2. BIG IDEA:
This year I intend to explore the notion that knowing the learner, teaching in an
explicit fashion, targeting future focused thinking skills and promoting self-
managing learners will help raise levels of achievement in all learners but
especially my target group of Maori and Pasifika children.
3. Rationale 1: Current trend in education whereby:
● Schools should now be focusing on Future Focused Learning. Our world has changed. Our
children will need thinking skills to navigate this change.
● Knowledge can come to you anywhere, such as streaming media - we don’t need bricks and
mortar to achieve this.
● Big changes that have been driven by changing technology including the change from film
cameras to digital cameras, the move from dvd’s to digital files, the decrease in hard-copy
newspaper readership in favour of online news and the decline of home landline telephones in
favour of cellular phones and smartphones.
Refer: Tony Wagner - Harvard Professor of Innovation - Future Focused Learning
Sugata Mitra TED Talk 2013 - The Future of Learning. The revolution in learning from the Victorian
model of teaching to the modern day.
Why did I choose these ideas to study?
4. Rationale 2: Future Focused Learning:
● Economist intelligence, survey of options/problem-solving is needed in order to create
● Schools need to promote higher-level thinking/entrepreneurial thinking not knowledge-based
regurgitation
● The Learner needs to know why they are learning and how to learn-AFOL
● Time to explore - Children need to spend time solving a problem. Problem solving should now
be priority learning
5. Rationale 3: Knowledge is a commodity
● Affordance - this is an architectural term, and a great model of thinking to explore
● Creativity - Is not just art, but higher-order thinking
Refer: Julie Atkin - Vision and Values Document
● Connections to community are vital (imperative to know social/cultural backgrounds of the
learner)
● Ensure authentic learning is based on the individual (know your learner)
● Promote Ako - where children teach each other
● Allow for exploration of their thinking/creativity - trial of Must-do’s/Can do’s
6. Rationale 4: Effective Pedagogy - ‘What is good teaching?’ - John Hattie
Refer: John Hattie - What is good teaching?
Refer: John Hattie: Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful?
● Activate the other ‘30’ teachers (other children) and move away from the teacher as the only
source of knowledge
● Peer tutoring is particularly effective with Maaori and Pasifika children
● Specific and direct instruction is also particularly effective with Maaori and Pasifika
● Practicing/revising/refining thinking is encouraged
● The most powerful teachers reflect on their own teaching and learning - “Now What?”
7. Rationale 5: Strategies To Promote Higher-Order Thinking/Improve Results of
Target Children
● ‘Snowballing’ = Pause, Paraphrase, Probe - inquire, clarify
● Power of Languages/Empower other children as teachers e.g. When a child speaks, say to
another: ‘What are some of your ideas? What do you think of that?’ This encourages thinking
about thinking which is metacognition.
● Implement - ‘Turn and Tell Your Buddy..’
● Implement - ‘Learning Buddies’ where children learn from each other
● Implement - ‘TAPS’ = Think-Aloud-Problem-Solving
● Implement - Specific Rubrics for skill building
8. Rationale 5: Strategies To Promote Higher-Order Thinking/Improve Results of
Target Children (contd)
● Have very clear W.A.L.Ts and Success Criteria for each lesson and skill
● Encourage multi-solution problem solving
● Use graphic organisers like: PMI charts to promote thinking.
● Questioning - Promote Children asking other children questions not just teacher-student
interactions. Teach specific questioning phrases.
● Promote expanding memory - play matching and recognition games, also ‘KIMs Game’ and use
B.Brann building block cards to promote improved memory and cognitive skills.
Refer: David Sousa ‘Make learning memorable and fun’
9. What will my target children need?
According to research, my target children will progress further with very explicit, clear teaching.
They will need a good understanding of:
● Why we are at school?
● What is learning?
● What does a good learner look like? Sound like? Do?
● What are learning intentions?
● What does WALT mean?
● How will we know we have done this?
● What will we do next?
● How could we make it better?
● Clear steps to learning and a knowledge of where to next?
10. What will I need?
I will need:
● A good understanding of the target children , their families and their backgrounds
● To explicitly teach behaviours around learning buddies and oral feedback with buddies
● To teach and model what a question is and how to ask a question and wait for an answer
● To link learning clearly to personal experiences and don’t teach isolated lessons e.g., use
the same word for the reader in oral language and in writing and in cut up sentences and
playdough activity
● To repeat, revisit and link learning to previous days
● To give ample opportunity for thinking, exploring, practising and changing
11. I will approach this by trialling the following each term
Term 1
● Afol - Why are we here? What is a learner? How do we help each other to learn? How do I
learn?
