Brief Reflection on Professional Standard 4 for Teacher Self Check Survey

Reflect & comment on Professional Standard 4: Develop a culture that is focused on learning, and is characterised by respect, inclusion, empathy, collaboration and safety. *

Here are some of the ways I did this….

1. First few weeks of school, you had to sit next to a minimum of 2 different people each day, to develop of culture where it is okay to sit next to anyone. It should be okay in the morning, put your stuff on any table and know it won’t matter who sits there because we are all one class and we can all work together.When you had sat next to every member of the class, you were allowed to choose to sit with whoever you like. I wanted people to all feel comfortable with each other and know that no matter who you were sitting with in the class, it would be safe, people would be kind and people would include you. It made it less awkward for those people that are afraid to sit with new people because they knew that you wouldn’t be rejected (unless you’d sat with all the people before) and that everyone was in the same boat.
2. STEAM challenges- We did many group STEAM challenges in the first few weeks of school. I chose the groups and changed them every day so everyone was forced to work with different people. Again I was trying to foster the idea that we are all one in the class and it should be safe for you to work with anyone in the class and know that they will be kind and they will include you. Obviously some children found this difficult but mostly it was the children who needed this that found it difficult because it took them out of their comfort zone. You can’t develop new relationships with new people if you are to afraid to leave the comfort of the relationships you have already established with people you consider safe and ok.
3. Collaborative Art- We did a collaborative piece of art with popsicles sticks. Again this was to get the message across that we are all one. We also started our 2nd collaborative piece which we will work on next term. It’s an outdoor piece of art to be made with recycled bottle caps.
4. Established a system of leadership and ownership over our class through the use of BANQER. Not only does this app cover key learning in the area of financial literacy but it provides other opportunities as well. It is linked to our values, behaviour management and roles within the class. Everyone contributes- everyone does their part-we all work together and respect each other and our environment.

BRIEF end of term reflection on Professional Standard 6 for Teacher Check Point Survey

Professional Standard 6: Teach and respond to learners in a knowledgeable and adaptive way to progress their learning at an appropriate depth and pace. How have you adapted your program to meet the needs of high or low achieving students?

There are so many ways that I can demonstrate this standard because essentially it sums up my job and what is expected of me. I have therefore only chosen a few examples.

Learning is personalised so that students can meet their individual learning needs and this is particularly evident in Reading and Maths. Students have quite a lot of choice over their learning and how they manage themselves.

I have a combination of needs based groups and ability groups in my class. This works well for me. My needs based groups are often mixed ability too. For example in reading, I have a group who needs to focus on inference but within that group, the students are not all at the same reading level. They all have the same gap in their learning but their overall level is different. Basically I utilise many strategies to adapt the learning to suit the different levels in the group. Firstly, oral language is a strong focus so there is no barrier with actually reading the words. But secondly, you can provide a rich task that challenges all members to think and they will each get out of it what they need for the level they are at.

Often teaching reading is more about developing thinking skills than it is about decoding words, especially at this level.

In Maths for example- I may teach the same strategy across four different levels. Students opt into the lesson at the level they can engage with and many challenge themselves to do more than they would expect and are pleasantly surprised (this causes acceleration with their learning). They can stay or move on from the group whenever they are ready and can join in at the level they feel appropriate for them. They also choose which aspects/levels they wish to master and practise after the teaching is done. If they realise the teaching was too hard for them at the higher level, they can opt to practise the learning at the lower level but they were still exposed to the higher level and can see the progression and where they are heading.

Students know that they can learn from others and the teacher is not the only authority for knowledge. They are also often given the option to learn fast or slow depending on what they prefer and can repeat lessons if they need clarification on a strategy.

Students apply their learning to projects that have a real life context where appropriate and often have cross curricular links.

The above practice is also combined with collaborative work. Students are sometimes accountable for their own learning and sometimes accountable to group with specific learning tasks or goals.

New Maths Project

Challenge: What do I want to do?
I want to teach a Maths unit which combines Measurement, Geometry and Number (specifically multiplication strategies) and I want it to be a collaborative project. Instead of teaching multiplication strategies in isolation, I want these to be used in the context of a measurement/geometry project. E.g. learn the mult strategies in order to find the volume of 3D shapes. They need to put the strategies into practice in a relevant learning context, so that hopefully they will remember them more easily and see the relevance and usefulness fo them in future life.

