Research Reflection PD

On our teacher only day we were asked to look at the data from the Reading, Writing and Maths results from students at our school compared to those in the Manaiakalani cluster. The findings were interesting, particularly because the period of time that the assessment took place was through the Covid epidemic which has affected all school students learning in a plethora of ways. In our small groups we looked at gender, ethnicity and year groups that were tested at different times of the year over a period of one year (Term 1 of 2022 - Term 1 of 2023). We took a deep dive into what student groups had made progress, acceleration, showed a shift or those that had gaps and why we thought was the case? We recorded a PMI for each subject ares or Reading, Writing and Maths. Then we broke into Quality Learning Circles to discuss what effective strategies we are currently using and share ideas with teaching colleagues. Here is a snapshot of our time spent together with a range of reading techniques used.

In the afternoon I went to a fun, interactive Create workshop led by the wonderful junior teachers from Glen Taylor school and their session was called "Mad Little Scientists" and this was divided into three areas of the Living World, The Material World and The Physical World. We broke into three groups and did a hands on Create activity which promotes young children's fine motor skills, creativity, cognitive development and language accumulation. They use provocations to promote student interest and then provide a range of activities for them to participate in. Overall, this was a positive and valuable experience of teaching and learning within our education cluster. I found it helpful and will endeavour to use some of these ideas in my own teaching practice. Special thanks to Georgie Hamilton for presenting the research, and Fiona Grant for collating this professional development Inquiry to us and the Manaiakalani team for their statistical analysis and research of our testing data. "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results", (John Dewey).