Beyond a Blackboard

Over the last few weeks, I have been conducting a mini inquiry to identify trends in my current practice. One limitation that I have had throughout this inquiry is that I am focussing on my literacy practice but currently do not have my literacy class (and will have gone almost a term without teaching them). Instead, I have been analysing my literacy practice with my maths class, which may slightly alter what I notice. I am aware of this and will be conducting some further data gathering at the start of next term, to get some more baseline data for my inquiry and to reflect further on my practice. I used three sources of data to inform this inquiry, a student voice survey, an analysis of my planning/ student activities and an observation of my teaching. I have interpreted each of these independently and I am now making connections between them and the literature that I have read on this topic. My focus question for this was: how am I supporting my students to monitor their own unde...

We would all agree that health is an important subject, particularly in the wake of the lockdown. Yet in our already crowded curriculum, it can be challenging to find time to teach it. Many of us already dedicate time planning sports trips, planning netball training sessions or slotting in daily fitness activities. HPE then becomes a subject solely taught in a gym or court. I believe now is the time to do better. When I talk about teaching Health with my non teacher friends, they often imagine that I am referring to either healthy eating or puberty. Perhaps because these are the topics they remember learning themselves at school! But when you explore the curriculum and what health looks like at college, you realise it is much more than that. Last term, for example, we explored Te Whare Tapa Wha. We started by discussing each principle before looking at how this model of health aligns with our own wellbeing. The students discussed ways in which they could improve different aspec...

The really annoying thing about collecting data to inform a self study, is that I am already hyper aware of myself and beginning to change elements of my practice. I know when I get my literacy class again some elements of my practice will have certainly changed from the last time I taught them in term one. This is due to a number of factors, from my experience with distance learning , the PD I have received and the literature I have read. To try and gather some data from my students, I tried to repeat some 'classic Danni lessons'. I gave my maths class some tasks that my literacy class had previously enjoyed (and that suited their reading levels) and followed the same planning as much as possible. One big limitation of this was that I am not teaching the students in small groups due to our furniture arrangement - instead we have half class groups and discussions. After teaching a week of these 'classic literacy lessons', I gave the class a survey to reflect ...