What's going on? Testing and Reports are all done!

The ball is rolling..  I took the 'Writing Hut' idea from Chris Marks' Blog  I spoke with my students about the idea and they were all on board and we designed this...

We then realised that the cardboard fell over and it wasn't working as you could still look out of it and got just as distracted.. 

So we went back to the drawing board, I then talked to a colleague and he had a heap of old election voting boxes that were being unused so the kids and I went and picked them up.  I gave the kids freedom of how they would like them to be designed.  They came up with this, and this is still working!

            

          

These 'Writing Huts' are amazing in our class and once the kids are in the Huts, no one is allowed to distract them, not even the teacher (rule they made)!  They love sitting there and getting stuck into their work.  They normally wear headphones to block out any noise around them as well.

The problem I've found is that the cardboard is slowly starting to wear out, so next term we will go back to the drawing board and have a go at creating something similar.

The Movie Making is happening!  

After a lot of teaching around how to film, what angles to use, how to hold the camera, how to use iMovie effectively.  My learners have started to understand how to make movies, they are taking baby steps but they're loving it.  It's made me understand how much the little things really matter.

                

             

The editing is what I've found the trickiest, everyone wants to have a turn and everyone needs to learn how to edit properly.  We are all having turns at learning how to edit on the iMacs and everyone is starting to get a lot better.  Some of my learners are now able to help other learners in our class.

           

How to Movies:

• How to hold the iPad/Camera.
• Different angles you can use.
• How to use the basics of iMovie

These are a few movies my learners and I will be making for my site for everyone to be able to use.

Weekend away in Kuatonu - My Inquiry

This weekend we were extremely luck to go away for a few nights and look in depth into our inquiries and realise exactly what we're doing.  I went into this weekend with a few ideas on what I wanted to do for my inquiry and now I have so many different ideas thanks to the MIT crew.

We arrived late Thursday night where we were able to have a nice relaxing evening getting to know each other, followed by a few very funny team building activities on Friday morning.

We were then able to get stuck in, my goodness I didn't realise how much my inquiry was going to change!  We did an activity where we put everyone who we thought would support us in our inquiry down on an A3 piece of paper, and my goodness there are a lot!  I'm incredibly blessed to have such an amazing team around me who will be able to help me take on this inquiry.

We then looked at the big 'WHY', why choose this inquiry, why will this help our children.  Our original inquiry idea was challenged.  This was incredibly helpful as it got us looking into the 'nitty gritty' of our inquiry.  I ended up turning my inquiry question around as I found it was only focusing on one way that I could engage students in writing.  My question has now become 'How can I engage and give learners ownership of their writing to increase achievement?'

We then critiqued each others inquiries and gave ideas on where we think we need to improve (seen above).  I needed more hard evidence/data supporting my ideas.  So I need to go back to the drawing board, and get the data and the evidence of why I decided to inquire into this part of my practise after all.

This was an amazing weekend away just focusing on my inquiry, I learned lots and was able to apply my new learning to my inquiry that I have decided to take on this year.

'How can I engage and give learners ownership of their writing to increase achievement?'

Thanks heaps to Dorothy, Anne, Jenny and Russell for making this weekend happen!

Inquiry 2017

“How can I accelerate maths achievement by focusing on Maths knowledge with groups working below national standard?”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2017 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge 

#4. Increase the achievement of Years 1-10 learners, with a focus on Years 7-10,  in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.

The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.
The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Label Key:

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect