This is why I do this!

I had one of these moments today.

As with all professionals, there are times I question my career choice.  It is as simple as that.  No glossing over it, no justifying the statement.  Just as it is.  Teaching some days, can be a thankless task and leave me questioning if a poor paying career as a groundbreaking sculptor may have been a better choice.  But not on days like today.

Today one of my Y12 students burst into my classroom and made an impassioned b-line for me.  I was thrown at first; unsure of her motives.  She was emotional, clutching at her chest and blurting some sentence that began with “Oh my goodness” and ended in “I was crying in Tutor time!”  It turns out she’d read a short story I’d suggested to her, Flowers for Algernon, and she’d been so moved by it, it prompted her to cry.

She spilled her reaction to the text at me then wanted to engage in confident, intelligent conversation about the characters in the text, how they and other elements of the text connected to the Shakespeare we are currently studying and that all of this was causing her to question her Christian faith.

BACK UP THE BUS SISTER.   Question her faith?  What she meant was that it was causing her to think about elements of her in ways she had never considered before.  She was ‘thinking’.  She had an awareness that what she was doing was thinking.  She was considering how the texts related to her, what effect they were having on her and as a result she was being challenged to consider the lessons she had been taught in good Christian faith.  I’m not afraid to admit this scared me somewhat.  I don’t want to be responsible for her questioning her faith.  I DO want to be responsible for stimulating her to think!  That’s decided then, I’ll take that one.

What actually happened is she filled me with faith.  Faith that the slog is still worth it.  Faith that there are students who do want to think.  Faith that I can do this.

This student is also beginning to question her chosen direction in that she was devoted to pursuing vet as a career prior to being placed in my English class.  Now she thinks it is her destiny to become an English teacher!  Wow!  I’ll take that one too!  How fabulous that a student is inspired by what happens in my classroom.

She certainly made my day and …

This is why I do this!

And so it begins.

So I’ve run the ‘idea’ past the Principal.  She was interested, open and enthusiastic about what it may lead to.  I’ve done a little more research; I found and added a couple of other peoples blogs about the idea of book sharing to a new Edmodo group I created for the class to join.

The more I research and look into the idea, the more I want it to gain some traction.  The Principal’s excitement was encouraging.  I have chosen to keep the idea/operation ‘secret squirrel’/covert.  The reason for this is the fact that is a little like a social experiment in a sense.  We plan to watch, and monitor in some way, how people react when they are faced with the opportunity to 1. take something away for free when they are not sure of the parameters and 2. whether these people are then encouraged to repeat the exercise themselves.

It was a pleasure to share the idea and to hear another’s thoughts.  PC (Principal) suggested she would go home and empty her own shelves of the books she was about to shed to the local opportunity shop.

What will be most interesting to me now is the students reaction to the idea.  I wonder if they’ll think it’s interesting, ‘naff’, a possibility, too hard…

So what’s working?

Hmmmm…..

I continue to climb the mountain that is motivating my Maori students.  Since last posting, my small forward steps have been peppered with some sliding backwards at what often feels like an equal pace.

Refresher –

A booster class with a number of pockets of students who, for whatever reason, achieve at the lower end of the curriculum levels.  Two of the pockets are Maori students.  They vary within their cultural group quite markedly which presents the first hurdle.  One or two of them are extremely proud of their Maori culture and seize any opportunity to share with us their knowledge and heritage.  One or two of them are non plus about where they come from, they don’t discuss their family in terms of being Maori.  One Maori student is very hard to engage with on any level.  She shows little interest in class and little care for allowing me to help her.  Another is very capable, very disorganised and very distant and finally, my biggest challenge and the little girl who tugs at my heart strings, a student who carries with her a great deal of ‘baggage’ for want of a better word.

