Week One at OrmPS

The school year began yesterday (Thursday) and I was eager to meet the learners in our habitat. But also, the ones in my hapu group. At Ormiston Primary the students are referred to as 'learners' and the team as 'habitat'. My hapu group is the core class of learners that I will be teaching for literacy and numeracy. My role at the school is now a 'Learning Coach' which is the term used for teachers.

The lessons or tasks and activities throughout the day are named differently. Instead of fitness, we use the term iActive. iExplore from my understanding are activities driven by the learners and iExperience is where the activities are driven by the learning coaches (teachers). These new terms are different but with time will slowly catch on. iDevelop is literacy and numeracy learning.
There are no bells at the school so everything is run by the clock and kept to time. Learning coaches out on duty inform the students of when iBreaks (morning tea and lunchtime) are over and send them back to class.

There are no rubbish bins at the school either. It's a waste free school. There are recycling bins for paper, plastic and tins as well as a bin for recyclable paper. There is also a bokashi bin for some of the food waste. Every other piece of rubbish is put back into learner bags and taken home to dispose of.

It's been a great first week and I've learned so much. The children are very sweet and some are helping me to learn the basics in Mandarin. I'm looking forward to a great year.

Learning with NZSL users @ OrmPS

As part of our professional development for New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) we had Krista from KDEC come in and speak to us about NZSL and what it's like for children in the classroom.

There is the use of interpreters that allows deaf people to converse within the hearing world. Interpreters provide full access for children in the classroom, everything said by the learning coach (teacher) is interpreted to the learners. Interpreters help and support in the classroom is vital in the classroom and makes so much difference.

Something new I've learned is every country has their own sign language. I also learned how to say hello, how are you, I"m good thank you, I'm (my name) and what is your name in sign language. I've also picked up the sign language for friend, dog, play, learn, coach, help and lunch.

This image is an idea of how a learner who is deaf to access the full picture for that child. If you're a child and can't make sense of it at all, it is very hard.
Learners may need to look away from their interpreters as their eyes are tired and it can be hard work.

We also had another activity to do, with ear plugs. All coaches had to wear ear plugs, walk around and ask others questions and find answers. All the while, there was an annoying background noise playing loudly. I relied heavily on lip reading and the use of gestures to understand some people's answers. I also felt frustrated when having to ask some questions too. Some of the things we did to try and understand each other was read lips, use actions and hand gestures and make eye contact. We found that it was harder to ask longer questions and where some words are tricky to say. This enabled us as a staff to put ourselves in the learners shoes and to better understand how learners are feeling.

It's important to gain the students attention before you start to communicate with them.
Examples are: flashing lights, waving, gently tapping their leg or stomping foot. We can also ask other learners who are listening to get their attention. Eye contact is really important in communicating with others.

Learning to sign helps to make a connections with NZSL learners. Connection is valuable. In order to gauge whether a learner has understood is by asking open ended questions. As often some children can use the deaf nod or the nod of bluffing which

Other points we discussed was how to create a deaf friendly school and that was to ensure that the school environment is inclusive of all learners. Use and teach other children signage during assembly and learning the days of the week. As well, as making sure that the notices were visual and accessible to all learners.

What does Ormiston primary do to be deaf friendly? Having visuals, turn off lights, shake the tambourine, learn more sign language and the learning coach to raise their hands to show that they are speaking.

I'm really excited about learning New Zealand Sign Language to help all children understand better and to communicate effectively in the classroom.

Induction Day at OrmPS

Today, as a staff we covered a lot of ground for the year ahead. We looked at the Vision Principles of the school, Collaboration and what it means, Assessment and Appraisals and a brief look at Maths and the resources we needed in our habitats.

The session that stood out today was around Collaboration. We were asked to get into nine groups and the task was to choose one person to lift up. Our group discussed and shared ideas about what we as a team were going to do. One person decided that we could put our own spin on it and lift a person up by giving saying positive things about them. What had to make decisions together as a team and come to an agreement about how we were going to do this.

As a collective, we discussed: Why is collaboration important? How is it implemented? What did we do show that we are a collaborative team?

Together, we talked about the values of the school and the learner's strengths, how the school is bi-culturally responsible and the strengths and how the community is involved and the strengths around this also.

Collaboration and working collaboratively is a reminder to working together and helping others.

For me personally, I was pointed out as sitting back and not saying much. But, it wasn't that I didn't have anything to say, what I wanted to say had already been shared and so I agreed with them. Nine is a big number to collaborate in as there are too many cooks in the kitchen. This is something for me to think about during my time as a learning coach at Ormiston.

