UNLEASH

ED

Tag: teaching

  • Assessment Assessment Assessment

    In the current education climate, teachers are finding themselves with the responsibility of making OTJ’s (Overall Teacher Judgements) to report to parents about their child’s academic achievements, but the requirement to have evidence for these judgements. These are rarely school imposed, but instead come from the likes of the Ministry of Education or ERO, who continually ask “How do you know that?” type questions in relation to National Standards data, with schools only being able to say “because of the test results” as a viable and measurable response. Therefore schools are asking teachers to assess their students using a range of different school-set assessments.

    When I think of assessment, I usually can’t get pass the first three letters. It’s tedious, a bore, and whilst I enjoy analysing data from them, they are generally a waste of time when I consider what I could be doing – working alongside students, engaging with them, insipring them, and unleashing them.

    Chris Hipkins wrote an interesting post about Kiwi kids being over tested. He says:

    “Kiwi kids are being over-tested in schools… Let’s get teachers actually teaching, rather than testing to meet ‘reporting’ requirements. Kids deserve nothing less.“

    It has been an issue I’ve noticed increasingly in my career. Whether it’s because I’m male, or because it’s genuinely difficult to do, I find that to test the entire class, I have to shut down the learning programme and go into ‘Assessment Mode’. I find I don’t do any actual “Teaching” during this time, more just provide suitable ‘practise’ type activities for students to work on independently while I repeat 1-on-1 testing. I can’t do both ‘assessment’ and ‘teaching’ at the same time. As a school, we are now moving away from whole-class testing because it gives a very limited view of the student’s abilities. But this means that more 1-on-1 testing is required. This can take 3 to 4 days to complete with a class of 28.

    I wrote a reply to Chris’s post that expressed my ideas:

    “Thanks Chris for this! I’m a primary teacher and I’m constantly going into “assessment mode” to get through the entire class, that sometimes I wonder if I’m actually teaching them anything! By the time I’ve finished one lot of assessment, the next lot is on my desk!
    I feel that if I were able to work constantly alongside my students; encourage, inform, correct, show, teach, and build genuine learning relationships with them that I’d have a much better understanding of them as individuals and thus understand what they need in their learning. Any assessment should only be to confirm what teachers already know about their students.“

    And that’s just it. If teachers were given the trust that a) they deserve, and b) that is required to make OTJ’s in the first place, then I’m sure that there would be better outcomes for all students. We are told constantly that teaching and learning is all about relationships, but I fail to see how sitting tests and being assessed builds any kind of meaningful learning relationship between student and teacher. Secondly – spending time working with these students and teaching them will only enhance my ability to make a judgement.
    We are showed the assessment pyramid regularly in P.L.D (Professional Learning & Development), and it still staggers me that things remain the same. The assessment pyramid works a lot like the food pyramid, with the top tier representing assessment that, whilst is usable, should not make up the bulk of assessment used in the classroom. The bottom tier represents assessments like teacher observations, anecdotal notes, conversations, discussions, behaviours, troubles, problem solving, which should be use more frequently. Yet the rate of importance placed on assessments is opposite. Those that fit down the bottom of the pyramid which should happen daily and make up the majority of our assessment as teachers, is given the least importance, while those at the top which happen once or twice a year, are relied heavily on when schools are asked to “prove it” by Ministry or ERO officials.

    Chris finished up his post by replying with a disclaimer that he in no way intends for there to be NO form of assessment, just that “…there is too much testing for ‘compliance’ rather than to genuinely inform the next steps in a child’s learning.”. And I wholeheartedly agree. If all we are doing is relying on test results, weighing the pig time and time again, it’s not going to help the students. Further to this is the issues happening in education overseas.

    Teachers in the U.S. have the common core to teach and to contend with where the success of the students in their class directly relates to their school image. What has ended up happening? Teachers preparing students for the test; not actually teaching them.

    “My old Principal was so enamored by an awarded Title I school for bringing up test scores. Their formula? Test prep. We copied and plummeted.” – @TeacherReality

    It is highly tempting to give students practise at sitting tests, or answering similar questions over and over again, in order to boost their test score by being able to answer similar questions. But this in no way is why we became teachers. We didn’t become teachers to give test-like questions, show helpful formulas to solve test-like problems, or show them practise tests to help them pass a ‘real’ one. No. We became teachers because we wanted to impart knowledge, to inspire and to encourage, to challenge and watch students struggle in the hope that one day, one day, they would be able to apply themselves in life and succeed.

    As I write this, I find myself thinking; “I know all this, and say all this, but hypocritically find myself in class administering tests. Why!?”. Well, mostly this is because of the school having certain requirements (from external or internal pressures) of the teachers, as most schools around the country will have. So what can be done? What can I do as a teacher?

    These are genuine questions. I don’t have the answers. I have the ideal – which is to make observations and notes the most important and reliable source of information about student learning available. It means teaching and working alongside students. And so I must do that. I must make that a priority. I won’t be able to avoid the summative tests at all, but I can certainly try to maximise the time I do have to assess informally, and use these with more prominence than a one off test.

