Creativity Miles

For 2018 I have two inquiry topics I am focussing on. The first with my Year 11 students I am aiming to improve the success rate of my NCEA Level 1 class by encouraging more working in groups and submitting group responses to assessments. and the second with my small class of Year 13 students. I am intending to open up the Year 13 programme so they can choose the topic they wish to research and the medium in which they develop their digital response. For example two boys are in a Young Enterprise team and they successfully dipped their toes in the water of Start-Up Enterprise and wish to continue with their company in 2018. Their decision is to find a technological product that they can develop for both their Year 13 Digital course and their Year 13 YES course. To support me in the development of my teaching practice I use 5 main areas: Colleguial discussions, both in my department, within school staff and within my Digital Technologies subject specialists. Twitter, has a group ...

40 years is a long time to be teaching. Several jobs but one career. I have found that every 10 years there is a major change that I have to adapt to. From manual typewriters to electric typewriters, IBM golf balls, word processors, acorn computers, dos computers, windows operating systems in its various forms on various computers, to the point now I carry a very powerful computer in my pocket. Once we hit computers, School Certificate took a turn to the Framework and unit standards, then the move into Achievement Standards and the Framework for all subjects and no more percentage grades, no more just a pass, but Achieved, Merit and Excellence grading scheme. In the current cycle of 10 years there is a heavy emphasis on computer coding/programming and now 21st century learning. In order, to be three steps ahead of students I have had to continually upskill, sometimes on my own, sometimes with national roadshow professional development, sometimes from colleagues. Since the introduc...

“ We do not learn from experience…. We learn from reflecting on experience” John Dewey. Thoughtful reflection is a part of every day. 50 minutes to work and 50 minutes home gives me opportunities to improve my practice. I work through lesson planning that did not achieve the goals I had set. I think about the student who I observed who has more socks than shoes under his feet.  I consider the disengaged student and wonder what is going on in their life that is causing them to come in day after day and engage minimally in my programme. One of the things I don’t do well is write down reflections. When I write reflections, usually in my plan book, I note that I am repeating some of the issues day after day that I have observed, or that I have not come up with a sustainable change that I can make to my practice. This issue will be a major focus for 2018 as I believe that spending more written time at the end of the day will have the biggest effect on student achievement th...