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!