My inquiry approach for 2019

My inquiry approach for 2019- Year 13 Calculus with Externals

I’d like to share my Teaching  Inquiry focus for 2019:

 I have decided to challenge myself by achieving

#1.  Raise Māori student achievement through the development of cultural visibility and responsive practices across the pathway as measured against National Standards and agreed targets for reading Years 1-10 and NCEA years 11-13. As a CoL leader within school I  am more interested in inquiring about student learning and my own practice.

This year my Inquiry focus is - year13 class with externals for targeted Maori students as well as the rest of the students so that they can gain at least 14 credits to get university entrance. By the end of the year, the Maori (targeted students) and the rest of the class can experience success in their learning by getting Merit and Excellence endorsements in mathematics.

This is a mix ability class and There are 4 Maori students, 6 Tongan students, 2 Samoan students , 2 Cook island Maori, 1 Asia and 1 Pakeha in this class.

In this class, I taught  all of them except two  last year. Their external results were two excellent endorsements, three Merit endorsements and rest of them passed at least one of the externals. Here is the link

Whilst working with them last year I realised I could offer scholarship this year. I prepared one group of the students from last year with two extra Level three standards and one extra level two internal with their last year’s programme.

I intend to enter one group of students in the Calculus scholarship examination, I am very excited by the challenges as this is first time for our school.

I am interested in learning more about myself and cater effectively to every learner in the classroom.

To make this effective, I have made the following initial plans with my students.

•      Organise sites/ work space/unit plans/ yearly planner and weekly planner.
•      Teaching three internals and two externals during class time and offering one external        and   one internal after school.
•        Weekly study classes two times a week and holiday classes. to balance the work load.
•      Organise teaching online to promote self-directed teaching.
•       Interactive activities, video lessons, Geogebra, Desmos 3DGraphing calculator etc.
•       Bring guest speakers for future tech and past students to promote engineering and        Architecture.

Year Planner for 2019

There are (two units)two internals which I offer in this programme which is a common for the other one year13 classes and one of the internals is common in all three year13 classes. We have decided to take a collaborative approach to the common standards which we teach. I am going to support my colleagues in teaching the skills and content of the course in order to maintain the consistency and cater for every student in the classroom.

I have made the following in order to support / collaborate with my colleagues

·        Updating sites with all the lessons, work space for every topic before the head of the term.
·         Meet with the teachers to keep everyone on track.
·         Discussion about success and improvements.
·         Literacy strategies
·         Weekly catch ups
·         Discussion in department meetings to share ideas
·         Making unit plans a term a head and encouraging colleagues to share resources.

I am excited about the challenge this year with my year13 calculus class with scholarship and collaboration with two of the units (two internal) with my one of my colleagues and one of the internals with two of my colleagues.

I strongly belief that collaboration adds motivation and values, when we work together with teachers can identify the common challenges, analyse common data,  it can improve our instructional approach.