Appraisal Feedback

Tuesday 22nd November 2016

1.  What is your biggest success?

• Movement and progress in reading.  Byron's attitude in guided reading was like a road block for him and what has been successful is that he is more willing to share and makes a contribution now.  Buffy made the group smaller so there was less competition.  This helped to remove the barriers.  
• Kane was a reluctant reader but has had a change in attitude.  He doesn't believe he is a good reader but when he get success or positive praise from the teacher he started to believe in himself.  
• Attitudes change

2.  Where are you at with your goals?

• Buffy doesn't believe she has achieved her goals because she feels they were slightly ambitious and the goals didn't fit the learners.  The children's own capabilities were different to previous years as the learners had initiative, were self motivated, and this year they have needed a higher level of scaffolding, breaking it down to the smallest step to the point where you are almost doing it for them.  Buffy would like to be more conscious of the students she is going to work with and that the goals are achievable.  She believes that her goals couldn't be achieved with these learners, she was trying to change the world, too many goals, goals too big.  Buffy used the learning progressions to guide the learners.
• The children couldn't do the on their own as they didn't have the skills to implement on their own.

3.  Target students - what difference have you made? Evidence?

• Byron and April - in writing.  Helped them do their speeches and helped them generate a topic as they couldn't identify a topic.  Buffy did guided reading where they looked at native birds as it came up in a conversation that they were interested in doing this for their speech.  Buffy provided the resources to help them, modelled and scaffolded, used planning sheets and linked it to a guided reading lesson.  At first they copied and pasted information from the internet and they had no awareness of what to tell the audience.  Buffy helped them to generate questions and link it to information with guidance.  After awhile they could tell the teacher what they had found and the purpose.

4.  Changes for 2017?

• Would like 1 goal and have a sole focus on it.  Buffy wants to develop her  proficiency in using planning sheets and then another goal may arise. e.g like I don't explain myself well.  Buffy found 3 goals were overwhelming and would like to get success from 1 goal and feel that she has achieved that goal.
• Buffy would like to do more subject focus learning like small units in science.  The children don't have a good understanding of the scientific process and the teacher had to know the skills of up to 20 different science fair concepts, so Buffy would like to teach small units e.g doing a unit on the digestive system to give the kids knowledge and to help prepare them for high school
• Similar with social studies
• Use a different writing model, explicit teaching more to guided than independence, lots of teaching at the start and then less guidance through the lessons
• Use reading to use language and structural features to support their writing, finding examples in texts

5. SLT support for 2017?

• To be able to do 1 goal
• Use the teacher inquiry on TKI, focussing inquiry, move to next phase an organisational tool

6. How do you motivate the learners?

• I haven't provided enough learning opportunities or tasks on a wide range of things that make up national standards.  Not enough evidence to make the OTJ.  If they don't do the book work and have to rely on testing it doesn't sit right with the teacher to say they are at the standard. The teacher checks books, some kids change the dates or they just don't do the work.  
• What are you going to do with them?  
• Teacher sits with the child and work with them, step by step, Erin suggests that child come and show Mr Sheterline their work.  If its not done they will sit and do it.  Some kids are happy to sit their and be helpless.  Parents have been contacted and meetings have happened.  Also send kids who have done their work to get praise.

7. Do the children know their next steps?

• Children have a better idea in maths rather in writing.  They do have literacy progressions.  They have a level 3 and 4 writing example and they use a checklist and analyse the piece of writing and then the children say what level they think they are at.  They can identify the difference between the levels but don't apply it.
• In maths have the steps you need to do, WALT, success criteria are being used.

Planning Templates

What: The Sheena Cameron Writing Book planning templates & mentor texts.  

Language Conventions & Text Structures: Do it in reading

What:
During a staff meeting, our RTLIT leader mentioned the strategy of teaching & learning about language and text features through reading.  Wonderful strategy and something I was aware of and doing already.  A resource we have in our school is the Short Stories Handy Resource.

So what:
These are great because included with each of the student texts are teacher notes that explain the different language and structural features.  I found these useful because I could identify the language features and discuss these with the group.  I was impressed with level of oral discussion once we started to look deeper into some of the language features.  I discovered that it was useful to discuss individual words and model how to visualise using the different features such as metaphor.
The resource also has a Bloom Taxonomy of student follow up activities.

Now what:  Continue to use these these texts and the teaching pages.

OTJ's - Support to make OTJ's wisely

What: TKI OTJ interactive modules to support educators to make OTJ's and to work with the National Standards in Reading, Writing & Mathematics.

So what: I have started to work through these and found them to be very useful at practising the art of making a valid OTJ using a range of student evidence.  I have found them useful because the standards are illustrated in a variety of ways through small tasks.  It was also useful to discover how to go about making an OTJ and looking for key aspects of the standard.

Now What: to work through the modules and to continue to practise with my own class.  I want to make sure that I provide a variety of tasks across the curriculum so I have a range of student evidence to use.  If they don't demonstrate an aspect in one task, I have other examples I can use.

Moderation - what it is and how is it being done

What: After a staff meeting topic discussion based on Moderation, I completed my own inquiry to find out more about what resources are available to assist educators with moderation.  I found my way to TKI and a range of resources that the MOE used that are aligned with the PACT tool.  These are the series of Frameworks used  with the PACT tool to make OTJ's.

So what:  I read lots and viewed a range of illustrations used to make OTJ.  The one aspect I took away from this was that as an educator I need to ensure that I provide tasks and teaching and learning that enables students to prove that can do an aspect of the different reading, writing and maths standards at that point in time.  The illustrations, found on TKI and within the PACT tool as as additional resources in the OTJ workshop resources provide a variety of different ways teachers can do this.  I also found that these are small tasks that can provide a wealth of evidence or multiple aspects of a standard.

Now what: to look into these more and to use them to guide my planning.  I would like to learn more about the Frameworks and PACT tool.

An illustration using the Frameworks

Cause and Effect: what is it

What: a mini lesson on 'Cause and effect' for writing.

So what: I discovered that it was important to use explicit teaching or showing/guided writing/independent writing model to support students to take on new learning.   In preparation explanation writing,   I ran a short cause and effect lesson.  First I told my group what cause and effect was after generating some PK.  I used a variety of simple models so it was clear to my group what I was trying to do.  Then, I used Think-Pair-Share, and students thought a one in pairs.  I gave them sub-coordinating conjunctions to use and a 'cause'.  It was interesting to see that the struggle students had at this first attempt.
After that we shared back and gave each other feedback.  Then I repeated the activity but students had ago on their own.  i noticed their confidence grow as we do this a few more times.  Finally, some students provided their own simple cause and effect sentences.  I found it worthwhile to use simple terms and to use their own topics for the modelling activity as well.

Now what: To try and this structure more often and use simple terms and vocab so students can focus on the skill and not the content.

Practical experiences: Science

What:  In preparation for science fair, we split our class into two groups and completed two different practical experiments to model the scientific process.

So what: Once again, I was impressed by the level of engagement when students were given a practical experience to complete.  I observed student inquiry as they modified the experiment.  For example, student completed a combustion activity to discover what elements are needed for combustion to occur.  Many were aware that oxygen is needed and quickly looked at comparing the rates of how long different candles took to go out.  It was also a good opportunity to make observations of what students saw.  It was interesting to observe that most were simplistic in their descriptions, for example, "its a flame".  However with prompting, were able to look closer at their flames and see the different colours within a flame and the different size and shape of their flames.  The oral discussion was great - students were making predictions, generating their own questions and verbally describing what they saw and thought and applying some reasoning based on evidence, with some support.

Now what: Supporting students to complete the written follow up for the activity.