Self Evaluation for Improvement - Using feedback & other evidence to improve performance

6th May 2020

What’s going on here? For which learners? Who are my priority learners this year? (Those in danger of not achieving)
I had a hunch at who my priority learners were prior to completing our first written internal assessment in Level 3 PED. I had used knowledge of learning difficulties, observations of students transferring into the subject and other observations such as students with low motivation levels. I had identified 5 students with learning difficulties, an additional 3 students who may struggle to settle into both a new subject and a new school and 2 students who were struggling with motivation levels in class. Throughout the process of completing our first written internal assessment a lot of these priority learners were confirmed.

What does achievement data tell me about my current cohort? Is this what I expected?
The achievement data from the first internal assessment told me that I have quite a large range of ability in my class this year. This had already been quite obvious through the different teaching and learning activities, having to differentiate lessons to ensure the top are being extended enough and that the bottom are getting enough support. The assessment results confirmed this. However, I believe it has shown me that the gap is bigger than I expected it to be. The results from the first internal (3.7) were as follows: 7 Achieved (3 Low, 2 High), 3 Merit (1 Low) & 7 Excellence (2 Low, 2 High).

What are my learner’s perspectives on the situation? What do my learners and I agree are my strengths and areas for development?After completing our first written internal I ensured to collect feedback from the students regarding the teaching and learning process and the assessment itself. In terms of strengths key themes included; help & explanations, support & feedback, range of resources provided, use of sentence starters and the use of class discussions to reinforce learning and share ideas and perspectives. In terms of areas for development key themes included; more personalised feedback, explanation of questions, aid with research, the assessment layout and one student wanted more encouragement.

What changes can I make to my practice? How long will it take for me to notice improvements in outcomes?
I ensured to take their feedback onboard when moving into our second written internal assessment (3.1). We managed to get one week of teaching and learning at school before lockdown started and continued online with distance learning. Before starting the assessment we did an activity that aided students with where and how to find relevant research for their upcoming assessment. I also made sure to review the assessment layout to make it more structured, including sentence starters to help guide student answers. As I was not there to explain the questions in person I decided to create videos breaking down the assessment questions. I choose to do this over a Webex call as students might struggle with different questions, therefore they could watch the video relating to the question they were struggling with. Students commented that they found this really helpful and it is something I will consider continuing to do even once we are back at school. As for feedback, I notice that when we are completing assessments in class it is always the same students who would ask for help or feedback. To try and avoid only helping these students I kept a tally of help/feedback given. This gave me a quick visual on who may have not received as much help or feedback and who I should turn my attention too. At the start of each day I also choose 7 students in which I was going to give feedback to before the end of the day. This helped me to balance out the amount of support and feedback I was giving. As for the encouragement, the one student who noted this is also one of the students who has been struggling with motivation levels. Because of his honest feedback I was able to ensure I was giving him more encouragement and 'warm fuzzies' rather than mainly constructive criticism.

How has this impacted on my learners? Which of my learners are/are not benefiting? How do you know?
The results from the latest written internal assessment (3.1) were as follows; 5 Achieved (1 Low, 1 High), 2 Merit (1 High) & 10 Excellence (3 Low & 3 High).I do acknowledge that the increase in results may also be due to the different content and 3.1 being rather personalised. However, I also believe that the improvement in grades for certain students were directly due to students being able to act on the feedback from their last assessment and due to the more equal spread of support and feedback throughout this assessment, as these students don't always ask for help or feedback. E.g. one student went from a High Achieved to a High Merit as he was able to include more detail in his analysis, another from an Achieved to a Low Excellence. However, what I found frustrating is that even giving the one particular student encouragement like he asked his motivation levels still appeared to remain low and he remained at a Low Achieved.

