Team Feedback on our Collaboration and its Impact

As part of the evaluation of my 2022 inquiry, I collected teacher voice asking them to reflect on our collaborative journey this year: 

Did collaborative planning help you deepen your maths curriculum knowledge and better understand progressions (stages)? 

- Yes, with having to plan all different stages it deepened my knowledge of the progressions as well as the curriculum. I was able to look at what my team had planned which allowed me to have access to more resources. Before we started collaboratively planning I noticed that I was planning too high for stages 2-3, now I understand the level that they are at and can see a big shift in their progress. 

- Definitely! I am an experienced teacher, who knows how to teach. However, as an overseas teacher, I struggled to understand the different stages and especially how to plan for each stage (and how to know when the students should move on to the next stage)....

Did team planning help you feel more comfortable and confident teaching maths?

- Absolutely. Now I feel so much more confident teaching maths, I really enjoy it. It took me some time to get used to teaching off others' plans. But once we spoke about using the same template that helped a lot more. 

- The best thing about this whole experience was that I never felt judged, criticized or as a failed teacher. I loved that I could bounce ideas off from my colleagues, that I was able to ask for advice in a safe space and that I was mentored. 

Did using different maths manipulatives help you teach and your students learn maths concepts better?

- Using different math manipulatives and hands-on activities gave my students more of an understanding of different concepts. I will never teach without manipulatives now. It also makes the students more engaged with their learning. I find that my students are actually excited to learn about maths now and really enjoy it! 

- Do you feel that you can scaffold your students' learning? What helped you achieve this?

- Yes, I feel like my students are able to get the correct teaching and guidance to improve in maths. As I have more content knowledge from the collaborative planning I am able to recognise my students' strengths and weaknesses and improve/ build on them. 

- Yes, it is incorporated in our plans. Instead of doing a massive lesson about a new concept, we break it up into smaller chunks and give them time to practice the new skill or concept. Once they are familiar and confident we move on to the next part/phase of the concept. 

What do you like about our collaborative planning and the changes that we made this year? What can be improved next year?

- We often reflect back on what worked well and what didn’t, which improved our planning and teaching (since we learn from our mistakes). Open communication in the team has been KEY (this is extremely important when planning and working together). I have learned so much from my two colleagues. Due to the fact that we have different teaching styles and different personalities, my own teaching practice has improved. I love that we are comfortable to ask each other for advice, that we can support each other and help each other grow. I honestly felt like we shared the load and that I was never alone... He waka eke noa.

- I think now that we have a solid template it will be great to look over these again and reflect on what works well and what doesn't.  Also reflecting and adding different activities to our choice board to keep this interesting. 

Burst and Bubbles 2022

My 2022 inquiry started at the end of last year when I noticed more discrepancies in Maths achievement data in different classes compared to Reading and Writing results. What could I do to reduce variability in teaching maths and accelerate student learning? I came up with my inquiry question: “Will developing teacher collaboration improve teacher practice, increase student engagement and raise achievement in mathematics” 

During the profiling phase, I used student voice from different classes, formative and summative assessments, lesson observations and had professional conversations with teachers. I noticed that many teachers felt more comfortable teaching literacy than Mathematics.  I wanted to effectively support teachers to build their confidence in maths. I was hoping to employ teacher collaboration to design and deliver an effective maths programme across our year 3-4 classes.

Interestingly, team teaching during hybrid learning at the beginning of the year helped with my inquiry as provided multiple opportunities for my team to collaborate. We improved our professional relationships by developing team trust, establishing shared values and goals and setting up high expectations within our team.  Having open conversations about teaching maths helped me identify areas for improvement. We worked together to unpack the principles of effective pedagogy in Mathematics, develop solid subject knowledge and effectively use manipulatives, visuals and technology. 

Last year, my inquiry was about the implementation of High leverage practices in mathematics and I managed to accelerate my students’ learning despite the lockdowns. I was excited to share my expertise and passion for teaching maths with my team. I’ve been helping my colleagues with understanding various assessments, analysing maths data and using it for planning, selecting the best resources to teach different concepts, observing, giving feedback,  and modelling maths lessons. Collectively, we designed a new team planning format to make sure that students in our classes were getting the same high-quality consistent programme delivered every day. Eventually, my team developed a habit of ongoing collective reflections on our practice constantly refining our programme and problem-solving. 

