Dialogue

Where am I with developing dialogic teaching in my classroom? How well do I think I am at getting my students to do the "heavy" lifting of classroom talk? 
I have made a start with teaching dialogue last term. I am at the beginning stages of getting my students to do the heavy lifting.

PLD with Susan:
What stood out for me:
The order of introducing things - start with unpacking Talanoa, then Talk Moves and lastly Discussion Rules.
Be very explicit when teaching above mentioned. Make learning visible with posters, on tables, digital etc.
IRE is good for revision but we are moving away from it as we want to empower the students to take the lead in their learning. Talk moves help learning and has been proven in research as the best way to accelerate students learning.

Teach your students that when participating in talk activities, it is a safe zone, everybody is listened to and everybody's opinions count. Students should feel like they are heard and there is no right or wrong answer. When we ask questions, we are challenging the idea, not the person.

It is important to introduce your goal at the start or the lesson. Just state it. No need to get to the goal through questions.

To encourage everybody to participate, you could have talk chips (2), and you are only allowed to talk if you pay a chip. Or you have a sticky note with your name on, give yourself a tick when you participated. Teachers take these sticky notes in to make it valuable.

Another cool idea is that while early finishers are finished reading their text and waiting for the others to finish, they can write questions about the text on a whiteboard to ask the rest of the group when everybody is finished.

What are my goals for this term? 
Introducing Talanoa - teaching each aspect of it in short powerful lessons.
Focussing on easy strategies such as Think, Pair, Share.
Try and use as many of the interactive pedagogical strategies as possible to create opportunities

PES Data meeting

Today we had the opportunity to look at our recent assessment data. Michelle showed us how to navigate on NZCER and the different reports we can look at. I found this really helpful, especially looking at where the gaps are for each year level compared to the norm.

Maths:
Year 6 Gaps: Fractions, measurement, frequency, statistics
Year 5 Gaps: Statistics, Time, Measurement, Multiplication
Year 4 Gaps: Measurement, money, calendar, probability, equal sharing, fractions.

So what:
My next steps will be:
- Identify target students and really focus on the gaps identified.
- Teach strand in context, using a lot of materials.
- Look at the classroom on air teachers for examples of how students can practice their maths digitally.
- When students are with the teacher, they should be getting new learning.
- Look at ALL the NZ Numeracy development project books. 
- Rethink my planning for Maths. Do an inquiry on different ways that students can demonstrate their understanding of their maths.
- Don't teach what the students can already do.

Reading:
Looking at our reading comprehension data, I noticed that our students struggle with inferencing especially in small parts of a text.

So we identified target students:
Maths: Student I is at EL2 (Early Level 2) and needs to be at EL3.
Reading: Student N is at PTEL3 and needs to be at L3.
Writing: Student K is at PTL2 and needs to be at EL3,

So what:
- Collect data for target students.
- Plan according to gap analysis for the next 3 weeks.
- Keep track of the shifts they are making.

Why did I become a teacher?

This is the start of my journey to reinvestigate as to why I became a teacher. I could say it was because I wanted to work with kids, but although this might have some truth, it can't really be my why, because I could have then become a pediatrician, or a speech therapist. It's not for the salary, as we all know teachers salary is not great. It's not for the holidays, because most holidays I sit and prepare and plan for the next term. What is my WHY?

I don't know what drove me to become a teacher, but I'm hoping to backtrack my life as a teacher and find the point where I decided this is what I wanted to do. 

What is motivating me to go back to school every day, regardless of students being rude, despite me being tired and working long hours to prepare, despite my budget never working out...

This video brought tears to my eyes...why? Because it took one teacher to see the potential in a child, that other teachers deemed as naughty. This teacher gave this little boy a purpose to live and pointed him in a direction that made him famous. 

Is this my why? I don't know why this video touched my heartstrings, all I know is that I have always said that I want to mean something to somebody. 

Is this enough reason to be a teacher? My search will continue as I think it's a lot more complicated as that. I think there are many things in your life that contribute to the decisions you make. And just to say you like working with kids, does not seem to be a good enough reason. 

Enjoy the video.

Te Whai Toi Tangata Workshops

I have had the privilege to attend the Twilight Middle Leaders workshop presented by David Bradford. It was a full-on session with lots of practical ideas and 
guidance as to how to be a good leader. 

Here are some of the main points that stood out for me: 
- Allow people to talk - fairness is key. Don't share war stories. 
- If you go into a debate too soon, it is the loudest person that is heard first. 
- Start with dialogue, before discussion and/or debate. 
- The foundation for how we communicate is the school culture will influence
how we communicate. What are our shared understandings, the ways in which 
we engage e.g. giving the agenda out in advance. Riding the boundary - 
knowing when to do what - asking things like what is a priority - not just 
accepting things thrown at you. 
- Having a professional agency - where there are restorative practices and difficult
conversations. 
If colleagues are not doing what they are asked, start a conversation like this e.g.
"We've had this conversation before..." I have to ensure that I have my dates and 
data aligned, and have my facts straight. Work through the issue. If you don't, 
come to an agreement, shake hands and park things. 

This linked in with my initial appraisal meeting. My goals as a leader this year is to 
have a bank of tools so that I can make informed decisions about the best course of
action. 

So what:
I have to filter when colleagues ask me for help, is this something they can solve themselves, or is it something I need to help them with.
Research tools and put them to practice. Test and try.
Learn to prioritize in order to make deadlines.

TLIF Planning Day

This week I had the opportunity to spend a day playing for my term 1 science lessons. It was good to do it with Sam that is new to TLIF, as I was explaining things to him, I felt like I was gaining a better understanding as well.

Up until now, I have done short quick lessons using Explorify, but focussing on Talanaoa, especially listening part to each. Some students are great at sharing their ideas, but they are not so great at listening to others ideas. My concern is my ESOL students that are finding this really hard. What I need to remember is to say to them that they are allowed to speak in their mother tongue.

The first few times I tried Think, Pair, Share where my students had to share what their buddy said. I noticed that they struggled to remember what their buddy said or talked about. So then I tried the Think, Write Share strategy and that went a lot better. It seems that having to write things down made them listen better and ask their buddies to repeat if they could not remember what to write.

So I wanted to build on that. I am still keeping the content of the lessons low and fun, but trying to gradually increase the dialogue strategies. This term I would like to continue with my teacher goal being Time to think and also introduce Say more. I ensured that I wrote my talk moves in my planning so that I can look at it during my lessons.
My Lesson Plan

I am looking forward to next week when I will teach these lessons.