After the success of my teacher inquiry into Maths last year, it would be a backwards step to go back to teaching Maths the way that I used to. I think there needs to be elements of my old teaching combined with elements of this project based style and with these powers combined, I can have a great engaging maths programme, which still covers the curriculum expectations for Years 6-8 students.

Anyway, I had been thinking for weeks about how to come up with a new idea that was equal to or better than the city project we did last year, and it has been difficult. When you teach the same students for 3 years in a row, you can't simply reuse the same lessons again year after year! Personally I would probably find that quite uninspiring anyway. So what on earth was I going to do?
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I started with my trusty pal Google who led me to a Pinterest post advertising a product a teacher was selling on TPT. https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/29977153747782960/
Basically she has made cute nets for 3D shapes and that was enough to lead me on a path of inspiration. I do not know how I made this connection but I thought, hey wouldn't it be great to make a castle out of 3D shapes? 

I started blurting my ideas into a Google doc before refining the process further in a proper Maths plan. Below is my blurt...may not make sense...

How will we do it?

Sequence

Collect assessment data to prove progress is made

WARM UP CHALLENGE…

Buy 3d shape  buddies from TPT.

Students do a STEAM challenge in a mixed ability collaborative group. Make a building out of these shapes using the shape buddies. Also write on the shape buddies how many corners, sides etc these shapes have. ALL shapes must be used. Multiples can be used.

Shapes included are

• cube

• rectangular prism/cuboid

• cylinder

• square based pyramid

• cone

• triangular prism

• triangular pyramid

ACTUAL CHALLENGE…

Research castles. Collect photos of your favourites. Create a collage of castles for the wall. Fill an A3 piece of paper.

Explore aspects of design such as symmetry and its impact on aesthetics.

What shapes are made from other shapes put together? For example a common castle shape is a cone on top of a cylinder.

Plan: Draw a castle- front, back and side views using 2D shapes. Basic sketch. Not flash.

Students create the castle they have designed in groups.

Must include all the shapes from previous challenge. Students have to follow criteria. Criteria will ensure students find the volume for all the shapes using multiplication. Criteria will involve measurement as students have to measure the sides etc to calculate the volume of their shapes.

Can include mm and cm in criteria to encourage conversions.

Make link between area and volume.

E.g. find area of 2D shape before finding the volume of the 3D shape.

Students will create nets based on the 3D shape buddies from the warm up lesson..

Need to include perimeter and circumference too in the task.

This unit will be integrated multiplication/ Division/ Geometry/ Measurement

We will spend a few days a week on the mult/div strategies and initially one day a week on the Geometry and measurement project. When students have mastered the strategies, that’s when the project will take over all 4 sessions per week because they will integrate and use their mult div strategies as part of the project.

LEARNING COVERED

Geometry

Identify 3D shapes

Identify features of 3D shapes eg faces, vertices and edges

Create nets for 3D shapes- first using the resource but then creating their own

Put shapes together to create other shapes

Draw a plan of the castle from different views

Symmetry-

Measurement

When creating all nets, sides must be measured in cm and mm.

Find perimeter of 2D shapes

Find area of 2D shapes

Find volume of 3D shapes

Find circumference of a circle

Multiplication

Use a range of multiplication strategies to multiply numbers. E.g. calculating volume.

Multiplying decimals will be necessary when using pi to calculate the volume/circumference of some shapes.

Addition and subtraction

This was taught in term one but many strategies will come in handy.

E.g. when using most mult strategies, there is an addition or subtraction component to the strategy. E.g. Place value, area mult, algorithm all use addition. Rounding and compensation involves subtraction.

Will also come into play when calculating perimeter.

Division

This isn't a key feature of this project but I am sure division will be part of this somehow.

If it isn't, I will integrate my teaching of division into my teaching of statistics next term. You must be able to use division to calculate the mean/average.

My next step is to create the instructions and criteria for the project for the students to use. I think this time I will create a checklist so that students can tick things off as they go. I will also add into my criteria some compulsory aspects so that each student in the group has to contribute some things to the project independently. Otherwise, some people in the group will not learn the above things and will let more confident peers do all the work for them.

I also think it's important for students to see WHAT they are learning to do, so I will provide them with the curriculum objectives. Then they will make a connection to the project actually covering things they should be learning at their age rather than just being for fun.

27/4/19
I have now finished all the instructions and criteria. Here are the instructions for the kids.

Here is the criteria for the students to include in their project in order to meet the curriculum objectives.

This is where the students will record their calculations that go with the above criteria.

This is an example of how the students can record who is doing what within the group in Phase 3 of the project.