    How do you manage the balance of testing vs. teaching? What restrictions are placed on you by school or external sources in terms of assessment? How do you deal with that? What suggestions do you have for others? Please leave your comments below.

  • Google Docs for Collaboration

    Using Google docs to create documents is easy. It especially works well when a document is being created by a small team, with each user the document is shared with able to make suggestions or edits.

    Create a New Document

    Open up Google Docs (http://docs.google.com)
    Click on the plus + in the bottom right corner, or open an existing document.

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    Make sure that you change the name of the document! Click on the name of the document and rename it. Click OK to save the name change.GD-3

    Sharing Google Docs

    The first thing you will want to do (possibly) is share the document with others. To do this simply click on the blue share button in the top right corner.

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    Then just simply enter in the email addresses of those who you wish to share this document with.

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    You can change these permissions after you add them by clicking on the words below the “People” input box which says “Shared with……………”

    You are always the owner of any document that you create.
    Can edit are able to completely change the document with the same level as owners
    Can comment allows people to make comments on the side of the document, but are unable to change anything in the document itself.
    Can view allows people to see the document, but not make any comments or edits.

    Some common uses for these roles:

    Can edit: Another teacher that you are collaborating with.
    Can comment: Sharing a unit plan with another education professional who you want their feedback on. This may also include BLENZ Teachers, RTLB, Van Asch Teachers etc…
    Can view: Students who have logged on and you want to show them an assignment that they need to work on the Chromebooks with.

    Sharing is available for ANY Google Doc, not just the Unit Template.

    Commenting and Collaborating

    The great thing about Google Docs is the ability for others to contribute and edit a document. Doing this can take different forms depending on what you want to do.
    On the right hand side, below the share button is the style of ‘editing’ that you can use.

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    • Editing: This is for editing the document in place. This is the default editing mode and makes the changes to the document.
    • Suggesting: This is very useful when collaborating with others. Using this mode, users can make suggestions of additions or changes to the document. Upon doing this, it puts it in a different colour, and puts a ‘comment’ box to the right of the document. It also shows an “Accept” or “Reject” tick box system, in which the other collaborators can either accept the ‘suggestions’ or remove them. This is very useful as it shows up in a different colour, and also allows for draft entries, especially for when you’re not sure or want to put forward an idea for others.
    • Viewing: Quite simply, this removes all editing capabilities, and just allows you to read and print the document.

    GD-8In addition to this, if you have a “Can edit” or “Can comment” status when the document is shared with you, there is a Comments section next to the Share button.
    These allow you to leave a comment for the other editors and commentators that you have shared the document with, or with documents that others have shared with you.
    Comments can be applied to specific parts of the document by first selecting the text, and then clicking on Comments → Add a comment as above.

    Revision History

    The really important part of Google Docs is that it keeps EVERY change you make. It saves automatically, and keeps a record of those saves.

    This means that any changes you make are kept in a log.

    GD-9Click on See revision history. A window will show up on the right which will have a list of major changes and save dates. You can click through these to see the changes.
    If you need a more detailed view of specific changes, you can click on ‘Show more detailed revisions’.
    This will show just about every auto-save in the history of the document.
    Clicking on each revision will restore that version. This allows you to go back to a previous edit of the document, if you or any of your collaborators have made a mistake you wish to go back and remedy.

    Other than that, Google Docs pretty much operates as any other Word Processor. Feel free to explore the menu’s to find out more. Google’s Help menu has a lot of good information about how to use it.

  • The PaCT Tool

    There has been many thoughts around the PaCT tool and it’s use or non-use by New Zealand schools. New Zealand Educational Institute (union for primary teachers, NZEI) has warned against it, but they are bound to do so given the current political climate and their educational policies.

    Using the Progress and Consistency Tool
    However, what I don’t understand is that we (teachers, schools) have been saying that National Standards are not standard and there is a vast difference from school to school as to what is Below, At, or Above since it’s inception. The PaCT tool has been designed to moderate this very problem, as NZEI point out in their article, which is surely what teachers want – to make National Standards more reliable, rather than just doing it because we have to and working with rubbish data about our students.

    You cannot deny that Ms. Parata, however controversial, makes some sense in this article, and essentially makes the same points as I do above.

    It would seem that they (National Standards) are not going anywhere, with the National Government in power for another three years. I don’t particularly agree with the saying “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, but in this case, it would seem pointless fighting. Teachers, Parents, Principals,  Educators, Educationalists and Professors have been fighting them since their release in 2010. Despite this, the National Standards continued to be rolled out, and the government continues to roll out other policies in the face of adversity. Most of the initial hatred towards them was the way they were rolled out, without any duty of care shown around their trialing on our kids. But it is now almost 5 years on. Let’s also make clear, that while the opposition would scrap them, they also suggest that they would still continue to monitor student’s progress, but align them to the curriculum. This seems like a complete waste of time, money, and resources, as if you read anything on the development of the National Standards, you’ll find that they are already aligned with the curriculum.

    “In doing this New Zealand has taken a different approach to the rest of the world. We have used our national curriculum to determine the standard of achievement that needs to be reached at the end of each year.” – Education Gazette, 11 October, 2010.