○ Rubrics
○ Skills, steps/rockets for learning
● Managing impulsivity (Art Coster)
● Perseverance (Art Coster)
http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Assessment-in-the-classroom/Assessment-for-learning-in-
practice/Clarity-about-the-learning
12. I will approach this by trialling the following each term
Term 2
● Learning buddies
● What is a question? How do I ask questions?
● Think, pair, share
● Wait time
● Future focussed problem solving. What is the problem? How can we solve it?
● Can do’s and must do’s
● Is there more than one answer? The first answer is not the only answer
● Discovery time (go into Term 3 also)
13. I will approach this by trialling the following each term
Term 3
● Think alouds - with teacher modelling thinking skills
● Memory Games - Kim’s game/Barbara Brann building blocks for metacognition
● PMI charts
● Independent routines
● Owl/frog
● Discovery time/Barbara Brann
14. Term 1
Action I took (contd):
● We discussed rubrics at the start of every literacy lesson. See photos “what do good
readers do”. “Good writers - checklists x 2”
● These individual rubrics were also included in every child’s ABC book and sent home
● A fair amount of time was spent clearly and explicitly reviewing our photos, rubrics and
daily WALT
● I also took photos of children who were showing great practise/explicit actions in literacy.
These were displayed. See photos of Dan, Sophie, Isileli
15. Who is Targeted?
My target children are:
● Isileli Mamatuki (Tongan - low reading and writing)
● Kaiva Etuati (Samoan - low reading and writing)
● Arjun Bal (Samoan/Maori - low reading and writing)
● Jayden Herewini (Maori - low reading and writing)
● Piripi Hawkins (Maori - low reading and writing)
16. Term 1
Goal 1:
To find out about the backgrounds and whanau/aiga/famili of my target students
Action I took:
● Personal phone calls to introduce myself
● Face to face meetings
● 1 home visit (I left with a bag of potatoes!)
● “Getting to know you” sheet sent home in cartoon form which was funky, accessible and
easy to read (see evidence criteria)
● Mihi and opportunity to share whakapapa given (Piripi returned with several A3 sheets of
his lineage)
● Photographs of each child taken Greetings from their special country added and displayed
with map
18. Term 1
Gallery wall:
The back wall of the classroom is devoted to display each child’s personal choice of work and
art. They added family photos, art, maps, feathers, rosary beads, tickets from family outings,
catalogue flyers of favourite toys, etc.
19. Term 1
Reflection:
The families and children were proud to share their whakapapa. Some parents did a project
with their child and put significant effort into presenting them, which was a pleasant surprise.
The gallery wall has been a huge hit and most successful. I have been able to see different
personalities and backgrounds and personalities emerging. I love how little plastic bags of
shells, feathers, rosary beads and a Niuean necklace found their way to our wall. I plan to use
this all year.
With the rigorous individual testing and the whanau contact, I now feel I have a great platform to
work from. I feel confident that I “know my learner”
20. Term 1
Goal 2:
To discus AFOL - Why are we here? What is a learner? How do I learn? How do we help each
other to learn?
Action I took:
● We explored and discussed the questions above drama and role play and I took photos of
what Room 8 thought great learning was. These were displayed
● We made a variety of bugs and worked out “what bugs us when we are trying to learn?”
● We learned about what a WALT is
● I shared the reading rocket (see photo) to show where we need to be at 6 years old
● Each child had an individual rocket in their ABC books with highlighted next steps for
them (depending on where they were on the ready to read colour wheel)
21. I will approach this by trialling the following each term
Term 4
● Self-managing learners
● How to blog (personal goal)
● Involving the students in their own learning/constantly checking in on making connections
to prior learning/always asking why are we learning this?
● Thinking dispositions/what do good learners use?
● Tying all Inquiry together and evaluating success
22. Term 1
Reflection:
I proved that formative type assessment, explicit goal setting rubrics and plenty of Learning
conversations with questions like “What do you think you are learning?” and “How will you know
you have learnt it?” does shift learners.
As well as the hard copy evidence of “good readers” poster and “good writers” poster all
strategies tried gave very clear, methodical steps to learning .I felt my target group could easily
articulate what good readers do and show me the photos of this. It was useful to begin each
group session with looking at these pictorial steps.
