FYI Planning

Here is this weeks notes...

2016 term two week three itinerary from WaihiCollege

Progress and Consistency Tool

Overall Teacher Judgements

The Ministry of Education has invested a great deal of time and money into an online computer program that is designed to help teachers make more informed judgments about what level the students are operating in the curriculum.  They call this program the PaCT which is Progress and Consistency Tool.  (Click here to go to the website)

As part of yesterday's Teacher Only Day programme the Year 7 & 8 teachers (and Junior Maths teachers) were introduced to this tool.  It was pleasing to see teachers become early adopters of this technology.

Some of the benefits of the PaCT system include...

1. Automatic communication with Kamar - the two administration systems sync together.
2. The individualised nature of PaCT where each student is individually judged.
3. The multiple illustrated exemplars (with teacher-student dialogue) make for very clear indications of where in the spectrum students consistently sit.
4. These illustrations become a good check point for staff to reflect upon the level of the class.
5. The entire cohort data will be available to better allow for monitoring and planning around year levels.  

One of the comments was that with greater awareness of the PaCT tool that there will be an increased level of consistency around overall teacher judgments between teachers, schools, and different years which can only be beneficial.  

 This post relates to RTC #11. "Analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally - i. analyse assessment information to identify progress and ongoing learning needs of ākonga." And ERO's School Evaluation Indicators Domain 4 "Responsive Curriculum, Effective Teaching and Opportunity to Learn - Effective Assessment for learning."

Improving NCEA Results

James Cook High School

James Cook High School in Manukau South Auckland is a larger school than Waihi College (1200 students year 9-13 as opposed to our 500).  They have had a very remarkable story of turning around their qualification results for their students.

The were featured in the New Zealand Herald in the school holidays (click here for that article).  Some of the interesting comments in that article was what their Principal Vaugh Couillault had to say;

Mr Couillault, who joined the school in 2012, says the results are indicative of serious amounts of work from teaching and support staff, who deal with kids who come to the school usually well below standard.

"At year nine, our kids are up to four years below where they should be," he says. "And it takes a lot of hard yakka to help them from there."

He hints at some of the interventions that James Cook High teachers put into place for their students;

It's about making a real effort to know our learners. Not about just standing up the front. But any teacher worth their salt will be doing that."

They also collect "hard core" data, and can make changes on almost a daily basis around what is and isn't working, he says.

Last night there was a report on TVNZ's One News on the increased results (up from 42% of students in year 11 getting Level One 2014 up to 95% in 2015).

Here is a copy of that report (intellectual property of TVNZ)...[takes a min to load]

James Cook High School is a good example of how a school can work towards a collective goal of increasing the qualification results of their students.  I find myself interested in the finer details around the changes they have put in place.  Here is a summary of the main points...

1. Perseverance - teachers not giving up on the kids (further opportunities) and kids not giving up (coming in in their holidays).
2. Re-looking at the middle management - splitting up teachers into smaller groups to increase accountability around results.  
3. Sense of Pride - looking at giving the student more pride in the community (including uniform etc).  Modernising the look of the school.  
4. Face lift - The school had new building programme (Waihi College is due new block to replace P Block).  
5. Student Centered Learning - getting personalised in the learning.  Identifying the needs of each individual student and getting the learning individualised.  

"I want every student that walks out the gate to simply be in charge of what happens to them next." - Vaugh Couillault

This post relates to RTC #6. "Conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme i. articulate clearly the aims of their teaching, give sound professional reasons for adopting these aims, and implement them in their practice." And RTC #11. "Analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally i. analyse assessment information to identify progress and ongoing learning needs of ākonga 
ii. use assessment information to give regular and ongoing feedback to, guide and support further learning, iii. analyse assessment information to reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching." 

Senior School Examination Information

Senior Examination Preparation
With the School Exams on the horizon here is a copy of a document that I've put together to hopefully focus our learners attention to doing their best.  I've saved copies of the document into S:\Curriculum\Learning Advisory\Year 2013\Planning\Checklist For Seniors Exams.docx.  There are spares around in the staffroom. 

Feedback
A challenge for us as educators is to make our senior examinations a quality learning opportunity.  We can anticipate the pressure that may exist for staff getting the marking done (especially with the senior reports due to go home just after the final exam). 

I hope to see that staff can take the opportunity to give some quality direction/guidance/motivation to the learners around what next steps they need to take to reach the next step N, A, M, or E. 

FYI from the date of this post there are 59 actual days left until the NCEA examinations - That's only 30 days of school. 



This post relates to RTC # 11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally

Use Of Data - Education Review Office

ERO Feedback.

With the departure of ERO there were some good points to focus upon in our school practices.  One of the core areas they focussed upon was the use of data (formative and summative). Primarily they were most interested in how staff are using their data in directing the teaching to specific students (especially 'Priority Learners'). 

Here is the PowerPoint that I presented to staff on Tuesday morning.  (a copy can be found in the school shared drive under admin - then professional development - then staff presentations).




