Monday 28 July 2014

Term 3 Update

Busy, busy, busy in Class 10!
Term two just flew by! Now I am here at the start of term three trying to get into the right frame of mind with my inquiry journey so far.

In term one, I focussed on getting the students to understand and apply the NZ curriculum key competencies. We use them daily now in learning and social/behavioural situations. Focussing on the key competencies in term one helped us as a class to create classroom norms and expectations, and also helped the students to set goals for themselves in order to become better learners.

I also used the key competencies in my classroom to support small group expectations. So for example in maths or reading in our small groups I would integrate 'participating and contributing' and 'relating to others' in order to promote more dialogic/conversational norms. I started to use the 'Five Talk Moves' during maths so that students have the chance not only to share their ideas, but also listen to others ideas, and learn from them. The talk moves help students to have  safe yet engaging conversations/debates with peers, they promote re-voicing and clarifying, repeating, reasoning and adding on.

Last term, I was looking at Bloom's taxonomy and SOLO taxonomy and thinking about how to use them in my own practice. I used one release day to plan a unit that revolved around the 'evaluate' component of Blooms model. That activity was a success, as it challenged my students to assess two different perspectives and bring them together to make new connections.

Through the rest of the term, I continued to use Bloom's and SOLO and also introduced extended readings to students. It was recommended by Rebecca Jesson (our researcher that works closely for our school) to provide students with further readings related to the current learning context and also to make better use of the affordances of the technology we have available. For example during reading we start off with a journal story about sailing boats, then afterwards students look into related texts about other boats or something that relates to that context.

This term (term 3), I am going to continue with integrating Blooms and SOLO taxonomy in literacy and continue with providing my students the opportunity to access, analyse and respond to extended readings. I feel last term went so fast, that I did not give it  a good enough go!

There are also two other things I would like to look into this term and they are: encouraging kids to come up with their own inquiry questions related to our topic and also giving the students richer 'creating' opportunities in order to consolidate and reinforce new learning.

So in short here is what I am wanting to focus on this term:

Term 3 Action
1. Continue to promote and provide extended readings related to journal readings/class inquiry, based on Rebecca’s feedback. Provide opportunities to inquire into own learning.

2. Continue to use blooms thinking prompts in group discussion and follow up activities. (Focus on analyse, evaluate, synthesize/create).

3. Create to learn - reinforcing new learning through creation. Focussing on providing students with rich creation tasks to consolidate learning. (Rebecca Jesson 2014).

Research to support:
Biggs & Collis, 1982 - SOLO
Bloom's, 1956
Rebecca Jesson 2014     


Until next time...

This was my birthday surprise! 

Ka kite ano! :)

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