Grade 6 Summative Assessment Feedback

The Intermediate Phase has spent time presenting an overview of recent Units and have focused specifically on the way assessment played out in these Units. Group reflection has raised the level of thinking about effective assessment.

Big 'Shout Out' for the IP Team

[As part of our new curriculum TEAM IP chooses 1 or 2 Habits of mind, values and concepts to give depth to students' learning. This magnificent team leads their students by example. This past week teachers have completed summative assessment and worked on unit 6 planning.]

Dear IP Team

 Thank-you for the innovative summative assessment ideas. Laura and Thembeni put hours of work into a successful Energy Expo. Caitlin and Bruce got students to do  experiments with household chemicals. Petra and John got their students telling stories to a wider audience for the first time. Thanks to Gladys and Lizzie for setting up a Setswana reading system. Thanks to Herme for exposing her students to events that they haven't dreamt of and putting Lebone on the map with her extreme sports.

 As I left at 4:30 on Friday I noticed  Laura and Thembeni working as team designing lessons for unit 6 and making arrangements to be back on Saturday to set up the classrooms before Monday. Caitlin was typing up all the English and Unit planning that had been discussed to share with Bruce whilst Bruce was coming in on Saturday to set up the Maths. On Sunday morning I received a delivery of ingredients from Caitlin  to make modeling dough for the class I sub next week. Petra and John had spent Thursday evening and Friday afternoon encouraging their students to present their stories to their parents after hours of preparation. Gladys and Lizzie have worked hard at unit 6 and sent the well organised prep to go onto the TD planner. On Friday Herme and Petra coordinated a successful cleanup operation with EVERY  member of the phase present to do their part!. TEAMWORK AT ITS BEST

The Lebone values of dedication and passion are not only being explored by the students but being lived out by the teachers. You are 'AWESOME' . Thank-you for extending time to IP PD team - we welcome Gladys and Lizzie who have complimented the team by acknowledging that they too are learning from you.

Special thanks to Therese, Karmi, Sue, Elize and Candice who are passionate about the arts - we don't see enough of you but the students love your lessons.

This year has been one of change as teachers are adapting from PYP to our own curriculum. As I am collating your planning onto the TD planner 6, I notice the continuity of learning and how much thought has gone into setting out your year plan.

This brings me to the final concept that has emerged through all your hard work - that of distinction. Although we are still a young department you all strive for excellence by  making what you do differently into more than what is expected. Each of you have brought your distinctive qualities to our team making us successful.

THANK-YOU

Ursula

Intermediate Phase focuses on the Summative Assessment of their Unit

The IP (Grades 4-6) met to decide on our way forward. We are going to focus on the summative assessment of Unit 5. Teachers have already planned this together so we want to use the next week to study the actual assessment process versus the planning. 

Each grade will then prepare their reflection of the process highlighting the positives and negatives as well as a plan for improvement. It will also give us an opportunity to work through the reflection part on our Unit Planner.

The Setswana teachers will review their TD planner and report on its execution. Each group will have 15 minutes to share their findings on Monday 2 September.

'Active' learning strategies engage students best

This week two teachers reported back using the video clips that focussed on disengaged students. It was more interesting to follow two particular students in a lesson rather than do another class overview. The dissection of the learning was also more fruitful. We agreed that we probably could not change the periods of disengagement that occurred with the students because it was linked to their preferred way of learning. What we did learn is that it is important to use various strategies during a lesson so that students experience the various modalities that include their preferred method. The recordings showed that  ‘hands on’ learning and group problem solving does keep the highest number students engaged at one time. 

IP reflects and sets goals for Term 2 CPD

We felt that:

• We should continue, but perhaps change the format; example:
• teachers come up with their own question, what they would like to observe in their class and base the lesson on that.
• use our literature circles as they are enjoyable – same ability children from different grades in one group.
• It was constructive as
• we were in a reflective mode.
• the lessons were what we could use in the class at that time.
• we learnt from each other.
• The planning and the doing of the lessons were good.
• The recording was not so successful; we couldn’t hear properly and were not sure what to look for when watching a clip.
• Talking about our experiences was more successful.
• More teachers to watch an actual lesson would be ideal – difficult because we would need substitution.
• We could watch across grades, talk with that teacher about the lesson and report back to the phase. 