    Despite what the scare mongers say, I think it’d be worth every school investigating signing up to use the PaCT Tool.
    That’s my personal opinion.
    Personally, I know some of the developers of the tool, and I have been assured on more than one occasion that from their side of things (the developers) the PaCT tool has not been designed with the capacity to link student data with teacher pay. This seems to be the main concern with the doubters beyond that of trying to make the ‘flawed’ National Standards more reliable (rather than scrapping them and developing a more robust assessment).

    I think that if the government wanted to align student achievement with teacher salaries (i.e. performance pay), that they would already be able to do so without using the PaCT tool anyway. Therefore, if that’s the case, then any school using the PaCT tool will not make a difference for the government; but it has the potential to be very worthwhile for us as teachers and as a school to better get to grips with assessments for the National Standards, and might even go some way into making them more robust – which is what we’re asking for anyway.

    There has been many a classroom I’ve seen, where a student has stepped out of line and done things on their own terms. For example, entering the classroom (their own terms) instead of lining up like the rest of the class (teachers terms). The teacher might scold them and then send them out to the principal, if the student hasn’t already become defiant and stormed out of the class for the scolding. When you boil down the behaviour and the problem, and take a step back; the actions taken by the ‘professional’ have in fact caused that child to no longer be in class, and no longer learning. If a quiet word was had, a little pride (on the teacher’s behalf) dropped, and the student allowed to still remain in class before everyone else, then that student might still be in class learning and hopefully engaged. The end product is what we really wanted, which is the troublesome child in the class.

    Instead of fighting for fighting sake, why don’t we take a step back, work out what it is we want, and drop our pride of having things done on our (teachers) terms. Rather than missing the point and ending up with nothing, we should be thinking about the end product.

    The end product is we want a robust system of measuring our children on a national level, without using a one off national test (that students could fail if they had an off day). We want to be able to use our professional judgement as teachers, and our knowledge of each child as individuals, and use that subjective information in order to fit students against our curriculum. We want it to be a robust and moderated system so that the data can be trusted from school to school, from city to city, right across the country.

    If we want National Standards to be more robust, then lets see if using PaCT will in fact make them more reliable, rather than scrapping National Standards and making all line up outside before bringing them into the classroom again.

  • Teaching: Technology

    Here’s the summary of our Term in my class. We have been preparing for School Production and using the Design process to assist us to come up with our class item, the script, and our costumes. We integrated a range of different subjects throughout, and this is our wall display of what we did. It incorporates a wide use of technology and different teaching ideas to guide a class through the design process.

    Also quite an easy way to document the work a class does – just use your iPhone and film the wall display that you’ve set up and follow the process through. Very cool!

    Engage. Inspire. Unleash.

  • Educated Statistics

    Those that know me, know I hate Maths, but love Statistics. Maybe it’s the graphs and the figures; but mostly it’s the story they tell without having to say anything. Interpreting the statistics isn’t rocket science, and generally they can speak a lot of sense into a confusing situation.

    It’s no wonder then that recently I have been looking into a range of different statistics surrounding Education in New Zealand at the moment. With the upcoming election, it’s important to have a grasp on what the current Government is trying to do, as well as what the implications are (if any) for them or the opposition hopefuls.

    Class Size vs & Quality Teaching

    Firstly, there is a perception out there that the two major parties are at odds about their policies. National are investing in IES / Quality Teaching and Labour are saying the money would be better spent being putting into lowering class sizes. This is not an either / or situation, but a fact that both are important, but each are differing as to the importance of them, and the priority they hold in the current educational climate.

    I must say that having worked in a classroom for the last five years, I would be able to better spend my time focussing on each individual child in my class if there were less of them. Not because of a time factor (although this would certainly come into it) but because of a behaviour management factor. I certainly notice a huge improvement in my students focus when there are 5 or 6 away. My class size for the lat 6 years has been:

    • 2009: 31 students
    • 2010: 28 students
    • 2011: 29 students
    • 2012: 27 students
    • 2013: 27 students
    • 2014: 27 students

    National claims to already have addressed the class size issue by employing more teachers. I’ve yet to see any impact of this at the school where I work, and certainly from the class sizes above we’re still talking a lot of students. I’m also not about to say that Labour’s proposed ratio of 1:26 is going to change much; except that if I’m operating on a ratio of 1:29 and I have 27 (2 less than the ratio size), then under Labour I should see a class of 24. Which already becomes more manageable from a teaching point of view.

    Class Sizes & Number of Teachers

    Yesterday I wrote about this in another blog post (see here):

    “I headed over to EducationCounts.govt.nz and downloaded their spreadsheet on student numbers since 1996.

    We can see that Screen Shot 2014-09-05 at 6.29.05 pmin 2008, the student numbers were 758,094 students.

    In 2013 there were 762,400 students. This is an increase of 4,306 students. That’s 0.56%. Half a percent.

    4,306 students would be spread across 149 classrooms, (based on the teacher/pupil ratio in NZ state schools of 1:29)

    That’s 149 teachers that are needed in the increase to maintain this ratio.

    In 2008, there were 52,958 teachers according to EducationCounts.govt.nz. In 2012 (which is as far as I can go from the same spreadsheet) there were 54,250 teachers.
    However, in this news release, it states that teacher numbers increased from 55,124 in 2008 to 58,707 this year. Discrepancies will exist, and some will include ECE Teachers and other teachers.
    For the first set of data from EducationCounts (which remember, is a government website), there is an increase of 1,292 teachers, or 2.4%.
    For the second set of data from the press release, there is an increase of 3,583 teachers, or 6.4%.

    Both somewhat removed from Hekia’s 15% (or ghost teachers as I call them).

    Even if we take the smaller percentage, and the increase of 1,288 teachers in 2012, it is still far, far away from the 149 new teachers that are required. That’s a surplus of 1,139 teachers.

    Obviously a lot of teachers are part time or reliever teachers. So lets take a look at FTTE teachers (Full Time Teaching Equivalent).

    With full time teachers, there has been an increase of 1,102 FTTE Teachers (2008-2012 data). Still not even close to the 149 teachers it would require to lower the class ratio to 1:29 based on the data.

    The difference between full time teachers, and the total number of teachers is just under 6,000 teachers in 2012. With 49,305 full time teachers spread across the 762,400 students (2013), this makes a teacher ratio of 1:15. This of course is an average, with a lower ratio in junior classes and senior classes, creating the 1:29 bulge in the middle.

    To change the ratio from 1:29 to 1:26 it requires a bit more mathemagic. The main reason for the difficulty is we have to work out the different ratios. For this, we go back to our first spreadsheet. I’ve put the resulting data into the table below.

    Current Teacher / Student Ratio No.of Students Required No. of Teachers Lowered Teacher / Student ratio Required No. of Teachers
    for New teacher/student ratio
    Year 1  1:15 64,208 4,280 1:12 5,350
    Year 2-3  1:23 118,549 5,154 1:20 5,927
    Year 4-8  1:29  295,858 10,202 1:26 11,379
    Year 9-10  1:23.5 117,265 4,990 1:20 5,863
    Year 11  1:23 60,805 2,643 1:20 3,040
    Year 12  1:18 55,277 3,071 1:15 3,685
    Year 13  1:17 48,905 2,876 1:14 3,493
    Total 33,216 Teachers  38,737 Teachers

    I don’t confess to being a mathmagician; and there may be a high possibility I’ve missed out some key information. At least I’m prepared to admit it if I get it wrong. If you find some issues with these numbers, can you please comment about where I’ve gone wrong so I can put it right.
    But to my knowledge, I’ve done the math correctly; and it raises some very interesting questions. Most importantly, if we lowered class size ratio by 3 students for each year bracket, we only increase the FTTE by 5,500, and we are still well within the current 49,305 current FTTE teachers.”

    The Cost

    One thing I didn’t go into in my last post is the cost associated with lowering the class size. Obviously cost is a big factor when government’s make policies, though some (including me) may ask does it matter when it comes to Education – we’re building the future generation… We do still need to be accountable.

    One thing I won’t go into arguments over is the associated costs such as building new classrooms to accommodate the extra classes needed due to the decrease of teacher:student ratio (needing a higher number of classrooms in the school”. The reason being is two fold: firstly, that the government hasn’t taking into consideration the associated costs, such as, hiring relievers, in their IES policy, and secondly, there are many, many schools with now empty classrooms, as there are also those with no extra classrooms. When we are discussing averages (such as we are here given the access to data I can find) we learn that we give and take a little either way.

    So lets have a look at the stats:

    The average teacher salary in 2012 was $71,526. The average secondary school teacher earned $73,995, while the average primary school teacher earned $69,660. Whether this figure has gone up or down since 2012 is difficult to guess as we would have to ask Novopay!

    Using these averages and multiplying them out by the increases I found yesterday, we get a table that looks like this:

    New T:Ss Ratio Number of New Teachers Req. Cost
    Year 1 1:12 1,070 $74,536,200
    Year 2-3 1:20 773 $53,847,180
    Year 4-8 1:26 1,177 $81,989,820
    Year 9-10 1:20 873 $64,597,635
    Year 11 1:20 397 $29,376,015
    Year 12 1:15 614 $45,432,930
    Year 13 1:14 617 $45,654,915
    Total 5,521 $395.5 million

    Don’t worry though. Take off 15% that the Government gets back through taxes, and the actual cost to the Government to lower class sizes to my proposed (and generous) class size model is $336.2 m. Certainly looks a lot like $359m to me. In fact, with the additional $22.8 million left over, they could put it into my personal account for having such a brilliant idea.

    What about Private & Charter Schools?

    Private Schools

    One of the most boring and overused quotes in the class size debate is: “You don’t remember your class size, but you remember when you had a good teacher.”

    I went to private schooling. I think my largest class was in Intermediate where I think we peaked at about 24 students. I certainly remember my good teachers. I also remember the bad ones. I also remember that none of my classes were with 30 other students.

    The quote is over-rated. You can say just about the same for anything. ‘You don’t remember all the meal’s you’ve had, but you remember you if you had a good chef’ or ‘You don’t remember all the kilometres you walked, but you remember your favourite pair of shoes’ or ‘You don’t remember all of the politicians names, but you remember when one used this quote’! It’s just silly nonsense they try and play with your intellect.

