Inquiry 2016

Inquiry question for 2016

  

Raising student achievement: My teacher inquiry-What now?

Your action plan will be a dynamic document and you will be expected to share your progress with you colleagues during PLD sessions. Keep in mind the school PLD 2016 goals.

Name:  Richard Tuhaka                                         School: Tolaga Bay Area School                                                                               Date:  2016

SMART goal? How to implement technology successfully into my Sustainability Classes?

Recording, processing and displaying data, dialogue and visual aides through technology namely the internet and blogging.

Are the students learning and understanding what is being taught? Can they respond or relay back their understandings through the introduction of devices?

S   specific

M   measurable

A   achievable

R   realistic

T   time bound

My PLD goals: What will be my focus this year?
Students use devices all the time and are comfortable with most technology especially apps. Can they use this successfully in classroom practice? An initial feeling is 50-50. Confidence on phones does not transfer into confidence on computers. Confidence in applications is not confidence in understanding concepts and ideas around sustainability.	Noticing What is happening here? Is this what we expected? Should we be concerned? Do we need to take a closer look?
Practice makes perfect. Can they video themselves with confidence? Can they remember to say or write the key concepts? A genuine lack of confidence to make mistakes is restricting them from talking or writing accurately? What is the block that stops from posting on blogs or videoing or talking to cameras?	Investigating What do we already know about this? What do we need to find out? How might we do this?
The students concerned have a range of abilities and vary in literacy and numeracy skill levels. Testing and assessment shows this already. Their actions reinforce it to another degree. This means they have, possibly, low self-esteem or confidence when understanding and explaining what is taught or learnt and then what needs to be done next. They may feel whakama about learning and thus do not take risks for fear of more failure or inability. Exploration around mistakes and risk taking. Trying different ways to show the same thing. What works best for me as a student? What type of learner are they. How to become more self aware? If I struggle with writing how else can I show my learning?	Collaborative Sense Making What is our data telling us? What insights does it provide? Is this good enough? What might we need to explore further?
We need to make mistakes and learn that mistakes are a part of the learning process. Its ok to admit mistakes and identify them and use them to ensure we correct them or make improvements to our learning. The change is minor to major. Depending on individual students feelings and willingness to take risks and make mistakes. The strengths are that we are already doing and participating in the concepts of sustainability. Our hands on activities all relate directly to concepts and ideas. Support needs to be around verbalizing what has taken place. The steps along the way and linking what we do to each concept.	Prioritising to take action What do we need to do and why? How big is the change we are planning? What strengths do we have to draw on? What support might we need?

Monitoring and Evaluating Impact What is happening as a result of our improvement actions? What evidence do we have of progress? Is this good enough? Do we need to adjust what we are doing? What are we learning here?

Learning Mentor 2016

My teacher inquiry mentor for 2016 is:                                                                           

We have agreed to have progress meetings:                                                              

(weekly, fortnightly, monthly)

Date of meeting	Notes of discussion

Target ARONA Students 2016

Target students- select a group (5 or 6) of ARONA students in one class who you would identify as a priority- they are at risk of under achieving this year.

Who are they and what evidence have you used to identify these students who are at risk of underachieving?

Student name (class, ethnicity, gender)	Evidence
Janelle	Assessment data around literacy and numeracy Behaviour while not disruptive or concerning can be withdrawn and lack motivation.
Liam	One on one sessions have shown lower than expected literacy skills. Also a reluctance to use technology especially new technology.
Brannagan	Behaviour while not disruptive or concerning can be withdrawn and lack motivation. Can become disengaged and may have chosen this course as the lesser of three evils.
Caitlin	Assessment data around literacy and numeracy
Jasmine	Behaviour while not disruptive or concerning can be withdrawn and lack motivation especially in terms of writing on computers so far.

Assessment – Reflective Portfolio – Richard Tuhaka

Teacher Inquiry

Communities Involved.

Students – Years 8-13 Sciecne and Sustainability Classes approximately 50 students, mixed ability and predominantly Maori.

Colleagues – Secondary Staff – 4 teachers, Citizenship, Science and Maths.

Wider Community – Whanau of students and interested parties – Uawanui Project.

These groups are chosen as they are who I already work with and wish to continue to develop my teaching and learning around.

My colleagues are selected to their significance to what I am teaching.  The students are from my main classes and have a range of needs and interests.

Project

Raise engagement, raise responses and work levels, raise computer literacy and work collaboratively through Science and Sustainability projects and tasks that require hands on learning and a different approach to assessment.

Questions posed

1.     Who is assessment for?

2.     How can we change schooling to better reflect the learner s and environments in which we live and work?

3.     How can assessment better meet the needs of the learners and be more proactive and relevant.

4.     How can we use technology to raise assessment and learning?

5.     How to create an innovative environment reflective of our students needs?

Figure 1 Screen shot of my blog for inquiry 2016

Initially I had wanted to use technology to raise engagement and help with assessment. My initial inquiry was really focussed on engagement. I used a number of tools, google classroom, chrome books and websites to help lift engagement and retaining information collected.

