Farewell...

 

Wow! I'm so incredibly grateful
to have been part of

the Pt England School whanau

but... after 4 (and a bit)! years, 

it's time to say farewell.

I will leave with a 

heart full of many precious memories 

of my life at PES.

To the staff at PES
Thank you for your friendship, 

your willingness to share ideas,
 your passion for educating young people 

and plenty of good laughs!

To my students - past and present:)

I learnt so much from each of you -

thank you for being my teacher!

My deepest wish for each of you is

that you find a way

to step into your amazingness

(yes - this is now a word!)

and show up as

the best you can be!

Ka kite Pt England, 

Team 5 and Room 2 

- it's been a journey!

Arohanui,

Ms. Tapuke 

Looking back at 2019! Moving forward to 2020!

As week 9 draws to a close, I find myself reflecting back over the last 12 months - it really is hard to believe that my third year as a classroom teacher is almost over! Humps and hollows, sidesteps and missteps aside, there have also been some triumphs. Here are a few of my personal highlights from 2019:

• By year end, all 6 Year 8 students in my target reading group made gains of at least 6 months in their reading ages- one student moved 2 years while two students made a shift of 12 months. It was a very satisfying to know that half the group would enter secondary school with a reading age of 11 years - the benchmark set for the students at the start of the year that would enhance their ability to access the Year 9 curriculum.
  
• Collaborating with team of Pt England staff (made of teachers and office personnel) to prepare and present to a PD session for staff about Tataiako, the Maori learners framework. It was an awesome opportunity to work together and produce practical steps our colleagues could implement based on the framework - the focus being to promote ways to empower those students who identify as Maori
  
• Embracing the opportunity to teach extension students in literacy. This really pushed me outside my comfort zone and required me to adapt to students who could unpack the deeper meaning in variety of texts. The students and I engaged in meaningful discussions across a range of topics. Students seized the change to grapple with a range of themes including stereotypes, race relations, family dynamics and climate crisis.

Now looking forward to the new year, I am excited by the prospect of new challenges including:

• Being part of the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) group for 2020. I am really interested in how we will apply the design thinking process to a rigorous teacher inquiry. I looking forward to meeting, working with and sharing ideas with educators selected from across the Manaiakalani outreach clusters.
  
• Continuing to develop my skills in teaching literacy, particularly writing
  
• Building my skills to teach Te Reo to Year 7 & 8 students

Farewell 2019 - thanks for the memories! Bring on 2020!

How do you RATE your teaching practice?

Today's staff PD session led by Dorothy Burt was a timely reminder that effective teachers are THE key component in achieving success in the classroom.  The world of digital learning offers many bells and whistles but nothing can replace what a competent teacher body can bring to the classroom.

Dorothy introduced us to the RATE framework. I found it very useful to breakdown how I can access EFFECTIVE TEACHING PRACTISE and continue my own personal journey to develop my teaching skillset.

R = RECOGNISE Effective Practice by seeking out out teaching practices that work. We got to see this in action at the end of our PD session with staff split into groups, role playing a guided reading session with a focus on a specific element of the NZ Curriculum (Reading, Level 2) with a 'teacher'  supporting 'students' to overcome decoding challenges. Lots of great ideas on display!

A = AMPLIFY Effective Practise by using the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy. Staying connected to other educators through our networks, keeping good practice visible, feeling empowered to get out and put different ideas into practise and taking advantage of colleagues skills and experiences at at time and place that suits (ubiquitous) e.g. online toolkits

T = TURBOCHARGE Effective Practise by using digital technologies to provide learning experiences that were previously not possible (SAMR model) or were not available 

E = EFFECTIVE PRACTICE 

Teaching Inquiry 2018 - Talk Moves

STUDENT NEEDS, DATA AND HUNCHES
I had originally intended to use this inquiry opportunity to examine how I could better teach my students the fundamentals for writing. This was based on my personal reflection that in 2018 I needed to improve how I taught this subject area.

However, after listening to the presentation by Woolf Fisher researchers at Tamaki College, I needed to change my plan. The 2017 results for students achievement across schools in the Manaiakalani cluster clearly showed that Maths was a bigger concern than Writing.

This realisation prompted me to check the data for my Maths class for this year. Based on National Standards benchmarks, only 2 students had achieved 'at' by the end of 2017, the remaining 27 students were sitting at either 'below' or 'well below'.

I wanted to focus on the band of students who are noted as 'below' in Maths. WIth the right intervention, there is a better chance of achieving upaward shift in 'below' learners than those who are 'well below'.  I then identified a group who I can best describe as being in Maths learning limbo - by this I mean that while they show capability in Maths they are stuck and not progressing because  I have not been able to move them to the up to the next level.  

Within this group I have identified six priority learners - all Year 8 students who achieved Stage 6 at the end of 2017. NB: Ideally they should have been hitting Stage 7. 

My hunch is that the progress of this group of Maths learners is being held back because they struggle to understand and then correctly apply higher level strategies. 

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Building on Maths PD last year with Jo Knox,  PES is rolling out the DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities) approach of teaching maths across the entire school i.e. from Year 1 to Year 8. Based on comprehensive research in the US around complex maths instruction, Prof. Bobbi Hunter of Massey University has developed a pedagogy that aims to deepen students understanding of maths - working in mixed ability groups to collectively solve maths problems.

The challenge will be to find out how to best to use the DMIC pedagogy to build confidence in priority learners so they are more likely to take risks to grapple with more complex problems - the payoff being they will develop their maths thinking and problem solving skills and progress to more complex maths work.

TALK MOVES - A POSSIBLE SOLUTION?

The DMIC teaching approach uses maths problems rooted in the real world problems in cultural contexts that are relevant and engaging for students and related to 'big' maths ideas.

For my inquiry then, as an initial starting point, I would like to investigate how the use of TALK MOVES can support my priority students to improve their understanding and make use of higher level Maths concepts.