What further adjustments might be worth considering?
I do believe I need to focus more on giving all students more encouragement and 'warm fuzzies'. I realise when providing feedback particularly on assessments I mainly tend to provide feedback on how to improve rather than telling them what they have already done well.
I also want to focus on how I can extend and encourage those achieving to achieve higher. I know two are definitely capable of achieving at a higher level as they were achieving with Merit & Excellence last year in Level 2 PED - how can I motivate them?

Harnessing & Enhancing Assessments in Schools

29th April 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Harnessing & Enhancing Assessments in Schools

Provider/Presenter: Stuart Kime

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

• There are 4 key principles that should always guide assessment; purpose, validity, reliability and value.
• I really liked the way Stuart explained how assessment, pedagogy and curriculum interrelate. He explained that assessment is only a tool for pedagogy which is guided by curriculum and that assessment is a tool used to understand the next steps when guiding a student through a curriculum and therefore can guide pedagogy.
• Tips for assessment while distance learning - ensure there is a slower pace and do fewer assessments however, do them better. This could be by varying the mode of assessment

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

This presentation helped to remind me that testing and assessment are different, although testing can be a part of assessment. This is something I often get caught up in with my IG students. The tip of varying the mode of assessment has also made be consider the assessment I have been conducting with my IG students while distance learning. I have been completing the same style of tests that I would in class however, they are open book. I have actually found that some students have done worse in these open book tests than they do in a closed book test. I believe this is because students are focusing on certain key words to do with content and writing from their notes about that rather than reading the entire question properly. This has already made me think about how I can trial different methods of assessments with my students to see if I achieve better results.

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

His tip about ensuring a pragmatic approach spoke to me. He suggested that by revisiting content that was introduced earlier it can help students create more dependable and credible connections with their assessment. The example he gave is a teacher starting each class with 3 questions; 1 question on current content, 1 question on content from the last topic and 1 question from an old topic. This is definitely something I can introduce more in IG PE. Students quite often do well in end of topic tests. However, some students struggle when completing end of unit tests as there is more for them to remember. Normally this is not a strategy I bring in until Term 3 but is definitely something I could look at starting this term.

I am also going to trial different methods of assessment with my IG students while distance learning. Can I create a knowledge review that is more meaningful from a Quizizz or by getting students to create a video applying their knowledge rather than a test?

Fostering Engagement & Wellbeing while Teaching Remotely

22nd April 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Fostering Engagement & Wellbeing while Teaching Remotely

Provider/Presenter: Dale Sidebottom

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

The PEGG strategy helps to increase student engagement by allowing students to feel a sense of fun and to feel connected to others outside of their bubble. Just like our Hauora the different dimensions of PEGG (Play, Exercise, Gratitude & Giving) are all equally as important. The PEGG strategy can be treated like a challenge with each of the different areas needing to be ticked off and completed each and every day. Once students have been able to complete a task for each of these they are encouraged to reflect on these before being able to "peg" themselves - they can literally have a physical peg to help remind them. This is also a strategy that students can then share with their family to increase household engagement. Then as pictured in my notes above we were given multiple different ways that we can help foster and engage students in each of the different aspects of PEGG.

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

With the lack of class discussions and group work in my distance learning classes at the moment, how can I help students to feel more connected to school and increase their engagement and sense of fun?

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

I would look at introducing a small task at the beginning of a lesson. This can help to differentiate lessons and make them a bit different. This could also be a task used at the start of the lesson which I have typically been using as the 'wait time' to ensure all members were there and that I could do the roll. These activities could be ideas from the different areas of PEGG i.e. an exercise challenge one day, a gratitude task the next.

