Colleen's Mind lab Journey

The contribution of teacher Inquiry topics to my community of Practice. How do the two chosen topics relate to issues in your professional practice? We have has a few new teaching focuses this year and next year we have decided as a staff that we need to consolidate our knowledge. We as a school are continuing our knowledge in Personalised Learning. Our end of year data shows that we need to again focus on writing even though we are above the national standard this is our weakest area that we want to further develop. Google docs were introduced last year also with Prime maths and Maths buddy. Focus one: Is to use Google Docs to further develop collaboration with a focus on writing and also to include the wider school community. Then to take this wider by including the other features in the Doc suite for planning and at staff level. At the moment we are using docs for planning, staff meeting, collaboration, feedback, must do’s may do’s and share through docs. Focus two: How t...

Change in my practice towards Future-oriented learning and teaching. Does education need to change?  Yes! We all need to be more Dog ! Personalised learning. I have chosen to reflect on views around Personalised learning. WHY DID I MAKE THIS CHANGE? My school has been on a journey around personalised learning for nearly 3 years now. We looked at this concept as a whole school inquiry topic where we all read a mentor text “Making Learning Personal. The what, who, WOW, where and why By Barbara Bray and Kathleen Mc Claskey. As a school, we would meet after reading each section and discuss that section with a focus on our school and practice. We also had tasks to trial after each section as well. The second year we applied the practice completely into our classrooms. This year my inquiry was based around including personalised learning with lifting writing achievement. I then paired up with the teacher of literacy, who was completing here degree and joined forc...

16 weeks of learning Look at how far we have come… I always tend to go back before I go forward. So I looked into the definition of what REFLECTING on reflective practice means: Reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experiences towards gaining new insights of self and or practice. (Boud et al 1985; Boyd and Fales, 1983; Mezirow, 1981, Jarvis, 1992). This involves examining assumptions of everyday practice and being self- aware and critically evaluating own responses to practice situations. To think about these practices we have to take into account our own ethical, professional, pedagogic and conceptual concerns or beliefs. We have to be really honest for change to occur, we can all put our rose-tinted glasses about a lesson and look at outside factors. I am a trained reading recovery teacher and one of my tutors use to always say. If a lesson goes wrong how could you change it? Teaching behind the one-way mirror I was constantl...