As a result of my team's commitment and productive collaboration, our students have been empowered through a structured, accessible and rewindable maths programme. We all noticed a great shift in student engagement and teacher confidence. Our students love maths and this resulted in their good progress which is evident from our assessment data.

 

Using Choice Boards and Subject Matrices to Boost Student Engagement across the Curriculum

In Term 3, my team looked at the ways to transform the way we learn, offer new experiences and create new opportunities for our students to boost their engagement and improve their learning outcomes. 

As GTS has been exploring the role of student agency, we decided to use our new (or refreshed) learning in our classes and introduced Maths matrices and Choice boards in literacy and maths.

When we take students through the curriculum without involving them, we act as learner managers instead of learner empowerers and we miss the opportunity to let students find their own way.  That's why we tried to involve our students by getting their input on how they’d like to demonstrate what they’ve learned. For example, students work with their buddies to practise one of the areas to achieve what's required. Sharing with them what exactly they need to do in order to move up the levels (or stages) showed us a simple way to channel students' learning. Young people are highly competitive and goal-driven. We enjoyed watching them choosing not just a busy activity during their independent learning time but something that will help them achieve their desired goals.   

John Hattie, author and educational researcher of influences and effect sizes related to student achievement, states student efficacy has a .92 effect size on student learning (Visibile Learning 2019). Student efficacy is the understanding that pupils believe they can achieve a complex goal or outcome.

Targeting student agency, we planned and allowed for student involvement in the creation of our choice boards  - this helped increase their ownership and follow-through.

Student Agency Readings - LCS and the integrated curriculum

Student inquiry is a teacher-supported process that provides a structure for students to learn through the process of inquiring into questions they develop themselves about a topic or concept. There are various models of student inquiry and I reviewed and reflected on a number of different models.

Interesting Points

The LCS approach to learning is based on the belief that students are powerful learners who must be actively engaged in the process of investigating, processing, organising, synthesising, refining and extending their knowledge within a topic. They also are able to work collaboratively and develop their key competencies while working on their LCS projects.

Teachers have to provide a clear structure and share their expectations of student learning. To make this process purposeful and enjoyable, teachers have to put a lot of effort into planning and collecting student voice.

Another interesting point that resonated with my view of the LCS process is the use of an integrated curriculum. Such an approach gives students a real purpose for learning and provides real-life experiences which in order help students see the world as a complex system rather than a number of separated topics. "The coherence principle states that “the curriculum offers all students a broad education that makes links within and across learning areas”

(Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 9, emphasis added)

The LCS (or inquiry) learning supports the development of students' critical thinking.

Concerns I have from within the reading

From my own experience, I know that LCS requires a high level of organisation, flexibility and negotiation skills to challenge the range of diverse learners. It requires a lot of careful planning and structured delivery. LCS can be messy and noisy due to the students' enthusiasm and drive.

My concern is mostly about inquiry learning in the ILE. Teachers have to be on the same page with their expectations and standards and have a high level of trust between them and learners.

New learning from this reading

It was interesting to read about different models and approaches to inquiry learning. Different schools and teachers use different models that suit them, their beliefs and their learners. It was great to see various rubrics for teachers to measure the quality of inquiry learning and outcomes. We used some of these ideas when working on the Team Kea LCS model.

What excites and enthuses me from this reading?

I personally love the integrated learning and LCS approach as I see these as great opportunities for students to learn in an authentic context, not to mention their enthusiasm and motivation! I believe that the LCS approach takes students beyond what they already know and supports the development of important lifelong skills and key competencies.

Reflection

The more knowledge we have about inquiry learning, the better our common understanding of all aspects of LCS becomes. I actually was excited to see that my team's understandings of the LCS process are pretty similar. I believe this is a result of our close teamwork and collaboration.