'Where to next?' Leveraging your new found digital skills in a post pandemic world

16th April 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Where to next? Leveraging your new found digital skills in a post pandemic world

Provider/Presenter: Carl Condliffe

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

Overall the PD was looking at the issues and challenges we may have faced going into the lockdown, opportunities that may have presented themselves to us and where to next after the lockdown. Below are some of the key points I took from this morning's presentation:

• We are fortunate that King's took the week to prepare us for distance learning as many schools and teachers felt underprepared
• A huge opportunity that is given to us is that we can create student agency and autonomy as they are accountable for their own work/effort - can we transfer and continue this when we return to the classroom?
• Ensure the focus is on identifying issues and creating solutions, encouraging students to think critically, rather than rely on content

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

This lockdown has presented us with many opportunities to enhance our practice. How can we ensure to transfer these skills when we return back to the classroom?

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

This year I proceeded to push blended learning to help create a more authentic learning environment for my IG PE students. As the IG curriculum has so much content I found classes were heavily based on learning new content rather than allowing learners to apply this, reinforcing their knowledge. I feel like this is something that I haven't done as much for my senior NCEA classes as we have more time in class for each unit of work. However, I have found that creating videos for my senior students particularly around breaking down of achievement criteria and assessments has been useful and is something that I would look to continue in future.

Leadership Session #2 - Time Management

17th March 2020

Key Points:

• Steven Covey’s matrix of time management - looking at tasks and whether or not they are urgent, not urgent, important, not important as shown in the matrix pictured below:
  

• Try to drop tasks that are deemed not important off the list
• Try to avoid a list mentality - doing so can be overwhelming and it often does not show priorities
• Simon’s tips:
  • Daily planner matrix
    • Includes list, properties and times that you are free
  • Ensure all high priorities are completed by the end of the day
  • Ensure that there is time to work on components that are important but not urgent each day
  • Remember that sometimes may come across your desk because they are important/urgent to others but not yourself, just as things that are urgent to you may not be urgent to others

Q&A

• If something is urgent to you and you need cooperation from others however, it is not urgent to others how do you work around this?
  • Questioning about what has been done before handing up the line
• Leaders who micromanage - how do you address a manager who has a crisis and makes their crisis become your crisis
  • Courageous conversations
    • It is all about the delivery of the conversation
    • how can you support them in their role whether it is planning or taking some of the load off them

I feel that over time I have gotten better at prioritising my tasks and identifying tasks that are important and urgent and focusing on those first. The key tool I help with my time management is the apple app 'Reminders'. It allows you to create a list, prioritise your tasks and even set day and time reminders that will sit on your home screen until you have marked these as complete.

A key point I have taken away from this session is the idea that you need to ensure that everyday you are working towards a task that is important but not urgent. This can allow for greater thought and creativity. This could be by researching for 10 minutes or having a conversation about a future event etc.

Being an Effective HOD

20th February 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Being an Effective HOD (18th & 19th Feb)

Provider/Presenter: Kay Hawk & Jan Hill from the Education Group

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

• The different leadership and managerial roles of an HOD and breaking down of the educational leadership capabilities
• What make an effective department and one that is 'moving' (teams where everyone is adding value, working together towards a common goal) or a performing
• Reinforcing the importance of a team knowing the 'Why' e.g. a team usually knows what their role is and how they complete it but they need to fully understand the why to get complete buy in
• Frameworks for leading professional learning discussions including opening discussions and fronting an issue

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

• By placing emphasis on the need to develop group culture - what is our vision and what are our department goals for 2020?

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

Key points I have identified that could easily be implemented are:

• Creation of a Google Doc - emailed once a week to the department, includes department meeting agenda, important dates for the week, recognition, notices, etc.
  • Ensures meeting time is not used for admin and stops overuse of admin emails
  • Allows for all members to contribute to the doc
• Ensuring the whole department is aware of the vision and 2020 goals

*Have spoken to REY about both of these points. He thinks it would be a good idea for the first to be implemented. As for second he agrees this needs to happen and wants input from the whole team

Further notes that I took away from this PD can be found here.

08/11: 'What does it mean to be a Successful Teacher?'

'What does it mean to be a Successful Teacher?'

8th November 2019

'What does it mean to be a successful teacher?' - John Hattie

"Your job is to help them do better than what they believe their best is"

Synopsis - Key Things I have taken away?

