Gloss Testing Tools

This post is published to help beginning Teachers locate all the items that they need to do a Gloss test.

 

gloss Testing from Tamaki Primary on Vimeo.

The Summer Drop

Today we had a PLD for Maths with Sue Pine. She drew our attention to the Framework  (Book 1).
It was a simple task that she had asked us to do but it made us think about how we can teach our students so that they achieve their goals for their levels. She asked us to brainstorm what we knew about number strategies, knowledge and measurement students needed to know at the levels we teach. This is what we came up with...

This simple exercise made us aware about where our students were and where they needed to be in one year's time. So if we keep thinking about the summer drop and keep revising what we have already thought them, then we will not be able to see our students reach National Standards at the end of the year. We need to give them strategies and use talk moves to generate discussions for students to verbalise their thinking. The more students talk about their mathematical thinking the more it will help them to analyse and understand the most efficient strategies they can use to solve problems. So our next steps will be to:

• Have mixed ability groups so that students learn from each other. Myself and Ashley have decided to have 2 maths groups only. One that will have our very low students and the other will have the rest. 
• Encourage students to participate in discussions. 
• Make sure that the problems are staged at year 4 level and not lower.
• Have high expectations 

Supporting students with their English language learning

Today our school had ESOL verification and I being an ESOL coordinator was under a lot of pressure as we have this new way of completing the matrices for all four strands in English. I am so delighted to see that the efforts of our team have brought in excellent results for us.
The whole process though very tedious has brought a lot of learning with it.
Having gone through the process has definitely made us analyse student work more deeply. One very good thing about the ELLP folders is that we can use these to inform our teaching on a daily basis  because we have all the WALTs ready for us and it is extremely easy for us to look at the next learning steps and plan for them. So from now on I would frequently visit the ELLP folder to inform my teaching of English language.

Click here to view ELLP Modules

This year I have an MTDA in my class which means that both Ashley and myself are teaching in the same class. I wanted Ashley to be seen as a teacher and not as a student as this was reiterated a number to times by Anne Sinclair and Dorothy Burt. It has worked very well as I can see Ashley more relaxed and confident each day as she is interacting with the students. She has very quickly got students to listen and respond to her. We both plan together and teach together taking turns to be a lead teacher. I can see how I will benefit so much by having an MTDA in my class. I am already finding time to do more with the students who need a little push. On many occasions Ashley has mentioned the same that she is liking the 

co-teaching way for she can find some of her friends who are beginning teachers and are giving away their weekends preparing things for class.

So all go for co-teaching  this year!