You're my favourite class, too

This year our school implemented a programme to support students in reaching Merit or Excellence endorsements in NCEA. Teachers mentor small groups, providing them with support in the form of meetings, shared documents, study calendars and conversation.  This past week I surveyed students and parents. I wanted to find out from students how proactive they were being in reaching their goals, including their study habits, planning, contact with mentors and conversations with other teachers. A couple of things stood out - a number of students are not aware of how they are tracking towards an endorsement, meaning that they are not keeping track of their credits; and a number have yet to set up a study plan, just two weeks out from important school exams. This reinforces what I had suspected based on my experiences with my own group, where I have struggled to get students to meetings or even to respond to emails: our students are still struggling to manage themselves at critical...

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit three Auckland schools as part of the Big River Learning and Change Network. This was my first chance to see what a modern teaching environment looks and feels like; my school was built in the 1920s and subsequent expansions strongly reflect the time periods they are built in, so the flowing open plans were quite a contrast. I like to challenge myself with my teaching. I take ideas from Twitter, Pinterest and (perhaps) more serious sources and try to use these in my classes as I can. However, the timetable and curriculum approach that Hobsonville Point Secondary School  utilises is far beyond what I envisaged for my classroom. This is undoubtedly because any changes I make to my classroom practice is realistically confined to this space, whereas HPSS has been built through new teaching theories and practices and there is a whole school philosophy. The challenge that I (and my school) face is taking the 21st ideas used by ...

I've been inspired by the 30 Goals Challenge , which encourages teachers to accomplish small goals in the process of becoming even better teachers. The challenge has been going since 2010, and the goals I'm pursuing are dated from 2012 - hopefully there will be a new set for 2013! The first challenge is to set a Me Manifesto  which outlines what you believe about learning and the ideals you want to have in the classroom. As part of my research into Me Manifestos I came across examples using Muzy ( Their Future blog) , Pixton ( janet's abruzzo edublog ) and Glogster ( Aspiring to Higher Tech ). I've never used any of these programs before so set myself the additional challenge of creating my manifesto using each of these formats. Me Manifesto My four main focuses as a teacher are: 1. The students are the most important in the classroom. My job is to help them to learn. Their families are an integral part of the learning triangle (school, family, student) and t...

Last year I experimented with using Google Docs for student tracking and goal setting. Each student in the class had their own 'progress chart' set up as a shared document between them and myself. It had term by term goal setting, reflections and feedback, and I entered essay, test and exam results so that they could keep track of their progress in the subject. It had great advantages. I didn't have to keep track of 28 pieces of paper for one. Students could access the material at home (ostensibly so they could also show their parents, who had been told about the chart through email), or whenever they happened to be in the computer lab. They could quickly see how their results stacked up (and it was amazing how often they forgot what they had gotten for an essay), and tally credits. On the not so good side, it took a bit of work to keep up to date and so wasn't actually up to date a lot of the time. Students didn't always constructively reflect on their efforts ...

The last couple of weeks of term means finding ways of surviving. Not only am I tired, but my students are both tired and wondering why they have to work when school is nearly finished. They've had their exams and they know that there is no other assessment to do. Westerns I've developed two new units to keep the kids engaged. My Year 10s are working through a Western study. this genre study explores how Western conventions are used in a range of texts. Ideally (ie, if I had time), this would include a novel extract, short story and comic strip, but as we are so very close to the end, I'm focusing on film. After learning about what to expect in a Western, we watched extracts from two classic Western films ( Stagecoach  and High Noon ). Students used the knowledge they gained from this to assess how Rango is a Western (not too hard once they got passed the hero being a chameleon). Finally,we've just started the Coen brother's adaptation of True Grit . A couple...

I love my Year 10 class. They are full of charisma, opinions, personality and energy. But they hated poetry. I love poetry. I love how writers cleverly manipulate language to create the most expressive phrases and show me the world from entirely new perspectives. We have great (southern) New Zealand poets, and I thought I was introducing them to the students in interesting ways. They didn't think so. Brian Turner's 'Pebbles' seems to me both a commentary on the changing environment, as well insight into a different sense of belonging and perspective: 'We belong in water / untroubled by envy for anything / born to live in the loneliness of air'. I got the students to think about their own knowledge of rivers, and to choose their own interpretation of rivers.We followed this up with a brief comparison with another Turner river poem, 'Audible'. They were able to complete sentences, but as for independent thinking, well... For 'Deep River Talk' by ...

With internal exams finished, marked and entered, I've been turning my attentions to getting my students through their BIG exams at the end of the year. While I'm pleased with the pass rates, I know there's heaps of room to lift more of my students' performances into the Merit and Excellence range. I believe that we can do it! First up (and something I'm really proud of), I've been working hard to create a revision booklet* which covers the key skills that the Year 11s will need to master. These are writing insightful literary essays and reading and interpreting unfamiliar texts. I've found some resources online (and acknowledged these!) but most of the activities I've developed myself. I'm really emphasising the importance of personal voice. I want my kids to write responses which show that they have thought about, learned from and engaged in the texts we have studied. I don't want my class to parrot things we have done in class, and alt...