    The fact is, yes; I felt I was an individual in the classes. I wasn’t lost under 30 other students. I had my chance to shine.

    Incredibly interesting that John Key chooses to send his children to private schools. Hekia Parata’s own daughter attended Wellington Girls High School, the only Decile 10 state school for girls, which also consistently gets 4-5 year ERO reviews (since 2005), and boasts a 25 pupil class size.

    Charter Schools

    Based on the interview given on Q&A this morning (part 1, part 2) (Sunday 7 September 2014, 13 days out from the election), Hekia listed some hard hitting ‘facts’ about Charter Schools and their registered teacher status (Video at 5:57) . I put facts in inverted commas, because we all know how the Minister can get these wrong from time to time and has to back down from her statements. However, she was quite adamant that these were in fact true, that out of the 36 teachers at the charter schools, 32 were registered with a practising certificate.

    Unfortunately for Hekia, she also spelled out a few more interesting pieces of data along side this. She stated that there were:

    340 students in the 5 charter schools. Doing the maths, this makes the average Charter School size with a roll of 68 students. Obviously, some will be higher, some will be lower. I’m purely talking about the averages.
    In addition to this, if we take our 340 students and divide them evenly among the teachers at these charter schools (all 36 of them), it doesn’t take much to realise that there is less than 10 students per teacher. In fact it’s 9.6 students per teacher.

    Put in cold, hard, but realistic terms, it’s an average class size ratio of 1:9.6 . Which is quite low when considering my class of 27. That’s one third of the size, something I couldn’t even have a decent dream over these days.

    As a side note, I’m quite intrigued that the term ‘Partnership School’ (remember that!?) has been dropped in all political debates around this issue so far.

    In Conclusion

    Do we need lower class sizes? No.
    Do we need the Investing in Educational Success policy? No.
    Do we need to make wholesale changes to the Education system? No.

    We have world class teachers who get paid boatloads to go and work overseas.
    We have a world class curriculum which other countries only dream of and drool over.

    The reality is that as most educationalists (including Parata and Key) know that the biggest influences on a child’s upbringing happen outside of the school gates. National Standards have done nothing but show where people live. I’ve calculated in my previous posts the amount of time our children are actually in school in any given year back in 2011. The stats are hard to believe: its less than 15% of the year when broken down into hours!
    The problem for the government (and teachers) is that they cannot control those factors. And so rather than being seen to be doing nothing about ‘the tail’ of underachievement, the government is targeting teachers and schools and saying that we aren’t doing a good enough job and we have to try something different. That quote pops out from Hekia’s mouth ‘If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got’. Yet what if it’s not education that is the problem? We have a tail which underachieves, not because they are dumb or incompetent, but because their home-life is stressed, violent, and broken. There’s no food on the table and no money under it. Keeping warm is a luxury, let alone keeping healthy. All of these issues are BIG factors which I have written about before. My challenge for those that don’t believe these are factors is to go without food for a day or two and try studying for an exam. Seriously, after about 10 minutes of reading text, you will only be thinking about how hungry you are. And when that’s all you’re thinking about, it becomes very difficult to stay focussed and learn anything. Now make yourself a 10 year old child. You might begin to understand the ACTUAL reality behind our under achieving tail.

    Unfortunately for everyone, those issues are out of anyone’s control. There is a limit as to how much the government can control those ‘out-of-school’ influences. And so they make changes to those things they can control – the teachers. Change. Change. Change. Assess. Assess. Assess. And cross our fingers that things get better.

     

    Note: You may detect a degree of bias away from the National Party, and that is purely because they have made the job of teaching to be a lot more work for not much reward with National Standards (which aren’t even National, nor Standard – yes I have proof should you wish to see it), as well as a lack of confidence in Hekia Parata; backing down on increasing class sizes (which was the honourable thing to do), closing schools in Christchurch, and the ridiculous implementation of Charter Schools based on the wishes of ONE candidate who had a cup of tea with the Prime Minister once. Need I mention the balls up with Novopay, the resignation of Secretary of Education Lesley Longstone, the deformation of Teacher’s Council to be replaced by a board with no Teacher representative, and of course the new Investing in Educational Success initiative. I am in no way a Labour supporter or spokesperson, and have disagreed with many of their policies around the Mid 2000’s.
    None of the stats, facts, or figures I have had to hack into anyone’s emails or websites to obtain. These are all freely available to the public through websites that I have visited. I have no affiliation with WhaleOil.
    I must also point out and make this very clear; I write this as an individual, not as a representative of my classroom, nor my school, or Board of Trustees which I currently serve on. My views are my own, and I encourage you to talk with me should they raise any concerns for you.

  • Using Google Apps in the Classroom

    Please read my full article here: The Use of Chromebooks and Google Apps in Education

    There are multiple reasons why we decided to head down the Chromebook and Google App path. While I do not wish to delve into all of these, some of them include:

    • Google Docs automatically Saves – having to remind students to save their work was horrendous, let alone the fallout when documents weren’t saved when the device crashed..
    • Searchable Drive – Needless to say, even if the student saved their work, there was no telling if they saved it in the right place, or that they could find it later where they saved it. Being able to search the Docs makes this easier, as well as the fact that each student has their own drive, and does not need to save into a Class Folder on a Windows Server somewhere.
    • Comments & Editing – By sharing their work with the teacher, teachers can provide almost instant feedback, that the students are able to view and address the next time they come to work on their work, or adjust while they are working.

