This RISE session I was able to reflect back on my Term 1 goal that addressed writing and student feedback. I took on Lauren’s great ideas and trialed different approaches which in return allowed me to equip my students with the tools to be able to confidently provide their peers with relevant feedback. I switched my focus to Mathematics. This subject area is one that I personally love to teach and mesh with my creative background.
I had my RISE session with Tiffany this term and if my head was completely screwed on I would have brought a video of my practice with writing (as she is the writing queen) but instead I have showcased my feedback during mathematics. Tiff began by explaining some of the struggles she is having with her students being able to transfer their talk to writing. It’s not everyday that you get to have these rich conversations and I appreciate Tiff being honest about what wasn’t working and looking for some input. It definitely set up a safe space and we were able to combine our thoughts and ideas. Although I have Year 6, this was a problem we were facing at the start of term as we found our students were fantastic at expressing their ideas cohesively through talk but were struggling with transferring this to their writing. We spoke about further scaffolding the writing lesson with longer sentence starters and also giving the students an opportunity to verbally express their sentence prior to writing it down. I also suggested to have a couple of Year 6 students come down to the classroom once a week to help guide the students during writing sessions. After all collaboration is key!
Tiff was very kind and specific when giving me feedback on my RISE video. She addressed the positive aspects of spending time with each student to give feedback on post assessments. To be able to move on to a new Maths strand, it’s always important to show our students what they have accomplished and what they are working towards. I explained to Tiff that I was concerned about my time management and she suggested to group the assessments according to what areas they needed extra help with. Such a simple idea but will save me so much time! Also another way of grouping my students for fluency rotations. We spoke about how Year 6 students being the independent learners that they are (sometimes) could identify themselves what they need to work towards from their post-test data.
GOAL:
To provide students with enough strategies, tools and resources to effectively highlight what they need feedback and extra assistance with.