Throughout all of his research Hattie's focus for educators is to understand learning through the eyes of the student. So what is the most important influences on student achievement and growth?

• Hattie acknowledges the tension amongst priorities e.g. pedagogy vs content. However, he emphasises the need and importance of PD - that it’s not about what you learn today but what you do tomorrow
• He suggests moving the focus away from the strategies and instead provide evidence that you are having an impact on your learners
• Hattie addressed Educator Burnout in his book '10 Mind Frames for Visible Learning' - he believes this is because too many teachers believe they need to be constantly busy and work individually. Efficiency, reprioritising and removing certain content, collective and collaborative work can help to minimise burnout

How has it helped me?

Hattie emphasised that we need to take a look at how students are learning. Students need to be able to relay the ideas they are taught and relate them to each other. However, the strategy on how to do each of these are different. Hattie also emphasises that students need to be given a range of different strategies so they can be successful. This is what I have been focusing on with my inquiry throughout the year - ensuring to provide students with a range of different strategies to suit different levels within the class and learning styles. However, I may have not fully acknowledged students ability to decide when a certain strategy is applicable.

Hattie identified some examples of what student impact could look like; changes in test scores, change and growth in student work, student voice and how they believe they have changed/grown and teacher reflection on impact and change. I notice and identify these impacts. However, I don't always ensure that the student also notice these. Test scores could be obvious, but often students won't recognise the growth in their work. This was evident to me via a discussion with a student in my Level 2 Physical Education class. The student had chosen not to take PE for Level 3 because they were unsure they were good enough. I pointed out to them how much they had grown and developed throughout the year moving from Achieved's to Excellence's. This was not something that he had already identified himself.

So What?

• In recognising that students don't automatically know when certain strategies are most applicable, next year I will focus on introducing students to a range of strategies I will also emphasise when they would be appropriate to use.
• Next year I am going to aim to introduce further strategies to celebrate student achievement and growth. I hope in doing this that students themselves will be able to then recognise and celebrate their own growth.

30/10: Reflection of HPE Scholarship Process 2019

Reflection of HPE Scholarship Process 2019

30th October 2019

Today was the final day of the Health & Physical Education Scholarship process for 2019. For the Health & Physical Education scholarship students self-select a topic or issue they would like to exam in depth over a 30 page report. As this was my first year leading the programme I thought I'd take the time to reflect on the positives and negatives of this year's process to help improve for next year.

Tips for 2020:

• Multiple afternoon workshops
  This year we held 4 afternoon workshops in Term 4. Each workshop ran for about 3 hours. The aim of these workshops was to give students an opportunity to chip away at their report, while having the support of staff in the room. Overall this process was really effective this year. This worked better than previous years where we held two big workshops that ran for about 6-7 hours each. For 2020 I would look at potentially adding some in the final week of T3 to encourage students to start working earlier.
• Insist on drafts by end of T3
  This year it seemed like students started the writing process later than previous years. I'm not sure if this is because we had less NCEA students participating this year who are given class time? By adding a workshop or two in the final week of Term 3 I would hope that would encourage students to start writing earlier. I would also push for students to have a rough draft before the end of Term 3.
• Push criticality
  This year some students struggled with the level of criticality needed for their report. They often chose topics they were passionate about, which is great, but they often had a strong view or opinion which reflected as a one sided argument. This typically was harder for the Cambridge students and I wonder if this is due to the level of criticality in Level 2 & 3 Physical Education? I wonder if we can push the idea of criticality earlier e.g. in Dragon’s Den workshop?
• Focus on solutions
  Students often also underestimate the importance of the solutions that they suggest towards the end of their report. By really looking in depth to what they suggest such as how it would be implemented, the change they hope it will have etc it will show a deeper understanding and a more critical view.
• Encourage students to reference as they writeStudents often underestimate the time it takes for them to reference their work properly once they have finished their writing. By teaching students how to reference and to reference as they go this will help to eliminate the rush of referencing once a report is deemed complete.
• Research & ReadingsSome students struggled to find academic readings and references to refer to while writing their report. Next year a base folder could be made with readings applicable to different scholarship topics for students to access and utilise.