What I have found in this class is those Maori students who show pride in their culture are the easiest to help.  They display an honest pride and are not ashamed to ask for help or attempt a question and get it wrong.  They seem secure enough to get it wrong but realise that this does not reflect on them personally.  Those who are removed from their extended whanau, who have little knowledge of their whakapapa, are those who, in this class, (and I realise this is a generalisation), can make teaching and learning difficult in a classroom.  They are often disorganised, slow to work and struggle with follow through.   (This is all getting a little deep!)  Clearly there are larger issues afoot here.  Lacking a sense of belonging or understanding of who we are or where we come from can adversely affect us can’t it?! Perhaps there’s another post, or four, in this.

I digress, a recurring theme in my blog so nothing new there….

Here’s what I really wanted to express in this post.

My three – (I’m going for succinct here).

There are three students in this class in particular that I have managed to ‘connect’ with on some level and who I intend to continue working with in some way.  One, a very proud and enthusiastic young lady who takes part in Kapahaka and wears her heart on her sleeve, one, very much a student whose mood as she walks through the door dictates the classes lesson day-to-day and one who is very able but disinterested, for the most part, in seeing anything through to completion.

There have been a number of things I’ve done this year in an effort to keep my movement with these girls uphill and moving forward rather than a sliding one.

• Dr Seuss certificates for determined and diligent behaviour
• leeway on speech and formal writing topics – allowing the students choice and the opportunity to write about what ‘gets’ them
• Praise after the lesson one-on-one
• Meeting with a student at lunchtime to work on improving a piece of work
• Picking my battles – realising that I can’t change what goes through the heads of my students before they walk through my door
• Use of Maori spelling words and giving the girls the opportunity to set these

There are possibly other things I have done that have not even registered in my head but do in the heads of these girls. 

I have hatched a plan to go forward with ‘My Three’; to be revealed at a later date…

I’m an ICT addICT!

A couple of years ago I attended a PD session led by Toni Twiss.  She’s the culprit, the one responsible for my current addiction!

That afternoon Toni spoke to us about how she saw ICT fitting into the New Zealand classroom.  She challenged us to rethink our preconceptions about technology, and in particular the dreaded ‘P’ word, (phones), in the classroom.

During that session Toni used a Prezi to share her ideas with us; I was hooked.  Although I didn’t know where to start in terms of integrating the technology, I knew I wanted to.  I spoke with Toni after the PD and I’ll never forget her saying to me that technology is easy to integrate into the classroom and can have real impact provided you keep using it, that’s the challenge!  When I found myself giving the same ‘advice’ this week to a friend and colleague, I realised that not only was I a convert but I was an ADDICT!

When I started talking to her further about the types of things I do in my classroom on a regular basis now, I thought it was time to note some of them down.  It’s funny, they’ve become so second nature that I quite surprised myself when I started to list them…

So…here they are, complete with some links in order to really show off!

wiki

I love my wiki.  (Although it’s not really for me I realise as I write this.)  Take a look.

http://mrsv2.wikispaces.com/Back+to+the+Beginning+

This is a landing page for my classes.  It began as a place to link further reading for my classes around the texts we were studying.  It soon became somewhere to also

• link audio texts relevant to our studies,
• post spelling lists,
• post notes we collaborated on as a class or in groups,
• conduct discussions about various text related topics,
• have students post researched information about the context texts are set in,
• post class, homework and extension tasks,
• post generic feedback about their most recent pieces of assessed work,
• have students link their Glogster work to and, more recently,
• link Google Docs work the students create to.

It keeps on giving!

I do remember Toni telling me once that one day the limitations a wiki would become obvious to me.  She said that at that point I may decide to use e-portfolios instead.  I’ve not realised the limitations of the wiki yet Toni!

