How do you accelerate learning?

Lately I have been wanting to create more post to show evidence for my teacher registration criteria (RTC).
This is something I haven't been doing frequently and part of being a teacher it is a must. The Education Council of Aotearoa requires all teachers to be registered and to keep this registration up to date. I have recently become a fully registered teacher (again). When I returned from the UK I spent a year as a provisionally registered teacher. As I have now meet all the requirements I then went onto apply to be a fully registered teacher. I have posted quite a few posts that meet each requirement so felt it was about time I linked them to each section.
Today on BFC630NZ the chat for the three days have been based around national Standards. Today's chat was on this.


I have decided to post a few of my suggestions I made to show how I cater for these students.

Our inquiry this term is based on our writing. Target is our below/well below #BFC630NZ

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

Our whole team monitors and knows targeted Ss. I'm constantly asking/questioning progress #BFC630NZ

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

Finding what makes them tick. Get to know them, show you care #BFC630NZ

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

Sometimes the norm doesn't work. You need to tweak planning, do different things. Break some rules #bfc630nz

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

Sometimes the whole school needs to be on the same page when it comes to common strategies and vocab #bfc630nz

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

I have swapped around my TA. I take the ones who need accelerated and she takes others. #bfc630nz

— Ruth (@ChCh_based) August 11, 2015

Ruth is right, acceleration processes need whole school buy in and you need to be consistent #BFC630NZ https://t.co/iM7jFAtl5p

— StephT (@st3ph007) August 11, 2015

What am I doing wrong?

This year has been filled with a lot of challenges and once again this term has seen more challenges arise.

My biggest hurdle at the moment is maths. For the last few years I have taught Stage 6+. This year I started off teaching Stage 5+ and now I have moved down to Stage 4. I love all the learning I am doing and appreciate the fact I am getting to  know the math curriculum in more detail. What I am finding hard is my teaching and am I teaching my students in the best way possible?

The issue is these are year 3 and 4 students who (according to National Standards) should be at stage 5 by the end of their school year. We are only just starting stage 4! This doesn't bother me because...

My issue is I am beginning to feel my style of teaching isn't suitable for these students and I don't know what I can do.

Every day no matter how hard I am trying some of my students just don't get it. I feel like I have tried everything. Visual, hands on, making it fun, competitive, real life context yet in my eyes nothing seems to be working. I know a lot of people would just scoff and make a snide comment about the type of students I have in the class, no motivation, behaviour, just can't do maths. But that is not so.

I am big on reflecting and when things are not going right, I don't blame the students I blame myself.
What is it that I'm not doing right?
How can I change so that they can learn?

The answer still alludes me but hopefully...

Why can't they spell?

We were given some professional readings last week and one being a hand out form e-shortcuts.

One article in there caught my eye as it was all about spelling. Lately on many teachers forums the discussion of spelling has popped up with many teachers wondering how to teach it.

A lot of the questions were about the best spelling programme and this notion that todays children don't seem to spell as well as on previous years.

We seem to think these days children can’t spell like the used to. So it was interesting when I started reading Was it ever thus that this was being challenged. The main question was how do we know?

There will always be a number of students who can’t spell. They will never master the spelling rules and systems. But do students of today spell any worse than say fifty years ago?

It seems that we link texting and the way today students abridge everything to their lack of spelling abilities. But where  is the evidence?

In his article Dennis Sleigh questions all of the above and ask a valid question- when it comes to spelling performances just how much do we really know?

He questions where the evidence is or if it is merely judgements of various individuals who themselves mastered the skills and today resent the weakness of current youths (Was it ever thus?)

A great way to explain this is John’s McWhorter Ted talk who explains that texting is a not a writing skill but a speaking one. I agree with him purely because when I text or even tweet anyone, I feel I am talking to the recipient rather than actually writing. And I am someone who does remember life before mobile phones!

People are always going to worry about spelling and I love how McWhorter actually highlights this right back to 63AD and even then people were complaining about spelling and literacy standards.

So is it really a modern day issue?

This article concludes that there will always be a significant number who will never master spelling no matter how much we teach them. He also highlight this will be the same for someone trying to learn a language, play a trumpet or even cross stich.

The article goes on to say that yes, we should still keep up the efforts to improve spelling and grammar but do it without beating yourselves up (Was it ever thus?)

Are we spending too much time worrying about the unsolvable?

Original article came from Was it ever thus? Dennis Sleigh  e-shortcuts July 2015

Graduate Student

Tomorrow I have my first Graduate student!

