At the beginning of Term 1 we had a PD session with Su Arrowsmith around where our we thought about what was on top for us and our inquiries for this year. There were a few of us (including myself) who were interested in how we could adapt our school reporting system.
There were a few reasons which had lead us in this direction:
- as teachers we felt that we spent a lot of time writing reports and that these comments were not necessarily being read by whanau. We felt that whanau were more interested in the teacher's general comment at the end of the report.
-we felt like our students were completely removed from our reporting system and that our current reports had minimal influence on student learning and achievement.
-we knew from the results of our "Student agency Survey" that our learners were still not confident to articulate/demonstrate what they were learning and were unsure of their next learning steps.
-part of our strategic goal is to strengthen our communication and engagement with our whanau (in particularly by utilising our digital platforms: class blogs, seesaw)
Some teachers had tried a self assessment type tool with learners in 2019 and found this to be useful when coming to report writing time. As a staff we discussed how this could be formalised and potentially strengthened to use as a way of reporting to families.
Term 1 started to take momentum at the chalk face and our personal Inquiries were only just starting to develop when Covid 19 hit and all schools were forced into lockdown for 8 weeks.
As teachers came to terms with this new style of teaching and communicating with students the recording of our inquiries was put on the back burner.
However, some interesting conversations were starting to occur. As a lot of our staff are also parents we were in a position to understand how our children were learning from both perspectives. Could we capture the knowledge that our whanau had about what their children were learning, what they found challenging and what successes they had, and use this to contribute to our reports that were due to come out in a few weeks? Why are we reporting to them, when they could quite possibly know more about their child's learning than we do at this unique time?
During our staff google meets we discussed this a length. We knew reporting was coming up in the mid year and decided that this might be a great time to trial a different type of reporting. We have decided to share a document with students and then whanau which they will contribute to about what their child has been learning and what their next steps may be and we will use this document as a basis of discussion in a 3 way conference at the beginning of term 3.
How will this impact on student achievement?
How will this support us to meet this strategic goal?
Strategic Goal:
To plan programmes to lift the achievement of all priority learners.
With particular attention being paid to Maori students.
Hunch:
Since returning to school we have noticed acceleration in some learners who have worked closely with their whanau during distance learning. Rob has seen acceleration with his learners due to "Whanau Kauri". Our hope is that a clear understanding between teachers, whanau and learners about what and how tamariki are learning at school will develop student agency and ultimately lift student achievement.
My role as WSL.
We are well on our way to rolling out this trial reporting system for the mid year.
As WSL my role is to lead inquiry. I think it is important for me to ensure we have a system of reflecting on how this trial goes. Ensuring that teachers are thinking about how this reporting system is impacting on student achievement. What worked? What didnt? How do we improve it as we move towards the next reporting cycle.
Our staff is very reflective as a group and open to new ideas so it will be exciting to see how the next step of our Inquiry plays out.