However due to the nature and personalities in our class, I felt I needed to introduce:
a) A plenary system like the OWLS to check understanding
b) Managing impulsivity/perseverance from Art Coster
We also modelled and role played often, eg: I would stop the class often, to highlight children
who were showing perseverance etc. I was trying to target Isileli, Kingston and Kaiva who did
not persist with a task.
23. Term 2
Goal:
To promote self-managing learners by shifting the reliance on the teacher to the other “26
teachers in the room” (i.e their peers)
Action I took:
● I introduced “learning buddies” which we changed every 3 weeks
● We modelled lots of scaffolded speech (even how to sit -knee to knee” and “eye to eye”
and how to look a the speaker. We modelled how to say something and then wait for their
buddy to have their turn
● I introduced and reinforced learning and language like “WALT”, “success criteria”,
“feedback”, and “rubrics”.
● We practised sitting knee to knee and eye to eye and asking a simple question with wait
time for answers (in other contexts) e.g., What did you have for breakfast? How do you
spell your name? What do you do after school?
24. Term 2
Action I took (contd):
● Photos of listening buddies were used and displayed
● We moved to encouraging student-generated questioning e.g., What did you like about
your book?
● I gave lots of encouragement to students finding their own answers
● I talked about learning buddies at the start of every lesson when I explained “Must do’s”
and “Can do’s” (read further for elaboration)
● I stopped the class and had buddies ‘reply and role play’ their actions. If I noticed buddies
discussing their learning, we unpacked why that was good
● Next, I refered learning buddies to our pictorial rubrics (from Term 1) e.g., What do good
readers do?, writing checklists and maths rockets
● I encouraged learning buddies to discuss what their next learning step was
* Refer to: Reading on the theory - Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development “there is
more effective learning with support of others”.
25. Term 2
Reflection:
I tried hard to focus on promoting self-regulated learners and how our learning buddies could
help us just as much as a teacher.
I needed to be aware of social, emotional, cultural and academic needs, so I decided to match
learning buddies myself, rather than let the children choose.
Learning about ‘what is a question’ was tricky at first for some children who just wanted to ‘tell’.
Having a learning buddy dramatically reduced the number of interruptions in small group work
Children felt empowered and enjoyed walking around with their rubrics and checklists. They
loved discussing where they were up to and giving their partner a tick.
I felt it improved my target children’s sense of self worth in that it motivated them to stay on
task more as they knew what they were doing and why.
26. Term 2
Reflection (contd):
The children enjoyed buddy reading and requested to do it.
Having our peers monitor and check in on our rubrics motivated my target children (and the
whole class) to stay on task. The questioning helped the buddy to dig deeper and explain why
they were doing something.
It was empowering for the children and rewarding for me to see 5 year olds be so explicit and
aware of their learning steps.
27. Term 2
Second action: Must do’s and can do’s
● These were introduced as pictures after a brainstorm about what might help us practise
our learning.
● The pictures were then also colour-coded with coloured spots to further show what was a
must do and what was a can do
● Children could then clearly discuss with their buddy what their must and can do’s were for
each subject including reading, writing and maths
28. Term 2
Reflection:
● Giving choices and letting children regulate how long they spent doing must do’s before
they could do can do’s was a refreshing change from me constantly monitoring and
moving groups around a taskboard. There were natural consequences if it took too long!
● Also it gave more opportunities for interaction and mixing of ability groups. Eg: a reader
from Red group might easily find themselves at the play dough table with someone much
more capable from the Orange group.
● I could also allow for children who wanted to spend time and explore an activity at length.
● There was also an element of accountability eg: A buddy would quickly make sure you
had done your “must dos” if they found you on the last ipad available! Refer photograph
Must do/Can do
● I think 5 year olds SHOULD be encouraged to have a choice in their learning activities.
29. Term 2
Third Action: Goal
To explore “What is a problem?”
Action I took:
● We discussed the question and role played some scenarios together so that the problem
of a ‘problem’ was understood
Example 1: We all went on a mimed walk around the room with our lunch boxes. A
big bear came. We got scared. Our lunchbox dropped. “Oh no, we had a problem
because our yoghurt spilled out.”
Example 2: We were reading our reader. We turned the page. “Oh no, we had a
problem. There was a big hard word.”
