Teaching As Inquiry Planning

Teaching as Inquiry Planning

Teacher Sandra Spekreijse Class: Room 1 School Waikuku Date: Term 1& 2

In completing this ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ cycle, teachers aim to meet the Ministry of Education ICT cluster goals of increasing the capability of:

·  Students to become successful digital citizens;

·  Teachers to integrate e-learning effectively into their practice creating an innovative and exciting learning environment for all students.

Step 1: Goal setting

(Identify the desired goals from the following ‘Effective pedagogies’, by highlighting an e-learning goal and one other goal.)

Effective teachers create a supportive learning environment
●  Treat and interact with students in a positive, respectful way, considerate of differences
●  Invite family and whänau to be involved in students’ learning
●  Use e-learning to support individual learning needs, cultural diversity and developmental differences
●  Use positive and non-confrontational classroom management strategies
Effective teachers encourage reflective thought and action
●  Have well planned and clear learning goals and communicate/negotiate these with students
●  Provide feedback and feedforward against learning intentions and success criteria
●  Encourage students to reflect on their learning goals and to identify what they should do in the future
●  Use e-learning tools for inquiry and critical reflection
Effective teachers enhance the relevance of new learning
●  Co-construct learning intentions and success criteria with students
●  Encourage students to explain what they are learning and why
●  Accommodate different learning preferences and levels of competency of their students
●  Use e-learning to make connections, enter and explore new learning environments
Effective teachers facilitate shared learning
●  Create opportunities for students to become experts, teaching others
●  Encourage co-operative learning in classroom groups, characterised by positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, individual and group reflection, small group skills, and face-to-face interaction.
●  Build good relationships with whanau and the wider school community to advance learning
●  Use e-learning to facilitate shared learning, connecting with communities that extend beyond the classroom
Effective teachers make connections to prior learning and experience
●  Support student learning through acknowledging and using students’ prior knowledge and experiences
●  Relate learning to students’ everyday lives
●  Negotiate learning contexts and content with students that are culturally responsive to the learner
●  Use e-learning to maximise use of learning time, resources and opportunities
Effective teachers provide sufficient opportunities to learn
●  Encourage students to practise what they have learnt over a period of time and in a variety of contexts
●  Plan for students to transfer their learning across learning areas, levels of competency, social and cultural settings
●  Use a variety of strategies targeted to specific learning purposes and needs
●  Use e-learning to assist students to engage with, practice and transfer learning

© eTime 2010. All rights reserved

Acknowledge/adapted from ‘Effective Pedagogy’ NZ Curriculum, Te Kötahitanga, ‘Principles’ NZ Curriculum

Step 2: Identify Strategies

What strategies will I use to help my students … Use e-learning to assist students to engage with, practice and transfer learning.

I am going to use Ultranet as a basis of my learning tracking and setting of objectives. I will work with the trainers to learn the basics of Ultranet. From there, I will be setting up a set of class pages to help children focus on the goals of our learning, to share learning and activities completed, and to reflect and evaluate their own personal learning. I am aware that self-assessing of grades for students is a huge factor in their progress according to Hattie’s research.

Weekly objectives and task sheets will be put on our class pages. They will be the basis of the “Anticipation” part of our day – at the start of every day and at the start of each lesson. They will also be what we reflect on during our “Evaluation” sessions. Objectives will be smart and in children speak. Children will be able to log on at home to review their own work and make comments on their work and the work of others.

Class sub-pages will include - maths, phonics, topic, reading, what’s new and a celebration page to share our successes. Each curriculum page will have activities for children to complete in class and at home – based on our current learning goals and their own specific or group needs. Children will be taught during class curriculum times how to use the activities and how to log on. We will use a tuakana/teina system so that the more capable and older students can help our younger ones access the website. We will also use our Year 8 buddies.

Once our pages are underway, we will also start a reflective learning blog for our class to help us to reflect on our learning and set next step goals.

●  What strategies will I use to help my students... Invite family and whänau to be involved in students’ learning.

We will be holding regular parent/student workshops in class time so that parents can learn how to access our ultranet site and how to make comments, review work. It will be the children’s job to teach their parents the things they have learnt. The first of these is to be held at the end of the first term. They will then be held – at least one per term 2.

Parents will be given access to the Ultranet at home so they can continue to help and be involved in their child’s learning with the set activities available online.

Step 3: Gather Evidence and Reflection

What assessment approaches will I use to gather evidence to show increased opportunities for students to …

Ú  Children’s access records – how often are they going on and completing activities – taken from Ultranet logs.

Ú  Reflective comments on Ultranet site from parents and students.

Ú  Class assessments based on rubrics for maths, reading, writing and topic – self, peer and teacher

Ú  Interviews with children and parents.

Ú  Feedback from workshops

·  What happened as a result of my teaching actions? (What are the student outcomes?)

Term 1 – Children have been buzzing about using the computers for learning and seeing their work online. They are asking more often to go online and share their work. I have also noticed the following: -

Ú  Increased time on computers in my room and at home.

Ú  Children more readily adding comments to the work of others.

Ú  An increase in IT skills amongst children and parents

Ú  Very successful parent workshop with 70% attendance of families.

Ú  Children are now more readily able to discuss their learning – what their goal is for the lesson, how they have done against our goals, what their next step might be.

·  What are my next steps for teaching and learning?

Ú  Add further activities to the reading and maths pages.

Ú  Have children themselves typing more work directly onto the ultranet page.

Ú  Run another parent workshop.

Ú  Add a blog and teach children how to add an entry to reflect on their learning/next steps.

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