Language is a vital part of communication

How can we support oral learning and development:

ERO publishes evaluation reports - there report on language say:

  giving greater attention to oral language learning of new entrants within a rich curriculum
  developing formal expectations for monitoring oral language progress or development across               Years 1 to 3 and beyond, across all key learning areas
 taking a formalised approach to identifying students’ oral language strengths (including       capabilities in languages other than English), needs and concerns, rather than relying on           informal observation and ‘gut feeling’
 systematically planning for interventions, where particular concerns or needs for oral language learning and development are identified
  teachers building on the advantage linguistically diverse learners bring to language learning
 building and strengthening teacher capability to support oral language teaching and learning.



What can we be doing in our classrooms daily to support our students? 

Leading Change - What are our priorities?

I had the opportunity to listen to Bek Galloway present on "Leading my team".
Bex talked about having a clear vision and purpose then everything you do should then work towards that goal.

She has a great visual that resonates with me.  
I think all teachers need to take stock of our class programmes and visions to ensure we are doing what we need to do.

As term four begins and we are all reflecting we need to think about our students needs.

What parts of my programme , plans do we need to Start, Stop, Limit and Continue for my vision to be a priority.

I think as a teacher all the demands placed on us sometimes distract us from our key task - Educating our students to the best  of our ability to ensure they achieve the most they possibly can !

The right assessment for the right purpose.

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

Educators should use a diverse array of assessment tools ,and methods to measure/assess our students. Assessments have different functions - assessments are typically designed to measure specific elements of learning—e.g., the level of knowledge a student already has about the concept or skill the teacher is planning to teach , or what they have learnt from recent learning opportunities.  Ideally, assessments  are used to identify individual student weaknesses and strengths so that educators can provide the most appropriate educational programmes. 

Are we using the right assessments to give us the most relevant information on our students to help us provide the most appropriate educational programmes? 

Do our students know what we want them to do, and how to do it ?

Are we  doing too much testing and not  enough teaching?

Everytime we ask a student a questions it is a form of testing, unless we have already given lots of input first.

Time to reflect

Time to reflect.

I had the opportunity to attend the APPA Leadership conference this week.

I attended Bek Galloway's workshop.

Thoroughly enjoyed her presentation and she has left me with lots to ponder.

Firstly, it confirmed my strong belief that teachers should be constantly learning and reflecting and our Teacher Inquiries give us a structure to this.

Bek talked about a Learning Culture Space.
The power of student focused learning and a curriculum that supports this.

Time to Reflect and Refocus.

The Next Generation

Tony Ryan Educational consultant spoke at the APPA conference about the future of the next generation.
What skills will we need?

 

Are we preparing our students for the future? What can we do as educators ?

There seems to be a common  theme from several presenters today  around the importance of the

  Key Competencies.

How do we increase the inclusion of the important competencies in our daily class programmes.

Tony Ryan also talked about the vital skill for our future being  Oracy.

This is a major concern considering the low levels of our students oral language skills.

Tony suggested we teach our students about how to self-talk, the beginning of thinking our thoughts through and problem solving.

Thanks Tony lots to consider.

A common theme - our students' language.

Manaiakalani Boards' Forum

At the BOT forum tonight 6 Col teachers presented their Inquiries. Well done to our presenters you were very informative.

Common theme: - The limited oral language and vocabulary of our students.

Each COL teacher presented on their Achievement challenge - everyone of us talked about how our Inquiries had lead us to realise that our students language levels were significantly impacting their progress across all curriculum areas.

Raising achievement in Maths - students did not understand the maths vocabulary
or could not follow instructions with positional concepts.

Lift the achievement for boys' writing -  students do not have  the vocab to describe and explain.

Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, - students need the confidence and language to share their ideas and the language vocabulary to understand what they are reading.

Here is the next challenge team - how do we accelerate our students language skills?

Watch out for some exciting professional development Sommerville will be offering next term.                            

Update on my Inquiry.

Update.

I had the opportunity to present to the BOT from Manaiakalani school tonight.

This was a great opportunity for me to reflect on what i have been up to.