Lightbulb Moment

I had a lightbulb moment today and I am proud of it - YAYYYY!

I have a clear understanding of my CoL intervention now. 

Inquiry Question: How will I change my teaching practice to ensure I am creating opportunities for learners to think critically in their learning?

Intervention Draft: I have been in touch with a couple of staff members from Tamaki College to talanoa about my vision. So part of my inquiry this year is the transition from Y8 to Y9. So far, I have a target group in Y9 and a target group in Y8. The students have helped by putting this intervention idea together. 2 key ideas I gathered from meeting with both cohorts were:

• Have more High-school weeks at school. Often this is a one week initiative a year that we hold in Term 4. The Y9 learners have suggested perhaps having more of those. 2 in Term 3 and 2 in Term 4. Reason being, one of the main struggles for the Y9 learners was moving around the school for class.
• Create an opportunity for the Y9 learners to mentor the Y8 students. Meet with them couple times in Term 3 and in Term 4. First session is a "Get to know your mentees" and the rest of the sessions is when I implement some critical thinking tasks for the students to work on with each other.

Professional Readings

 1. Teaching Critical Thinking - An evidence Based Guide

Critical thinking is about reasoning and asking questions, analysing and internalising. Critical thinking also allows students to become problem solvers through active investigation. It is also about “high order thinking processes”  in order to make some informed decisions.

• Games to promote critical thinking 

  1. Puzzles, mazes, mystery bag, brain teasers, rebus puzzles

  
  

  HOW?

  • Encourage agree & disagree

  • Asking why questions

  • Talk about implications / solutions

  • Reflections

  Encourage students to listen, internalise and then respond

- This reading was a reminder of why teaching Critical Thinking is important for the students learning. The benefits of critical thinking goes beyond the classroom and can be applied to any experience in education.

- As teachers, when Teaching Critical Thinking Skills, it's important to slow down the pace. Pose a question of the day as something to stimulate thinking. Create a response box that students can slot their responses in throughout the day. Debates is also a great class activity for students to partake in. Deciding whether they're for or against a proposition is effective.

2. 5 Critical Thinking Skills Kids need to Learn

• Children are naturally curious to find out how things work, to make sense of the world around them - they use their critical thinking skills.
• Children who have been taught critical thinking skills, have higher IQs and do better in language comprehension and problem-solving. 

• Encourage students to ask ‘why’. Ask do you agree/disagree and give reasons. Ask for clarification and if they can give you an example.

• Talk about implications. When reading a story, stop in the middle and ask what do you think will happen next. Why or what would you do.

-This reading was a reminder to encourage opportunities for students to practice questioning and giving full detailed answers (for younger learners). Teachers to also encourage exploration and investigation to find the answers.

3. How to help your child develop Critical Thinking Skills

• Children who have been taught critical thinking skills, have higher IQs and do better in language comprehension and problem-solving. 
• Encourage students to ask ‘why’. Ask do you agree/disagree and give reasons. Ask for clarification and if they can give you an example.
• Talk about implications. When reading a story, stop in the middle and ask what do you think will happen next. Why or what would you do.

-This reading was a reminder that Children are naturally curious to find out how things work, to make sense of the world around them - they use their critical thinking skills.

Target Group Info...

After collecting student voice and ideas from the 2 groups I am working with, I was able to analyze and record it on a table. I've also finished with assessments so I've included the data in my profiling information.

Now that I know more information from my Y8s and Y9s, I am hoping to find time to work with the Y9s, to come up with an action plan/interventions on how to better assist our Year 8 students with transitioning into High School. I also aspire to find time where both groups can meet or we can visit each other and have the Y9 students work like mentors for our Y8 students.

The mentoring idea comes from my Y8 students in 2023, working with the Way-finder mentors from Tamaki College last year. Our students loved it and data showed that those particular students attendance improved, engagement in class was evident and they enjoyed having someone check-up on them weekly. Someone other than their class teacher.

 

 Interesting Finds from Y8 learners and their attitudes towards Literacy:

1. Most of them like Literacy
2. There is a balance between preferences for both Reading & Writing
3. Some do not like the current spelling programme we have
4. They all think highly of themselves as doing well in both Reading and Writing
5. Most have requested for more Writing opportunities and learning tasks
6. Only a couple of them receive support at home with Literacy

Interesting Finds from the Year 9 students and their experience with High School thus far:

1. High School Week should be every term or longer than just one week. We usually run High School week once a year and is often in Term 4.
2. They would like to have time to check-in with the Y8 students. Give them advice on what to expect with High School.
3. Adjusting to a High School timetable takes a while. A lot of moving around and it can be quite overwhelming having different teachers every day.
4. They miss the attention and relationships they had with their Primary/Intermediate teachers.

Student Profiling...

This blog post explains who my target students are:

I have 2 groups of students that I will be working closely with this year.

Group 1: 6 Y8 students who I currently teach and I know they will be going to Tamaki College next year.

Group 2: 6 Y9 students who study down at Tamaki College. I will be using their expertise to help me develop my intervention/s for my inquiry this year.

I also would like to see them as some sort of mentors for the Y8 students. Try and have them meet couple times a term to help with preparing our Y8 learners., especially in Literacy.

To find out more information, I created a google form to collect student voice from my Y8 learners about learning in Literacy.

For my Y9 experts, I had imported the questions above into a google form and had them fill it out. We met as a group, and although they filled out their responses via forms, we had some deep and meaningful talanoa out of this.

After collecting the information from both of my groups - I will sit down and analyze the findings before creating my hypotheses.

The ball is rolling...

 Hi Everyone,

I know it's been a while. I had taken time off work to look after my mother who had terminal cancer. Unfortunately, my Mum lost her battle with cancer during the school holidays. Took a further 3 weeks off (to grieve and be with family) and returned to school this week (Monday 20th May - W4).

Before taking time off, I had met with Amber George from Tamaki about my Inquiry and my vision of what I want to achieve. She directed me to Albie Stevenson (one of the English teachers and dean). The learning area I am choosing to focus on is Literacy and my Inquiry is on the transition of Y8 students into High School. 

I also met with my Principal Mr Herlihy to gain some insight and expertise from him too.

So what now? The ball is rolling...

1. I've met with Albie and together, we selected a group of Y9 students, former students of GTS. Some may call them my 'target students' but I prefer to call them my "experts". I will be interviewing my group of students to find out more about their experience of High School so far, as a Y9 student. Over time, I want to identify strategies and ideas of what we can do from our end (as an Intermediate) to prepare our current Y8's for High School next year.
2. I would also like to pop in to some of their English classes to observe the students. Looking at attitude and behaviour for learning.

Before finalising my Inquiry for 2024, I had reached out to some of our colleagues at Tamaki College end of last year. I wanted to gauge some insight to their thoughts about Y9 students and also hear what they think we should do as Y8 teachers to prepare the students.