Thinking about my learners, I believe that during inquiry learning, peer learning becomes as effective as teacher-led learning. Some meaningful “aha!” moments often come in authentic interactions with other students. Sometimes, during the LCS projects, the class transforms into a space where everyone can try different roles: a teacher, a facilitator, a leader, an IT guru etc and has something to share! Inquiry-based learning triggers students' critical thinking and problem-solving capacities and pushes them to take action instead of learning passively.

It was great to have these readings done before and during our work on the Team Kea LCS model as we kept referring to different ideas and models and synthesized them into our own pilot LCS model that we are excited to implement in term 4.

Readings:

http://pjsibpyp.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11231090/inquirymurdochwilson.pdf

http://pjsibpyp.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11231090/kath_murdochs_inquiry_model.pdf  This has awesome components for students to know what they should be doing / working through that you can add to Learn, Create, Share

https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/set2012_3_015.pdf  This reading is more of an academic read, but gives great information.

Monitoring the Effects of Teacher Collaboration in my Team on Learner Outcomes

Identify informal and formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes. Explain the reflections and tweaks you are making along the way.

My Inquiry: Will Teacher Collaboration improve student engagement and raise their achievement?

In my team, we reflected on our collaboration and mid-year results. Have we managed to lift our students' engagement and achievement due to the change we've implemented in our planning? The short answer is yes; however, we also developed a shared understanding of our next steps: bring student agency on board and refine our planning.

Since the beginning of my inquiry, we have developed a habit of ongoing reflections on our practice. It now happens naturally, almost every day when we share what worked well and what needs to be improved. We act faster and are not afraid to give feedback about each others' work. I believe that our professionalism helped us develop a healthy collaborative partnership in our team.

Some tweaks that we did since the beginning of my TAI:

- introduced and unpacked maths matrixes with our learners. This allowed them to take ownership of their independent learning choices. 

- our next step was to provide our students with choices to support their independent meaningful learning. As a result, we designed our maths and literacy choice boards that our students love to use.

- redesigning our planning template to make it easy to use by all stakeholders: team members and our learners. We all now know what to do and when. 

Monitoring the effect: 

- Many of our students developed self-motivation. Many ask for maths homework as they want to improve their results. 

- I let students choose to join different groups to deepen their understanding of current topics (maths) and many of them love having more freedom in their learning. 

- Students across all 3 classes are getting the same consistent programme and are less dependent on individual teachers' knowledge of maths.

- My team appreciates our collaborative approach as it helped them improve their own knowledge of the curriculum. We also bounce ideas from each other, taking and implementing the best of them.

- mid-year Data showed progress and some acceleration in our students' achievements across the syndicate. 

Causal Chain TAI 2022

As identified during my Teacher profiling phase, I decided to focus on improving student achievement and engagement through teacher collaboration.

My own practice - continue to refine my practice (For example, in maths - daily number talk, the use of visualisation and materials, developing fluency and confidence in maths as opposed to memorisation, and practical application of their knowledge.

In my team, we reflected on our collaboration and mid-year results. Have you managed to lift our students' engagement and achievement due to the change we've implemented in our planning? The short answer is yes; however, we developed a shared understanding of our next steps: bring student agency on board and refine our programme. 

School-wide. Support my colleagues to improve their understanding of maths progressions and the effective use of various manipulatives in their classroom programmes by sharing some resources, reviewing school maths matrices, and actively participating and contributing during staff meetings.

Teacher Collaboration will lead to improving Teacher Practice - already visible from our T1-2 work

Collaborative planning - deepens Teachers' subject and pedagogical knowledge - students benefit from consistency/ balanced programme/ content, that in order leads to their increased motivation, engagement and better achievements.

We will employ Student Agency to help students take ownership of their learning: link content to their passions and interests.  When Students set personal goals, the learning becomes theirs. This sense of ownership leads to increased motivation and achievement. We will use the School Matrices with the learners.  ----- Team teachers move from being the deliverer of curriculum to being the co-constructors and experienced learners.

Collaborative teachers reflect on their own practice and are open to colleagues' feedback developing and improving their metacognition and key competencies. At the same time, they model and promote collaboration, metacognition, and personal agency to their learners. 

I believe that this chain will lead to increased teacher and student agency, collaboration, engagement, achievement and success for all syndicate members. 

