Mentoring New Teachers

Ensuring all students achieve success Last Night I attended a lecture by Christine Rubie Davis on High Expectation Teachers. She was talking about her findings from a recent research project. What I took from this talk was that high expectation teachers: use flexible student grouping (according to activity) and a variety of learning experiences. Use assessment information to set goals for each student and support the student to achieve them through high expectations. Students have autonomy over their learning through setting goals and selecting activities to work on – for example with " must-do, can-do” options. It is essential that: expectations for each student are appropriate. teachers provide the scaffolding learners need in order to progress (Vygotsky). the impact of teaching practice on student learning is monitored in an ongoing way. teachers take action to change their practice if it is not having the desired effect. Low ...

Digital Intensive I learned some basic things that will make my life easier this week. Gmail - Put Gmail on compact settings and then I  seem to have half as many emails to attend to! Put a pink flower theme into my Gmail and I feel a lot calmer when writing and answering emails I don't like the way Gmail nests conversations because I sometimes miss new emails so I can use "conversation view off" and "new mail notifications" on. The problem is we get into the habit of just doing what has already been set up rather than looking at other possibilities. One Tab I now have the OneTab icon on my computer " Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once. When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chr...

AKO featured in the Practising Teacher Criteria - in fact it underpinned those criteria in that the word ākonga was used throughout " to be inclusive of all learners in the full range of settings, from early childhood to secondary and beyond, where the  Practising Teacher Criteria  apply. Ako, on he other hand, " is a teaching-learning practice that involves teachers and students learning in an interactive dialogic relationship". These words don't feature in the "new" Standards for the Teaching Profession but come through in "seek and respond to feedback from learners" (Standard 2); "engage in reciprocal, collaborative learning - focused relationships....." (Standard 3) Kia Eke Panuku   Teaching and learning roles are interdependent, fluid and dynamic; students and teachers are able to learn with and from other learners ( ako ). This aligns well with the idea of peer tutoring and peer assessment used in Assessment for Learning  a...