Being Culturally Responsive

Notes taken while attending the Southwest Cluster Group hosted by Core Education with Gemma Stewart and Dianne Collier.

What is culture?

How do we respond to culture?

Culture is central to learning. It plays a role not only in communicating and receiving information, but also shaping the thinking process of groups and individuals. A pedagogy that acknowledges, responds to and celebrates fundamental cultures offers full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures. Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognises the importance of including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings, 1994)

How do we be responsive for all?

Practice getting it right. Change. Confidence.

Actively work on it. Ever changing. Doing, Being, Thinking.   

Treaty of Waitangi. Four Articles.

Article One: Kawanantanga- Honourable Governance

We have to get it right for our Maori first

What actions are we doing?

Article Two: Rangatiratanga

Maori Self Determination

Maori achieving success as Maori

Children learn best in environments where their identities are valued

What opportunities am I giving them?

Article Three: Oritetanga

Equity

What does bi- cultural mean?

Article Four: The spoken Promise

Their culture

My Culture

Our Culture

The next step for me is to ask myself what am I already doing in the classroom to promote this and what do I need to be doing more of. 

Successful Learners

Nathan Mikaere-Wallis' RNZ interview has got me thinking! It was very timely that I stumbled across this as I have spent a year teaching children who fall into this age bracket. It opened a lot of questions for me and left me pondering about how WE as a school can foster this social and emotional learning more.

Below are the notes I made while listening to his interview.

When a child reaches 7 years this is when their frontal cortex is finally developed. In theory they are 'mini' adults.

Before 7 this has not developed therefore they learn differently.

From 3-7 it should be all about the social and emotional skills. 

Parents have this perception that their child is intelligent if they can read and write at an early age.

 Research has shown this is not the case.

• A study of adults aged 32-37 who had degrees showed no correlation to what they knew at 3-7 (whether they could read or write early). 

• 90% of hot housed children have plateaued by 8 years of age. The only thing that marks them as different is that they have stunted social skills. (Nathan Mikaere-Wallis)

• Those who started reading at 3 had the same reading age as those who learn t to read a 6.5 years of age (when they were aged between 8-9).

We need to build the perception of  'What am I like as a learner?' 

We need to build up students experiences to be successful in learning.

Are they gifted or are the gifted at 'parroting' back?

What is important is how the child feels about themselves as a learner. 

If you build the confidence there is a desire to learn. 

If you 'push' them it inhibits the risk taking.

Model in a way that doesn't point out the mistakes- research showed that if we point out the mistakes in the next 30 minutes children will use less language. 

(As Nathan pointed out in the interview about the 'sheeps').

Wording is important.

Tell them specifically what they have done rather than 'good boy/girl' be more specific and acknowledge what they did well. 

From 3-7 children are 'divergent' thinkers. They are creative and we need to foster this. 

Avoid right and wrong questions. 

Develop more open ended questions for them to work through - Problem solving enhanced by creativity. 

Create the thinker before you bring the facts in - Power of Play!

Good outcomes= less structure.

Stop asking test questions

Open ended questions so that children can have an opinion

Listen to the child's concept of the world.

Do things of interest and don't push the need that they need to be at a certain level by a certain time.

Intelligence as a parrot vs Intelligence as a human

Key Competencies are important. If a child has anxiety/sensitive go back to being a child- social skills are important- stop the learning

90% of people in reading recovery are boys who are not the first born. Piaget says we will learn to read at about 7 when we're ready for cognition. Schools has pressured students into learning to read at 6, then 5, then below 5

How does this affect their self confidence? For nearly 2 years they are not feeling successful.

We need to remember not to give 3-7 year old to much cognitive skills. Develop the social and emotional skills.

Rubrics

Be careful how they are used. Are they developed so every child can be successful? Will children move or for ever be on that bottom rubric?

Same as grouping children 

Self Reflection.

One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging for a while is because I have been struggling to write anything positive. I will admit this year has been a struggle. I am teaching a year 2/3 class and to be honest, I am finding it very difficult to enjoy it.

