KEY CHANGE IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE Week 32 Blog


KEY CHANGE IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Week 32 Blog

The key change that I have identified in my teaching practice is the use of more collaborative learning in my classrooms. This is one of the themes that was identified in the Hack education research and also fits in with many of standard in “ Our code, Our standards”.
I will use the Cycle of Experiential Learning to show the journey I have been on to incorporate collaborative learning into my teaching over the last 32 weeks. I will focus on one as in my year 9 Food Technology class where students are making links between what they have been taught in theory and how that relates in a practical aspect.

Step one: Problem identification.
I was driven to make change as I had observed that not all students were making links between what they were taught and how it relates in practise. This meant that some students were not achieving at as higher level as others.  I thought that it was important to make change to try and improve student outcomes and to see how I could make better use of the technology that we now had available to us.

Step two: Observation and analysis
The data that I had available to me was student test results which showed a spread of marks. I could see from these that not all students were making links between what they had been taught and how it related in different contexts, while others were successfully achieving this.

Step three: Abstract or reconceptualization.
Through learning about the theory of  21st  century skills. I was interested in the research completed by ITL research and the learning rubrics that they developed. One of the skills that they identified was Collaboration.  I wanted to explore what 21st century skills were, how I could work towards implementing these in my teaching and learning and in particular how I could effectively use collaborative learning as a tool to improve student outcomes.

Stage four: Active experimentation
I decided that I wanted to develop more collaborative tasks in my year 9 course. This would mean that students would work together more to apply the theory that we taught into different contexts. I did this with the help of the G suite for education platform. All year 9 students had access to Chrome books and this allowed me to use classroom as a means of communicating with them. I also allowed the students to work collaboratively on shared google docs and slides. I created a task with allowed them to work in groups to create a recipe book over time that they could use to communicate what we were cooking and include key information about the knowledge that we covered in the course that related to this. At the end of the course I reflected on their grades and could see that the gap in achievement had narrowed. Through working collaboratively the high achieving students had helped the lower ability students to raise their marks through improved understanding of what we were learning and how this related. I could see that allowing students to work collaboratively really worked for all students. A positive working environment was created in the classroom and student engagement and achievement was high.

WHAT NOW?
From my experience of how successful it was to allow students to work collaboratively I would like to investigate how to teach collaboration better. I created a task that meant students worked together, which I labelled collaboration.  I think that it would be useful to see if teaching students what working collaboratively means, would improve the experience for students.

REFERENCES

ITL Research. (2012). 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Retrieved from https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/ITL-Research
Ministry of Education (2017). Our code, our standards. Retrieved from
https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/our-code-our-standards
Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Corwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.itslifejimbutn otasweknowit.org.uk/files

Comments

  1. Carolyn8 July 2018 at 15:47

    Your goal to explicitly teach collaboration is something I am keen to do too Melanie. I have been teaching Technology for many years and 21C skills are developed as students undertake technological practice and become technologically literate. Until recently I was making assumptions that students worked collaboratively. However, Mind Lab challenged my assumptions and I recognised that I actually had to teach the skill of collaboration. I found the ideas here useful: https://www.cte.cornell.edu/teaching-ideas/engaging-students/collaborative-learning.html and hope that you might too. I think as we begin (or have completed) our move away from the whiteboard and use teaching and learning to encapsulate 21C skills many of our students will thrive on not being taught 'at' anymore. Our role in teaching and learning is changing and Mind Lab has given me the confidence to keep challenging myself and my ideas. I would love the opportunity to continue sharing your learning journey through this blog :-)


    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WEEK 19 - Reflective blog.

ACTIVITY 3 : CONTRIBUTION OF TEACHER INQUIRY TOPICS TO MY COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE The two inquiry topics I will consider are: ·          Followership ·          Implementing Technology innovation in the classroom. DESCRIPTIIVE Wenger defines a community of practice as “a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion on about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott&Synder,2002,p4) If we are to grow as teachers we need to be part of a community of practice. For me I am part of a department within my school which forms my strongest COP. I also work with other teachers in schools in the Bay of plenty who teach the same subject. This forms my second COP. How these fit the three elements of COP: ·          Joint enterprise – We all wor...
Read more

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness. Reflective blog week 31

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness. Reflective blog week 31 My understanding of indigenous knowledge is that it is the local knowledge that is unique to a culture or society. In a school where we have a variety of different cultures. It is important that we do not use only our own cultural identity to guide our teaching but that we acknowledge that in our classrooms there are a variety of different cultures.   They will all be bringing with them their own indigenous knowledge. If we first acknowledge this, it will become the starting point for us as teachers to be able to achieve culturally responsive pedagogy. Gay defined this as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives as conduits for effective teaching” (gay 2001, p.106) The two areas that I will focus on are the core values of the school I teach at and learning activities that I incorporate in my own classroom. Below I have included the core values of our school. They are Respect...
Read more

Week 30 The impact of Global Trends On Education.

WEEK 30 THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL TRENDS ON EDUCATION A current trend that is impacting on education is the impact of digital learning in education. We have students hitting our classes who are digital natives. They have grown up with technology as part of their everyday lives and the reality is that it will only become a bigger part of our society as time goes by. As educators we are challenged with the job of using the technology to best serve our students to help educate them and make them ready for either further education when they leave school or for future jobs and the workforce. We are challenged to keep up with the technology ourselves and assess how best to use it to allow for the best outcomes for our students. There is an increased trend for the use of technology but we can question how effectively are we doing this? Every teachers skill set are different and the access to digital technologies in schools is different. Beyond school you do not need to go far to see ...
Read more