    From the outset, I encouraged students to share their work with me through my work email address. This enabled me to check on their progress of their publishing at the end of the day. It also established an expectation and some excitement as the students rose to this new responsibility of being able to email their teacher.

    During my experimentation with Google Docs, I eventually realised that you can see others editing in real time. I already knew that I could comment on a document, but this new realisation enabled me to work with James on his Maths problems. I created a very short screencast of this process as it happened. Once again, this is timely feedback, with additional support and encouragement for a learner who otherwise struggled to remain on task, let alone be motivated to work at home.

    Throughout the video I have made notes as to when I used any of these acts of teaching, and by the end of the three minute clip, I realised that each and every of the seven Deliberate Acts of Teaching had been used. It made me aware that not only had I just been helping a student out with some homework, but that the process had enabled me to offer some additional teaching with sound pedagogical base. Not only that, but by the end of this online session, James had completed the worksheet, and had shown how he accurately uses different strategies to solve subtraction problems. These are what we have currently been learning in class, but now they were being practised and solidified at home.

    For a long time I saw the motivation of technology to be more of a surface feature that was more bells and whistles than anything worthwhile. By seeing the value of real-time feedback, the ability to provide next steps along with examples, all completed seamlessly while checking emails at home, it is impossible to ignore this as a viable learning possibility. The potential within Google Apps is difficult to comprehend, as more and more ideas are developed and utilized within the classroom. Teachers will need to find themselves not only having to be technologically savvy, but also technologically creative in the way they are able to use technology in their classroom; not just as a gimmick or a reward for early finishers, but as the foundation for further learning in any and every curriculum area. As we continue to move into a world where technology is becoming ever more integrated into everyday life, it is only fitting that schools become a place where this is not only enhanced, but innovated, and become places where tomorrow’s citizens begin their technological journey.

  • Charter Schools: The Future of Success

    Managed to catch the encore screening of 3rd Degree (TV3) this week which had an exposé on the 5 trial Charter Schools being run in Auckland at the moment.

    3rdDegree

    3rd Degree: Charter Schools

    All in all Charter Schools have been portrayed as the greatest thing happening in our education system. We obviously think that just because they’ve failed overseas in the UK and the US, that they won’t fail here.
    There are many benefits to the charter schools; ones that the staff, parents, and children are more than aware of, and make these school incredibly popular on paper.
    Lets have a look at some of the benefits:

    Smaller Classes

    With State Schools often bursting at the seams with 30-35 students in a class, a class size of 15 is brilliant for those who are struggling with aspects of their learning. They get to work more intently with their teacher and receive help more regularly.

    Before Charter Schools, the Government wanted to save money by increasing class sizes across the country. Obviously the government is trialling small class sizes with these Charter Schools so that they can see if it works for the State sector as well…right?

    Not Just Teachers

    How much more invigorating and real would learning be if you had a skilled professional accountant running the economics class. Or heavyweight boxer David Tua running a boxing class for fitness. What amazing engagement and opportunities would be presented to the students at the school, to have people at the top of their professions giving back into the learning. They don’t have to be a registered teacher at all in order to be able to inspire the next generation of society.

    Of course, one does take a little precaution, because as it turns out, even with tight registration guidelines from the Teacher’s Council, there were a few cases of inappropriate conduct.

    But I’m sure getting rid of registration for Charter School teachers will instil a new sense of trust for employees and employers, and in turn, parents and students.

    Freedom of Curriculum

    At Charter Schools, the staff are able to offer a flexible and selective curriculum for their students. They’re able to pick and choose what they teach. So many students have failed the state system because they don’t like the prescriptive nature of the learning and all of the subjects that gets crammed in every day. At Charter Schools, you can rely on real life experiences, like going to the beach, exploring, and learning through hands on activities.
    Charter schools are also exempt from having to report against National Standards, and so will be able to focus on other areas of learning, rather than get burdened into Reading, Writing, and Maths that the State schools have to focus on, even though the National Standards, of course, have been given honorary status as raising kids achievements.

    New Zealand has one of the best curriculums in the world, and was designed over countless hours, weeks, months, years, to be flexible and to encourage creativity, to allow students to engage with a rich learning that was unprecedented anywhere else in the world. Of course, it only has that freedom if Teachers are empowered to do so, and aren’t hog-tied by the constant monitoring and assessing required of them by the National Standards in Reading, Writing, and Maths.

    In Conclusion

    Charter schools are wonderful. They take kids who dropped out of state school and re-invigorate them with learning in various different ways. They allow parents to make choices for the future of their children’s education.

