Activity 10: Postgraduate Journey and Future Plan

My journey this year has been a lot of hard work, but worth it. I have found the coarse to be very insightful, giving me power to learn and understand where my future in this profession will take me. I've gained skills that have empowered me and created a passion for 21st Century Learning. In this post I will reflect on the year using the 12 Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC) in e-learning as a guide. I will cover the first 9 criteria.

Criteria 1: Establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of all ākonga.
Maintaining a professional relationship focused on learning has become a lot easier using Social Media. I have been able to share resources found online with colleagues in real time without having to be next them.

Students are able to present their learning in different ways. As an example, I set up a hopscotch activity focusing on the effects of plastic. Children could pick and chose what they wanted to do and present their learning in different formats. Some activities were fixed on presenting format, but ultimately if a child wanted to do a specific job and present it in another way they could.

This student has decided to present her learning as a blog post.

This student has decided to present his learning as a Google Slide.













To provide support for other teachers I have taken the time to sit with them and show how to organise learning around certain tools and resources e.g using Kiwi Kids News as an activity for a group of children with limited devices.

Criteria 2: Demonstrate commitment to promoting the well-being of ākonga.

Having strong relationships and having knowledge about them is really beneficial. To demonstrate well being for akonga I have found it important to talk to the students, ask them about their weekend, what their interests are, where their extended whanau live, what they want to be when they're older etc. I have also found it's important to set expectations on them and to make sure they are clear, this will set them up to succeed in your classroom. On a daily basis I'll talk to the children about their weekend, how their parents and grandparents are, if they saw something in particular show on TV,  how their game or recital went etc. I use this information when we're learning, especially if they can't make connections e.g problem solving questions for maths. 

Criteria 3: Demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa / New Zealand

Allowing students to bring their culture, knowledge and unique selves into the classroom is important. Sometimes it can be difficult to engage some Maori and Pacific students into their learning but giving them some choice can help. Kiwi Kids News is a good example of allowing them read about current events that might interest them. Topics will vary and engage in discussion about an article, which might not be something they do at home. Also children have the chance to embrace the maori culture through the Kapa Haka group (which I lead). Virtues such as whakawhanungatanga and ako are expressed.

Criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice.
There are several ways in which ongoing professional development is happening:

I have committed my time to professional development this year pursuing a Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Practice through Unitech and Mindlab and a Certificate in Te Ara Maori Level 2. It has been incredible for my own personal and professional growth, but has been difficult for my personal life. Having a supportive whanau is imperative.

I am constantly reading articles that are sent to my Home Page on Facebook. I really enjoy these as it is constantly giving me insight to practices outside of my school. You also have access to a wide range of articles.

Criteria 5: Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning
Currently at our school, my team is the only team looking into 21st Century Learning Practices and are asked for advice on a regular basis. Things that I do in terms of demonstrating leadership is by assisting colleagues in other teams by giving them ideas on how to incorporate ICT into their practice and how to use Google Docs for planning and sharing documents. 


Criteria 6: Conceptualise, plan, and implement an appropriate learning programme.

This year our senior team looked into 21st Century Learning Practices as a way to enhance the children's learning. To assist with planning and implementing an appropriate learning program, Mindlab and our Team Leader gave us the tools and resources to support this. As an example, BYOD was implemented to assist with accessing information and encourage key competencies. The Literacy 5 was implemented to encourage self directed learning in a literacy tumble. I have found these two programs have created an environment where children can collaborate, discuss content, share information and increase motivation. As apart of a unit that I was teaching that linked to empathy and problem solving, children were asked to gain knowledge and share about Nepal. After the earthquakes the children were really keen to learn about the country. I provided videos, articles and created quizzes to promote learning around this. Children were able to take this information and embed it into another project that we were working on. 

-Here is a picture of a quiz on Nepal embedded into our class blog.









Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment.

In my classroom the furniture is placed in position to promote collaboration and individual work. In these pictures presented we used Padlet as the tool to brainstorm our prior knowledge on Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming. When I put this up on the big screen and told the children that they needed to sit where they could see the screen, they immediately began to work together to position the tables to form a conference table to collaborate. This is just one of many ways I promote a collaborative environment for my class. We use tools such as Kahoot to use a formative assessment tool and the kids are highly engaged, children move furniture to fit their learning needs and are encouraged to use subject experts when stuck.

Here is a picture of student who prefers to work independently.

Criteria 8: Demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn.

When teaching a unit on Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases I knew that not too many children would have much prior knowledge around this topic. As I was going through the content to integrate it into the reading program I realised only the top reading group might have the ability to grasp the concepts in the School Journal articles and videos. So to organise ideas I used graphic organisers, this helped children extract main pieces of information e.g a reading group were asked to organise the water cycle into a 'Cycle of Events' organiser to show they understood the concept. During the reading session, because of the content being quite heavy, we read and focused on the first two paragraphs and discussed them. This allowed the children to just focus on one idea and ask specific questions. This was really effective as groups were able to work at a slower pace to understand content. As we worked through the text over the course of 3 weeks graphic organisers were used to extract and organise information to gain a deeper understanding.

