Mentoring New Teachers

There has been much talk about reviewing NCEA . NCEA was implemented in the 2002-2004 and has been changed, upgraded and the like over time to make it more equitable. But NCEA is a qualification based on given standards not a true reflection of a students' strengths and capabilities. NCEA is supposedly an assessment of what students can do. But we know that there are students that do amazing things outside of NCEA but these abilities do not count. Unfortunately NCEA has led to some degree to over-assessment, credit counting (if it doesn't give me credits, it doesn't count) and extraordinary pressure on schools, teachers and students. NZAI was set up this year to look at quality assessment across the education system. Schools came together in seminars across NZ to look at positive ways of assessing student progress. Avonside Girls' High School suggested integrating learning across multiple standards to minimise the NCEA effect using connected learning across m...

Hattie (2012) “teachers need to change to far less talk and much more listening”  Visible Learning for Teachers (p. 80).  “Teachers talk between 70 and 80 percent of class time (p. 80) Student engagement is higher when teachers talk less, this is especially true for at-risk students  Only “5-10 per cent of teacher talk triggers more conversation or dialogue engaging the student” (p. 81)  Research shows that “when highly effective and other teachers were compared, the former had more general class talk and less directive talk” (p. 81) How do we light the fire within students to express their thinking? Dr Aaron Wilson and Jacinta Oldehaver in their research in Talking about Text (TaT) worked to change traditional patterns of teacher dominated talk in the classroom and found that achievement rates in TaT classes were higher than in previous years and also higher than students in non TaT classes because of the changes in teacher talk. They found that ...

What is collaborative sense-making? I've come to that part of my appraisal where I need to show evidence of my collaborative sense-making this year. It does sound like more of education jargon but at the same time needs to be investigated in order to get it right. It is one of the 6 components of the appraisal cycle put out by the Education Council. Luckily I went to their workshop this year and this was explained as: How you collaborate with others who have different perspectives from yours eg experts, colleagues, mentors etc through conversation to look at different perspectives on a situation. From these conversations you share findings, learning and implications for changes in practice. An example given was to use another person eg have a conversation with the Te Reo teacher to give you feedback on your work with Standard 1 (Treaty) Questions from ERO include: What do we already know about this? What do we need to find out? How might we do this? Catalysts that lead ...

I have just been re-reading the notes I took at the Education Council (EC) workshop on the new standards at the beginning of this year. Provisionally certificated teachers (PCTs) are always worried about having enough evidence and what to record. I currently mentor 7 PCTs, 3 of whom are coming up for certification this year. What the EC has said is that they do not want voluminous portfolios of stuff and that they want to shift the emphasis from the showing of evidence to improvement of practice done through discussion and documentation. Teachers engaging in “learning talk” analyse, critique and challenge their current teaching practices to find and/or create more effective ways of teaching. ( Annan, Lai & Robinson 2003) The current situation is that ERO will audit the documentation for certification of teachers recently certificated. They are looking to see that the school has a robust system well founded in evidence. They will be looking at the level of support and inducti...

Mahi = work kotahitanga = working together ERO: " Mahi tahi (or mahi ngātahi) describes the unity of a group of people working towards a specific goal or on a specific task, often in a hands-on fashion.   In the school context, mahi tahi describes the business of working together collaboratively in the pursuit of learner-centred education goals. ....." At Tamaki College, staff are working together to raise student achievement in NCEA. I am on the Change Committee which meets every few weeks. We are a group of innovative educators who try to find different ways of approaching the challenge. We discuss and work on this sitting around the table eating brain food and then take it back to our respective PLuG groups for the group to share strategies and ways of working that have helped reach the achievement goals for priority students. It seems to be working because the list of priority students has become shorter as students go from no credits (red) to some credits (gree...

What is appraisal exactly? The Education Review Office is very clear on its purpose of appraisal in schools . Teacher appraisal has two purposes: improvement - appraisal supports personal development and school capability to meet student outcome goals professional accountability - appraisal provides assurances to the wider community that teaching standards are rigorously applied. The Education Council sees it as: The appraisal process exists to affirm and develop a high standard of teaching in New Zealand. Effective appraisal systems using the  Standards for the Teaching Profession  help teachers learn, grow and achieve the best outcomes for our learners. PPTA describes appraisal as : Performance appraisal has two purposes – development and accountability, or to put it another way, formative and summative assessment. It should be about helping teachers to develop their practice and do their personal best Appraisal is a good way of reflecting on your...

On the 27th February I was fortunate to be able to attend a workshop run by the Education Council on the "new" standards that have been put out for teachers in schools. Unfortunately, some teachers have brushed this off with "Oh they have just put 12 criteria into 6 standards but really nothing has changed". When you read the standards carefully you notice that there has been a sea change which has already been reflected in the more progressive schools especially those who engaged with assessment for learning , Kia Eke Panuku , and to a lesser extent PB4L . So what has changed? Std1   Waitangi partnership - Practise and develop the use of te reo and tikanga Māori Std2 Professional learning - Critically examine how my own assumptions and beliefs, including cultural beliefs, impact on practice and the achievement of learners. Std3 Professional Relationships - Communicate clear and accurate assessment for learning and achievement for learning Std4 Learning-fo...

John Hattie, currently co-chairing a Science of Learning Centre ,  stated in an interview that " we need to bring back ‘learning’ as our focus (more than ‘teaching)’.  What does it mean to learn, which learning strategies are optimal (when, how, and where), how do we assess and evaluate how a student learns (wow, we have so many measures of achievement but how many measures of learning do we have!), and how do new advances in the science of learning help make the difference." Yesterday 2 engineering students from University of Auckland spent the day showing students how to work with robots - how to code them, how to test the code on the maze, and how to improve the code so the robot could get through the maze. I observed them working with a Year 10 class. Knowing nothing about using robots in education, I was astonished to see what a difference it made to the students' learning. Instead of working on individual devices they naturally collaborated in groups and when the...