    But questions linger in my mind. Why do we need to set up a new breed of schooling, with private investors running schools for a profit, or picking and choosing their students? If all of these great things are happening in these 5 trial schools, why can we not make it a reality in our current state schooling?
    If smaller class sizes is such a big draw card in raising student engagement, why not have smaller class sizes in ALL schools across New Zealand, instead of charter schools?
    If access to the wider New Zealand Curriculum (which already exists by the way) is what gets kids enthused about learning and engaging them with the big wide world, then why do we narrow teacher’s minds by getting them to focus on National Standards so much? If it’s good enough to ditch the National Standards for Charter Schools, then why not ditch it for ALL New Zealand schools, seeing as it doesn’t seem to make a difference on student’s ability to learn.

    Note: In essence, we could return education to the way it was before National implemented all these changes, and we would have a wide and rich curriculum that teachers felt empowered to choose from, and the freedom to make that choice. We would have a set of registration requirements that drive so many good teachers out, and yet somehow keeps some bad ones in. We would have less focus on Reading Writing and Mathematics that narrows and stunts the grown of learning in the classroom. And after the comments of students, parents, and staff regarding class sizes at the Charter Schools in the 3rd Degree exposé, I truely hope that one John Hattie doesn’t give this government any more advice, and that they might use the $359 million they are spending on the new career roles (IES) to put towards more classes in schools with less students in each class.

  • Books. Books. iBooks.

    Those that know me know I am not much of a reader. Obviously I have to keep that quite quiet in the classroom, because I want to encourage my class to read as much as possible. To do so, I usually use a lot of picture books as inspiration for reading. I like picture books because; well lets face it… they have pictures! And some of those picture are works of arts all on their own. Whilst at University, a group of friends and I had an assignment to write a children’s “EBook” for use in a classroom. We had so much fun with it, we actually wrote a few books.
    Now; this was back in the time before iPads, E-Readers and the like. We had to use Powerpoint to create them for use as an EBook.
    Having just purchased iPads for each classroom at our school, I went and found some picture books on iBooks. It gave me an idea.
    A good idea.
    So I dug around my old files from university, and eventually found our original powerpoint EBook. I took it, converted it into a suitable format using iBooks Author, and now it is currently awaiting approval from Apple NZ to be made available in our country. Seeing how easy it was, I decided that actually, I could probably use my love of art and painting, and couple it with my vocation, and make some picture books suitable for 10 year olds and up.

    02

    I even found out how to get ISBN numbers – and it’s not that hard!!!
    Keep an eye out on iBooks Store for an author out there with my name on it!

  • National Standards Again

    Today Nigel Latta launched on the offensive at the press release from Hekia “how-do-you-say-her-name-Potato” Parata and “the Media”.
    Here’s what was on his Facebook page (Wednesday 12 June, 10:14am)

    ‘National Standards’ aren’t.

    The latest national standards ‘results’ being reported in the media are utter nonsense. Pure and simple. Even if we ignore the large inconsistencies between the way that the ‘standards’ are measured (and we can’t because the inconsistencies make comparisons all but impossible), and the fact that it assumes all children of a given age are maturing at the same rate (which they don’t), and we ignore the impact of little things like child poverty (which some politicians like to do much to their shame), it’s still impossible to say anything at all about a change in the numbers when you only have two data points.

    They can’t say that a difference of 1.2-2% on the various measures between last year and this year is an ‘improvement’, because we simply don’t know.

    If you had assessed all of those very same children again the day after they were assessed for these numbers, in the exact same conditions with the exact same measures, then you would also get a different number. That’s because in the real world we have this little thing called statistical variation–things never work out exactly the same. To make any meaningful statements about ‘improvements’ you need meaningful measures (which national standards aren’t anyway) over several different data points (i.e. over several years).

    I wish the media would get that very simple, but very important point. Politicians will spin it as a gain, but it isn’t. It’s simply meaningless statistical ‘noise’.

    The government went with national standards because they thought voters would like it, not because it’s the best thing for making progress on education. If we really wanted to lift our ‘national standards’ then, perhaps as a beginning, we’d take more care of the large numbers of our kids living in poverty.

    When they produce their ‘rankings’ of schools I’m pretty sure it’s going to show a trend whereby higher decile schools meet/exceed the ‘standards’ much more than lower decile schools. I wonder why that might be? And who do we blame for that? Teachers?

    Don’t be sucked in by all this political positioning. My advice is to ignore the national standards tables because they don’t mean anything. There’s a reason teachers were so opposed to the way these ‘national standards’ are being used… fundamentally because it’s nonsense!

    This was all in relation to this article on Stuff. (which I have appended at the end of this post incase it goes missing!)

    As Mr Latta points out, there is little point in celebrating increases of 1%, 2% or even 3% increases and calling them improvements. Even if you disregard the fact that these judgements are made based on a whole variety of factors, and that even from class to class, let alone school to school there are variations and interpretations of the standard, a statistical difference of 1-3% is too small to consider any more than an anomaly. Heck… My intellectual ability changes as much as 1-3% on any given day.

    Add to this the fact that the assessment that teachers have been using has been shifting and adjusting their benchmarks as results come in, meaning that comparisons from year to year are even more ridiculous, and can quite easily account for more than 1-3%. Some more skeptical scholars such as myself think that these adjustments are probably being made to make sure that National Standards look good, and to give the allusion that they are working and increasing the achievement levels. The fact that the Ministry has hinted that these changes will be on-going as they are “…regularly reviewed and ways of moderating results would continue to be refined.” suggests to me that the benchmarks will continue to be changed until results improve.

