Classroom Observations

I have now completed the classroom observations of both teachers and students. As I am the Maths Lead Teacher I observed everyone's maths lessons to kill two birds with one stone.
I used the same model as Woolf Fisher for the senior school observations, which gave me a really good picture of what was happening in the classroom for both the teacher and the learners. Some of what I observed linked back to the hunches I had.

Notes from my Observations
- Planning is visible for the children and available BUT are they making the best use of it. Teachers are still using verbal prompts.
- Target students are working with a specific teaching and have specific learning goals they are working towards. Recent assessment data has been shared with them so they know what their next steps are.
- There is still not much Student Agency happening. (There was choice for the order of tasks)
- Collaboration is happening between the teachers and some with the students BUT most of the time it was 'My Work'
- The nature of the tasks tended to be game based learning, constrained practice or non-digital.
- There was a variety of main teaching activities observed: Modelling, Conferencing, Instructing, Roving, and only some Management.
- In most cases the main teaching foci was on strategy and practice.
- Feedback given still tends to be Evaluative
- Still cases of whole class teaching happening. (During this time I noticed children not focused and off task).
- There were instances of 'Off Task' behaviour


After the observations I meet with the teachers and discussed the sheets. We have used these observation sheets and created some specific goals that the teachers are going to work on. We also linked some of them back to our KEN goals to make it more manageable.

Re-defining my Inquiry

So after returning back from our wonderful day at Spark HQ and reflecting on my inquiry question and with help from Dorothy, I have decided to re-word it.

My new inquiry question is:

How does collaboration supported by digital tools and visible learning contribute to accelerated progress in all curriculum areas for learners?

These are some of the hunches I have and things I would like to check out.

Some target students are making progress, so they do feel successful, but not at the rate that is needed for them to catch up so are still classified as targets.(Accelerating Learning)

-If children are 2 years behind and they are only making a year or a year and a half progress, they are never going to reach the standard.

Teachers are not making the most of the collaborative environment. -One teacher always taking the bottom groups not catering for their needs.

Digital tools are not being used effectively to cater for these learners (Affordances of Technology).

Do Target students know where they are and how are they going to get to where they need to be? Is data being shared with them?

How does more engagement in high quality teaching and learning activities contribute to accelerated learning? What does this look like for target students?

Are teachers making the most of Visible Learning?

Now that we have completed all our beginning of the year assessments, staff have been able to look closely at their data and decide where to next with their teaching. Data has been shared with students and learning goals have been made.

We have discussed our target students at staff meeting and what we have been doing for these students, especially in writing. We have one staff member who is focussing on our target writers this year and is carrying out regular class observations to see if the changes we are making are working.

Target writers from my team have created learning maps, with their goals for writing to get them to where they need to be. They have these in front of them all the time during writing and they have created a screen castify to share them on their blogs.

Here are a couple of examples of their maps:

Next week I am heading into the classroom's to observe what is happening and to see where my support is needed and to develop some goals with the teachers.