Plan and conduct a detailed inquiry

Plan and conduct a detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature.  

Reality: The latest research is out. In math and reading, students are behind where they would be after a normal year, with the most vulnerable students showing the steepest drops, according to two new reports from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the NWEA, a nonprofit organization that provides academic assessments. The students did not just stall early on; the setbacks accumulated over time — and continued even after many students had returned to the classroom this year. Perhaps even more troubling, the students who were most affected by the crisis were already behind their peers before the pandemic, and the added losses have pushed them further back.

What can we do to bring back and retain more students at school and develop (or sometimes ignite) their love of learning? Teachers have to collaborate to address all these needs and use our strengths to engage our tamariki along with accelerating their learning. Covid affected everyone! That's why I believe that teacher collaboration is an extremely powerful approach that can be used to not just benefit our students but support teachers' well-being too.

For teacher collaboration to be effective, we (teachers) should want to participate rather than feel like we must. Like any other skill, collaboration can be improved upon with practice. This is my and, hopefully, my team's experience and reflection on the past two terms of our collaborative work. I look forward to continuing to improve our team's practice to maximise our tamariki successes in all areas of school life and support them to become life-long motivated learners. He waka eke noa!

The focus and plan of my inquiry into teacher and student collaboration to improve learning outcomes and well-being.

• Continue to  develop and refine our shared vision and goals, team culture
• Continue to refine and reflect on our collaborative planning and creation of shared resources
• Create a habit of frequent and consistent team data analysis (formative and summative) to reflect on best practices and plan the next steps.
• Continue to develop trust and positive professional relationships. Like any relationship, collaborative teams take time to build and have the potential to increase in strength and productivity over time. 
• Collaboratively advance our professional knowledge, skills, and beliefs about student learning. 
• Model positive collaborative behaviour to our learners.

Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts By Jo Boaler

Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts by Jo Boaler (2015)

Found a few years ago during my ALiM work, I keep referring back to this article and  https://www.youcubed.org/ website. This work is about developing number sense instead of memorization of facts, it unpacks the idea of learning math facts along with a deep understanding of numbers and the ways they relate to each other.

In a critical research project, researchers studied students as they solved number problems (Gray & Tall, 1994). The researchers concluded that low achievers are often low achievers not because they know less but because they don’t use numbers flexibly – they have been set on the wrong path, often from an early age, of trying to memorize methods instead of interacting with numbers flexibly (Boaler, 2009). 

Based on my experience, some teachers want their students to drill in basic facts and times tables as this is 'a good old school that worked well in the past'. Saying that we don't really have any research data to support this statement. I remember a lot of my classmates who hated maths because they didn't understand it or had to sit timed tests. I was one of them and I didn't enjoy that 'good old school' approach. 

I believe that the current decline in student achievement in maths is caused by a lack of maintenance or an unbalanced or inconsistent maths programme. 

• Do we all have a solid maths block every day four or five times a week? 
• Do our students practise and apply the knowledge and concepts taught in class or just do some busy work during their independent activities? 
• How can they develop fluency without mileage and purposefully created and provided opportunities? 

According to the NZC,  'number' should be the focus of 60–80 percent of mathematics teaching time during the first four years at school and 50-70 percent afterwards. 

Here comes a common misunderstanding or misconception. The curriculum requires a lot of time teaching 'number', but modern research talks about reasoning. The answer is simple. The 'old school' is about memorizing facts while the modern school is about developing fluency through making sense and connections, and talking about reasons for the use of different methods. Students need to learn to calculate through number sense, as well as spend time on problem-solving and reasoning. 

One of the great methods for teaching number sense and math facts at the same time is a teaching strategy called ‘number talks’ that many of us have been implementing already. Research tells us that the best mathematics classrooms are those in which students learn number facts and number sense through engaging activities that focus on mathematical understanding rather than rote memorization. (Jo Boaler)

At the end of her article, Jo compiled some great and engaging activities that can be used in any classroom to support your tamariki number sense development. 

Learning about Collaboration from Literature

My hypothesis is that a collaborative approach during group and independent learning activities might increase student engagement and develop a better understanding of topics or concepts and their practical application. 

