19.6.18

Monitoring our Interventions

At syndicate meeting this afternoon, we took time to look at the questions posed by Woolf Fisher about how we know our intervention is making a difference. Both in terms of the changes in the teaching and the changes in what the students are doing.


It is interesting to hear the evidence other teachers have collected to gather student voice, as well as track and monitor progress in informal ways.

11.6.18

Starting to see traction


Really happy with the session today. A lot of progress with the responses and comments idea. We discussed the idea of 'chains of conversation' before we started and I think this made a difference as we had a much better conversation and a lot of comments were being made about what other group members had said. This idea of conversation chains comes from the work we have been doing with Jannie van Hees. 

This slide of Jannie's talks about the scaffolders that will help students develop an abundance of language. It is interesting that the peer section matches what I am hoping to achieve with my students. Also as part of these sessions Jannie has emphasised the role of the teacher in introducing new vocabulary to the students. I am thinking of a way that I can be involved in the students discussions with out undermining the improvements I have seen in the students when the teacher doesn't take an active role. I feel that I do have the ability to introduce the extended vocabulary needed.


This is the template that I am working on and want to introduce next term. The idea being to build on having a conversation by adding links to the chain. Thanks to Ashley Schellingerhout for letting me re-purpose her template. 

1.6.18

Introducing new learners to the group

As I talked about in my previous post, I decided that I would add 2 new learners to the group as a way to spark some more conversation. This has the added benefit of making the group a mixed ability group. An unintended consequence, but a happy one, is that the original 4 students took the lead as they 'taught' the newcomers what we were trying to do. This has been an amazing change as we have had the most interactions that we have had so far. This ties in well with what Dr Hunter talks about in maths.

'Our achievement results for Pasifika children are “dismal, heartbreaking”, says Associate Professor Bobbie Hunter, but they do not accurately reflect their capabilities. Because Pasifika children tend not to talk, their teachers assume they don’t understand and put them in a bottom group. Once there, they become trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of low expectations.'

It is interesting that we have grouped our students for instructional reading for so long that perhaps we have locked our lower students into a cycle where they are only exposed to talking about text in a way that is lowered by the abilities of the people in the group. If we are aiming for acceleration in makes sense that we try new things to break the cycle of what we have always done.

I am excited by the possibilities that this session has brought up. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next with this group of learners.