Thursday 23 April 2015

Heights Reflection

Am having a bit of disconnect between the quality reflection I am already doing on my blog and what I'm expected to do for school. At school we have to focus on an inquiry student.

But I feel like every student is an inquiry student.

At the moment I'm trying to crack three students in my Y11 class: one that just can't seem to understand what I need her to do with the novel analysis and who just closes her book (basically need to teach growth mindset to her and continue working with her - but to the detriment of the other students...though have asked our awesome TA to work with her), another student who has so so many issues going on at home and in her life that she isn't actually 'here' at school because she can't focus on her schoolwork - and refuses to go to a counsellor despite my ongoing pleading, the student who has serious individual learning needs but who brought his laptop in the other day so he didn't have to deal with his "chicken scratch" as he put it - I nearly jumped for joy!! He became the key member of his group which was really cool to see the transition in him as he was able to become the leader - perhaps for the first time ever, the student who isn't asking for help despite our awesome relationaship and her usual willingness to accept my advice and ideas - something must be going on and I just haven't had the time to go figure it out.

Then of course there are my other classes.

Y12L - students who consistently work well but who I am trying to further extend consistently.

Y12A - students who at times give up on themselves because they've been told they're not good enough or that have become to believe it to be true. Other students who try so damn hard and it's absolutely beautiful. One particular inquiry student has finally made some progress!! He was sitting right by me as they were doing their creative writing. He mucked around for a while - but in the end actually wrote half a page. The mucking around was oral brainstorming, playing with the story cubes for ideas and asking me questions about the dream world because we're about to start watchinf Inception. Because we have a projector now!! No more stalling!!! :)

I was so incredibly impressed by them all last lesson. All I gave them was the line, "As I lay my head down on the pillow, all thoughts disappeared." We did a basic idea brainstorm and gave them 20 minutes on the timer. They wanted it extended to the end of the period - and to Friday for some of them to further work on it at home. Completely quiet - all students working. Stoked.

Y10 English - every single student in this class is an inquiry student. The student who worked so hard on his poetry last term and I just hope that he continues to develop his growth mindset towards the rest of his studies this year. I bought him a poetry book by Yeats abd gave it to him on Tuesday. Love how much he's reading. Tye student who is super enthusiastic for 9 square. The students who fight for top spot for 9 square! How to further extend them? Not allow three letter words.

The student who keeps mucking around - talking, being immature... it's good to finally see that the rest of the class are at the point that they don't break into the other two students silly behaviours too. They've finally crossed that point. Looking forward to the rest of the year now!!

Y1p Social studies - my favourite class.
I asked them the other day whether they wanted to have human rights as their focus for rhe year. They didn't get what I meant because partly they must not understand what rights are and also wanted to learn other things. What they'll realise though is that everything comes back to human rights or animal rights.

Showed them an amazing video yesterday after going through 10 of the human rights from the Declaration of Human Rights. Showed them the facebook page I made up for them over the holidays and have been collating different links for them. Helps my personal FB feed too! Less school stuff. The video though - truly hit home. The two inquiry students I've been worried about in terms of their lack of empathy towards the Holocaust - I think that video began to hit home. Homework last night was to look up the different rights that are not being upheld in different countries currently and historically.

So - there. That's just a small taste of the range of inquiries I've been doing.

And it has nothing to do with my personal inquiries.

And furthermore - focussing down on one student - while beneficial - makes me think that I'm not giving adequate time to the other 140+ kids I teach.

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