Week 19- Communities of Practice

Inquiry Topic 1-

Using the "See Saw" application to increase the amount of parent engagement we currently have with our syndicate's online reporting system.
This topic relates to a current issue in our practice because we have identified that the online reports documenting digital examples of student learning are not currently being viewed regularly by parents. Currently our students create online reports where they have to create pieces of evidence that demonstrate mastery of learning across different curriculum areas. These reports are worked on throughout the year before being shared with parents on the last day of term. While they are an effective learning tool for students, parents are currently not engaging with as regularly with the report as we would like.
In order to increase the amount of parent engagement that we get our syndicate is going to trial using the "See Saw" digital portfolio next year. The ap is unique because it sends alerts to parent's phones the moment a student posts a new piece of evidence.
Here is how I plan to use Wegner's "Communities of Practice and Social LearningSystems".

The Domain-  This will be teachers that are using, or already have, used the program. In our school this will be the senior syndicate team, as well as the junior and middle syndicate teachers who have already used the ap. The domain will also include teachers in our COL who are using the ap.
The Community - This will predominantly be my fellow team members, as well as other staff across the school. Within my team, we will interact regularly at staff and syndicate meetings, as well informally throughout the year. Forming a community with the other syndicates will also be important as they have experience using the program. We will be able to meet with them throughout the year at staff meetings, as well as during breaks and at other informal times during the day. The community could comprise of teachers on the web who are also using the ap through google plus, twitter, or other online forums.
The Practice- Within my team we will record the experiences that we are having in the notes of oour weekly team meetings. We will be able to build a collection of exemplars of different examples of digital technologies that can be used to showcase learning across different curriculum areas. Encouraging each teacher to create their own exemplars will be a challenge for me, as I have a tendency to rush in and do things myself or for other people. I would say that I do this with the intention of being helpful to people, but I can see how this can prevent others from feeling they have ownership of an initiative.

Week 18 Reflection- Future Orientated Learning and Teaching

Theme 3: A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity

This is an area that I would like to develop in my teaching practice. Currently, my practice focuses too narrowly on teaching specific skills to my students in order for them to reach a pre-determined outcome. For instance, when I am planning my reading program I currently select my learning objectives (or the "knowledge" that I would like them to acquire) for the students before matching specific texts to meet those objectives. I am therefore spoon feeding the knowledge to my class without giving them any practical or meaningful opportunities to apply the skills I am hoping to teach them to any type of personal inquiry or area of interest. The recent consultation draft “Digital Technologies:Hangarau Matihiko”, states that “...our
education system needs to change how we prepare our children and young people to
participate, create and thrive in a digital world”, and that all students should be able to “use and
create digital technologies...” (MOE 2017 p4). I am aware of the need to change my practice as well.

 I am going to begin to provide students with more opportunities to explore their own avenues of interest in reading by providing them with greater agency when applying the "knowledge" that I impart on them. For instance, when teaching sentence structure, I could allow students to identify the features that we are looking for in their own personal texts or through a web based inquiry program. I could also allow students greater degrees of freedom when selecting the ways that they share their learning with me, for instance, using different types of digital technologies, like Imovie, Comic Life, Book Creator and Google slides. By doing this students will hopefully begin to realize the point of learning specific reading skills and how the knowledge that we are trying to transfer needs to be applied in constructive and positive ways that are for the betterment of the individual concerned.

Incorporating my reading program into personal inquiry studies that the students undergo is another way of allowing students to apply "knowledge" in meaningful ways. Students would have to incorporate the application of set reading skills to demonstrate their understanding of a selected issue or problem. It places a large emphasis on students selecting texts that they see as valuable to them and will be motivated to apply the knowledge that they have gained to acquire greater understandings.

Of course, there are limitations to this approach that I am hoping people will give me some feedback on. How do I ensure that students are able to access the resources that they need without wasting time? Some students have excellent self management skills, whereas others need or even prefer to be provided scaffolding with their activities. There is also the possible issue of time wasting that can occur when searching for resources.

Week 17- My Reflective practice

Post One

My Reflective practice

Like most schools, we are required to fulfill several criteria that require reflection as a part of our "Registered Teacher Criteria". These obligations include

• Individual Professional Learning documents that cover the 12 criteria for registered teachers
• An annual "Teaching as Inquiry" program that is completed in syndicate
• Informal reflections that emerge from weekly syndicate meetings
• Informal reflections based on AFL practices and weekly plans

Currently, the first two are the only reflections that require formal completion. The latter two, however, would make up the basis for the majority of our reflections.

When I look at my current reflection process in relation to Zeichner and Liston’s (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4) five levels of reflection I would say that  our teams current practices would match up in this way. 

1. "Rapid reflection" - The informal reflections I make based on my weekly plans and the anecdotal notes I either record or store in my memory. We also often make rapid reflections in our team meetings based on discussions around our class programs.
2. "Repair" – This takes place based on "rapid reflections" of planning. We are often able to alter the directions of our overall classroom programs based on the reflections we make during our syndicate meetings.
3. "Review" – This type of reflection traditionally takes place when we have completed units of work or reached the end of term. I think that we don not review our practices formally as frequently as we could because teachers do not have time to reflect when they are in the classroom full time, as forward planning always needs to be done. Reviewing our teaching practice over a sustained period without needing to make recommendations for immediate changes would be a valuable exercise for me and my team.
4. "Research" – Little or none of this is done outside readings provided by senior management. Again, this is because teachers on a full time teaching load do not have time available to them.
5. "Retheorizing and reformulating" –Personally, this course has started my doing this effectively for the first time. I have found it so helpful to reflect on some of the initiatives that I have introduced and drawn parallels to many of the theories and style of leadership that were introduced to me in the "Leadership" section of the course.

I would like to begin to focus more on the "Reviewing" and "Researching" components of my reflection. I find that I have introduced many initiatives in the last couple of years and need to sit back objectively and review these changes and the impacts they have made. As they are mostly digital and based around the "21st  Century Learning Dispositions" it is difficult gather the same raw data that can be gathered by standardized academic assessments, so I have a challenge to encounter. Any ideas that would help me I would consider helpful !