End of an Era

This is my final post as a teacher at Point England School. I have been at Point England school since 2006 and have learned a great deal. Thank you to Russell and Dorothy Burt and all the staff for their support and leadership. Thank you to the office/ admin staff who are the backbone of the school. Thanks to all the support staff for their help throughout the years. Thank you to parents for allowing me to teach your children. Thank you most of all to the children, who as much as I have taught I've also learned from you. I will take a bit of Point England with me. I'll still be posting to my inquiry blog. Thanks Point England, I love you all.

End of an Era from Priscilla Lavakula on Vimeo.

Inquiry Update: Change in Pedagogy

I've been reflecting on how much my teaching has changed this year. When it came to reading, I was in the mindset of the children reading a text and then having a followup for it. This also meant the children had to get through at least two texts a week.

My focus around what the children are reading in class has changed. Yes, I still need to have a followup for each group but because of what we're doing in our team in reading, has changed so has the focus, slightly.

Team 4 teachers and I decided to have mini topics under the school inquiry. The topic for this term is the Olympics and we looked at it from a point of view as the: Olympics Exposed. This meant that we were teaching children what goes on behind the scenes of the Olympics. I hadn't really thought about that point of view before but not only did the children learn about these mini topics, but so did I.

I'll be honest and say that it wasn't easy at first. This meant that there weren't many books or journals for children to read under these mini topics. So, as a team we had to delve into online readings. The children have one main text that they have to read but we also have also included other readings that support the main text. It's still a work in progress for myself. But as a team we are working collaboratively. I check out what others have been doing on our site and might use some readings or followup activities and make them my own.

 

Term 3 Inquiry Update

This term our team focus was around issues that went on behind the scenes of the Olympics, called "Olympics Uncovered". We had to teach issues that covered two to three weeks at a time. The following texts were found on Journal Surf. The focus of my mini topics were: Doping in Sport, the Zika Virus, Muscles and the Human Body and some sports. These are the books I found that specifically related to these topics.

Boost is a story about some children that had enhancements from a clinic and how they behaved in class. When children read this, they could tell that this was cheating and that it wasn't fair on others. For extended reading texts, I found articles online based on doping in sport.

Mighty Muscles is a short article that gives students a brief idea of why it is important to have healthy muscles. From observations, few children knew only one or two muscles in their body. For extended readings, I've had to search online to find articles and readings that related to the muscular system.

The texts around viruses and bacteria that I found were The good, the bad and the ugly and Double, double, toilet trouble. My top reading group are able to explain the difference between bacteria and a virus. I found articles on the Zika virus online and used these as extended texts. One teaching "a-ha!" moment is when one of my students said "oh, I didn't know that'.

The follow up activities were based on agree/ disagree, compare and contrast and short fact presentations. Some children made advertisements about Boost and whether people should be using it or not. Check out an example here. Here's are movies made by students about the Zika Virus here and here. Here's an activity for Mighty Muscles here. 

LIteracy Tasks for Reading Followup

Here is a selection of followup tasks that I have been using and practicing in my classroom. Please feel free to use them if you wish. They are suitable for all reading ages and can be changed to suit your own groups.

Term One Inquiry Reflection

My focus has been having followup tasks that engage students motivation in reading. Here is what I have found out so far.

Inquiry Focus in 2016

Welcome back to 2016. At Pt England, our school-wide focus is formative practice in reading and writing to improve students achievement. My personal inquiry will focus on: How to get engaging follow-up activities to increase student motivation in reading.

Final Inquiry Reflection for 2015

The following is data based on end of year gloss testing. This is of my maths class, a total of 28 students, nine of which were in my ALIM group.

Things that I would like to focus on for next year: sorting my groups in to mixed ability, focus on fractions and incorporating strands - geometry and statistics.

Alim Impact Day Presenation

I've been privileged to have been part of the Accelerated Learning in Maths 1 programme this year.
A brief overview of the demographics of our school. We are in East Auckland and have a roll of around 650 students. The majority of the children are of Maori and Pasifika background with a small number of Asian and New Zealand European. We are a Manaiakalani cluster school and are a 1:1 digitally immersed. We base our approach on Learn, Create and Share. The resources that I used mainly were from the nzmaths site, figure it out books and the No Nonsense Maths Problem books. One activity that I felt helped with fractions was: Fraction Tagging. My focus question was: "How can I use problem solving with rich tasks to improve the learning outcomes of my target students?"

I initially chose 10 students but 1 student left so I had 9 altogether. The first week was spent setting up a treaty, creating a checklist for students to use when problem solving, having a reflection chart at the end of each lesson and sending home letters to parents.
Grouping students was important. I wanted to split children that were very chatty but also wanted confident children amongst the less confident.

I found that my "Maths Club" became more confident and began sharing their learning in class with other children. They were able to help others too. I also created a google form that I got my students to fill out. Some of the children's responses were that they really loved maths, maths was the only thing they were good at and one student loved maths because he could learn from others.
I mainly focused my teaching around fractions and proportions although I did teach multiplication and division strategies as well.