Another way I’ve started using wikis is with my ‘Booster’ class.  Engagement and retention of focus can be an issue with this class.  For some time I considered how I could vary their learning in a way that may spark their interest.  The wiki (visualise a light bulb glowing at this point).  I had each student set up a wiki to complete their novel study on.  Check one of them out here.  They are works in progress.

http://zoesenglishnovel.wikispaces.com/

Google Docs

My own learner, my 12 year old, Year 7 son, is an e-learner.  All this year he has been studiously completing homework using ICT, in particular Google Docs.  I sat him down to educate me.  When I realised just how easy it all was to use and the potential of it, I jumped all over it.

Now I have a Year 9 class in particular using this method of creating documents all the time.  They have been

• collaborating on character grids and then sharing them with me.  These are then turned into PDF’s and posted to the wiki for anyone to download,
• writing extension tasks on – creative writing and response to text essays,
• and lastly, (this is what I am currently most excited about), using Google Docs to reflect on their own learning journey using the feedback they receive on their work and the generic feedback I post on the wiki.

I am constantly amazed at how easy it all is!  Why was I not doing all of this early?  Check out all the linking and cross-over functions.  It’s gorgeous.

Glogster

What a great tool!  Visual blogging.  My students have used this in the past and are now using it again.  It’s a great way to have them learn about visual verbal links in their work.  Links to some fabulous examples of these coming soon.  A tip:  If you intend to use this, sign up to the Glogedu site as teacher for the free trial.  This will give you a teacher code you can use to get your students started.  Warning to follow tip: It’s addictive and time wasting to use!

Students own devices

This I love!  After having many talks with another colleague, a computing teacher, I was convinced it was time to relent and allow my Year 9 Extension class the opportunity to bring their own ipod touches, ipads, notebooks and such to class.  I wanted to challenge some of the misgivings I had about letting them expose these to the air outside of their pockets…the ipods anyway.  These learners are technologically savy, moreso than the majority of people I teach with at any rate, and I had to trust that they would use that technology for good, I mean learning in my class.  And they did!  Photo evidence to boot!

These wee cherubs are writing a response to text essay using a variety of tools, Google Docs, word, Simple Note.  It was super and the focus and engagement, second to none.  They have continued to bring and use their devices in class.

App of the Week

My Year 9’s thrive on my ‘App of the Week’.  It’s just a bit of fun but often leads to some great conversations.  Every week I come up with some FREE app that the girls can download to their iPod touches.  They love it.  I even used the Countdown shopping app as the ‘App of the Week’ once!  We had a lot of fun scanning all the items they could find in their lunchboxes with bar codes!

Interface Magazine

What a super publication for the techo geek like me.  Filled with inspirational stories from classroom teachers like me who are trying so new and exciting things.  There are some pearls hidden in the back pages.  Here it is online http://interfaceonline.co.nz/

So, it’s official.  I am addICTed!  No intentions of kicking the habit either.

Curriculum Levels – Using the continuum to progress.

Our school made a shift and last year began using curriculum levels to report on the progress of our Junior students.  The merit in using these levels to assess students learning, is that it provides them with a good picture of what their strengths and weaknesses are.  A student may be achieving at Level 3A of the curriculum in one aspect of their work but at 4A or higher in another aspect.  

Both my Year 9 classes have recently received work based that has been assessed based on these curriculum levels.  If you’ve read a previous blog of mine,   https://thereflectiveramblingsofmrsv.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/playing-around-with-feed-back/ you’ll know that using assessed work and feedback given to inform teaching and therefore the learning of my students, is a key focus of mine.  I am keen to explore new ways of

1. Ensuring the feedback I give students is effective in informing where they should direct their learning next and

2. Having the students set learning goals in English based on the curriculum level feedback they receive.

So, with this in mind, I handed back a set of response to text essays that my Year 9 Extension class wrote recently. 

