Inquiry 2018

By -
As the year draws closer and I reflect on 2017, it is time to consider what aspects of my practice I wish to work on next year.

This year I completed an intervention and dissertation on mathematics; specifically using differentiated approaches to accelerate the learning of all of my students in a mixed-ability setting. I learnt so much from this intervention and it has altered much of my mathematics pedagogy and use of my class site. 

However, next year I would like to focus on writing, as this is another area of the curriculum that some of my learners struggle with. As I will be teaching a year 7 and 8 class, I must ensure that my teaching will support the students to transition between intermediate and high school. It is also vital that I facilitate accelerated learning so that they can cope with the literary demands of college.

I would like to investigate the use of text analysis, peer and self assessment to make the connection between reading and writing explicit. In this intervention, I intend to start the week with a text analysis. The learners would first respond to the text as readers to gain an understanding of it, before I guide them to analyse a specific aspect of the text as writers. Smith (1983), states that effective writers are able to write like readers, and effective readers read like writers. That is, the students notice the techniques that writers use when reading and write with their audience in mind.
This analysis would involve a great deal of discussion, to provide scaffolding for the learners. These text responses would be shared on the students blogs as a short text or video. They would then select elements of the text to use in their own writing in the week, before discussing their ideas for writing with one another because "reading and writing float on a sea of talk" (Briton,  1970, p.164).

The students would self and peer assess during the week against a rubric that we would co-construct. At the end of the week we would analyse a student-created text just as we had at the start of the week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Different Kind of Ending

By -
Image
As I approached the stage at my graduation on Friday,  I began to consider where I might be if I had not undertaken this degree. In fact, there was a chance that I might not have gone to University at all, as I am the first person in my family to gain a degree and one of only a handful from my old primary school.  Although I like to think I would have found a job that I would enjoy, it would be such a shame to let my dream of teaching go simply because I was not brave enough to enroll in tertiary study. It felt a little surreal returning to the University of Auckland city campus on Friday to graduate. I know that at other universities graduation is held at the end of the year, yet mine was held after I had finished my first term as a teacher. Although the celebration felt a little belated,  I really enjoyed catching up with my old classmates and I had a wonderful day. The highlight of my Graduation was when I went to dinner with my family as we discussed my ti...
Read more

Unpacking Our Reading Journey

By -
Image
Over the past two years I have been able to track a target group of students in my literacy group. The students are all girls except for F and G but these boys left in 2018.  I wanted to track this group closely this year as they came to me with reading ages between 8 and 9, where our learners seem to get stuck. In the first year, some were able to achieve accelerated shift, while others only made 6 months. Student End 2017 End 2018 End 2019 A 8.5 9 11 B 8.5 10.5 12 C 9 10.5 13 D 9 9.5 11 E 9 10 11.5 F 8.5 10 / G 9 9.5 / I focussed on those that had made the best shift and surveyed them to see what they thought caused it. F said that he enjoyed the topics that we were reading and that he was reading more. B and C had similar answers, with my hunch being that B made so much shift due to reading more at home. In fact, I gave B an extra text every week. In 2019 I attempted to give the students texts that they would find more interesting, and for the end of te...
Read more

Top Tips for Online Learning

By -
Image
With the world in lockdown every teacher is having to make adaptations for online distance learning. To help speed your learning journey,  here are seven top tips that I've curated from the experts Harry Fletcher-Wood and Dr Nina Wood at the  Education Hub . 1. Students attention spans are going to be far shorter . We know that there are many distractions for children at home and they are definitely not dedicating six hours of their day for school work. We don't want to overload parents either - if there is too much content and they have multiple children things get very tricky. A couple of hours of learning a day is great. In fact, my 11 to 13 year old students tend to clock out after about 90 - so I make the most of them! 2. Your learning activities need to be simple. We don't have the chance to meet face to face with students, to answer questions as they arise, so our tasks need to be easily introduced and explained. It is helpful to use a similar format each ...
Read more