Term 3 already

Lisa's goals for Term 3: Be more organised! This term we'll have a much clearer plan of attack for everything that's going on. And stick to it. (Haha good luck!)

The structure for T3's goals is to pick a curriculum area you wish to strengthen and a specific goal within this. From here three observations of other people will take place (mixture of in school and other schools) as well as one learning experience being observed. By seeing others, the guys will be able to bring a range of ideas and new ways of doing things back to their teams, which is often hard as a PRT when everyone else already has so many ideas.

We've also discussed observations following a coaching format, where questions are asked to help the person come to thier own understandings and conclusions rather than being told.

Term 2 update - Vid observations

Term 2 was a bit of a crazy term for us here at Amesbury. We had a lot of things going on time just flew.
As part of using more IT in the PRT programme, each of the guys videoed themselves during a lesson, then refelcted on it. I then also watched the videos and gave feedback.
I think we all felt this was really powerful, as it's one thing to be told how to improve by someone else and another to actually reflect on yourself and see what everyone else sees. I think video is a great reflective tool and more of us should be using it to reflect on our practice.

Here are the links to said videos

Matt's

Mike's

I'm really proud of the guys with their reflections and adjustments of their teaching accordingly. I'm also really proud of the way they try new things like this and are honest about it's usefulness and happy to share it with the world!

Term 2 - Lisa's Goal

My goal is to find some more ways we can use IT in our PRT programme.
I would like to try using video more as it's a good visual record and we use it frequently as a student assessment, so why wouldn't we use it for our own assessment.

Term 2 Goals - Mike

This was the goal i set in the second week and has been my main goal through out the term, i felt it was an area that i needed more knowledge in. how do you teach emergent readers and writers to read and write?

• Goal- To find and explore resources and strategies to help new entrants with letter and sound recognition.
• plan- Talk with and watch angela teach, explore PD in area. Look at on line resources, try new things, explore use of IT.

i have found that i have naturally been picking up tools and strategies as the term has gone by, from adapting along the way and also through team teaching, seeing a teacher doing something or making something or a passing conversation. great learning environment. should book in some time to watch other reading groups.

second goal came through reflections over last couple of weeks-

• to help with feeling a little lost at times to reflect back on big picture ideas. what is underneath what we are doing?

this came about because of the way we are always adapting and challenging the way we teach, it makes me feel a little lost at times so wanted to make sure i was aware of what is at the heart of what we are doing here at amesbury.

haven’t really had the time to reflect and read on big picture ideas, planning to do some reading over easter break. read our manifesto and see if there is a book lesley can recommend me from the books in principals office.


Term 2

One area I came away from last term which I felt I needed to really focus on was maths, as a hub we all felt like it didnt really fit and felt very separate from our other learning. So as a hub we need to focus on improving our maths programme.

Personally I struggled with the range of abilities even within a stage 4 focused group, how can I cater for all their needs without falling back to a more traditional way of teaching maths with splitting them into smaller groups.
Also I struggled with the balance of number and strand, alot of the time number got pushed aside, I need to be more aware of what these students next steps are with strategies and how to deliver it within context and rich and engaging.
strand work needs to be more focused and learning intentions need to be explicit.

Maths goal-
‘ To create an engaging supportive number programme and create more focused strand work all supporting the individual needs of each student’

how to achieve-

• as a hub to formulate how we want maths to look like in koru
• go through matrix and see what each individual student’s needs are
• good balance between number and strand
• with strand make sure am aware that work is meeting standards on matrix
• watch demelza run problem solving with my children, get demelza to help with helping push students strategy knowledge.

how will i show evidence of this

• through my planning
• talking with kids
• running regular individual reflections

Term 2 goal

I found that after term 1 when looking at students achievements I found it hard to individualise them, that when I looked at my reading group it felt like I was looking at their ability as a group and not individuals.

' goal to keep track of individual progress through regular reflections through quick notes and google doc’

how to achieve

• create google doc for reading, writing/ inquiry and maths
• make quick little notes at end of lesson
• end of day reflect on google docs

evidence of achievement

• by end of term will be able to have a better understanding of individual achievement

Term 2 Goals - Matt

Goal Two idea:

To use more Mandarin and Te Reo in ‘everyday talk’. To help others (including teachers and parents) to use more Mandarin and Te Reo in ‘everyday talk’. This will help myself and the children to review vocabulary and to practice using these languages in a meaningful context (links with how we learn at Amesbury).

This comes from my own acknowledgment that I am not using enough Mandarin or Te Reo in ‘everyday talk’.
This comes from our aborted efforts at squeezing in more time to practice our languages for 5 minutes every day - we don’t have the time, so it needs to be done more integrally (read: meaningfully).
This comes from my opinion that children are not retaining what they have learned in language class well enough (particularly Mandarin) -- The kids in Te Reo retain their language learned because they use it, in Powhiri and Crisana’s / Demelza’s commands, and it is much more ‘visual’ in life at Amesbury school.

Notes:

*I can make a gDoc with often used vocabulary and commands, and translate these into Mandarin and Te Reo. Need to cross reference with Crisana and Lulu so I know we are on the same page. This can be in chunks, so that once teachers have mastery of a certain amount of terms, they can move onto the next chunk - maybe have check boxes next to them? This can also be an ongoing document so that it can be added to (by anyone) or requests can be put in.

*I could link this document closer to Crisana and Lulu’s planning, so that we could be practising the same thing, week to week (although, I think week to week is too quick to be moving on to new vocab - the purpose of this is to review, and actually USE what we are learning in our language classes)

*Because.... why are we learning these languages anyway? Just to use in our language classes? -- Links to previous goal (about the purpose of learning). Why are children learning Mandarin? Do they know? Do parents know? Could we do a few workshops / lessons as a case study on the growth of China?

*We could do a “teach your parent / a friend this word this week challenge” and have the kids video themselves teaching someone a term, and then using that term in a meaningful context - can go Mandarin / Te Reo every 2 weeks?

*I could share the document on Twitter, and make a new page for it on our blog where we could put this challenge and any videos / audio the kids upload.

*Are we talking about languages in our Korero Tatou?

Term 2 already

It's been a busy term for us, so a bit slow on getting some stuff up.
In the mean time, here's a link to an Ignite talk I did on PRTs

http://vimeo.com/40566844

Please ignore the spelling errors!

Term 1 Reflection

I've noticed that mentoring in a collaborative environment is quite different. For both Mentor teacher and PRT. It seems to be a less stressful, more supportive environment. And I think our PRTs are greatly benefiting from it.
What makes this easier?
Safer?
Less stressful?
More supportive?

These are some things I would like to investigate this year.