Generic feedback –

As I was marking I noticed, as is normally the case, that they were elements of feedback about aspects of the response writing that needed to be given to fairly much every student in the class.  Rather than repeat this information over and over and over in and effort to slowly pen my way to insanity, I decided rather to create a page on my wiki that would give the students this generic feedback in an open forum.  The bonus to this is that it is always accessible to them and that I am able to give specific examples of what I mean when I make statements.   Here is what I posted for them, take a look and see what you think.  http://mrsv2.wikispaces.com/Year+9+-+Response+to+Text+Feedback+notes

In a week or so I intend to ask the students if they have had some time to read the feedback and whether they have found it useful.

Watch this space.

Playing around with feed back

One thing I have been particularly interested in finding out more about this year is how to best give effective feed back to my students.

The ‘hands off’ nature of internal assessments in English can be incredibly frustrating for students and teachers.  Year after year I watch as the more reluctant of my learners gloss over when I ‘serve’ them with their generically worded formative feed back.  In some cases, getting them to a point where they have produced something worthy of being read is a triumph.  And then to throw at them broad sweeping comments such as

“consider how you could better structure your paragraph” or “is there a way you could create more effectively create pace in this passage?”

just about turns them off creating another piece of writing for life!  In some cases, I don’t doubt that this is exactly what happens. 

I have been searching for ways to make the feed back I give my students more effective.  Let’s face it, if there’s not a learning moment in it for them, then what really is the point? 

Having attended “A chat with Mike”, a PD session with my HOD recently, I decided to throw caution to the wind and push the ‘hands off’ condition of assessment, as detaiedl in the achievement standard we were working with, to the wire.  We have been so cautious as a school where these conditions of assessment have been concerned.  We have penned our broad sweeping statements about students work on a separate piece of paper, stapled it to the front of their work, handed it back in silent exam conditions and made the statements “It’s all in your feed back.  I can’t help you any further.”

Something about this wasn’t sitting right with me and those poor vessels sitting in front of me, glassy-eyed made it more obvious to me that this year I wanted to change something.

Mike Fowler, ‘A chat with Mike”, Mike, threw some light on all of this for me.  He took us through a project he was a part of here in NZ called Effective Writing Practice.  The project highlight effective practices that were being used in schools in the South Island. 

There were two strategies that caught my eye and I was keen to try.  One was the giving of feed back actually on the work the student had produced.  A simple idea I know.  Why wouldn’t we be doing this?  The teacher modelled how her students created an additional margin down the side of their work for the teacher to give her ‘hands off’ feed back.  The advantage of this it seemed to me, was that the students no longer had to guess where the comments might be relevant and so the learning moment was immediate.  The comments were still posed in a questioning manner and designed to promote thought in the student, but they were able to instantly reflect on the area in which the change needed to be made.  Loved it!  Have done it!  IT WORKS! 

The second part to this was the conferencing the teacher did with each student post feed back.  We have been so hell-bent in the Department on having silence in the internal assessment classroom for fear the girls might share ideas and cheat.  But hang on, we’re talking about creative writing, not a maths test where there are right and wrong, black and white answers.  Anyway, students sharing and feeding off one another often promotes better work than we can as teachers!  The teacher we watched spent five/ten minutes with each student ensuring their feed back made sense to them.  Loved it!  Did it!  IT WORKED.

I am completely satisfied that I did all of this within the boundaries of the assessment conditions.  My feed back was still ‘hands off’ and I was GUIDING NOT GIVING. 

I took all of this another step further and while feeding back I made more detailed notes on my wiki space to expand my feed back further.  Here I gave the students examples of what I meant when I wrote the feed back.  I made sure this available to the students in the days leading up to their crafting and editing periods.  Check it out here.

So, I was happy with the way this all worked.  The verbal word on the ‘street’ is that the students found the process much more effective.  Student voice to come…

TK Feedback – where to next for my Maori students?

The school I teach at is a Te Kotahitanga school.  Te Kotahitanga is an initiative of the Ministry of Education aimed at improving the achievement of Year 9 and 10 Maori students in schools through the professional development of their teachers.  (For more info on the initiative click here).