Concrete tips in the IP for thinking lessons

This week we had numerous video clips to view but some of us did not realise that the way one positions the iPad actually makes a difference so we had upside down clips, which took time to flip! The teachers focussed on the clips that showed the product which guided the discussions about levels of thinking. Although most students in grade 4 and 5 are on the early to middle concrete level, and function at that level during episode one, we did notice how the thinking progressed as they developed systems whilst organising the match schedule in grade 4 and the strength and club choice to make successful hits in a golf game.

Overall we decided that their learning taught us:

• To ensure we arrange student groups according to the type of lesson i.e. near ability vs mixed ability.
• Only do as much vocabulary that will relate to the part of the lesson that will be covered within the time on a particular day during the concrete preparation stage.
• Scaffolding will be required to get all students to understand episode one so that all have a fair chance at episode two.
• Most lessons take longer than the manual suggests and one should not force the process.
• It is wise to have material available for students to plan on or draw ideas as they think and develop ideas so that they remain engaged.
• The video clips improved but we still need to improve on our filming skills, transferring the clips onto our lap tops and the dissection of the process clips.

CAME in the IP: spotting Piagetian levels

The IP Mathematics programme includes 24 Shayer lessons to promote cognitive acceleration. Each grade has been allocated 8 lessons for the year which amounts to 1 per unit. Since all 3 grades need to teach the first CAME lesson of the year, we decided that our focus on student learning, for the 3-week period, would be through these lessons. Each set of grade teachers has spent time discussing the objective of the lesson, the cognitive preparation, the episodes and have prepared the lesson material . We plan to video each lesson and edit the recording so that we have clips that can be used to observe and reflect on learning that took place. We aim to focus on spotting the Piagetian levels as set out in the manual and note how students may/may not switch to a higher level as the lesson proceeds.  The Grade 4 and 5 lessons each have 2 episodes and the Grade 6 lesson has 3 episodes. Grade 5 and 6 will develop the episodes over more than one period.

Reflections from micro-teaching "Reading" in the IP

4 February: The third, and final, session in this particular lesson study was largely reflection. We viewed some video clips with the intention of discussing each in detail but it took a different course. As teachers viewed the clips thoughts thoughts were shred of what had happened in their own 'reading-station lessons'. There were some common findings:

1. Instructions on task cards must be concise yet easy to understand.

2. Tasks must be timed realistically.

3. Some benefits of micro teaching in the teacher group were: One got through more; able to go into more detail; students are ‘forced’ to engage because the group is small; students were positive and engaged; an opportunity for students to guide learning; weaker students performed better without being over shadowed.

4. Benefits of other groups were: students were responsible; they cooperated and shared ideas; opportunity for self-management.

5. Teachers gained confidence. Using this experience they will be able to apply it to other lessons in Maths and Inquiry lessons.

6. Teachers who had planned assessments and later felt that it was not balanced and intend to put more thinking into it.

7. The teachers who took the opportunities to view other lessons and get involved in discussions and reflections, managed better because they put more thought into their planning.

Teaching reading in the IP

The teacher whose lesson we used as a jump-start went ahead and taught her 4 half hour sessions over 4 days.

It was exciting to actually teach reading and feel that the children are learning at different levels. What will I change next time? 1. Be VERY organised - right down to how many books are required per group and which group will be working in exercise books. 2. I must have task cards; explaining and writing on the board was fine for stronger children on day one when I had the weaker children, but took too long when weaker children had to work on their own on days 2-4. 3.Activities must be varied; children became restless once they had the same book twice. 4. The creative writing was not very creative. That group should do something that had been planned/prepared/discussed as a whole class before this lesson. 5. I found myself becoming bored by day 4. Will try 2 double sessions over 2 days.

The next lesson that was viewed was planned by a grade 5 teacher who used the first planning session as a guide. She was very positive about having a good chunk of contact time with a small group. All groups were engaged but the one group did not follow their instructions sequentially and missed the point of the study. The teacher concluded the lesson by reflecting on the process to improve the session on day 2. Both teachers planned an assessment sheet which clarified the purpose of the lesson. The second grade 6 teacher started his series of lessons where all students were actively engaged in groups. The one group did not fully understand their instructions and wasted much of their time rather than deciding on a course of action. This was a good point of discussion as it became clear that the most successful parts of these lessons have been grounded by the clarity of instructions. Teachers who continue to teach these lessons this week all plan to review both their verbal and written instructions. It was also decided that students who do not complete the work in class will not have to do it for homework so that they begin to practice the strategy “every minute counts”. Teachers will continue to get better at setting tasks which suit the levels of the groups to avoid student frustration. Next week we plan to discuss the clips that have been recorded in preparation for the inquiry lesson planning using this model.