These questions have been formed from my research into assessment and innovative environments. Mainly the Ministry of Education and TKI websites, also research completed by Whitiriea – Ria Tomona, “Growth Mindset” Geoff 2013 and Brown et al 1989 on “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.”

I have also formed my own opinions based on many years teaching and having been in the system for some time now. I am of the belief that much of what we assess is not for students or their learning but rather to meet targets and ‘standards’ assigned by government.

Figure 2 Screen shot of my google classroom set up.

We have a large number of students who struggle with the current system, yet are very capable and able to achieve. They are hindered by their misconceptions of school life versus real world and by the values systems they have at home. Many are physical in nature or do not fit into the normal mould of a typical student. We are rural and have different opportunities and limitations to other schools.

Steps

This is where the chromes and tablets come in. I wanted to try and use them to record learning and thinking. I wanted to use them to be an assessment tool.

1.     Google classroom, blogging and journals were meant to ease the burden of study and workloads.

2.     Facebook page to further learning and show what has been done.

3.     Hands on activities were designed to take the students out of the classroom and then use blogs to record thinking and efforts. Tablets and chromes would lessen the burden of losing materials and recording data.

4.     Weed busting, investigating water ways, finding spawning habitats and the like.

5.     Engage Community members who own the farms, (Hauiti Inc. Pop Milner) or we needed access to waterways. Alison Waru is a local project manager for Project Uawanui. We are continually working with her around the community for each task we do.

6.     Create good working relationships with Department of Conservation and Peter Handford form Ground Truth, an environmental company. Locals are invited to work alongside students to perform plantings and restoration work.

7.     Ask questions around use of technology with my classes. Has it been useful, better, worse? Why/why not? What else would help you learn and develop more? Video journals or blogs?

Issues that are relevant today and in the near future. Making tasks real as shown through the “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” which shows we need tasks that ask us to perform proper real world jobs where “learning will occur naturally.” All have been set up with varying degrees of success. Hands on activities were to do with the environment. 

Figure 3 Facebook page for my Science and Sustainability Classes

Facebook is part of the Social Media phenomenon. I have used it to encourage students to share learning and activities we have taken part in. I have increased the comments and am adding more information in the hope students will pick up more titbits of info as they scan and scroll through the page.

Community Engagement

I have not formally collected any data but have spoken with members of the community, parents and my colleagues about the work I am doing. Many community members have expressed their pleasure at seeing the work we are doing. The facebook page has had positive feedback and we have a number of people and communities outside of our district following our progress and commenting on photos and videos that are posted regularly. Many have given advice on what we could do next or what we could do better.

Facebook is a great way to connect with whanau. The trick now is to get them to turn up to events and to survey them for better-informed decision-making. I plan to interview a few parents and the farmers concerned about our learning pathways. I plan to collate this information to give more direction to the programme.

I’m thinking of even doing an online survey for students and community to gauge their understandings and thinking of how we can assess better and better provide learning opportunities with more relevance and substance.  I wish to ask them their opinions and thoughts on my own questions.

1.     Who is assessment for?

2.     How can we be more relevant?

3.     What types of learning opportunities are of value to them?

4.     What types of learning opportunities are relevant?

5.     Are they open to forums held in facebook or another social media format.

Peer evaluation

Our DP, Earle Karini has been following our progress over the year. We have regular meetings once a week to discuss school and our inquiries. He is happy with the direction my inquiry is going and only really offered that I write down changes in direction and thinking more clearly in my inquiry as it has changed somewhat since the beginning of the year. He feels there is good engagement from students and community and now I need to follow up with assessment as this is where I said I wanted to begin heading.  He agreed with my ideas around standards based assessment and while he thinks the ‘growth mindset’ sounds excellent he is unable to change the current system as ‘it is what it is.’ He has supported my learning and is comfortable for me to be more creative with my assessment on how I get it and how I manage it in the future. Our principal, Nori Parata is also open to trying out new ways and even to the extent of learning through trial and error over the coming year or two.

These two are very supportive and only ask I record all information so I can see trends and areas for concern or improvement. My discussions with them have been informal and through meetings.

Conclusion

If I can get this right I could potentially unlock a way to better assess some of our harder to teach learners and allow them better opportunities for success. Technology can assist them in recording and processing data and information. Social Media can open it up for discussion and sharing. Hands on activities can raise the engagement levels and a focus on actual real life tasks and jobs will help with relevance. Transitioning those skills will most likely be the hardest part.

This could have massive benefits to the community of learners and the community at large. Why? Because this can open up a very different assessment approach and a different approach to teaching and learning our Maori and Pacific Island learners who are in need of a different system that caters to their needs and values their cultural capital and learning needs. Also to the actual physical environment as we work to improving biodiversity and our understandings of how we impact positively and negatively upon the places in which we live.

Updates as Of November 2016.
Overall there has been improvement and raised levels of engagement.
Some things could have been done better. More writing together in class time to be better prepared for audio and video recordings.
Shared writing and learning approach for 2017.
Video as we go and continue to ask questions.
Post to Facebook with students names and evaluations all in one place.
Allow students to access and post on Sustainability class.
Use live streaming for students to show learning in 2017.