Thankfully enough, our CAP plan was already in place from previous teachers who had been through Alim so I spent some time going over it again. You'll see the data and my findings in the presentation below. If you have any questions please feel free to comment. Also thank you to Juanita and Sue for helping me along the way.

Inquiry Reflection Term 3

Reflecting on what am I trying to address and what impact has it had on student's learning.

Reflecting So Far...

 

When I started out my inquiry I wanted to promote student discourse in mathematics. I did this by using Talk Moves. This required me to really pay attention and listen to students' when they were sharing their thinking in small groups. It wasn't easy because at times, like other students, I was confused.

However, after much practice and pulling children's thinking back to the problem and what the problem is requiring them to do, facilitating discussions became easier. Once a student shared, I would give the others in the group a raised eyebrow look and that would signal to them that they needed to ask questions eg. Can you explain how you got your answer? 

This rest of the group had to be listening when others were sharing. The children in my Integers group are leading their discussion when problem solving. If the problem is difficult then I would record their thinking on the whiteboard for others to see and this would apply for children that speak quickly. It helps others to take notice and think whether they agree or disagree with the speaker's thinking and answer.

This has changed my practice immensely. I am not talking or leading the discussion as much as I use too.

Where to next? I've focused a lot on teaching strategies through problem solving. I'm now going to focus on teaching number knowledge.

Stage 5 and 6 Strategies

I've been teaching children to recognise the way that they solve number problems and getting them to relate them to names. At the moment both the Integers and Exponents are very familiar and are more able at using Place Value and Tidy Number strategies.

Stage 5 Strategies


 Stage 6 Strategies
 

ALIM: Accelerated Learning in Mathematics

This year, I am very fortunate to have been accepted to this programme. If you'd like to know more about it you can click here.
I have a group of 5 children that I have glossed prior to launching into teaching. My inquiry is "How will a focus on Rich Tasks in Problem Solving contribute to improved learning outcomes for my target students? I will be focusing on teaching fractions, proportions and ratios.

Term 2 Inquiry Reflection

Here is my reflection of my inquiry so far. I have included what has worked well, observations, what needs improving and where to next.

Progress with Integers Group

During the past week, I've been focusing on teaching division with remainders. The Integers have found this a challenge when the number being divided gets bigger. So, we started off small for example: There are 13 jellybeans to share between Karen and her sister. How many do they get each? How many are left over?
Without using materials children were able to solve this.
When I posed the question 53 divided by 10, Richard was able to use a different strategy and say that 50 divided by 10=5 and there were 3 left over. He knew that 5x10=50 (reversibility) and knowledge of basic facts.
Another question was 44 divided by 5. Machelle said the answer was 9 remainder 1. She said that 5x9=45-1 =44.
Richard disagreed. He said that 40 divided by 5=8 and there's 4 left over. Machelle had to repeat it back and she could see that was she had shared was incorrect. She showed understanding through discussion.

Teaching with Integers

During the previous weeks, I have focused on giving students opportunities to talk and share their thoughts. I had to gift them with examples of sentence starters:

You said ______________________, can you explain why did you do that?
Why did you  _______________________?
I don't agree because ___________________.
I didn't understand, could you repeat that please?

I also focused on not speaking too much and encouraged the children to speak instead. When a student shared their learning and ideas, I found that a lot of the children tended to agree and weren't really questioning or challenging what was shared.

However, children began to put on their thinking caps and had light bulb "a-ha!" moments. Discussions have been working really well with my Integers group.  Machelle is a good example. She is always commenting and asking questions. She would say, "you said ________ but that doesn't make sense because _____________". A few of the children are asking "what strategy did you use?"

By allowing children opportunities to direct the discussion empowers them and gives them ownership of their learning. It also keeps children accountable of tuning in and staying focused.

If children get side tracked during discussion, I redirect them back to the problem and ask them "what is it asking us to do?" If children are confident with their answers, (which is incorrect) I would get them to prove it using materials and prompting them along the way.

This has been a major change in my practice. I'm still learning to remember when to speak and when not too. It's hard but do-able. I'm also still learning to facilitate discussions in my lower ability groups.

Term One Reflection

Reflection: This term has been a very busy week but I've been enjoying my inquiry and looking at ways of improving my practise. Here is an inquiry presentation that I've made to explain what I've done and where I'm up to now.
 This is a short video clip of the Calculators group. These children are year 5 and 6 working at Stage 3 to 4 going into Early Stage 5.

This is a short video clip of the Exponents group. Again, these children are year 5 and 6, working at Early Stage 5.
 
Exponents T1 from Team 4 Pes on Vimeo.