Well, it’s been a long year but I’ve finally been able to start looking at the data surrounding my Multimedia project idea from the start of the year. Better late than never, right?
Anyway, I found it went rather well with several students lifting their original grade and then gaining two other standards.
Due to my classroom being used for an important workshop for the year 12s my Year 11 class was moved to the drama room for period one on Wednesday morning. It was something that I had requested as I was moving onto Creative Writing and wanted to get my students out of their comfort zone. I was also nervous because I was about to have an observation and, as any teacher knows, observations can be nerve wracking.
Read MoreI’m trying something new with some of my senior classes this year. By new, I mean creative…I guess.
What I mean is that I am attempting to do a combined project with some of my senior English classes. I am going to use my Year 11 Advanced class as an example.
In the past I have taught each standard separately and, more often that I’d like to admit, I have expected written responses or essays when approaching the following standards:
1.11 Close Scene Analysis
1.5 Formal Writing
Read MoreIt doesn’t seem possible that 2018 is nearing an end. Term 4 is slowly starting to wind down but, as a teacher, I still have a lot of work to do.
For the first time in my teaching career I am still marking senior work – the last day for us to load grades is this Friday. That is our cut off – and so I’m making list after list while I try and finish marking essays that were over due.
Then there is all the behind the scenes stuff that most people might not see.
Read MoreContinuing from my last post we have been given some guiding questions with regard to sharing what we’ve found. I am going to use these questions as a way to reflect on what I’ve found so far.
What made you decide to try that activity/approach?
As I outlined briefly in my last post I have been trying to find a way to provide good feedback to my students on there written work. In English, there is a fine line between good feedback and too much feedback. Too much feedback can result in students feeling overwhelmed and it can also impact the authenticity of the students work.
It’s 2018 and, although I’m still on summer break, I’m already thinking about what I want to accomplish and what I want my students to accomplish this year.
One of my main focuses is to improve writing – specifically creative writing – but writing and editing in general. Ideas wise my students are normally pretty good. They can see the big picture but they struggle when it comes to incorporating their ideas into their writing.
Although my classes are not quite set in stone yet I have a rough idea of what my focus for term one is going to be.
Although this is subject to change my classes are looking a little like this:
9ENG (9English) 10APEX 1ENA 2ENG 3ENI
I’ve got two advanced classes – which might seem easy but from experience I’ve found them to be the more difficult and it’s the first time I’ve had two “strong” classes. The others will definitely have a range of abilities so differentiation will be another strong focus for my teaching.
“COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.”
-Etienne Wenger, Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge
Hello dear readers,
Let’s talk about communities of practice. If we refer to Wenger’s quote above we immediately see that a community of practice (CoP) is simply a group of people who have similar ideas or goals with regard to a specific topic or idea who meet regularly to foster and build on their knowledge. The first thing that comes to mind is a Guild or Dungeons and Dragons group but this is mainly due to my nerdy nature. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realised that I have been, and currently are, part of numerous CoPs in a professional capacity, not just a nerdy capacity. The difference is that according to Wenger again CoP must have the following three elements otherwise it is just a community:
As part of Mindlab we had to plan a Teaching as Inquiry project which was great as I focused around the concept of Growth Mindset along with using Education Perfect.
You can read my assignment here.
My basic idea was to use Education Perfect as a way to strengthen unfamiliar text knowledge and build on the students understanding of Growth Mindset.
So far I have seen an uptake in the use of Education Perfect with my Year 12s – this is purely due to the fact that they have been using it as a starter in my class before moving onto research.
Some of my Year 11s have dabbled with it but I need to have a more focused approach to that.
So, for now, it’s just a matter of keeping an eye their progress via Education Perfect.
If I am honest, I am not entirely pleased with how my first TAI went. Of course there were positives. The structured nature of the do nows worked really well with my class and the students are starting to use some of the new vocab words in everyday conversation. A brilliant example of that happened today in my drama class of all places. I teach year ten drama as well as year ten English so there are some students who are in both classes. One of my students commented on how I was sitting and said I looked like a “contortionist” which was a word from last week’s vocab list.
I still need to re test the students and see if the do nows have had a significant effect on my students. This will involve doing another writing test but I do want to give them time to study some of the words.
Using the guiding questions from our TAI Booklet this is how my inquiry progressed…
1. How am I infusing my ideas into my classroom practice?
Mainly through discussion and through consistency. I have been reading around the importance of Do Nows and making sure that I stick to the routine. By having the routine in place it gives me more time to float around the class and see students who aren’t doing too well. It also gives me an indication on who is taking this seriously. I can see students how haven’t written anything and those who have completed and moved onto the next task.
2. What am I learning from monitoring student outcomes?
I am learning that there are some students who struggle with simple concepts and this has allowed me to narrow my classroom teaching focus. A great example was when students struggled with apostrophes with regard to one of the Do Nows and that gave me the opportunity to have a lesson that focused on that.
I am also able to see how students are challenging themselves with their vocab – even when they are using the words in the wrong context it is great to see them expanding their vocabulary.
3. What are the next steps I need to take? (Research, resources, activities)
My current next steps involved re-testing with regard to the writing test at the start of the year.
I also want to do some more research about how focusing on vocabulary and reading can improve students writing. I want to also bring in the writing frame in order to strengthen their writing further.
The Caffeinated Teacher 