Weekly Reflection: Building Relationships (Term 3, Week 1)

Visiting Other Classrooms

This week I visited a Year 10 English, Year 9 Maths class, Year 9 PE and Year 10 Maths.  In enjoyed seeing the relationships each teacher has with their students.  Seeing warmth, fun and genuine interest in the students.  I saw the importance of do now's to settle the class, especially when they are achievable by all of the class.  I enjoyed playing a game in PE even if they ran circles around me and certainly look forward to visiting PE again.  For the Year 10's it was great to link the science they learnt last term into their maths class.  It really highlighted how, we as teachers, could enrich our student's learning by communicating with each other on what is happening in our classes and looking at ways to from links between the different subject areas.

PD

Doug Black ran a PD that was centred around and article called "Learning about learning".  He used the following Prezi presentation to investigate whether we might need to change to be more learner centred.

http://prezi.com/oogkuvtvgmwa/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Everything that he said resonated with me.  He refered to both Ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra and showed us the following clips.

Ken Robinson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYk91jzv1jg

Sugata Mitra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpcEpmNbHds

 

 

Mentoring

 

I met with Penny Cox on Friday.  We discussed a key student in my class and some of the issues I am having with him.  He has been picked up by one of the DP's but I still need to look at what i can do in the class.  I am going to see him in some different classes and I will meet with the DP next week.  I also need to catch up with the student before he comes back to class on Monday.  We also looked at clarification statements that will help me with my internal standards in Level 1 Science (e.g http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/qualifications-standards/qualifications/ncea/subjects/biology/clarifications/level-1/as90925/) .  I am still in discussions with my HOD over the marking of some of them in relation to the exemplars.  We identified another staff member I can go and talk to about it.