As mentioned above, the Daily 5 is used to provide children with choice and also allows them to work at their pace. Children are asked to be responsible for their learning and are held accountable by me. The children have become a lot better at managing themselves by driving their own learning. 

Criteria 9: Respond effectively to the diverse and cultural experiences and the varied strengths, interests, and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga

Flipped learning is a new model I've used this year to assist with children's self directed learning. Here is an example of a video teaching children about how to structure narrative writing. 

Other online tools such as Kahoot and Powtoons are used to engage children with their learning and graphic organisers used to assist with children who need to organise their ideas before applying them.

Plan and Justify Two Main Goals

Next year I am moving to a new school. The school has a diverse demographic, with a big population of Maori and Pacific Island students

Goal One:
Create an online learning community
Creating a teaching community online that would be collegial, caring, interactive and social. A great way to help one another.  

Step One: Share my vision of creating and online community that will enhance our practice and benefit the children. Include teachers from current school, new school and teachers within the cluster.

Step Two: Encourage a cluster of teachers to join Twitter if they haven't already. Use Twitter as a model for sharing resources, articles and learning using a hastag (#).

Step Three: Send bi-weekly emails to teachers to encourage them to keep sharing their work and resources.

Goal Two:

Work towards teaching 21st century learning skills within the curriculum

Working with children who come from a low demographic area it is more important that they learn how to learn. This is what I'm passionate about and really keen to get started.

Step One: In the planning phase before term one begins, I will create a model of a learning process for the children and plan to teach that process through a variety of learning activities that incorporate the curriculum subjects.

Step Two: The inquiry topic will be the driving force behind the activities. Using a variety of graphic organisers, children will learn how to organise, evaluate and synthesis information which leads onto how to ask questions and gaining more prior knowledge. This process allows the children to critically think and problem solve. We would then look at how to apply our knowledge whether it be creating a presentation to share with an audience, to creating social action. 

Step Three: Children will then be asked to create a chart (model) on their learning process which will be the basis of how to learn.

Step Four: When the children understand this learning process we would then apply it to other learning e.g branching off on the inquiry topic or Genius Hour

Activity 9: Cultural Responsiveness in Practice

Russell Bishop (Bishop & Berryman, 2009) said that what is good for all students is not necessarily good for maori, but what is good for maori is good for all students. As a maori learner, school was difficult. Unable to make connections to what I was learning made me feel inadequate. At Intermediate I had a teacher who we called Whaia Erina. Not only did she introduce waiata to us, she also displayed a belief in my abilities that no one ever had, even my own parents. This was the first time I felt the drive and need to achieve academically. Throughout the rest of my schooling life was difficult but the unending faith towards what I was capable of from teachers never stopped.

I believe that being cultural responsive is important. Children have a right to feel safe in the classroom and should be able to bring with them their identities. One of the key competencies in the curriculum is 'Making Connections'. As I've experienced as a teacher and a learner, if the learner can't connect with the content, they find it difficult to learn. To support Bishops notion of student's learning, we ask our Maori and Pacific students to learn content that have no meaning to them and in a way that doesn't suit their learning styles e.g Maori and Pacific students benefit from visual and kinaesthetic learning.

In the school I'm currently at, there isn't a lot of diversity. With that bring challenges around what the community demand of their children and what they learn.

School-wide activities
Mike Hogan discusses his schools journey around becoming more culturally responsive. He mentions that he felt that his school was being 'tokenistic' as opposed to being culturally responsive (Edtalks, 2012). Currently I am leading the school Kapa Haka group. I feel that we're practising 'tokenism' in the sense that we are doing it to tick a box. We practise for 20 minutes on a Friday afternoon, 2:30-2:50. Maori as a language is only being taught as a custom to greet someone. With this evidence I see, there is a lot to improve on in terms of being culturally responsive. To improve the cultural responsiveness across school wide activities I would seek P.D for staff to implement the Curriculum Maori lesson plans. I would also allow for release time for a teacher to go into classrooms to support and drive this P.D. This teacher with release time would also be released for the Kapa Haka group, finding resources, learning new songs etc.

Learning activities
To cater to the diversity in my class I consider the knowledge that the different children bring. When planning and assessing I also think about the different needs of the children. Here are some examples of how I practice cultural responsiveness in my class:

• Maths context questions: connecting children's culture and interests into the problem solving questions.
• When teaching maths concepts I try to teach the children a process to help organise their thinking. I adapt the process to the children's needs e.g drawing diagrams instead of drawing equations in a linear fashion.
• When looking at concepts during a guided reading and writing session sometimes I will connect the concept to their lives using my knowledge of their culture. 
• Building strong relationships with those who feel inadequate with classwork. Showing faith and let them know that I believe in them.

I apply these for all children, not just Maori and Pacific. 

References

Bishop, R., & Berryman, M. (2009). The Te Kotahitanga effective teaching profile. Set: Research Information for Teachers. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press

Edtalks.(2012, May 30). Mike Hogan: Culturally responsive practice in a mainstream school. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/43097812