and where they are heading next. I have been able to make time for each student individually to support them, but also to contact home if I am concerned they are falling behind (although not positive connections with home, still more connections than last year). I have offered 2 lunchtime tutorials for my Year 11s and 2 for my Year 12s, but only one student has shown up so far. At the end of the day though, I am trying to encourage students to take more responsibility for their learning and be self managed, and many seek help from me outside of school hours through emails and Google Doc comments for instance. I will continue to offer these tutorials, so I know I have offered the time if students need additional help.

To support my inquiry, I have attended a webinar on data to support teaching as inquiry (hosted by Darcy Fawcett and The Education Hub), watched this seminar about data to improve teacher practice (Dr Aaron Wilson and The Education Hub) and read this blogpost by My Study Series about how to best utilise the flipped learning platform (have used with 11PE so far and will use with 13PE next term). I have some thoughts after reading/watching these sources of information.

Using data to inform teacher practice is useful, is important, is pertinent. BUT, we must ask ourselves whether the learning is relevant and authentic. Are the children actually learning? Their test results may be high, but are there valuable learning experiences? Finally, are you judging your teacher effectiveness (or other teachers' effectiveness) based off their academic results? 

Throughout my dissertation, and Aaron reminded me in the seminar, that data does not just have to be related to academic results, does not have to be quantitative (we can use other sources of data, not just academic results). I am guilty though, as are many others, of feeling disappointed that we haven't given our best, and responsible when our results aren't as high as we had hoped. I had a discussion with another teacher last week about grades, and they said they were embarrassed when they had lots of students with the grade 'Not Achieved'. Though it may be difficult to see low academic results, the important thing to ask ourselves is 'did we do everything we could to help this student achieve?' 

Aaron discussed the importance of not just comparing the mean result though, because it may not be an accurate comparison. The bar graphs below show two sets of classes and student results. When the means of the two sets were compared, they were near identical, but it is clear in these graphs there is a considerable difference in individual  student results. Therefore I will need to reflect on students' results like this when comparing 2018 and 2019 results, not just the overall mean.

In addition to the quantitative achievement levels of students, when seeking/collecting/analysing data, we should be considering student progress. Students may be making significant progress but achieving poorly, or may be making little progress but achieving highly. Hence the importance of checkpoints, feedback opportunities, one to one conversations, and other forms of qualitative data. Moving forward I need to be completing more of the aforementioned, as well as providing opportunities for students to apply their knowledge, to relate their learning to other contexts, to utilise learning most relevant to them and to discuss their learning and ideas with others. These will provide opportunities for me to 'collect' informal data, and formatively assess student progress.

As previously blogged about, at Orewa registered teachers do not complete teacher observations, but instead complete Ako observations (which are essentially conversations with students about their learning journey in that class). Aaron identified, as can be seen alongside, some of the problems with completing teacher observations. These are some of the reasons why I value the Ako observations, as I feel they are more authentic and we don't go in with any preconceived ideas or judgements. I did not have anyone come into any of my classes to complete an Ako observation last year, which was disappointing, so hopefully I have some this year as I believe it would be invaluable qualitative data to have the student voice to reflect on.

I have a lot to continue to reflect on and look out for as identified throughout this post. If you are interested to learn further about data in teacher practice, I do recommend watching Aaron's seminar.