This is her first time in a classroom and I am slightly nervous. The Graduate degree is slightly different to the Post Graduate Primary degree that Universities run. This is more classroom based and you can take less than a year or more than a year to complete it depending on how quickly you meet all the requirements. As this is my first time having someone no doubt I will blog about the differences and similarities I had when doing mine.

I am not 100% sure how a post graduate degree is run these days. I did mine in 1999! At that time they only let fifty people apply for a place on the programme ( not sure if this is still the same). I applied for this only because I wanted to carry on with becoming an Educational Psychologist and was told that I should have a teaching degree as this would help me. So I sent in my application, passed that, then passed the interview section.

There had been over 200 applicants and my cohort of fifty adults had only five of us who had just finished our university degree. The rest had been in fulltime employment and had wanted a change in career.

I'm not sure what to expect tomorrow. I am quite lucky as I work alongside some who has just finished this programme so I can ask her lots of questions.

My biggest challenge will be to plan on paper. I tend to bounce form one idea to another, change my planning halfway through and post it note a lot of my ideas.

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.

Effective Communicators Week 3

This week as it was Cook Island Language week we wanted to create a task linked to this and the other Pacific Islands.

This task was a little harder as it wasn't something the class could solve in the time we allocate each week for this.
The capital City section was ideal to teach in class as many of my students had no idea how to use a atlas or work out what the capital city of a place would be.

It was also great to hear the children talk about who they were going to ask in the syndicate how to say 'hello' in their language. We already had a student from Fiji so they become effective communicators  by asking him.

When ever we spend time on these tasks we always use our pathways to discuss what sections of the path we are using. It has been great to see the students make these connections and tell me what sections they are using.

So this weeks task in photos.

Soul Searching

 

 

I love appraisal time as it is pretty much a time of 'Soul Searching'.

This year I have reflected a lot on the way I teach, who I am (as a teacher) and where I want to go.

I haven't answered them all and I am still searching and wondering about a lot of things.

 

What I do know is that last year was a very steep learning curve for me and opened my eyes up to how I saw things. I will admit I am stubborn, passionate and somewhat opinionated. Sometimes this isn't always a great combination. And near the end of last year, I let my ego get the better of me.

 

A recent trip to Wellington along with my professional readings and comments on Twitter made me realise I needed to stop and take a step back in regards to how I was approaching all the changes that were occurring in our school. One of the highlights of the trip was listening to the principal of Amesbury School talking about how new teachers entered their school. Teaching them that it was 'sacred' ground and to tread lightly in regards to their ideas, thoughts and opinions of how they thought the school should be operating. I happened to attend this trip with my principal and at that moment I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Everything she said resonated with me and what I had done wrong!

 

 I let my enthusiasm get the better of me. Now there is nothing wrong with this but I pushed too hard and voiced (loudly) my opinions. As much as I was keen to start changing my pedagogy and take on all the great ideas off Twitter I had to realise that not everyone else was ready. Things take time, and sometimes I am not the right person to be promoting this. Yes, it's wonderful to be trying new things in your own class and feel a sense of success but not everyone sees what you are seeing. I started only looking at myself and my own ideas rather than the vision of the school and what was best for our students.

 

This is the great thing about reflecting on your own learning. You will make mistakes and get it wrong but you can move forward and make changes.

 

Week Two of Effective Communicators

Week Two of our Effective Communicators saw the whole school working out another clue.

All classes how now received their first puzzle piece and they are desperately trying to work out what it could be.

I let my class solve this week’s clues in groups of three. We stopped at time to discuss and talk about what parts of the Effective Communicators pathway we were using so they gained more insight into what it meant to be an ‘Effective Communicator’.

I was extremely impressed with my class this week as they didn’t really need my help at all. I posed questions to them when they were stuck and tis enabled them to solve the clues!

This is what we started off with

 

Next we had to solve this. My class quickly realised that there were two different puzzles in the envelope.

 

     This gave them the clue to the next piece of the puzzle.

 

From the picture of the door, you can tell I work in a very old school building!

Inside the chest was their next piece of the puzzle which contained a cross word.

 

My class caught onto this clue quite quickly realising they needed to highlight all the other letter. What was harder was some couldn’t quite comprehend the answer – ‘wills has the key’ = Miss Will (a Teacher) had the key they needed to collect. Once they clicked on they received a key with their room number on it. This went back into their Effective Communicators bag and then returned to the blue box to await their next clue and a brand new puzzle piece.