This process wouldn't be as effective if it wasn't for the help and support of the department. For now all we can do is wait until the results come out to see how our students have gone.

16/09: Undergrad Presentation

Undergrad Presentation

16th September 2019

This afternoon Rob Paterson, Georgia Dougherty and I went and presented to a group of Undergraduates at the University of Auckland on 'Stepping into the Real World". This is a result of an Auckland PENZ initiative from the Graduate Mentor group.

Last year we recognised the need for a new section of the Auckland PENZ Graduate Mentor group. We have had great success with our workshops run for first and second year teachers on a variety of topics including; surviving your first six months & expanding your toolbox, culturally responsive & relational pedagogy, marking & moderation and gathering evidence for the 6 teaching standards. However, we noticed that feedback from these sessions and from our own personal experiences, there were no presentations or tips on how to actually get a job upon graduating university. This lead to the creation of the sub-group of Undergraduate Mentoring.

The purpose of today's presentation was to present to undergraduates on what to expect in your first year of teaching and how to navigate your way through the job application process. Topics in our presentation included; CV & cover letters, interview tips & possible questions, relief and legalities. The link to our presentation can be found here.

A group of about 20-30 students from the BPE and Grad Dip programmes attended from Auckland University and a couple from the AUT Sport & Rec programme. Overall today's presentation was a success with those attending engaged throughout - this was evident through the great questions that were asked throughout the session and feedback from the lecturer (pictured below).

This has already been in improvement on last year's presentation, particularly presenting this earlier in the year and the ability to catch students from multiple different courses in the same session. Hopefully the students found it useful and were able to take away some tips to help them with their job hunting.

29/04: T2 Staff PD Day

T2 Staff PD Day 

29th April 2019

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Term 2 Staff PD Day

Collaborative notes from today's PD session can be found here

Today's PD session started with Melissa running through King's Leadership journey to date.

We then moved into a group activity where we looked at different leadership statements and identified different behaviours that we currently see and what we want to see. I found this task useful and the group that I was working with had great engaging conversations of each of our given statements. It was interesting to hear the reoccurring theme for the want for more inter-departmental work across the school for us to share our best practice.

My highlight of the day was listening to Jo Martin speak about personal branding. I found the five theories of self and the different ways of catching people's attention particularly interesting. More detailed notes can be found here.

My key takeaway from today would be to use “yes and” instead of “yes, but” and ensuring that I lead with my best values.

09/04: Inquiry Update for 2019

Inquiry Update for 2019

9th April 2019

What’s happening and why?

• As this has been my second year looking into independent (2017 - L2 PED) and self-directed learners (2018 - IG PE) have found that a lot of strategies that I was purposely putting in place now come naturally.
• I find it easy to note the difference in the need between independent and self-directed learners and what is needed for different students at varying levels levels of age, ability and curriculum. This makes it easy to identify the needs of the students and action points that can be put into place.
• I am involving whanau and other support networks more effectively and earlier on. An example of this is identifying students who were struggling in IG after the first 6 weeks and contacting Housemasters, Mentor teachers & the Y11 Academic Coordinator to flag these students. This also lead to contacting home for a couple of these students. This has largely had a postive impact and in most cases has increased the work ethic of students in the class. Another example of this is that by identifying that I have a lot of priority learners in my Level 2 class I emailed home before the start of the written assessment with due dates and where they can go for support. I also broke down these dates with students in the lead up to their assessment, 3 weeks prior to them starting the assessment, so they didn't feel it had been sprung on them. Majority of students felt that going into the assessment that there were no surprises. They knew what was expected of them to reach an Achieved, Merit or Excellence.
• A new initiative for 2019 to help IG students identify weaknesses is that I complete a 'End of Unit Test Teacher Reflection'. An example of one of these reflections has been attached to this post. By doing this I am able to analyse what went well, what didn't and what needs to change. By completing this before handing back student test papers with results it gives me an overview of what may need to be revisited. Following this students are given back their test papers and are encouraged to look through these. We then go through common mistakes or questions that were not answered well as a class before students being able to ask their own questions about the test. Students then write in the correct answers on their test papers to help them with future studies.

