Oberservation

Today I was invited to attend a cooking lesson with the Year 8's. This was such an awesome lesson to observe as it was on Google Meet. Each of the students were cooking in their kitchens at home and were using what they had to make pasta and a sauce from scratch. This meant no two pasta dishes would look the same as they were made up of different ingredients.

It was amazing to see that the students made adaptions to their recipes in order to produce a variation of pasta. Mrs Heka ensured to give tips to the students as they cooked and checked on their progress. She consistently talked each student through the recipe. It was great to see so many interacting and participating, including Mrs Anderson and Miss Linda. I felt as if this lesson went extremely well and it was a fantastic way to end the term.

Teacher Inquiry

Due to lockdown I have made the decision to tie off my Teacher Inquiry. I have done this as I believe reconnecting with my students is more important after such a crazy and uncertain term. When we get back to school my main goal will be taking my classroom back and building those relationships with my students. I will be continuing to practise using learning intentions in all of my teaching and consistently revert back to these. 

Here is a summary of my Teacher Inquiry so far:

Deliberate Acts of Teaching

Deliberate Acts of Teaching or DATs are instructional strategies that aid teachers as tools for effective practice. There are seven DATs which are broken into modelling, prompting, questioning, giving feedback, telling, explaining, and directing.

Modelling encompasses showing the learners how to carry out a task and thinking aloud to make it "visual". This portrays what the final product is and the process in getting to that. Often a combination of modelling and other instructional strategies are effective as they can be used in conjunction with one another. I could use modelling in most of my teaching alongside other strategies in order to demonstrate the process and portray the expected outcome. 

Prompting is all about encouraging learners to use their prior knowledge to make connections and build one's confidence in their abilities. A prompt is often directed as a question and allows "wait time" to develop their ideas and express them. 

Questioning is a large part of teaching as it is crucial to literacy and numeracy. Questions can be direct or allow for more thought and personal perspective. They help develop learners' comprehension and understanding of the task at hand. By using questioning around student reflection I will be able to understand the areas each student needs improvement on.

Giving feedback is most effective when it relates to specific learning goals. The purpose for giving feedback is to affirm, inform and guide future learning. Giving feedback helps the learner to reflect on the work they have provided with prompts. Giving feedback is used every day in the classroom and is often done autonomously.

Telling is defined as giving the learner the knowledge to fill a gap in order to move on with their learning. It is giving them an unknown word or topic. This helps when it comes to specific language and topics. Giving students text specific language or topics to write about is one of the most effective ways to engage learners with little to no background knowledge of the task.

Explaining is an extension of telling. It is going into specific detail regarding topics or tasks. This builds confidence in the learners when completing the task at hand. Explanations are very verbally explicit. Explanations help learners develop their own understanding. Explaining is a large part of teaching as it is used every day in the classroom.

The last strategy is directing. Simply put, this is giving instructions for learners to follow. It is used deliberately and purposefully to aide learners.

Week 5-7 Reflection

 Week 5 was my first full week of teaching and Google Meets. I met my class every day from 9:30-9:50 to explain their daily tasks and see how everyone was. We started with about 4 students and by Friday we saw a few more during our daily meets. 

The students loved having Google Meets every morning as it gave them an opportunity to their friends and myself face-to-face. They were all very happy to see their friends and myself which was lovely to see.

After week 5 I made a few changes to my online teaching. One of the main things I changed was only having whole class Google Meets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I set aside Tuesday and Thursday as optional Google Meets for those who needed extra help. So far I have a good amount of learners attending for extra help. This has given them an opportunity to ask any questions and allows us to talk through the work in more detail if needed. This has meant I've received a lot more completed work throughout the week which is great.

I also am opening the Meet early at 9:20am to allow the students to have a chance to chat and communicate face-to-face with their peers. More learners have been attending earlier in order to talk with their friends which is great.

Another change I have made is playing a game at the start of everyone Google Meet. I have included a Kahoot for the start of every Meet. This has gained a lot of interest and increased the amount of learners attending. We have made it a daily competition to win the Kahoot which they love.

So far, distance learning is going extremely well. I am enjoying my daily Google Meets and emails with the students.

Lockdown Reflection

It was announced that we were going into a Level 4 Lockdown on Tuesday afternoon. This came as a sudden shock but was also inevitable due to the state of the rest of the world. I had only gone through one previous Lockdown and I started to become anxious once again. 

It was decided that we would continue with the work we had started in for the week and this would allow the teachers time to get themselves organised for Distance Learning. The links to continue this work was placed on a new set of slides called Distance Learning. 

During the next few days I had a lot of support from my team leader. She walked me through how to work Google Meet and what to say. This run through made me feel a lot more confident when it came around to Monday morning.

I felt as though I was a lot more prepared for this Level 4 Lockdown than I was previously due to going through it already and the persistent support from my team leader.

Here are the lockdown slides for my class.