Sally Avern's Professional Journey

What is happening? Using quick writes and fluency for my writing target students is great, but what can I do that will see more accelerated progress in all of my target students across the 3 subjects. If I look critically at what I am currently doing. It is nothing. I am trying some things. But it is not targeted and not enough.  I am seeing shift in my students based on data but I need to push them.  So: what can I do? Writing: Making sure I am sticking to my plan from my TAI. Ensure I am using the quick writes that work for the needs of my students. The quick sentence practice to get fluency at the stage is where they are at. (See TAI for this). Maths: To meet the needs of my target maths learners I am going to do 15 mins of SPRING into Maths for them at the start of every lesson.  While the other students are doing their warm up. I can do SPRING. It is a wonderful resource that is proven to boost learning in the area needed. So why am I not using it?  Th...

I have gone back to the beginning of the Inquiry cycle. The oral language activities have been working to help the students to understand the content at a deeper level and contribute to the lessons in a more interactive way. Now I need to work out what is next. I looked at their work and found my next 'Big Bang'. Soldier Brooklyn Stephone Maile Wiremu     Bronson What is happening? The students are now planning with many details and using those plans to organise sentences into paragraphs most of the time. By using quick writes and simple structured activities, I tested this out. They found the use of structure and vocabulary very easy, as well as articulating their ideas within a group and coming up with ideas. These students are able to generate ideas and build up a plan that will help them write. They are learning the different structures of things. Something that they all lack to varying degrees is the ability to consistently create sen...

What is happening and why? After scanning my students for what their needs were I found out that I needed to facilitate Literacy learning in a group of Ell students. They are just below the expected level in all 3 main curriculum strands and so I needed to find out what it was that they were struggling with. By looking at the assessment data that I have gathered it confiremed they are all still just under, but that the effort put in is not the problem. I though perhaps for one of them it may have been lazyness- in the last few weeks though I had changed a few things to make them a bit clearer and made instructions more explicit for everyone in class. This has changed the attitude of some of my students. They are now excited to do things and help others- although this is a positive, it debunks my theory for those couple of students. I know the work is al their level as I can see them do it with a little explanation. But they are struggling to get things complete.  To help focu...

Focus Inquiry: I have chosen 3 disengaged boys in my class to focus my inquiry on. My evidence says: These gentlemen choose to do the bare minimum in most projects and do not see the need to learn lots of things we do in school. We are focusing our Inquiries on Science currently and I think this will be a great place for me to start to make change that can filter into my other subjects. All three of these boys really dislike working on things they think are not useful. They all hate talking in videos that are put online. I have asked them how they would like to present their work and they chose powtoon.  I wanted to see if they could make a decent powtoon in a short amount of time so, asked them to begin by just showing me they could do that. They completed a powtoon quite quickly and were eager to show it to me. They have all expressed interest in being able to choose some things we look into. They are all very adept at technology have have given me very detailed and ...

Susan took a lesson in my class, demonstrating an effective Science lesson.  The things I noticed were: -she introduced all knew CONCEPTS by relating them to her life or things students would understand. REALLY using their prior knowledge as the first port of call. Not talking about something and then relating it.  So they already had the building blocks assembled ready to go.  She explained every single new piece of vocab - using the same method of breaking up words that we are doing (yay!). Used the " I notice, I think, I wonder "  model, which will become the "I predict, observe explain.." when it gets more sophisticated. This is also the SC so it becomes how we measure our success everytime. It is also good for students because you can't predict without experience.  -she is messy , which is great. I am very clean- that's my way, but perhaps I put too much emphasis on staying clean sometimes. I have habits from before, but I need to rememb...

Sam's writing that we have been working on What is happening and why? My students are now producing more quality work. Their planning is improved now that I have worked on what else they need to be including in their writing and looking at it before the lessons in models with them. They are including details that are being selected more carefully and the work is becoming far more relevant. This is happening because the process of pulling apart models and then using that info to increase our writing is helping. What is not happening and why? Some of my students that need extra support are writing their story in a kind of list.  They have gotten the things they need in their intro/ body/conc and have included them but it doesn't really flow and I don't know how to make this better.  They have done what I have asked of them but now I need to know how to make it better. What am I going to do to change that? I am going to continue to use models, although more ...

  Inquiry/Goal: 2017: How can I improve the achievement in for my target students in Reading, Writing, Maths. This is the goal that I had from the beginning of term from writing observations.  My writing is going to be totally rearranged- to be more quick workshops and less long whole class stuff. Every lesson will now be a 15 min spot: 15 min workshop with 2 groups and then a 15 min spot to conference with a whole group. That way I really will get to conference with each child at least once a week. Ensure that we are fitting in to my writing 15 min workshop: A clear LI and SC, as well as: I do, We do, They do. Telling them they have a short amount of time to get it done. By just doing one small thing at a time this will be easy (as this is also what I do it reading and maths). Even when I am finding the ways things happen in an exemplar it should take way less time. But this can be a whole class activity). By doing things in a shorter, more specific way I will be...