Research shows that collaborative group work involves students working jointly on the same problem at all times. Within a collaborative group, decisions are shared and the negotiation of roles and relationships constantly evolves. Such a collaborative approach to learning is linked to Vygotskian ideas such as situated cognition, scaffolding, and the zone of proximal development  (Forman & Cazden, 1985).

Interestingly enough, I found proof of my own observations 'that part of the reason students give up on learning is because they find it difficult and think they are alone in their struggle. An important change takes place when students work together and discover that everybody finds some or all of the work difficult. This is a critical moment for students, and one that helps them know that for everyone learning is a process and that obstacles are common.' (LIMITLESS MIND by Jo Boaler)

Jo says that collaboration is vital for learning, brain development, and creating equitable outcomes. I agree with her; however, first of all, it is important to establish interpersonal connections. I noticed that some of my learners are happy working together and they achieve better results than a group that keeps arguing without listening to each other's ideas. Hence, teachers need to spend more time creating positive norms for collaborative groups.

Emily R. Lai (June 2011) in her Pearson Research report states that "Collaborative interactions are characterized by shared goals, symmetry of structure, and a high degree of negotiation, interactivity, and interdependence. Interactions producing elaborated explanations are particularly valuable for improving student learning. Nonresponsive feedback, on the other hand, can be detrimental to student learning in collaborative situations. Collaboration can have powerful effects on student learning, particularly for low-achieving students. However, a number of factors may moderate the impact of collaboration on student learning, including student characteristics, group composition, and task characteristics."

This resonates with me and my own experiences and shows that student collaboration requires a lot of teacher thinking and designing in creating tasks, forming groups and again, setting up class positive norms. Teachers need to carefully consider group composition in terms of gender and ability when using collaborative learning. Simple tasks with one correct solution that can easily be solved by a single, competent group member should not be used in collaborative settings. Even if not all young students will be able to collaborate effectively in their early school years, they will definitely start to develop such important habits required in older classes and in life in general. 

Another important idea I confirmed during my professional reading is that collaboration is not the only powerful approach to learning and/or working together. There are some times when individual and co-operative learning should take place to develop sound knowledge and skills to be able to work collaboratively and achieve better outcomes. 

For example, Nilofer Merchant in her article Eight Dangers of Collaboration (Dec 2011) reveals eight dangers of collaboration. She describes situations when people want to be individually recognised because they are great professionals or situations when collaboration slows down the process and creates conflicts instead of benefiting participants and organisations. Once again, in my opinion, we have to learn to choose the most suitable approach when it comes to a specific situation or task. This relates to students and even more to teachers. 

Create Staff Meeting - Silhouette Art workshop

Each term the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako hosts staff meetings as an opportunity for Manaiakalani teachers to connect with our COL Kaupapa and Pedagogy.

This time, my school hosted the Create Staff Meeting and I enjoyed the opportunity to share my practice with other wonderful and creative Manaiakalanai teachers. I was privileged to be supported by my team as this was the first workshop that we presented together. Well done Team Kea!

Team Collaboration to improve the efficiency and well-being of my team.

I believe that achieving effective collaboration with my colleagues improves the efficiency and well-being of my team. As I shared earlier in this blog, I see my team's collaboration not as a task to complete and then move on. Collaboration is an ongoing process that involves a lot of sharing, experimenting, designing, reflecting, etc.  I noticed that when we are team-planning and co-teaching, we develop and establish shared trust, values, goals and improve our team's systems.

TKI - Collaborative Teaching

Active collaboration is particularly important for creating a growth-based learning environment and for increasing student learning progress. Research shows that teachers who work together and learn from each other are more successful in improving student outcomes than those who work alone.

Through growth to achievement: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools , (March 2018)

Key benefits of teacher collaboration include:

• a sense of "all being in it together"
• having a critical friend to support you
• trying new things and getting feedback from students and colleagues on their impact
• being part of an ongoing process of reflection.
• a shift of thinking from “me” to “we” and from “my learners” to “our learners”.

We already see the shift in our thinking and approach to Team Kea's planning, teaching and learning.

