Wednesday, 7 September 2016

The Language of Influence in Teaching

Recently I read a reading about the effects of different types of language teachers use towards their students. It got me reflecting on how I use language in the class towards my students. Something that resonated with me was the part about talking to students in a way that was not intrusive, encouraged living collaboratively, work out out problems together and to  increase student agency.

Professional Readings - Choice Words (Chapters 1-2) - Peter H. Johnston

Leader of Literacy :Learning

Tuesday, 6 September 2016

Gail Loane - Writing PD

Staff Meeting - Gail Loane - Wednesday 24th August 2016

Andrew Jackson piece
- Use of the 5 senses
- Description - Factual
- No personal response/opinion

Leaf Description

The Leaf writing enlightened me to Set up meaningful literacy writing tasks, alongside effective models.

Framework for Lesson
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 - resonated with me

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

Te Reo



This PD session, highlighted the ORAL CHORAL method again. It challenged my to use puppets as a way to INPUT language (vocabulary) and also not jump straight from Teacher to individual students. It forced my to not rush this - Teacher whole class, split class, then ping ponging etc..

Artistic Maths PD

Artistic Maths PD We had a fantastic professional development about integrating mathematics and art. Many engaging ideas that rich with mathematic concepts. I completed the Fibinacci sequence activity adn encouraged students to identify where else this exists in nature. I pushed my top students to find a formula for the nth term - Relationship to Algebra.

UOI Books

Inquiry

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