Week 19 Community Of Practice
In our school we use our focus of improvement aligned to our strategic goals. Writing is an area we need to improve and move students to a higher level. This is embedded through engagement and student agency. So for this reflection I will be reflecting on Agency and Engagement using Blended Learning. The Community of Learning I will use is our teaching staff. We have a teaching staff of 6 plus the Principal so, we find it useful to combine all our knowledge for our inquiry shift meetings. We offer a wide range of experience and knowledge within our teaching staff. Each of our teachers have leadership responsibilities because we believe in the distributed leadership model and we have an open and collaborative approach when we are searching for best solutions for our children.
Thinking about Agency and Engagement
Engagement is measured by cognitive, behavioural and emotional change. Cognitive is difficult to measure, however it is clearly defined by achieving goals and flexible to be able to cope with failure. Behavioural has rules it is about participation, collaboration and communication with peers. School participation is helpful for cognitive engagement. Emotional engagement is included and difficult to separate. Our challenge is to invest heavily in all three aspects to have positive outcomes for our students in writing.
Part of our investment is using blending learning. "Blended learning combines multiple delivery media that are designed to complement each other and promote learning and application-learning behaviour." (Educational Technology December 2003)
Khan’s framework serves as a guide to plan, develop, deliver, manage, and evaluate blended learning programs.
Our school is at the beginning of our blended learning journey. We have a lead teacher who is working with Manakalani ( A technology supported implementation programme for Northland Schools) and 2 other teachers implementing this into our school because they have one to one devices and are in the senior end of the school. We are currently critically thinking and inquiring into authentic ways of enhancing children's writing.
As this is the beginning of our journey we are discovering getting our tools sorted by expert guidance has been invaluable for our growth. Teachers have always been time poor but very willing learners so we have found there have been many interesting procedures followed when using devices. This has been our starting point. We will continue to reflect and grow and we use best practise to support our inquiry.
(2004)
Fredericks et al. (2004) propose a framework for considering engagement that distinguishes between
cognitive, behavioural and emotional
engagement
Badrul Khan's E-Learning Framework is located at http://asianvu.com/bk/framework
1
Fredericks, et al.
redericks et al.
(2004) propose a framework for considering engagement that distinguishes between cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement
(2004)
Fredericks et al. (2004)
propose a framework for considering engagement that distinguishes between cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement
Frederick's (2004)
Week 18 Reflecting on changes in my future oriented teaching practice
For this weeks reflection, I will be using the Gibb's reflective cycle to guide me. I read the theme extracts 1:personalising learning, 2:new views of equity, diversity and inclusivity, 3:a curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity 4:"changing the script". Rethinking learners and teachers roles, 5:a culture of continuous learning for teachers and educational leaders, 6: new kinds of partnerships and relationships: schools no longer siloed from the community (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins, 2012).
My reflection this week I have chosen theme 4: rethinking learners and teachers roles. Although I thought all of the themes had relevance to 21st century learners I felt the teacher and learner roles is the most pertinent for me because I need my students to own their own learning and me to be less the driver of what happens in my room. I teach five year old children so the way I embed this needs to be explicitly taught.
As part of our school wide goal we have student agency as a school goal. I need to make sure my goal is specific and achievable therefore, I have linked it to writing. This way I will have evidence of improvement because my students will be able to self monitor and know how and where to obtain their next learning steps. Through research, consultation and trial and error I have developed writing goal strips which children self check then peer check for feedback and feed forward.
The process of getting all my students to where I want them to be is quite challenging in a new entrant class because the children all enter at different stages of readiness in a structured school environment so, it it depends how strong my current learners are for positive role modelling in comparison to the new ones entering. This means for constant modifying and reflecting quickly to keep the momentum strong. It is totalling rewarding when you hear true peer learning conversations about how they can improve their writing. My next goal is for the children to share their writing with a wider audience using seesaw. Currently I need to timetable this into an overcrowded timetable. Next time I would prioritise what is most important for my learners.
Week 17
We are focusing on our teaching as inquiry as school wide inquiry question based around our school wide targets. We also have personalised goals. P.T.C this worked because we needed a model to base our thinking.
" 1. Rapid reflection - immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher.
2. Repair – in which a thoughtful teacher makes decisions to alter their behaviour in response to students’ cues.
3. Review – when a teacher thinks about, discusses or writes about some element of their teaching.
4. Research – when a teacher engages in more systematic and sustained thinking over time, perhaps by collecting data or reading research.
5. Retheorizing and reformulating – the process by which a teacher critically examines their own practice and theories in the light of academic theories." (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4)
I do not understand about blogs because I’m feeling unsure of the online safety and security, the idea of the public eye being able to view my true reflective thoughts is scary.
Comparative
Because we are on this journey together, we are able to support and define our teacher inquiry through shift meetings, which have been helpful for our school wide goals. The research is easily accessed and common understanding because of the Teacher Inquiry model from the New Zealand Curriculum and it is a well-researched document that can be easily referenced by us as professionals. It gives me the freedom to make mistakes and rethink to know I can improve and change as part of the learning process. In the past experience equalled quality but process of teaching as inquiry allows us all to continually grow to improve.
Shift meetings allow for group discussion and feed forward, teachers discuss and provide ideas for each other. We could improve by going outside our school and observing other schools with the same focus to help answer our inquiry questions.
Reflective
It gives a wider pool of information and knowledge shared for feed forward. It give me different perspectives to see things from through professional discussions.