For example, collaborative planning provides opportunities for us to improve our content knowledge of the NZC and receive/ give feedback on our next steps and professional achievements.

As we move towards moving to ILE, we will continue to develop our personal and team successful collaboration skills by actively participating in PLDs, reading professional literature, visiting different ILE schools and reflecting on our own practice and experiences.

Developing collaboration skills to improve learning experiences and achievements

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

The research shows that problem-solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representation–can be seen in action in a discourse-rich mathematics community as students interact, question one another and convey their understanding. 

After analysing my students' Term 1 data, I also had a few formative observations and conversations about their learning. The students enjoyed maths but didn't feel comfortable with 'harder' questions. I have a group of boys who are extremely competitive and want to win - no matter if it is a sports competition, a game or a maths question. I had to reestablish our maths class norms by talking about productive struggle, the purpose of solving problems, collaboration and team encouragement and support. He waka eke noa! We are all in this together!

I also believe that after two bumpy years, my students had no opportunities to develop their collaboration skills. You might wonder why is collaboration important in maths class? Because maths discourse is one of the powerful components of an effective maths programme. Along with the high leverage practices,  mathematical discourse improves students' critical, cognitive and metacognitive thinking, develops their key competencies, maths knowledge and skills, and contributes to their better achievements across the curriculum. My students needed to learn how to collaborate and engage in mathematical argumentation. I must admit that by this time, they started to collaborate together to learn and grow from each other. They also noticed that they have lots of fun working together.

Tools, measures & approaches to measure students progress

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

To measure my students' progress and knowledge, I plan to use both formative and summative assessments with a bigger emphasis on formative assessment strategies. I believe this will help improve teaching and learning simultaneously. 

Three types of standardized maths tests:

PAT, GLOSS/JAM and e-asttle

Surely, along with the standardized tests, I'll be using formative assessments (observations, student voice, conferencing, number talk and problem solving - tasks that require students to use skills or apply ideas, etc) to evaluate my students' progress.

The first set of Term 1 data showed that over half of my team's learners are working below or well-below expectations in Maths. Last year, my class' progress proved that my maths programme worked well for my students. This year, with the focus on team collaboration, I hope to extend my inquiry across my syndicate.

Collaborative Planning

In my previous blog posts, I shared my team's journey from individual classes' online learning spaces and programmes toward collaborative planning, teaching and learning across the syndicate. During the Hybrid learning period, we created our team's Hybrid Learning Site that helped us address our home and in-class diverse students' needs. Surprisingly, we all enjoyed this approach for a number of reasons and decided to continue with our collaboration in Term 2.

I believe that my team's collaboration is not a task to complete then move on, it will be an ever-changing, ongoing process that will involve a lot of sharing, experimenting, designing, reflecting, etc.  I noticed that when we are co-planning and co-teaching, we develop and establish shared values and commitments which in turn help unify and unite our team.

I appreciate that all strong collaborative cultures develop over time and require a lot of team effort and commitment to the process. My Team and I are at the beginning of our journey and we look forward to growing into a genuinely collaborative team in order to increase student achievement and advance our own professional skills and knowledge.

The Team's Learning Site is one of the first pieces of evidence of our productive collaboration. We are getting to know the teaching and learning styles, needs, interests, fears and hopes of each team member and this helps to shape the norms for how the team engages in the shared work.

Developing Team Trust during Team Teaching

"Active collaboration is particularly important for creating a growth-based learning environment and for increasing student learning progress. Research shows that teachers who work together and learn from each other are more successful in improving student outcomes than those who work alone." Through growth to achievement: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools, (March 2018)

I completely agree that working together helps to learn from each other in a seamless and practical way, right there at the right moment in time and this makes this learning more successful. What I've noticed is that team teaching also improves trust among the teachers. 

Another important aspect that team teaching brings to the plate is reflecting on the lesson plan. You are not planning just for yourself, you're planning for the team and this adds more responsibility and effort that each team member puts into their planning and... delivery. 

We noticed that our learners benefit from our collaborative teaching because we take collective responsibility for all learners, and we are consistent in our curriculum and experience delivery across the syndicate. We also observed that we (team teachers) model skills of collaboration to our learners.

