Mentoring New Teachers

Digital Intensive 2 I can't believe that a week has passed since the last digital intensive. Today we were looking at Google Forms, Google Sheets and Google maps. We began this session with the history of Manaiakalani around Learning and the pedagogy of "Learn, Create, Share". Research underpinning this came from John Hattie's constructivist and metacognitive approach, Russell Bishop's culturally responsive pedagogy, the global study for the Ministry of Education that showed acceleration can be achieved through inquiry driven exploration and the use of the Google platform. We learned how to set up a Google form with many available options that would give us data that we can analyse either as baseline data, feedback data or exit data. I created a Google form with questions around the new Education Council standards and sent it out to 10 teachers - have had 3 responses so will send again. I had recently attended a workshop on these and will be using th...

A colleague & I did some research some years back by analysing examiners' comments on NCEA subjects.  We focussed on why students fail in NCEA? and How students get to Excellence in NCEA. We had a hunch that failure was to do with literacy - subject vocabulary, subject reading materials and subject writing requirements. We also had a hunch that from our experiences with classroom teaching, NCEA marking and working with teachers, that students attain Excellence or Scholarship through demonstrating the quality of their thinking and especially using the Extended Abstract category of the SOLO taxonomy. Analysis of the examiners' reports proved that our hunches were correct. 2016 examiner's reports can be seen here . The examiners descriptively list what students commonly did to be awarded Achieved, Not Achieved, Merit and Excellence. These lists are very helpful, especially for Beginning Teachers and the findings within the lists concur with our hunches of 8 years ago....

At our PCT meeting yesterday the PCTs shared which students they were focussing on for their inquiry into lifting individual student achievement - a focus for the Professional Learning groups (PLuGS) and what they thought needed to be addressed for these students. The needs discussed were motivation x 3, non completion, disengaged, easily distracted. I decided to do some reading around motivation with Pasifika Learners. ERO in its 2012 report " Improving Education Outcomes for Pasifika Learner s "  saw the key elements as: Identity, Language & Culture - different needs for different learners Assessment information - understanding and using data to make a difference An effective connection between home and school A curriculum that has meaning for students and connects with their wider lives The last bullet point refers to using a culturally  responsive pedagogy.  (see video) What is a culturally responsive pedagogy? It is about knowing your Pasifika stu...

Mele Suipi Latu, a teacher on the staff at Tamaki College, ran a session for us on Tongan values, ways of being and how these are sometimes in conflict with what we expect of them in school. She reminded us that students come to school already shaped with a whole world view consisting of beliefs, customs, practices, and expectations. The 4 Tongan values: Respect Relationships - family, church, country, villages Humility - Lototo - drop what you want and go with expectations. Everyone knows their place. Commitment - you do it until it hurts. Commit to whatever course you are doing. Students develop a subculture when they leave home - a second culture. There can be a clash between the subculture of school & home. At home they learn to do what they are told and to respect their elders; at school they are taught to question. Mele suggests that the teacher puts up their expectations from the first lesson but should never disown the students from their culture. There can be...

The advantage of working with trainee teachers (Teach First teachers) when you have been teaching for a long time is that it takes you back to the beginnings of things like classroom management 1.01 and behaviour management basics. Building Relationships and Expectations are crucial in the first few weeks.  Tamaki College has a set of values called RISE (Respect, Integrity, Success, Responsibility) which are embedded into the vision and ways of working in the school. The students are familiar with these and they work well. The teacher will also set other expectations to do with behaviour, work, tools, listening and following instructions. These will all enable the development of positive relationships between teacher and students and so make the teaching and learning more productive. See building relationships with Pasifika students here  and with Māori students here . Setting up a routine and sticking to it is also crucial to developing a good and safe physical and e...