Patience is a virtue

Earlier this year, one of my Y12 learners struggled to commit to their learning. They completed one of two NCEA L2 standards, moved on to another course for term 2 and then transitioned to a nearby tertiary institution in term 3.

To my surprise, my learner returned in term 3 to complete unfinished work from term 1. He would set himself up every Friday and managed his learning by working through his unfinished term 1 programme.

Today (week 4), my learner finished his assessment and gained NCEA L2 Maths credits. While chatting to him he mentioned that he had set himself a few goals; one of them was sitting his driver's test next week. I am going to be bold and say that sitting his maths test was another of his goals.

Without patience and persistence, my learner would not have gained his L2 credits today. Patience is a virtue.

Review of term 2 data

My Physics Elective class in term 2, 11ELE B outperformed both my term 1 class , 11ELE A and national data as shown above

My term 2 Algebra class,  11MAT B had maximum success with 100% achieving. 11MAT A whom I taught in term 1 achieved higher that national data. The Probability data for both classes 11MAT A and 11MAT B has 100% success, once again outperforming national data as shown above.

The standards taught in term 1 were repeated in term 2 to a different cohort. My term 1 cohort, 12MAT A outperformed my term 2 cohort, 12MAT B.

Maori A (term 1 students) outperformed both Maori B (term 2 students) and national data; whereas Pasifika A (term 1 students) and B (term 2 students) both outperformed Coordinate Geometry National data - shown above

100% of Pasifika students in both terms 1 (Pasifika A) and 2 (Pasifika 2) achieved maximum success and outperformed national data

My reluctant learner is no more

I have a somewhat reluctant learner who gets bored/distracted quite easily so I had him work on an Algebra standard worth 3 credits for a while, then switched to Probability, another standard worth 3 credits. That continued all term and seemed to give him more confidence as his prior knowledge was fairly recent each time he switched standards. He was also armed with a teacher-created
 CHEAT SHEET, subject-specific LITERACY STRATEGIES as well as LEARNING STRATEGIES

Well it has paid off big time.....my learner sat his Algebra assessment on one day and gained 3 credits and then sat his Probability assessment the next and gained another 3 credits.

The 6 credits within 2 days seems remarkable, but I am more impressed by my learner's new-found confidence in his ability and he now knows what SUCCESS feels like........ My reluctant learner is no more

Working smarter not harder.............

In my 12MAT class, I have learners working on up to 4 different achievement standards at any given time and all are at varying levels of competence. In order to maximise engagement and give students more ownership of their learning, all the teaching and learning resources have been centralised on a Google site with teacher-created "Cheat Sheets", learning programmes, tracking sheets, exemplars, practice tests and rewindable learning opportunities which they can access 24/7.


In a bid to work smarter not harder, I have armed students with the tools for success thereby giving me an opportunity to conference with small groups or work one-on-one as opposed to drip feeding information to students and hampering their progress.

Update

Just a follow up on my two previous posts about one of my undisciplined learners who was struggling to self manage, so I resorted to removing his laptop and making him work on paper,  has now had a change of heart.

He questioned me for a while about why I was taking such action and how long it would last, which I appreciated. Today, I gave him a choice of working online or on paper and he chose the former. He seems to have a renewed desire to be successful and is now showing commitment to his learning by focusing on the task at hand and initiating learning conversations whilst working  through his programme.  He has asked for assistance 3 times and not shown any signs of being distracted. What a joy to witness learners "managing self", one of the 5 Key Competencies in the NZ curriculum. He has been rewarded with a sense of accomplishment and much praise from me.

I love it when a plan comes together

I love it when a plan comes together....................my previous post about "desperate times calls for desperate  measures" was a plan that did not come together. This is the evidence of my reluctant learner after 3 and a half hours of maths. To be honest, it was an intermittent 3 and a half hours with toilet breaks, water breaks, blowing nose breaks etc.

I had to come with a plan B and fast. My plan B is to always make plan A work, so my learner was given a laptop today and he chose to start a new standard. We went over 

expectations for the standard, 

criteria for achievement 

subject-specific terminology needed for the standard

a few "Cheats" and

did a few examples together to build his confidence in the subject.

Hopefully, my learner will spread his maths wings and fly.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

I did not think that I would have to acquaint myself with the photocopying machine or laminator (pictured below in case you too have forgotten).......
     

......and I cannot say the "good old days" because teachers and learners and in fact, society has moved on. So what has caused me to resort to these desperate measures? 

Recently I formalised my goal setting where I aim to increase participation by using the Key Competency "Managing self" and it is going fairly well with most of my learners engaging, participating and progressing fairly well. Going fairly well does not sit well with me and goes against one of our school values of being EXCELLENT. A few ......and by that I mean one or two, ok maybe up to three learners have minimal "managing self" skills and are ill-disciplined when learning online and using digital technology responsibly, another school value. 

In a desperate bid to get them engaging and actively participating with their learning, I have resorted to laminating resources specially for them which I hope only lasts a day. I am saddened that I had to resort to that option but desperate times call for desperate measures.