Reflection and Sharing - ASL Report

Here is the final report from my time as an Across-Schools CoL Leader.. I had a great time learning about teaching reading comprehension and trying out the strategies on 9PKr.

Another highlight was getting my Mum to come in on Thursdays (our reading day) to help out and act as another reading buddy.

For 11 weeks from the start of Term 2 to the middle of Term 3, I just tried my best to increase reading mileage, vocabulary, confidence, enjoyment, and either 'learning to read' or 'reading to learn.' I had read a little literature about reading comprehension at that point, but hadn't started to synthesise what I'd learnt. Then for 4 weeks in Term 3 I actively tried to teach strategies given in the literature, in a way that was recommended by the literature.

Here are some of the good results - let me translate them for you:

In the chart above, it shows that every one of 9PKr's members improved their average Read Theory Grade scores at least a little bit (some definitely more than others) from the start of Term 2 to the end of Term 3. 

This data analysis table shows that 7 students increased their average score by more than 1 grade during the 11 weeks of me just trying my best. 5 increased by more than half a grade (0.5) in that time. 

When comparing the 4 week intervention to the 11 weeks of me just giving it a go, it's hard to make comparisons. The time is not a controlled variable, so I'm not comparing like with like! However, 6 students made a greater average grade increase in the 4 weeks than they did during the 11 weeks! In saying that, those 6 students also all shared a big shift in attitude towards science class, me, school and reading in that time as well - it was like they grew up a bit in those 4 weeks!

These next two graphs are pretty cool: 

This one shows that by the end of the whole reading programme (11 weeks of trying + 4 weeks planned intervention) 11 students had increased by more than 1 whole grade. Another 1 had increased by more than half a grade. 

And finally, this graph shows the pretest scores of the whole class on the left, and it shows the highest grade they reached at any point during the year. This data is less reliable because they maaaay have fluked it up there, but it does also show their potential! P even managed to reach the same reading grade (10) that I scored at! 

Science Rap - Acid, Do You Love Me?

Tamaki Productions returns with another science rap! The main character is a base (not an acid), and he is wearing a blue shirt and singing from his perspective as a base.

Lyrics and images cover lots of different concepts from the Year 11 NCEA Exam Acids and Bases!

One example is when the base sings "acid, do you love me, are we colliding, say you'll never neutralize here without me." 

When an acid and a base react, that chemical reaction is called a neutralization reaction. 

They react to form a salt, and water. 

There is lots of analysis you could do on this video with students, such as why particles in the drone shot move faster when red and orange 'flames' are being shaken in the shot? 

Why does the litmus character throw blue paper up in the air while the base sings about her, and the phenolphthalein character throw pink?!

What does the umbrella in the drone shot represent? Why does everyone link arms when the umbrella passes over them? What is that meant to show?

We hope you like it :)

Filming Year 13 Biology

This year I've been involved in the Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir project with my year 13 biology class - it's taken up most of my free 'blogging' time which is why this blog has been so quiet this year! 

I've just published lesson 12, which is the final lesson in a series of four consecutive lessons. 

I thought it would be interesting to film, publish and reflect on a full week's teaching and learning. 

The aim of this was both for me to reflect on my assumptions as a teacher and my view on the pedagogy of building understanding during one specific context (timing in plants and animals), as well as provide an honest view on how I incorporate technology into my average, daily teaching to anyone who chooses to view my Class OnAir project! 

My latest reflection was on how, overall, I'm quite happy with the progression of learning I laid out about the content of timing, the multimodal and rewindable learning opportunities offered and how many times we returned to information over the week, hopefully building both knowledge and confidence from new vocabulary up to more complex ideas such as the mechanism of photoperiodism.

However, on reflecting on the last lesson I have noticed that I did not follow a similar scaffolding procedure to introduce answering exam questions, and instead expected students (by the end of the week, by the end of Term 3) to be able to straight away apply their new understandings to an exam question. This proved to be quite a jump in skills.

Next Term when we return to revise for the Plant and Animal Responses exam I will work to support students in answering exam questions, and I reflect on how to do this at the end of my Lesson 12 post, which can be found under the green butterfly at this link here. 

Something else I tried for the first time OnAir was to include a full video of my explanation of the concept. I did this so students could return to it and help them study by watching it again at their own pace. You can watch it below: