Priority Students - Is there any shift?

As part of our PLG groups this afternoon, we looked at the priority students that we had chosen at the start of the year and later on in Term 3. We wanted to look at two things. One was to see if there has been any shift over the year and the second was to see how they are doing in all of their other lessons compared to your own.


We then had to make a plan about what we were going to do next and which teachers we were going to contact in regards to those students.

First Group (Term 2)

First Group	Reason
Student 1	Credits in Maths and BCaTs and none in DVC
Student 2	Credits in Science and Maths but none in DVC
Student 3	DVC is the only lesson she has no credits in

1st May Total
8	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-4
8	Mat-4	Sci-4	Eng-0	Vis-0	Geo-0
14	Mat-4	Sci-4	Eng-3	Vis-0	PE-3

20th Aug Total						29th Aug
22	Mat-11	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-11	Vis-4
39	Mat-11	Sci-8	Eng-3	Vis-7	Geo-10	Vis-10
38	Mat-11	Sci-8	Eng-3	Vis-10	PE-6

	Actions by teacher
Whole class	Vocabulary exercises all together for product analysis.
Student 1	I spoke with his BCATs teacher as he was acheiving and working really well in that class. I visited him in that class too to see how he was working. He was really quiet and focussed. I have been letting him use my laptop as it has the latest version of Photoshop on it so he can finish his project work. I have sat with another group but have activiely monitoring him and "kicking the back of his chair" when he has drifted off task.
Student 2	Lots of one to one help and supplying examples of what she has to do. Not letting her settle for "just getting it finished", but making her focus higher. Working with her to show her how to do skills, sitting with her and doing the skill at the same time as her. She has achieved 10 credits at merit as of 29th August.
Student 3	Working with her one to one with skills and tasks. Sharing excellence examples of NZQA examples and examples from Tamaki College so she can see that excellence is possible in the subject at TC. Letting her work on a different sequence to the rest of the Level 1 group as she is ahead of them.

Second Group (Term 3)

First Group	Reason
Student 1	No credits in DVC
Student 2	No credits in DVC
Student 3	Slow working. Seems to lack motivation
Student 4	Slow working. Attendance issues and no work done at home.
Student 5	Slow working. Lacks motivation. Won't come in the room.

1st May Total
8	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-4
4	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	Mus-0
8	Eng-0	Mat-0	Aut-0	Vis-4	Art-0
10	Eng-0	Mat-2	BCAT-4	Mus-0	Vis-4
3	Phy-0	Eng-0	Mat-3	Mus-0	Vis-0

20th Aug Total						29th Aug
22	Mat-11	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-11	Vis-4
8	Mat-8	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	Mus-0
18	Eng-0	Mat-7	Aut-5	Vis-7	Art-0
43	Eng-4	Mat-6	BCAT-22	Mus-4	Vis-7
23	Phy-7	Eng-0	Mat-6	Mus-10	Vis-0

	Actions by teacher
Student 1	I spoke with his BCATs teacher as he was acheiving and working really well in that class. I visited him in that class too to see how he was working. He was really quiet and focussed. I have been letting him use my laptop as it has the latest version of Photoshop on it so he can finish his project work. I have sat with another group but have activiely monitoring him and "kicking the back of his chair" when he has drifted off task.
Student 2	Have sat with her and shown her how to do things but she will just sit and do nothing. Her attendance is very poor at the moment so nothing is being done at all.
Student 3	Supplies examples of what to do. Sits with him and goes through with him what to do for individual designs (doing at the same time)
Student 4	Make sure I catch up with him when he is in the lesson so he knows where he is and what he should be doing. He has an attendance problem due to working so I dont see him very often.
Student 5	Individual task sheet for her to refer to
	She does not come into the classroom but sits outside.

Plan for moving forward

Continue to give as much one to one help as I can. Make sure the tasks on the class site are the first thing the students look at when they come in.

The following list is which teachers to talk to about the students as they are doing well in their lessons. The conversation needs to revolve around how they are working with those students and if there are any strategies that they are using that work and could be shared.

Student 1 - Talk BCATs and Maths teachers

Student 2 - Talk to maths teacher

Student 3 - Talk to BCATs teacher

Student 4 - Talk to Maths and Auto

Student 5 - Talk to Physics and Music

Staff PLD August 1st 2017 - Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy

July CoL Meeting - The Good the Bad and The Ugly....

Today, in our CoL meeting, we had to analyse at what we were doing and share in our inquiry groups. Our groups for this meeting were based around the Achievement Challenges so we could compare what was gong well and what wasn't with colleagues working on the same goal.

Out main feedback session to each other was to highlight parts of our inquiries that was a success and which parts failed and where they can be improved.

This was my main feedback about this :-

The working together as small groups worked really well and they had a lot more confidence with their research. 

What is not going well is that now they think they can help each other with their drawings. This would be ok but it has branched into them doing it for each other rather than helping!!
I am trying to model how to help each other like this by doing drawing work with individuals and letting them do it the same way but not letting them have mine.

I was surprised when we worked together on a design analysis exercise that the hard bit was the describing. After talking to other teachers, I realised that this was due to lack of vocabulary. This has led me to put together the beginnings of a vocabulary collection especially for describing design work - link here

We all worked on a Google Drawing to plan our feedback first, so we could structure it correctly.

The outcome of this for me is that I have organised to go and visit +Kyla Hansell  ( her blog is here ) to talk about the students working in groups and how she does it.

Teacher Only Day 27th March 2017

We had our teacher only day today.
The focus was on:-

• Culturally Responsive Pedagogy with Stephen Rowe
• Wide and Deep Reading with Aaron Wilson
• An introduction to "Understanding Behaviour - Responding Safely"

Here are my notes. They were hand written on an iPad app called Notes Plus and exported out as images.