Here is a link to another post that I have done which uses my year nine maths class as the basis for questioning my own use of formative data.

Here is a link to the TKI online tool I refer to in the above PowerPoint.

This post relates to RTC #11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally

Formative Assessment

Inside The Black Box
With the departure of ERO this term there has been a highlight of the need for a common level of practice in the use of our data.  This post is particularly focussed on the use of formative assessment data to improve our practice, planning, reporting and general knowledge of our learning progress. 

It was recommended to us to use as one of the core academic sources an article by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam called Inside the Black Box : Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment  [click on the title to link to an online copy].  This article is somewhat dated (circa 1998) but was a quick read (only sixteen pages) and written with the teacher in mind. 

I believed that my own practice around formative assessment is/was very sound.  It has morfed slightly over my years as a teacher of Mathematics - but primarily has involved the same strategy.  Specifically that looked like beginning lessons with some "do now" questions (maths material that focusses on the work covered in recent lessons or earlier this year).  I have detailed roll book (see attached document). 

My formative assessment data would be the scores out of 10.  These I used as a means of gauging whether the class are 'getting it'.  Inside the Black Box really challenged my assumptions and drilled down into the quality of what my formative practice has actually been. 

Here are some of the quotes which if found to be most profound...
  

"Improved formative assessment helps low achievers more than other students and so reduces the range of achieved while raising achievement overall." (p. 4)

A strong statement on the importance of a concentration on the use of data. 

"Pupils who come to see themselves as unable to learn usually cease to take school seriously." (p. 4). 

With honest personal reflection I can see this trait is a valid observable factor in with 9BK - students that are giving up on Maths as they see themselves unable to do it.  Making this one of my priority goals as an teachers. 

"Teachers are often able to predict pupils' results on external tests because their own tests imitate them, but at the same time teachers know too little about their pupils' learning needs." (p. 5)

This is notable in my own formative assessment - I know who's on track for the summative assessment but I'm not specifically able to pin point exactly where they're deficient (and therefore I'm lacking in my practice with feedback/feedforward). 

"Feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils." (p. 7) 

Black and Wiliam highlight a particular shortcoming of my own use of formative data;

"It is essential to ensure the quality of feedback.  Research studies have shown that, if pupils are given only marks or grades, they do not benefit from feedback." (p. 9)

And they challenge with a self assessment questions of;

"Do I really know enough about the understanding of my pupils to be able to help each of them?" (p. 10)

Here are the questions that the ERO team were asking staff and management...

For Staff

1. Where is your formative data?  Can I see it?
2. How do you use your formative data to plan?
3. Can I see the notes you've made for yourself that you use to follow up on?
4. Where are your reflections on your students?

For Management

1. What tools are you expecting your staff to use to gather formative data?
2. What do you provide to staff as guidelines and expectations you have for your staff?
3. What are the your expectations on recording formative observations?

 Finally they commented "We can see the data, we can't see overtly the use of that data."





This material relates to RTC #
11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally - and - RTC # 8. demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn

PISA

PISA - Programme for International Student Assessment
PISA testing is something of a political football.  It is used as justification or provocation by various invested interest groups.  I always find it curious how easy it is for politicians to make *changes* in education - we are a pretty easy football to be kicked. 

I prefer to look at PISA as a means of improvement of our practice as teachers and the culture of learning as leaders.  It acts as a snapshot of a cohort of students (PISA aims exclusively at 15 year olds).  PISA looks at only at the 34 OECD countries.  

The nice thing about PISA is that it's not solely interested in content (although the test against curriculum).  The assessment is also about how students use that knowledge. 

The key areas that are looked at in the PISA testing is Maths, Reading, Science, Problem Solving and recently they've added Financial Literacy.  An area that is often over looked in the PISA testing is that each individual student (slightly over half a million students world wide are tested) over the two hours of testing the first part is a survey on their attitude towards school.  Fairly similar idea done in our NZ asTTle testing.  The PISA report makes note of the correlation to the student attitude and their overall success.  Here is my summary of the correlations...

1. Having parents that encourage and push is important.  How do we at Waihi College engender this?  What things can we do to improve this?
2. students that enjoy being at school do much better.  How do we create or add to this environment?  What ways do we identify those students not enjoying Waihi College?  FYI in the PISA report 91% of kiwi students reported as being happy at school - what would that be like here at Waihi College? 
3. Belonging was a key - PISA measure this by asking if they're late to school or have missed classes [the results were 1/3 are late and 1/4 missed a class].  Do we follow up our lateness or missed lessons?  Who should be doing this?  Statistically late students score 27% less and those that miss lessons score 37% lower.
4. The better the relationship with teacher the higher the scores.  
5. Boys are likely to associate difficulty in assessments on external factors and girls are more likely to associate difficulty intrinsically.   Do we create self management/responsibility in our boys?  Do we offer enough support for our girls? 



Further information on this can be found at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
You can actual try some of the actual 2012 PISA tests online at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/


This post relates to RTC #2. demonstrate commitment to promoting the well-being of all ākonga and RTC # 11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally