Achievement

When listening to
Dr Aaron Wilson - Using data and evidence
to improve your practice

I think about VLO’s and identifying what the valued learning outcomes are for me as a teacher,
my students and my school community in regards to my MIT project. What is it that I want the
students to achieve and are these things actually valued by students and myself alike?

Achievement is obviously at the heart of what I want the students to achieve from my project,
but what about things such as their attitude to writing, the key competencies that they develop
through this project and enabling Maori to have success as Maori? Is the student’s participation
in this project accelerated and are they more engaged? What progress have they made?

What also resonated with me was around teacher observations and the problems with ‘observing.’
When observing we can tend to ‘see what we want to see’ and that we can make judgments based
on these. We can also focus our observations on one thing and make these observations fit with
what we want to see. So when I think of the observations that I have made in my classroom, how
valid are these observations? Do I add my own bias to these observations when what I am wanting
to see is progress in my students writing?

I have got student voice, anecdotal comments, and writing samples on their drive and in their books.
But ultimately, the shift I am wanting to make is in their achievement.

Have I enabled Maori to have success as Maori and incorporated a Ngai Tahu story into the
curriculum? Yes. Tuakana / Teina relationships are evident in my classroom to help those who
are less confident in writing to get the support that they need. Maori Kupu are being discussed
and used in class. Discussions have been rich around the mighty Pouakai.

Are the students developing their Key Competencies through this digital Storytelling process?
Yes. The students are communicating and collaborating, supporting one another through this
process. Sharing their learning tasks on their blogs and with others within the classroom environment.
They are developing their use of language, being exposed to rich discussions and a different
‘older style’ of written English. 

Engagement and interest has sparked richer vocabulary and this is clearly evident when you ask
the children about the Pouakai and read their writing. But has this made the shift required in their
achievement?

How are we going? MIT2019

I think it's important to document the process and journey that I am on as then I can look back at what worked, what didn't work and then look at the next possible steps. It can be tricky at times to document your whole journey and all the little moments of thinking and changes / adaptions you go through along the way. I think that as a profession we are always being reflective and looking at other ways that we can do things more effectively. I do however think that sometimes we have our own 'intended curriculum' and the things that we want our students to learn and don't check in with the students to get their voice and feedback. Are the students getting what we are intending them to get?

Up until this point I have shared my intervention with the Staff at my school and have had informal feedback from the Deputy Principal, commenting on a sample of writing from my students. I have also done a midway survey with my students to gain student voice in regards to what they are enjoying / not enjoying about the Digital Storytelling Resource, what they have learnt and where some next possible steps could be for this resource. 

Here is the feedback here:




I have highlighted some of the key themes from the feedback so that I can take some of this on-board as I put together the next story. It has been an interesting process as the use of this resource essentially takes a term to use, so the final feedback (for this story) will come later in the Term and of course the data (E-asTTle Writing Sample) will come early next term.
Informally, I have the writing samples, digital learning objects/ activities that the children have created which show the learning that the students are making. I have the discussions that I have had with my students and anecdotal notes in my planning too. Formally, I have not done an E-asTTle Writing sample as I we have these coming up early Term 4. 

My next steps however will be: 
To get formative data so that I can show the shift in their writing level