Refining my Inquiry Focus - Team Collaboration and Student Engagement

Over the past 2 months, my Team and I experienced many changes in our teaching approach and pedagogy. I would say, that we naturally started to collaborate in order to address new challenges of hybrid learning and the transition of students returning back to school after lockdowns and isolations. 

As a team, we are heading into a new era of collaborative planning, teaching and learning, and it looks and feels exciting. During my TAI, I want to understand how collaboration can support and better our classroom practice and also our professional well-being. We are at the beginning of our collaborative journey as we have to develop a common understanding of what effective collaboration looks like.

Does Teacher Collaboration improve student achievement and their learning experiences?

Does Teacher Collaboration improve the team's professional well-being?

I read an extract of an article about 'the outcomes of four Australian schools' efforts to promote greater collaboration between teachers in each school by Bruce Johnson: Teacher collaboration: good for some, not so good for others', and found it very interesting. 

"Collaborative ways of working helped most teachers feel better about themselves and their work and provided them with opportunities to learn from each other. However, a minority of teachers were negative about the new teaming arrangements claiming that the changes had led to an increase in their workloads, a loss of professional autonomy, and the emergence of damaging competition between teams for resources, recognition and power."

I definitely want to develop an effective team that is happy to collaborate without experiencing any of the above-stated negative situations. We already addressed the issue of the extra workload by having our daily and weekly reflections on our planning and teaching and developing a model of team planning that is clear for everyone and can be recycled over the next terms and years. We found out that having the planning schedule helped us scaffold our understanding of the NZC and learning progressions.

Hybrid Learning - Creating Inspirational Learning Environments

This year educators faced a number of challenges, including students' poor attendance due to covid, low academic levels of some students as a result of their inconsistent approach to learning during lockdowns,  and general issues with re-engaging when they are back at school.

First, I decided to focus on making learning fun, engaging and inspirational to my team: both students and team members. My perception of the initial step in forming my inquiry was in line with Russell's question: 'How do I have present, happy, healthy and engaged tauira (both students and teachers) who are learning in the Goldilocks Zone?'

I believe that you’ve already heard about the Goldilocks Zone but think it's still worth clarifying its definition. Theo Dawson: 'It’s the range in which a learning task is just challenging enough to support optimal learning by stimulating interest and triggering the dopamine-opioid cycle—the brain’s natural motivational cycle. The brains of babies and young children are wired to learn in the Goldilocks Zone, but formal education often disrupts the dopamine-opioid cycle. As a consequence, many (perhaps most) older children, adolescents, and adults must rediscover the Goldilocks Zone if they want to learn optimally from everyday experience.' 

So, we needed some fun to improve our tamariki learning experiences, hook them up and motivate them to be present and engaged. Magic and collaboration formed my response to the situation: as a team, we dived into the world of magical learning and teaching. We’ve been busy designing our magic wands, using them and sharing our creative stories. It looks like we managed to sprinkle some magic over other students as this definitely improved their attendance and engagement.

The results were rewarding:

• students' engagement was very high - including the students who worked from home and participated in our activities via Google meets.
• improved reading and writing outcomes
• creating a positive and collaborative learning environment
• improving and taking my team's collaboration (teachers) to the next level
• increased attendance!

Thinking of my 2022 Inquiry

This week I have been thinking about the next steps for my teaching inquiry. Last year, I focused on accelerating our students' learning in Maths by implementing the best world education practices and working closely with my colleagues to achieve better results for our students.  The beginning of 2022 brought us a new reality - Hybrid learning. What can we do to make learning accessible to all of our students no matter where they are now. How can we get them connected, include them in our group and class learning and provide timely feedback? 

At this moment nobody knows how long this new covid reality will last, so the first steps will be:

• create a team approach to deliver quality teaching and learning to all of our Year 3-4 tamariki
• collaborate and cross-teach to improve students' learning experiences
• collaborative planning to deepen my team's knowledge of learning progressions in all the NZC areas
• provide opportunities for all the learners' in my team to stay connected with their peers and teachers
• collect and analyse the first set of data to plan for learning
•