Reflecting on my Teacher Practice

TAI 2020 WFRC #8: Self Reflection...

Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you:

Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development
Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year to provide evidence of shifts in teachingUse multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice.

One of the specific areas of my teaching practice I looked into was how I was conveying the learning intention to the students. How well did they receive this? Did they take it in? what evidence do I have that reflects whether or not students understood the learning?

Before purposeful intervention: The structure of my lessons went like this:

Warm up game related in some way to our learning intention

Share learning intention with the class

Watch related video together

Explain whole class task - pull out 1 group at a time to work with while the rest of the class are completing whole class task.

We normally work right up to the bell time leaving 3-4minutes to pack up at the end. 

A normal maths lesson lets me see 2 groups thoroughly working through different problems from the ones set for the whole class. This is then followed by 1-1 check ups with students who are maybe off task or who I feel have not grasped the mathematical concept being learnt.

Upon reflection, and breaking down my lessons so that I could review what I was currently doing and what needed change, I realised there was no room in my maths lesson where I checked back in with students about the learning intention for that lesson. I also gave no allocated time for students to construct the task description that goes with their learning up on their blogs. 

This gave me a good lead for questioning that I was able to conduct with my learning through a student survey. Students were simply expected to get their learning on their blog when they've completed the task. There was no clear understanding about which learning that was: whether it be the teacher session they had with me or the slides they completed independently.  This I noted down quickly on the board as a reminder for what I needed to change, and make time for in each maths lesson.

One piece of evidence I used to collect this data were the students blogs. I am using students blog posts about maths to see the effectiveness of my purposeful change in maths program, allowing students time to create a maths blog during the maths session, co-constructing the task description with learners (and therefore revisiting the learning intention and constructing a success criteria together), and clear expectations of what maths can be posted. This can be their working out, the teacher session, how they used materials or their completed slides. 

My next steps will be to get a colleague to observe me and take note on the following things:

1. The structure of the lesson

2. How many times I refer back to the learning intention

3. Opportunities for students to share their learning/thinking - whether it is in groups, working with a buddy, or on their blogs.

4. Co-construction of task description/success criteria

If you are reading this and feel there is something else that would benefit my inquiry and can be observed please leave us a comment and I'd like to include that in my observation.

Preliminary Findings

TAI 2020 WFRC #4: Collecting evidence and data...

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence

One of my takeaways from CoL last year was to have a larger pool of target students. Depending on what your inquiry is, this is sometimes not ideal. However, in looking at my students data, I realise I can actually have a larger target group which give me more concrete data on whether interventions are working or not. 

Before we went into lockdown, I'd only just started collating data on my whole and had not actually informed students I would be tracking them. Therefore I also didn't get a chance to get student voice from Term 1. I am planning on sending out a google form to get student voice while we are still doing distance learning in Term 2.

Out of my 27 maths students, I'm selecting 22 as my pool of target students. They range from levels late year 3 to late year 6. Here are their OTJ's (Overall Teacher Judgements) from 2019 reports and this year 2020 PAT results analysis.

An overall view of how this particular group of students look using stanines is below.

Throughout this inquiry process, I am hoping to shift these bars to the right with a higher number of students achieving stanine 5 and higher.

Tools, Measures and Approaches

TAI 2020 WFRC #3: Building an accurate profile of students' learning - tools, measures and approaches...

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Kahui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Increase the achievement of Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.


My inquiry problem/ challenge: Students who are 3-4 years behind in math. Combining a variety of best practice approaches to find best mix towards accelerating students who are 3-4 years behind in math.

My challenge with this is that we've just finished 2 years of DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiring Communities). Some kids really grasped and grew from this approach and some kids were put off with math altogether. This did not help those students who were already behind in math.

To measure how much 'new knowledge' students are learning or picking up, I plan to use the following tools and approaches:

PAT/Ikan/Gloss/e-asTTle:

• I plan to analyse the PAT closely and group the types of questions students struggled on. Ikan and Gloss tests would be great indicators to how well they are retaining and picking up strategies and number knowledge. These combined, will give me a clear picture of exactly where students are in their learning and identify the gaps.
• Use of e-asttle mini test will also be beneficial for strand in getting pre and post test data.

Student Voice:

• This has been very useful and informative in my past inquiries as sometimes the way you think the lesson went doesn't always match up with how students feel. Gaining student voice before, during and after an intervention in a great way to gauge whether something is working, and students are interested in what they are learning.

Plan/Reflect Weekly: 

• This is very important to carry out as well as monitor. Plan on how I will go about the intervention, then reflect each week on whether it needs changing or if it on the right track. Completing reflections straight after a math lesson can sometimes be difficult so jotting down notes to self on the modelling sheets or on the board with student initials as students are learning will be great in helping to gather evidence as reflection time.

Tools, Measures and Approaches

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools. 

Kahui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with special needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My inquiry problem/ challenge: Students who are 'stuck' in their learning 2-3 years behind where they should be at for Year 7 and 8 getting ready for College.

One of the reasons why I chose this challenge, was because this particular group of students had not made much - if any - shift in their reading age for the last 2 years. A look back at their records is shared in my blog post about 'Why I've selected this challenge'

To measure how much 'new knowledge' students are learning or picking up, I plan to use the following tools and approaches:

- HFW Test (High Frequency Word Test): This test has sight words up to reading level 15 or Orange. This is a great indicator for students who recognise words they are reading daily. Very quick test to administer.

- Student Voice Survey: This would be very informative for my teaching so I'd know whether students like/enjoy the task they are given. Are instructions easy to follow? Do they feel like they get enough 'teacher time' in class. This could reinforce or change the way I teach for sure!

- Running Records: The 'ideal' aim is to improve their reading ages to enable students to cope with the academic workload required of them in College. Because PAT test don't give us behavioural/ learning difficulties related to reading, a running record every 4 or so weeks would be more informative for both students and myself.

- Weekly Reflections/observations: Completing this straight after reading sessions would be useful in moving forward with this target group of learners. - Seek help/advice/ideas from CoL across schools teachers: I have already had a meeting with Clarelle Caruthers who has helped me with iPads and how to set up my site so it's easier for this group of learners to access and navigate. I've also made an appointment with Donna Ryan for the holidays to set up a plan of attack how I can better assess and cater for this group of target students.