What’s not happening & why?

• Although student ownership and accountability has increased within these classes from the start of 2019 to the end of Term 1 not all students are on board. I believe this is largely contributed to in the range of abilities in both my L2 and IG classes. The top students tend to take all advice on board where as those towards the bottom need more help in finding their own way. As this gap is large I have been trying to incorporate strategies to ensure I am still pushing those at the top and helping those at the bottom reach their level of success.

What am I going to do to influence what is not happening?

• This is something that I am considering looking into further and is a potential inquiry for 2019. How can I focus on differentiation in my senior classes to help push students at the top while not leaving those at the bottom behind? It was interesting to listen to Bridget presenting on her inquiry from last year as I could take and adapt some of her strategies such as scaffolding, key word lists, focus on fun/hands on activities in Periods 5 & 6 to help lift and students creating quizzes and mark sheets. I'm sure that there are other strategies that I already have in place to help with this that I could make more deliberate.

18/10 - PD: The Future of Education + Mind Lab Pop-up

PD: The Future of Education + Mind Lab Pop-up

18th October 2018

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Future of Education

Provider/Presenter: Frances Valintine

Last night I attended a talk about the future of education by Frances Valintine followed by a Mind Lab pop-up. Frances is the Founder and Chair of Mind Lab. I first heard about Frances through her TED talk about the courage to connect and the challenge she was laying down to educators.

A lot of her ideas come from 'The Policy of our Nation'. Key points include:

• We don't want to be just a consumer of new technology (social media etc), we need to utilize it
• NZ is experiencing a growing demand for digital citizens - this can easily be seen in the work force and job advertisements
• We currently have a lot of obstacles - is the traditional view on education one of them?
• This is about understanding the power of the tools we have available

Her push is to empower educators to take the leap and embrace change, to push the boundaries and challenge the traditional stereotypes e.g. do we need a classroom or do we need somewhere to learn? We don't need to get rid of classrooms but need to expand and allow students to realize they can learn everywhere. However, when change is involved people can panic as they lose their comfort zone. She expresses that what you know and the experiences you have had are really important as these help us build in the future ahead.

Frances also pushes the importance of the change in skills needed. Most schools focus on getting students through with a school qualification to move onto higher education. Unfortunately just getting a degree isn't enough anymore. 70% of employers in NZ are recognising that soft skills are more valued and highly sought after. An example of this that the ability to retain knowledge matters less but the ability to go and find knowledge is more powerful.

So what is your burning platform to embrace change?

*The book 'The 100 Year Life' was brought up in conversation and could be a good read

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

It helps to reinforce that we need to move away from what is seen as traditional teaching and teaching of and for assessments as this is creating a disservice for our students. This PD of both the talk and the Pop-up Mind Lab session have really encouraged and inspired me to take the Mind Lab Postgraduate Certificate in Digital & Collaborative Learning.

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

I feel like this time of the year was a great time to hear a strong message like this. As senior classes are coming to an end I am already picking apart my courses as to how I can improve on them and make them more interactive and interesting for the following year. This has inspired me to continue reflecting on my IG course in particular to see how I can make the course more interactive and memorable for students. I want to make learning more hands on through practicals, online games, learning activities etc. As I have now taught the course for a year, got my head around it and learnt through trial and error I feel like I will easily be able to reflect and adapt the course for 2019.

