Teacher Call Back Day 19/7/19

Key Ideas from Reading: Responsive Curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn

• The curriculum is enabling and future-focused and is intended to promote self-efficacy. This requires a learner-centered approach, where teachers choose contexts and design learning opportunities in discussion with their students and support them to work collaboratively on challenges and problems set in real-world contexts
• Responsive curriculum incorporates connections to students’ lives, prior understandings, and out-of-school experiences
• It draws on and adds to parent, whānau, and community funds of knowledge. Student identities, languages and cultures are represented in materials used in the enacted curriculum

There are 7 core principals for designing learning environments

1. the learner is at the centre, active engagement is encouraged and learners develop understandings of themselves as learners
2. the social and often collaborative nature of learning is recognised and well-organized; cooperative learning is actively encouraged
3. learning professionals are highly attuned to learners’ motivations and the importance of emotions
4. opportunities to learn are acutely sensitive to individual differences including in prior knowledge
5. learning is demanding for each learner but without excessive overload
6. assessment for learning with a strong emphasis on formative feedback is used
7. horizontal connectedness across areas of knowledge and learning activities, as well as to the community and the wider world, is strongly promoted

• Quality of teaching is a major determinant of outcomes for diverse students, what teachers know and do is one of the most important influences on what students learn
• In New Zealand, education environments that reflect a Māori worldview and ways of working (for example, with respect to whanaungatanga and ako) offer significantly enhanced learning opportunities for all students.
• The Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme has identified 10 dimensions of quality teaching that make a bigger difference to valued outcomes for diverse (all) learners:27 
  • focus on valued student outcomes / kia arotahia ngā hua ākonga uara nui
  • use knowledge, evidence, and inquiry to improve teaching / ko te mātauranga, te taunakitanga me te uiui hei whakapai ake i te whakaako
  • select, develop, and use smart tools and worthwhile tasks / ngā taputapu ngaio me ngā mahi whaikiko – whiria, mahia
  • ensure sufficient and effective opportunities for all students to learn / rau te ako, rau te mahi tōtika, rau te hua
  • develop caring, collaborative learning communities that are inclusive of diverse (all) learners / he piringa tauawhi, he piringa mahitahi, he piringa tauakoako, he piringa ākonga rerekura (katoa)
  • activate educationally powerful connections to learners’ knowledge, experiences, identities, whānau, iwi, and communities / whakatere hono ākonga torokaha, ākonga tū kaha
  • scaffold learning and provide appropriate feed forward and feedback on learning / te ako poutama
  • be responsive to all students’ learning, identities, and wellbeing / me aro ki te hā o te ākonga
  • promote thoughtful learning strategies, thoughtful discourse, and student self-regulation / takina te wānanga
  • use assessment for learning / te aromatawai i roto i te ako.
  Teachers need to be data literate:

  Data literacy for teaching is the ability to transform information into actionable instructional knowledge and practices by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting all types of data (assessment, school climate, behavioural, snapshot, moment-to-moment, and so on) to help determine instructional steps. It combines an understanding of data with standards, disciplinary knowledge and practices, curricular knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and an understanding of how children learn

Questions to share:

1) What are 3 key ideas from this text that resonate with you as an educator?

• A responsive curriculum involves making connections with your students, whanau, and community
• What teachers do and know is one of the most important influences on what students learn
• Teachers need to be data literate

2) What are 3 ideas you see as a strength of yours?

• Making connections with my students beyond the classroom
• Making adaptions to programmes to cater to individual needs
• Having an understanding/knowledge of a curriculum

3) What are 2 ideas you see as a weakness of yours?

• making connections with iwi and communities
• collaborating with students to help design learning opportunities