MIT - KPMG

We were very lucky to spend a day at KPMG in Auckland and break down, un pack and really look closely into our moonshot proposals.  We were given the opportunity to share our ideas with not only our own colleagues but KPMG employees as well, it was awesome to get ideas from someone that doesn't work in education as well.

A really inspiring idea that I got from one of my colleagues was talking about a year 7&8 teacher at Tamaki primary and what she did one year for her inquiry.  From my understanding she got her students teaching their little siblings at home by taking home word blends, books, and basic word games.  Not only did this help for their younger siblings but it also consolidated their own understanding.

We had a chance to sit down and share where we are all at, being able to reconnect with people that have similar moonshot ideas.  This was really awesome and inspiring.  We then split into small groups and shared our ideas and talked to each other about what we want to do and were able to give each other feedback.  I did a very rough (as you'll see) design on the whiteboard and was helped by both Dorothy and Hinerau of my Google Site that I'll be designing and creating.

I then went to my computer and thought I would have a play and see what it would look like.. very roughly.  I now will take the template below away and design the colour scheme and the rest of the site.  Learners and teachers will be able to use this site for resources of making movies and learning how to teach effectively via movie making.

If you have any ideas or feedback please leave me a comment or send me an email.

Where's my head at, what is engagement?

Lately I've been doing some thinking and questioning my own thinking.  I was asked how I will measure my learners engagement and I was stuck, I think I threw the word engagement around to easily. 

Are these kids engaged? 

How do I engage these kids?

Why is engagement so important?

How do I measure engagement?

What does engagement really mean?

I then did some research and have realised that there are many different types of engagement, two that I will be focusing on will be these two:

• Behavioural Engagement
• Cognitive Engagement

For my learners to be behaviourally engaged I have the understanding that they need to be focused and completing their work.  I am going to video my students and see if they are behaviourally engaged in their learning.  Cognitive engagement is a bit more tricky i've found.  I'm still researching and learning to understand what 'Cognitive Engagement' really is and how I will be able to measure this in my classroom.

I started my inquiry thinking that I was going to be making a whole lot of movies and have turned away from that idea since.  The reason I turned away was because I realised that my inquiry needed to based upon a problem that I have identified with my learners and that was engagement.  

I then have gone back and thought more critically about my inquiry and have come to think that making movies and looking at creating scripts could cognitively engage my learners.  I will still be looking at multiple ways of engaging my learners to write.  Any ideas please let me know!

Maths PD - Rich Activities

Today we were very lucky to have Jo Knox come and present to us.  She talked about how open ended questions can be so much more effective than just a closed question.  She used an awesome example, she showed us her hand that was photocopied and blown up on A3 paper and said to us that we needed to tell her how tall the 'giant' was.  We then needed to use multiple different strategies and the conversations that we were having were very rich.  In the end we were able to measure our own hand and our height.  We then found the ratio and were able to apply this to the giants hand, which gave us his height.

This is something in my teaching that I don't do enough of, giving students open ended questions that they need to spend some time on.  This has definitely made me realise after doing this activity that sometimes a very basic activity like this can be so effective.  The conversation will be rich, and giving the children the opportunity to struggle at something and have to make lots of errors before they get the answer right can be very effective.

Incorporating different strands of maths can be very powerful, during this one activity we used measurement, multiplication, division, and addition.   Being able to use real life questions so they're able to comprehend the question and a reason for solving the problem is also very important.

This was such a great session, and I took so much out of this PD, thanks heaps Jo!

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