I am WAY out of my comfort zone and spend a lot of weekends wondering if I am actually the best person to teach this year group.

My comfort zone is older children. Give me some of these students in year 5/6 and I will absolutely love them! But at this age I am not so sure.

I am reflecting a lot on my own teaching and learning. My planning is for ever changing each day and some weeks I completely re-write what I am doing.

I look at my assessments and wonder how will I move a certain child on to reach a level that seems so far away!
Post assessments have me questioning my own teaching style. Did I expect too much from some individuals? Did I rush through the learning? Do I need to give this year group more time? More hands on? Learn through play?

My biggest worry is that I will fail these children.

As a teacher I feel I’m not experienced enough at teaching younger students to read and write and feel I am always swimming in the deep end. I then begin to second guess myself and my own teaching ability.

Is this where I want to be? 

Have I connected with you?

Write a blog about some legendary bloggers, educators, inspiring leaders that help you to dream bigger

I know this should be an easy task and reading other blogs they all seem to have an answer but I don’t.

I think there is a combination of great bloggers out there that I grab ideas from. I love reading what others write and if posted on Twitter I tend to read each one that comes up on my feed.

I got into the habit of blogging more because of Claire Amos and her #hackyourclassroom and took on this challenge last year. This started me blogging but also made me worried about how inadequate my blog might be to others.

I guess that can be the hard part about reading other blogs from amazing educators; you begin to wonder if you could ever rise to that challenge. It can be somewhat intimidating and daunting.

There are times when I do read blogs (and love them) but realistically know that I can’t do that in my school. There are about 50 computers for nearly 200 students. No ‘maker movement’ as ours and the parent’s budgets can’t justify it. So no papertronics, makey makey, robots  and no 3D printing.  When even buying ingredients for basic baking has to be come out of a very tight budget. Trips need to be funded or free and even asking parents to supply more resources can be an issue!

I am a teacher working in a low decile school where money, support, resources are tight. Where sometimes school is the only safe place. That no matter how ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ it would be to try new things or ideas, it sometimes isn’t possible.

I am turning this slightly around and asking for others to connect with me. Are you in the same situation?  Do you blog about it? Do I know you? Share with me please as I would love to read more blogs that relate to my situation and what you do.

Putting the zing into maths

I was lucky enough to attend a maths course that was focussing on the approaches to teaching mathematics.

I have always had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that at times I don't teach maths to the best of my ability. The reason behind this is because I was dropped into a classroom with no training in this math curriculum.  I have basically read the books, asked the questions and tried to get my head around what I am supposed to do. But I always wondered if I was doing it the right way.

Thankfully this course gave me that sense of relief that I have been doing the majority correct - ( haven't yet got my head around modelling books!).

This course focussed on the teaching of maintenances in maths which I still can't get out of the habit of calling starters.

What I found interesting was that a lot of teachers don't teach this or find it hard to set differentiated activities for the students. This is something that was expected from my previous school so is something I have never found difficult to do.

Courses like these are always great to go on as they remind you of old activities you have forgotten about and new ones to learn. This course also focussed on developing students mathematical discussion and encouraged the use of literacy in the lesson. Which I loved!

Takeaways for me were:

• Making sure that there were 'I can" statements for each stages and examples of this so students can see the progression, where they are at and what they need to do to get to the next stage.

One great idea was to use these statements as a maintenance activity. Either discussing what it meant or getting students to show you what they understand the statements to mean.

• Are we pulling out our information from our data?

What does your data say about your students? Do you re visit what they still don't understand? Does your teaching reflect your data? Use maintenance to re visit this and always differentiate to meet the needs of your students even those at the same stages.

• Don't teach Monday to Friday instead it should be Day 1 to Day 5 with the fifth day having a literacy focus.

Use picture books to communicate mathematical knowledge and learning, word problems or even get students to create their own maths story. As long as it is filled with language.

This is something I have tried hard to do each week. I noticed a lot of the teaching of mathematical was number based and when we were assessing the students we asked children questions based on a word problem/story which totally threw them.  One thing I have been trialling this week is the microphone on the active board. Each day I have put up a new picture up that they need to turn into a multiplication story.

• The Knowledge is important.

You don't always have to teach the strategies. If the strategy is not there then in most cases it is because the knowledge is not secure. Place value, place value, place value- students need a good understanding of this. Having moved to a lower stage in maths this is something I have learn this year. A lot of the time I am teaching the knowledge as my students don't have this understanding yet.

• Hands on

Show it , draw it, model it using as many different resources so students understand what the numbers means.
345
Use dienes blocks, money, write it, how many groups of?

What do I want to work on myself?
Get into the habit of using modelling books. I use a working wall and differentiate the activities by placing (big) sheets of paper around the room. I am (slowly) beginning to see the benefits of these books now.

• Rotations.

I haven't really been doing different rotation groups this term. This is because at times I can have three teachers in the room and with a class of 18 we tend to have our little groups set already.

• What I want to try is the idea of

Concept- small group teaching with the teacher
Practise- using the modelling book with set questions (six at the most) and a maths buddy to work with
Application- independently solve problems that also incorporate word based problems.

This is something I have done in the past but again let slip this term mainly because most of my students struggled to do any work independently and it has taken me a long time to set up/make resources that cater for this level.

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.

Working with a beginning teacher (BT)

So far this year I have worked with three different teachers and three completely different styles of teaching and planning. This has got me thinking about they way I teach and plan. This term I am working with a BT (beginning teacher) and I have already realised that my way of planning lessons doesn't gel with there's.

This is one problem you have when planning and teaching in a team. I have had to adapt my way of planning to suit someone else. Now, I can hear some of you asking 'why doesn't the other person change theirs?' and to be honest fair comment but as an experienced teacher and them a BT is that fair? I have the experience to adapt and change where most BT find this quite hard to do.

I don't plan long detailed planning these days. Back in the UK we were always expected to have detailed planning of every single lesson and even then I found that hard as I had a tendency to chop and change everything. These days I don't plan in so much detail and I tend to plan the first two days and then from that gauge how the rest of the week will transpire. My planning is fill of scribbles annotated notes or post its. I am quite happy to go off on a tangent if it means meeting my students needs.

I am someone who can pretty much think up an idea on the way to work and run with it. I chop and change my planning, ideas and pretty much my day sometimes.

This isn't for everyone.

I began to realise this in the first week with my new colleague. While I was explaining my ideas about blocking out the whole morning for reading and writing I could sense she wanted actual times. I had envisage we would mix it up a bit. Set whole class teaching of the writing, let some go off, small groups teaching, a bit of reading, back to writing etc. What they wanted was a lot more structure and a block for reading and writing.

I am learning (slowly) that sometimes you have to let go your ideas and slip into others even if it is not want you want. There will be time for me to help develop my new colleague into being a little more flexible but for now my role is to be supportive and help them become a great teacher.

Do MLE actually raise the academic achievement of students?

Edchatnz is a great Thursday night twitter conversation that is fast paced and really gets you thinking. Last week’s conversation was no different - MLE Modern Learning Environments.

Lately I have distanced myself from this term as since beginning my journey into this area, I have realised how much my opinion and ideas have changed. I have realized and seen that although some schools use the term MLE they still teaching like a single cell classroom just in a bigger space.

I began to question what was really changing. Had we misinterpreted what MLE were supposed to be? Should we have never introduced the ‘bean bag’ catch phrase? Had we run with one idea and forgotten to look at all the other parts of a MLE? Is ‘modern’ the best word to use at all?

A lot of educators have been throwing out the term MLP- Modern Learning Practices. To sum it up teachers are creating a personalised, collaborative and reflective classroom. This is where I am. I teach in a single cell classroom in a school where the buildings are older than me! But I am changing the way I teach and think students should learn. My pedagogy is changing and becoming more in line with what students of today need.