I need to admit at this stage that the achievement of ALL of my students is paramount to me.  One of the most powerful outcomes of having been involved with Te Kotahitanga for me is that ALL of my students, Maori, Pacific Islander, Asian and Pakeha benefit from the attention I pay to

• creating a culturally inclusive classroom
• forging relationships with my students
• planning learning activities aimed at those with different learning styles.

All of these are things that I would consider a necessary part of my teaching practise at any given time.  So in that sense, I change nothing.  I’ve never been one to pay lip service to something I didn’t believe had some merit.  I know these three things are key to the achievement of any student.

This year I have a Year 9 class that has many Maori students in it.  This class is a ‘booster’ class which means that they are generally achieving lower than is expected within the New Zealand Curriculum Levels.  I put my hand up to teach this class.  I love a good challenge, and more than that, believe that I am genuine enough in the classroom to give the class every opportunity to achieve at a higher level and know what success in the English classroom feels like.

I digress, this posting is all about the most recent Te Kotahitanga feedback I received after an observation of my room in action.  I’m doing something right!  The observer noted that 95% of the time, those students she was particularly interested in observing, the Maori students, were on task!  Super.  Box ticked.  This has been a battle and I’m under no illusion that it will cease to be!  

These girls are particularly social and appear to have very short attention spans.  They try hard but often lack the self control to ‘haul’ themselves away from a conversation about a mutual friend when the opportunity arises.  To combat this I have been designing units that I thought would appeal to their social nature. 

•  ‘Handle the Jandal’, the designing of a cardboard jandal for display that shows visually all the things in their lives that are important to them – friends, family, boys, music. 
• ‘Belonging’, a reading and writing unit designed thematically around what it means and feels like to belong – culturally and socially. 
• ‘My favourite place’, a creative writing unit designed to follow the ‘Belonging’ unit in which the students describe somewhere that is important to them for what ever reason.

This all seems to have worked so far.  Fingers crossed the units to come continue to spark their interest.

One thing I realised very early on with this group of girls, is that if I wanted on task students then I needed to plan varied and bite-sized lessons.  This has also contributed to the 95% on task behaviour.  These girls, bless their cotton socks, are just not capable at this stage of completing a task that requires them to work solidly for longer than 15 minutes.  The customary “Plan of Attack” on the board at the beginning of every lesson is blocked in 15 minute blocks.  They don’t know that, I do!  And it works…for the moment!

Another thing noted in the feedback was my willingness to use Maori words and attempt correct pronunciation of them.  I was schooled here in NZ.  I was the sole white face in the Kapahaka group at Arataki Primary school and the teacher who had the most impact on me, ever, was Mrs Whata-Blackaby, one of only two Maori teachers I recall at that same primary school, (the same Primary school Stan Walker attended might I add).  I learnt a whole heap of Reo that I still use to this day.  It isn’t a huge leap for me to use what I know in class and whats more, I know that the Maori students appreciate my efforts.  They are masters at spotting disingenuous, token gesture teachers.  I make no excuses for not knowing a particular Maori word and laugh with them when they laugh at me.  I also make a habit of using the resource I have in them for my learning.  At the beginning of the year I had my two ‘toughest customers’ write a list of Maori words I could incorporate into our spelling each week.  This made them feel their knowledge was valuable and showed them that I valued the contribution they were making in my English class.

So for the feed forward.  What’s next for my Maori students.  I want to keep forging ahead with my literacy goal with these girls, (see Looking at Literacy page), but with an increasing focus on them becoming independent users of the literacy strategies we are using in class and at home.  Their reading levels were tested at the beginning of the year using the e-sattle diagnostic tool and I intend to re-test them in the coming weeks.  This will give me some idea of the gaps they still have.   Stand-by for the next phase!

Ask and you shall recieve – the power of student voice.

Having asked two of my senior classes to pen their thoughts about English and my delivery of it this week, I sat down today, with a coffee, in the comfort of home to bask in the praise!  Ha!  I write in jest…well, in some small way.