    Nigel Latta is right. These results are meaningless. They serve to popularise the government and their great education improving policies. They celebrate over these small increases in improvements and throw a party for National Standards. They claim it as their victory. They won’t say that teachers are the cause for these increases. No. Quite the opposite. They will say that the reason there isn’t more improvement is because of poor teaching. Teachers therefore need to work harder to raise the tail, while the government and ministry claim the prizes for meaningless “improvements”.

    The media has some responsibility in this. Rather than accepting these remarks from Hekia Parata, why not actually stop for just a moment, and then ask her whether they can really claim 1-3% as a success. And if she won’t answer, then don’t report her story. The media are playing dumb, and reporting once again thinking that the rest of the country are fickle. We’re not. We are able to think. We are able to actually work out that what’s spurting out of the government’s mouth is rather tainted. Yet you won’t stop treating us like we won’t be able to work this out. That we take everything at face value.
    It’s kinda pathetic.
    It’s a good thing teachers don’t treat their students like that.

    Related Reading

    Students’ achievement ‘increasing’ – Stuff Article

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8780900/Students-achievement-increasing

    The latest national standards data shows an increase in achievement particularly for Pacific children, according to figures released today.

    But they also revealed some “concerning trends”, including a decline in achievement at different year-levels, especially in maths.

    The latest overall national standards results in reading, writing and mathematics were released by Education Minister Hekia Parata this morning.

    The data revealed the percentage of primary and intermediate school children achieving above, at or below the standards in the 2012 year.

    It is the second time the results have been released publicly since the standards became mandatory in 2010.

    Last year Fairfax Media obtained and analysed nationwide national standards results and published them on Stuff’s School Report.

    The latest data showed:

    – Achievement against the national standard for reading was up by 1.2 per cent from 76.2 per cent in 2011 to 77.4 per cent in 2012.

    – Achievement against the national standard for mathematics increased by 1.4 per cent to 73.6 per cent in 2012.

    – Achievement against the national standard for writing increased by 2 per cent to 70 per cent in 2012.

    “What the data tells us is that there has been a small but incremental improvement in reading, writing and mathematics,” Parata said.

    Pasifika children showed the greatest increase, improving by 3 per cent in all three standards.

    “It’s great to see that around 70 per cent of children are at or above the national standards and the increase in Pasifika achievement,” Parata said.

    This was the first year national standards data had been broken down by year-level and there were some concerning trends including a decline in the achievement as the year-level increased, especially in mathematics, she said.

    The New Zealand Educational Institute said this year’s data was even more unreliable than last year because of changes to a key assessment tool for teachers.

    But the Ministry of Education said it was working to “continuously improve the range and quality of data”.

    Ministry student achievement deputy secretary Rowena Phair said: “As with any new large-scale data-gathering initiative, there will be a period of adjustment.”

    She said assessment tools would be regularly reviewed and ways of moderating results would continue to be refined.

  • L.I.Y. – Focusing Students

    “We want W.A.L.T that is less Disney”.
    A brilliant quote from Lester Flockton.

    In my classroom, I have developed a new way of presenting the “WALT”.
    W.A.L.T stands for “We Are Learning To” which is how the Learning Intention (or L.I.) should start for students.
    In my class I did away with W.A.L.T.
    It annoyed me and my students are more than capable of understanding “Learning Intention”. So I use L.I.

    Recently we have heard about the benefits of students knowing WHY they are learning what we are learning. I have thought about this and added to the L.I.

    L.I.Y – a little bit like D.I.Y, but not. It allows a teacher to combine the WHAT we are learning, and the WHY we are learning it. The “Y” stands for the word it sounds like… “why”.

    I have been using this system in my class in all subjects and it has been really interesting to see students picking up on the new way of thinking and there has been a noticeable improvement in engagement.

    History

    For a long time I have been sceptical and cynical about the use of Learning Intentions in the classroom. My main reason being that we never had them growing up, and I turned out okay. We never worried about what we were learning or why we needed to learn it. We just did it because we respected the teacher and trusted that what they were doing in class was part of them providing a good education, so we just did what we were told.

    However, it is a reality and an expectation that teachers should be directing their students by explaining what the students should be learning.

    Much has been made of Success Criteria, or S.C. It’s the HOW students will know they succeeded or WHAT it is students are going to be doing.
    To be honest I am even less enthusiastic about S.C. The How is just what happens during the lesson. I always give my students targets during a lesson, or expectations for what they need to complete. They know what they have learned without having to over think about it.

    Sometimes it does feel like there is a lot of actual teaching time used up explaining what I’m going to be teaching, rather than actually teaching it. But I have seen some benefits, and even as a teacher, it is quite cool to see my learners come full circle and realise what they learned.

    I feel that now with L.I.Y., I have made it myself. I came up with it using my own thought process, and because I “own” it, and made it my own, I’m more likely to use it on a regular basis in my class.