Staff Meeting - Gail Loane - Wednesday 24th August 2016

Andrew Jackson piece

- Use of the 5 senses

- Description - Factual

- No personal response/opinion

Leaf Description

Thin veins stretch out connecting the holey flesh.

Mouldy brown and green in colour.

Old and fragile, it looks as if it could fall apart at the slightest touch.

Dirt clings to it's skin.

Eco-literacy

- Connect with the simple

- What are the possibilities to get children quickly writing?

- Create a challenge for them e.g. try not to use 'I' or 'my'

Look at a piece of student writing and decide what can be improved/what needs to be worked on and then think about how this can be incorporated into your teaching.

Murray Gadd - Research on writing

What makes teachers effective? - Three most important are highlighted.

- Expectations - Vision of achievement - How is this communicated to the students?

- Learning Goals - What do teachers think about when they create goals for/with students?

- Learning Tasks - How are they set up? Specific tasks for specific learning.

- Direct instruction - Explicit teaching.

- Responding to students work - Feedback/feedforward - Is it clear?

- Motivating and challenging learners

- Organisation and management - Differentiation - If it is a whole-class lesson aim for 100% student engagement/need.

- Self-regulation - Actions the teachers take to give students a sense of ownership/responsibility.

Developing student agency - use of the book 'Choice Words'

- Learning intentions are too broad - stick to using a learning focus for each lesson.

Memoir - Model - Piano Rock by Gavin Bishop

Give background to hook the students in.

- Make them aware that there is a person behind the model.

Read for meaning - picture aids can be used to ensure 100% understanding from all students.

Use of visual contrast - use colouring pencils to colour for each paragraph - look at what colour each paragraph makes you feel.

Make students aware of the deliberate choices that author's make - Allow them to discover this.

Pick one sentence for students to imitate, e.g. The creek, white with ice, had patches of black where someone before me had...

(white with ice = adjectival phrase)

Plan: Students to brainstorm 4 nouns e.g. window, duvet, light, floor.

- Come up with a full sentence before they move away to write independently.

Success Criteria: Include one sentence with a noun and a descriptor after the noun.

Ensure to teach all different types of writing:

- Shared

- Guided

- Independent

- Collaborative

Gail Loane Observation - Wednesday 24th August 2016

Learning I took away from these experiences:

 - Although I was trying to keep things simple - I can make them simpler! When using a model text means that this will need to be unpacked for meaning with the students before moving on to the revision process.

- Use more of the students' writing when teaching skills; this provides student agency - they have purpose and meaning behind editing or reshaping the texts, as it is their own work and can help them to improve their writing - This was evident in my session and could have formed the basis of the whole lesson.

- Continuing with student agency, Gail discussed leaving room for students to reflect and ponder about the texts themselves, I can do this by practicing what kinds of language I use when wanting them to think about texts more in depth, making sure that my questioning is leading them toward learning and finding out - Practising language that leads the students to discover is one of my goals for my teaching.

- I need to discover how to lead ALL of my students into experiencing the process in which we are exploring; making sure that they are all with me in that moment and are ready to share reflect and work - Aim for 100% engagement from all students.

- Embedding the skills (such as editing and crafting) into daily writing/helping circle. I am yet to introduce a proper helping circle in class. I feel that this would be a very beneficial part of each literacy session for my students, so I look forward to working on this further.

Attitude Performance - Friendship Factor/Tackling Technology - Thursday 18th August 2016

Today we had the pleasure of meeting Liz from Attitude.

Attitude is an organisation that is:

"Dedicated to equipping teenagers with the information and skills they need to negotiate the adolescent years and build meaningful lives."

Liz used humour to capture our attention and share key messages about quality friendships, bullying, and our digital footprints. The information that was presented to our students was crucial at their age level. This is information that we as teachers inform them repeatedly, however it is important that the students hear this from other sources.

You can find more information about Attitude and their strategies to equip young people with life skills here:

PYP New Zealand Networking Day - Glendowie Primary School

A look at exhibition in action

Worthwhile Professional Development

Examples of Mathematics rich tasks and the Learner Profile and Attitudes in action

Creating authentic action - Follow the frog

Staff Meeting - E-Portfolios - Tuesday 16th August 2016

Professional Readings - Academic honesty in the IB educational context

 After a discussion in our staff meeting this afternoon for exhibition about Academic honesty, I went away and did some research about this topic. Personally I had never heard of this term before and so was interested to find out what this meant for myself and my students.

PCT Meeting - Gail Loane - Wednesday 29th June 2016

We are developing young writers who have something to say. We need to be the trigger for that. What do they need?

- Lower level students exposed to learning conversations
- Create a partnership with students - Expert, co-learner and learner
- Positioning - Russell Bishop
- Allow them to tell their stories
- Lesson and purpose needs to be authentic - do not teach skills in isolated ways
- Can have a wide learning focus, allow the children to discover the learning (Metaphor of a gift, allow them to find the surprise)
- Ask the students "What do you think we were learning today?"
- Use of imitating, taking sentences/structure from a text and try it on for size - Jeff Anderson
- Can have different criteria for different lessons that come under one overarching criteria - for example begin a sentence with although
- Allow them to choose a skill and come in at their own level
- Encourage meaningful feedback - Model this for the students
- Model and scaffold so that students are able to be more independent and are able to have conversations between themselves. Make the students teacher, student, student, teacher, student, student, student rather than just back and forth between a student and the teacher.
- Rather than WALT write similes - look at why does this simile work? Why is it effective here?
- Ensure that our feedback is specific so that all students have the opportunity to learn from what you are saying - John Hatty
- Cater for diverse needs - don't hold back your higher learners while you scaffold your lowers, however it is important that they are all a part of the initial learning conversation
- Make all students accountable
- Deliberate acts of teaching - Effective Literacy Practice
- Writing for purpose

Book: Revision Decisions - Talking through sentences and beyond - Dean Anderson