Emma's Teaching as Inquiry

*Develop a set of hypotheses about patterns in your teaching that could be changed to more effectively address the student learning focus. *Describe your process for developing hypotheses (what you read, who you talked with). Reflections: Am I giving my learners the opportunities to reflect on their learning? I noticed that my learners weren’t reflecting on their learning. They were unable to discuss whether they had been successful in their learning, what helped them with their learning and what they might be doing next. I have spoken with many teachers at Stonefield's about how the learner qualities could be used as a tool for reflection.  Agency: Are my learners able to discuss in detail about their learning and make decisions about that learning?  I asked my learners to tell me what their next steps were and they were unable to do so. I attended a literacy symposium where I learnt different strategies to gift learners the vocabulary they might need. We use S...

Jannie Van Hees visited our school and introduced us to a tool that can be used to assess the oral language capabilities of our learners.  "Children need expressive patterns in talking and we need to give them the space to do that"  The Combi Tool 16 assessments using a rubric that is designed for 4-7 years of age.  The Combi Tool looks at these main areas:  Willingness to communicate Communication Participation Contribution Benefits from feedback Reflection:  This tool will be useful for me because it gives a good indicator about the oral language capabilities of my learners. It also seems very easy to use and once data is entered it will generate a graph so I can highlight the needs of my learners.  Things to note:  When using the tool ask 'can they or do they?' - Do they not because of something personally or because the spaces are not there for this to happen.  Could we get more information from parents? Especially...