Teacher Appraisal

What is your opinion of the PRIDE Values and why? Perseverance, Resilience, Integrity, Diversity and Excellence.  These values underpin a good, moral human being. They are at the base of everything we should be doing as teachers and as role models in society. The values are 'big' words for some of our lower level learners, so they need to be so explicitly and specifically taught so they can fully understand what these values mean and how they can live by them and display them in their day to day life. They need a secure understanding of this by the time they move on from us at the end of year 8. They need to understand how important these words are and how they can demonstrate them in real life.  Not every child has an ingrained background of these values for a variety of different reasons (home life may not reflect these values). So, unless we teach them, they may never have an opportunity to learn from these. And it is so important for them to learn t...

Staff Meetings - Term One Monday 11th February 2019 After looking at the first Principle of Learning, "Learners at the centre", I have established that my planning should be based on the learners needs and interests. Due to a lot of students forming an interest in the topic of war, particularly because of the Treaty of Waitangi, it would be a good focus for this term. However, students will be able to steer their learning and focus on what in particular interests them.  I will be differentiating the learning and being inclusive of all my students. Another part of this is knowing our learners and I feel I have been doing that over the past 3 weeks getting to know their interests, whanau, hobbies, sports and unique things about each of them.  Smart Goals Video The smart goals video is a great way for me to remember to keep my goals simple and achievable. It's perfect when I will be setting goals throughout the year for my Induction and Mentoring programme. Al...

Improving my Math Lessons My Goal: During my meeting with my associate teacher, on Thursday 28th March 2019, I brought up the fact that I am not feeling confident with how my math lessons were going. I felt uneasy about the structure and wanted some new ideas to start Term Two strong. My associate shared with me how she teaches math in her class. She uses a rotation system in which she sees two groups a day. While a group is being guided by her, the rest of the groups have a certain task to do. This may be watching a video on Maths Hub (before seeing the teacher), working on a task on Education Perfect, doing a practice worksheet, or working with the Figure It Out books. All of this was very helpful and I began to ask myself: Should I set up a Math rotation ? Would it benefit my students? Would it work with the behaviour in my class? Considering a rotation system works quite well for Literacy, I'm going to give it a go for Term Two and then reflect on how it works....

One of my personal goals for the first half of the year is to challenge high attainers in math.  A lot of focus tends to go towards the lower attainers and supporting them, however, I want to keep pushing and challenging other children. During one of my meetings with my associate teacher, we came up with some ideas of how to challenge the students: Word problems (one or two-step) Mathematics challenge cards Mathematics e-books Writing explanations and reflections 'Why' questions, 'Convince me' or 'Prove it' Work set at a higher level Integrate technology Self-Assessment Real world math practice NRich maths challenges Tuakana Teina NZMaths Larger numbers Converting Missing numbers Solving backwards Not all children learn the same way so I need to be aware of how they learn best and also I need to incorporate a variety of learning opportunities. Here is a useful  website explaining ways to meet individual needs in the classroom in...

Observing a Science Lesson Monday 18th March 2018 Inertia Cup Tower Experiment Notes from observation: The lesson started with reviewing last weeks science lesson. This included what they did and how they laid out their work in their books. The teacher went over all the expectations again very carefully so that the students remembered how to complete their task and what they need to include.  As the teacher was talking about the experiment, she modelled aloud some thoughts and questions about what might happen.  She also modelled on the board how to layout the experiment including: title, materials (bullet points), a prediction(sentence starter) and the outcome.  The children then went and wrote all of this (apart from the outcome) in their books. When they were finished, some students shared their predictions.  Next, they all gathered around a table and the teacher modelled how to perform the experiment. After a few goes and a discussion, th...

PB4L Restorative Practice  Thursday 7th March 2019 Notes from Restorative Practice PD What did I learn? I learnt that restorative practice is all about the relationship between student and teacher. It is about respect, dignity and taking ownership and accountability for behaviour and choices. From this workshop, I learn a lot about myself and how restorative I am (or not) without even being aware that it was restorative practice. I am able to stay calm and listen during conversations with students, however, I do not always refer to the school values during these conversations. This is probably due to the fact that I am new to them but my goal is now to be including these in most, if not all, restorative conversations. I also learnt that follow ups are very important and we need to stick to our word and give students the message that they will be checked up on. This could be in a positive way too, depending on the situation and if the student has made improvements. ot...

Incorporating ICT Effectively One of my first goals this year is to incorporate ICT into lessons more often and effectively. Thinking back to a staff meeting in February we touched on making  SMART Goals . To make sure my goal is SMART I needed to ensure it meets these five essentials: S - Specific M - Measurable A - Attainable R - Realistic/Relevant T - Timely Specific: To make my goal more specific I need to ensure it is clear, precise and concrete. My goal is to incorporate the use ICT effectively in lessons at least two days a week. Measurable: To guarantee my goal is measurable I need to have some way of recording progress.  Term One Inquiry Plan My goal is to incorporate the use ICT effectively in lessons at least two days a week which will be shown within my planning. Attainable: To make sure I attain my goal I need to develop a pathway that will lead me there.  My goal is to incorporate the use ICT effectively in lessons at...