One of the questions raised by the devil’s advocate aka @BeccaSweeney was Do MLE actually raise the academic achievement of students? This is what others thought.

I have been questioning this as a parent and a teacher. To be honest, I don’t think they do. It’s more about the MLP that is happening inside these buildings rather than the building itself. And this can happen in a brand new  building or  a 40 year old prefabs. The only bonus of a MLE is that you can easily fit more than 30 students into a room and it allows for more collaboration among teachers.

I made a hard decision last term to pull my son out of a MLE. I began to realize some MLE schools believed that by letting students move from class to class to be taught by different they were  ‘modern’. Yet they were still streaming their reading, writing and maths groups.  I wrote about this and my own personal battle about how we were trying to develop a more MLP and what I felt wasn’t working. The more I reflected on my own teaching and learning practices with my own class the more I became aware this was not happening in my sons own school. Therefore I made the decision to move him. I realized by putting him into a school that worked more on MLP rather than focused on the MLE his own mindset about school and learning had completely changed. I suddenly had a child who was learning and wanted to learn!

So no, MLE don’t raise the academic achievements of students it is more about the teaching and learning and how inline it is with MLP’s. This is only my own personal experience and I also think a lot also come down to the teacher/ student relationship as well as how dedicated a teacher is to wanting her students to succeed. But then if they’re dedicated, they are probably a teacher who is always reflecting, changing and looking at ways to improve themselves to meet the needs of their students.

This has got me thinking a lot about where I want to head with my journey. So far we still stream for maths and reading. This is something I want to try and change next term but and still unsure how. Mainly because this term we had two new teachers start with us and next term I will have another new teacher starting. I have to think about what is best for my students but also what is best for a teaching coming in half way through the year.

With 112 students and five classrooms where 3 are still single cell it does face me with a lot of challenges. I know where I want to head, but it is the getting there that is causing me headaches!

Part of me still feels I am only halfway there with my MLP’s and I have areas I still need to work on and change.  Where we are focusing more on MLP I can see the benefits. In those areas I can see that students have succeeded and are enjoying their learning. My job now is to work out how to continue and develop my MLP’s so that the whole day is like this.

Move Out Of Your Comfort Zone

If anyone had asked me this weekend if I wanted to continue teaching year 3/4, I would have probably said no! This weekend I have spent more time staring at a computer in-between juggling the children and my domestic goddess roles and I am knackered.

I have forgotten what it is like at this age. I love the challenge, the different relationships you have but getting my head around everything is taking longer than I thought.

I have gone from teaching Stage 7-8 maths to Stage 5 and that is a whole new concept for me. Stage 7-8 was fine for me as it was where my year 6’s (in the UK) were at so slotting back into NZ wasn’t too hard. But Stage 5 is a whole new ball game. I have had to learn strategies’ and terminology that I am not familiar with while getting my head around what they can and can't do yet. I have devoured Book 5 and asked a multitude of questions to team members. I have even scoured the internet to find the key ideas broken down so that I know exactly what knowledge and strategy's  I need to be doing. It’s also getting my head around the fact that I am working with numbers a lot smaller than I am used to.

Then there is writing. Realising that some can and can’t write. That I need to remember that they have limited vocabulary and if I’m going to use terms like ‘outrageous’ ‘cunning’ and ‘sly’ I am also going to have to explain their meanings. That when I talk about a semi colon they might not actually know what this is alongside brackets as well. Although I do love this quote I saw on Twitter the other day and something I believe in.

My head is about to explode.

But although completely drained and exhausted I can still smile. It’s nice to get out of my comfort zone and to challenge myself. I am able to tell my students that this is all new to me, that I will make mistakes but it’s ok because that is how I learn. And what is great is that they see me make these mistakes, take the risk and sometimes look completely bamboozled at situations in the classroom. But in the end they see me smile and try again and that is what counts. A teacher modelling to them that risks are part of life, mistakes do happen and we can learn from them and still feel great inside.