22/7: PENZ Conference 2018

PD: PENZ Conference 2018

22nd July 2018

July 9th to 11th 2018 marked the 60th National PENZ conference; Together, Towards Tomorrow. Across the three days I was able to grow my professional network and continue professionally developing myself. Below are some of my highlights and takeaways from the conference.


Session 1: Together, Towards Tomorrow Keynote - Wayne Smith, Margot Bowes & James McIntyre
I found this a refreshing keynote to start the conference. The key theme of the keynote was the development of the theory behind skill acquisition. Wayne Smith discussed the theory, Margot Bowes discussed how it can be implemented (where King's College was used as an example) and James McIntyre focussed on a primary lens. Overall the keynote challenged the old school technique approach found that can still be found within Physical Education. Two of my key points from this keynote session can be summarised in my two tweets pictured below:

Session 2: Presenting Our Scholarship Journey - Mallory Bish, Rob Paterson & Alex Smith
The first round of breakout sessions involved the three of us presenting about our Scholarship Programme and our journey over the past three years. The aim of the session was to share what had been working for us in the hopes that others may be able to takeaway aspects to trial with their own students. We shared info about our school, the outline of our programme, exemplars of student work, example of the process a student goes through, student feedback, criticality within our PE programme from Y9-13 before moving onto the Dragon's Den. The link to our presentation can be found here.

Feedback from teachers after the session was overwhelmingly positive. Some of this feedback came through the form of a Facebook post and tweet from Carl Condliffe (NZ PE Teacher). The feedback received allowed us to believe that we had met the aims of our session.

Session 9: ‘A Good Akina Man’ - Hastings Boys' High
Hastings Boys' High identified a need to help develop and change the character and feelings students related to school and their high school experience. They used to have an identity unit for four weeks in health at the start of Y9. This idea was also sparked from seeing the success of Gisborne Boys' High. The HODs and SLT came together to create a list of values that they wanted to instill in their Y9 students to create a year long integrated underlying theme.

Term One's unit was about respect; what is respect, why do students respect certain people, how do they show respect etc. They then instilled respect for the school through the idea that they are now apart of the school and the school is now apart of them. Students looked into history of all the houses, school song, school haka, colours etc. This linked nicely to the Health & PE curriculum by connecting to what was their old Hauora unit that got students to learn about their own personal identity.

I really liked this idea of an integrated identity unit and building respect for the school and its culture and traditions, while also acknowledging the individuality of each student. We could easily incorporate this into our Y9 program, especially with the linking of PE & Health for 2019. Students could look at why they are attending King's and the history of King's to develop a sense of identity and belonging.


Session 13: How do you know what learning is happening in HPE? - Chris Hurston
In this session Chris shared how he was using technology and apps such as Plickers, Google Forms & Seesaw to build reflective practise in his juniors. This reflective practise came in forms of students recapping their learning from prior lessons, getting students to assess their level of understanding against rubrics for self assessment and peer assessment. Chris also shared the importance of having a visible programme for parents and students alike to check in and see outlines of term topics, discussion points, assessment tasks, showcase routines/videos, short video clips of lessons, reflections and next steps. He used the app Seesaw to share this information with parents and students. This was the part of the session that stood out the most to me as I have been focussing on visible learning for both my students and parents/guardians. I wonder whether we could try incorporating this app or could use Schoolbox more affectively?

The takeaway key question form this session was 'what are you doing in your practice to enhance reflective practice?' When reflecting on this question myself I know that I have been focussing on challenging my juniors to reflect on what we are learning, why and how these skills can be transferable. I have also been focussing on creating more self directed learners in my IGCSE class.



Overall I think this is a range of takeaways from this years annual conference. It will be interesting to take these key ideas forward, particularly with the development of our new connected Health & PE programme for 2019 and how we can ensure this learning is visible to both students and parents/guardians alike.