Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini

Yesterday we had our second CoL PLG. It is always an empowering and inspiring experience because as I looked around the room, I saw leaders, collaborators, passionate educators, innovators and also challenges. All of us have expertise which we can share with each other. Collaboration thrives in our Manaiakalani Cluster. 

Our convenor Russell Burt gave us a few wero to think of as we begin to identify the challenges we will be addressing in our inquiries this year. When identifying our focus, to be specific about the changes we will be implementing to cause lift in student achievement. He warned us about having big inquiries. For example: Accelerating boys writing or boys reading. That in itself is a big focus and I would imagine the inquiring teacher would go around in circles trying to implement so many changes to address the issue. 

We were encouraged to think about what practice changes we were planning on applying to our target groups to change the outcomes for our students. This also reminded me about our previous PLG where we were reminded not to think of solutions yet but to identify the challenges in our student data and have discussions with our school leaders and colleagues before identifying our focus for our inquiries. I think diving into the deep a saying which comes to mind when I think of this. I feel it is very important to be clear in the challenge you want to address, then reflect on what has been happening so far to address the challenge, then make a plan on changes to teacher practice which will change the way students learn.

We had the opportunity to have learning conversations with our other CoL colleagues about our inquiries for this year. We are all at the planning stage but we already know which area we are focussing on. I found my conversations with Clarelle, Danni and Hannah very valuable. We were able to share ideas with each other and also ask questions to identify other areas to explore about our inquiries. 

Where to now?

I am now at the finalising my focus for my inquiry. I am inquiring into accelerating the achievement of my students in Reading through Project Based Learning. This is because I am implementing Project Based Learning in my class now. I am looking at self regulated study, independent research, purposeful inquiries for projects, implementing Learn, Create, Share in the project learning curriculum for my students. There are many aspects I am thinking about at the moment and I am having conversations with different colleagues to share my thinking and gather some more insights. 

I am also identifying my target group. I plan to have at least eight in my target group. After finalising my target group, I will then profile my learners which is a task I enjoy because it gives me a lot of insight into the learning journey my students have been on throughout their primary years and enables me to understand more about their learning needs. 

There is a lot of mahi to be done. It is a journey which I hope will be of success but I also know will have a lot of challenges along the way.