There’s nothing more uncomfortable than laying it all on the table and asking for honest feedback.  Nothing like a bit of constructive criticism to prompt you to check yourself.

Whenever I go through this exercise I’m surprised by what my students think is important and what they don’t, what they see as my weaknesses and my strengths and by their take on the classroom as a whole. 

My Year 12 and Year 13 students have had an opportunity to tell me what they think so far.

I’d asked in the questionnaire if they thought there was a particular focus or goal I had for their class this year.  I have.  They hadn’t noticed!  What I thought I was being so obviously, explicitly teaching, isn’t obvious to them!  Argggghhhh.  Back to the drawing board on that one. 

Funny, although they haven’t been able identify that there is something I ‘harp’ on about all the time, in their post-exam reflection and discussions as a class, they were able to tell me that they felt more able to expand their answers in their response to text essays and, the Year 12’s in particular, felt more prepared to do this in the close reading of unfamiliar texts component of the exam.  So, it works, just sub-consciously maybe.

I was interested to read about the views of some of my less focused students.  (The questionnaires were anonymous but some distinctive handwriting gives all this away.)  There are those in class who chat, fidget, distract others and complete very little.  These students felt that I spend too much time with the ‘clever kids’ in the class.  The same students also feel they don’t have enough notes, they haven’t had enough opportunity to write practice essays and they want exemplar answers to take away with them.

It’s always interesting when you’re faced with these requests, or are they criticisms?  Am I guilty of teaching to the more able, or are they the more interested students who focus in my class?  Whichever of the two, I find myself considering the students I think have made these comments.  I don’t want them feeling despondent in my class and, more than this, I want them to feel successful.  So, what to do about it?  Watch this space?

Reflect-tastic!

Here I go…

I’m a little nervous about all this blogging lark.  Never done it, always been afraid to.  Who might read it?  What might they think about my ramblings?  It’s quite a ‘naked’ feeling.  Scary!  However, now it’s time.

Education in New Zealand, from where I hail, is in a constant state of flux.  With these fluxes comes many buzz words.  Currently we teach and learn in an environment where the words, ‘differentiate’, ‘literacy’, ‘under-achieving’ and ‘reflective practitioner’ are all readily used.  It’s the ‘reflective practitioner’ phrase that brings me to this blog and to my sharing with you, assuming someone other than me is reading this!

I think I’ve always been a person who reflects on my actions, my husband would say a little too much sometimes!  In teaching, I’m constantly evaluating what’s happening and happened in my classroom on a lesson by lesson basis in an effort to figure out what worked, what didn’t work and why.  Sometimes this reflecting is all within the confines of my often overloaded head, sometimes it’s on paper and sometimes it’s spat at colleagues who happen to be in my immediate path.

I think myself lucky that I work in a department of talented and reflective teachers.  We’re always off-loading after our not-so-successful lessons and comforted by others with ideas about what we could try next time.  On the flip side, we are great at sharing the successes we’ve and ideas about how others might adapt them to their classrooms.

This year, my PLC (Professional Learning Cycle), calls for me to document my reflection.  At first, I have to admit, the idea of having to do this felt like just another paperwork exercise that was keeping me from planning and researching new ideas for my students.  When I jumped down off my high horse, I realised that in fact the purpose of it was completely the opposite.  The inquiry that I’ve formalised as a part of PLC is making me focus more on exactly that, more effective planning and researching of new ideas for my teaching and the learning of my students.

So here my documentation begins….it’s been a little slow at coming to fruition, this doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a consideration though.

I have two major focuses in my teaching of English this year.  One is to help my students show greater depth of explanation in their written work.  This is a goal for me over all the year levels I teach.  The second is to improve the literacy skills of my ‘booster’ English class.  My hope is that they will independently begin to use tools and strategies in their reading based on what they learn in class.