● Once the concept of a problem was understood, we discussed solutions. We talked about
how there is not just one way to solve a problem, there are hundreds.
31. Term 2
Action I took:
● We discussed the question and role played some scenarios together so that the problem
of a ‘problem’ was understood
Example 1: We all went on a mimed walk around the room with our lunch boxes. A
big bear came. We got scared. Our lunchbox dropped. “Oh no, we had a problem
because our yoghurt spilled out.”
Example 2: We were reading our reader. We turned the page. “Oh no, we had a
problem. There was a big hard word.”
● Once the concept of a problem was understood, we discussed solutions. We talked about
how there is not just one way to solve a problem, there are hundreds.
32. Term 3
Goal 1:
To target future focussed thinking skills.
Action I took:
● I explored Discovery time and what it is. “Discovery time is a hands-on activity-based
programme that puts children in control of their own learning. The teacher sets the scene
but the students decide on the action”
*Refer: Discovery time: Developing key competencies through activity based learning
www.discoverytime.co.nz
● I set up an activity space and used the key competencies as WALTS
See photo - We are learning to try hard to do things for ourselves
● I explained the key competency and linked it to Art Coster’s Thinking Dispositions
● We then made sure there was sharing time at the end to say “This is what I did today”...”I
tried hard because…”
33. Term 3
Reflection:
Discovery time is a useful option for ensuring the student is at the centre of their learning. It
was good to link it back to the key competencies and Thinking Dispositions. However I would
have liked more time to investigate this and see how other schools do discovery time. I think
that would have been valuable. I would like to buy the book “Discovery Time” - with CD for
$48.00 by Brenda Martin and Gay Hay.
The process of discovery time did support my theory that children learn best when they are in
control and have a high interest in what they are learning. If they are interested, they are more
likely to ask questions, be more creative, persevere for longer and take learning to a different
level. There is a much greater emphasis on student-directed learning.
I also liked how it naturally led to “Have you had any problems?”...“How did you do
that?”...”Where did that idea come from?”...and it consolidated our “What is a problem” work in
Term 2.
34. Term 3
Reflection (contd):
I came a bit unstuck as to how marry up this wonderful process with shifting achievement in my
target children. I will need to discuss this with Judith but I can see how the process empowered
the learner. Isileli, Arjun and Jayden were great problem solvers. I can also see how this
process will support the child for self-directed learning.
I am wanting to explore how to use this process with literacy? Can it be connected to must and
can do’s? It does have natural links to improving oral language and I like the links it has to “Te
Whaariki” and the open-ended experiences initiated by the spontaneous creative activity.
I also appreciate the solid theoretical base behind discovery time. Refer: “Boys need more time
to play” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmHWjCL_inc
35. Term 3
Reflection (contd):
Refer: Dockett Sue - Australia https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/inform
Art Coster - “Assessment Strategies for Self-Directed Learning [Sage Publications]
In conclusion, I want to continue to explore this by:
a) Viewing planning sheets for discovery time and viewing possible activities
b) Viewing other schools in action
c) Exploring how this could be used to support literacy enhancements
This enquiry remains open!
36. Term 3
Goal 2:
To strengthen memory pathways for my target children.
Action I took:
● To explore and research “a child’s working memory”. How do we hold on to and work with
information stored?” Children use working memory to learn and follow directions
● Is it possible to ‘boost’ s child’s working memory in daily life?
● I researched and implemented some fun activities that worked on visualisation skills. I
encourages children to create a picture in their minds of what they had just read. I
encouraged mental pictures. We called this “thinking bubbles on our mind’s T.V.
● Next we progressed to writing basic sight words in colours and get the child to visualise
the letter and the colour on their “mind’s T.V.”
● We learnt some key words in this fashion. We practised key words at the start of a group
reading session using this technique.
Refer:https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/learning-at-home/homework-study-skills/8-working-memory-
boosters
37. Term 3
Reflection:
Practising ‘active reading’ and visualising was very effective and it helped with reading
comprehension. Learning key sight words by coloured letters ‘imaged’ on our mind’s T.V. was
an effective strategy that supported my target students.
I want to further explore some memory enhancers. My ideas include making it multi sensory (we
already make play dough words, but what else could we do?). Could we continue to make
connections with rhymes and mnemonics or cultural themes?
Currently, I use elements like b.e.c.a.u.s.e. (big elephants can always use small elephants).
Maybe this could be cultural or be a song?
