INQUIRY: Cycle of Learning

2017 Summative Senior Music Data

LEVEL 1


Notes:
No Not Achieved in level 1 music and a higher excellence rate than decile 1 national standard.

LEVEL 2




Notes:
Higher merit rate than the decile 1 national standard in music and a lower Not Achieved rate.

LEVEL 3




Notes:
Higher Excellence rate than the decile 1 national standard in music and a lower Not Achieved rate.

Feedback from Music Teachers in NZ

On MusicNet this week a teacher asked if anyone had task sheets for a level three music technology standard. I sent a link to the assessment on my website. Since sharing it I have had a number of teachers email me asking to use the site and commenting on it. These are some of the emails I have received:

"Teresa, Your website is a huge inspiration. I love it. Bloomin genius.
Thank you so much for sharing and inspiring."
Jo Suren- Waitara High School

"Hi Teresa, Wow these are really good resources!! Can I have permission to use these next year??"
Joanna Dickinson- Hamilton Girls High School

"Dear Teresa,
I picked up on your post re-23730 and checked out your new google site. Its fantastic! I intend to create my own for my dept over the hols. Thanks for allowing me to view and if I can be any assistance in return I wont hesitate."
Jim Wallace- Kamo High School

"That's really great Teresa! Love the website Idea!"
Eileen Scott- Makoura College

It's pretty cool to be able share these resources with other teachers and open their eyes to the power of technology in the music classroom!  

Music Further Studies

On Sunday the 3rd of September I took 8 students to Wellington to visit Whitireia Polytechnic and check out the music department (where I did my degree). The students attended a range of classes including DJ scratching class, Improvisation, Band class and beat making. It was a great day. We stayed in Levin with my family and also got to check out downtown Wellington and the Levin adventure park as part of our visit. We also caught up with Whare Mitai and Carlos Rangi-Dick who are in their first year of study for the music degree after graduating from Tarawera high school last year. I made a video of our trip here:

Leading Change Workshop

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to go on a Connected Learning Advisory Workshop 'Leading Change in Digital Technologies' in Papamoa this week. t was a great opportunity and it was very valuable. We looked at a range of theories, the two that resonated with me was the problem-solving theory 'Cynefin' and Kotters 8 Steps to change. I have included my key learnings/notes from the day below....

The three critical imperatives: 

• create great leaders
• stop boring students 
• drive change from the middle out rather than the top down.

“Your personal qualities greatly influence your professional identity.”

Social and emotional skills based on your experiences and that enables to inspire

Create unity where there is discord

Cynefin

Kotter's 8 steps for change

Leadership Lessons from the Dancing Guy

How a movement is created

No movement without the first follower courageously follow and show others how to follow

Some things to try….

Slack	OneDrive	Zoom	Flipgrid
Google Plus	Google Drive	Skype	Doodle
Yammer	Trello	Wix	Flask
Google Classroom	TodaysMeet	Weebly	TitanPad
Microsoft Classroom	Google Hangouts	Google Sites	Bubbl.us

Junior Practical

Today was one of those times where my lesson evolved because of how much my students were loving a particular activity we were doing. I have been developing my year 8s skills for rhythm reading and have them clapping rhythms as they read them off sheets of rhythms that I keep in the classroom. They were enjoying it so much that we continued on this tact into composition. The students wrote their own rhythms using the note values and then practiced them in groups ready to perform them to the class. I was surprised at how excited they were and how focused they were to practice their rhythm and get it correct it was awesome, I was glad I let the lesson naturally develop and encouraged them to be creative with their rhythm reading and writing!

Celebrating Success

Term 2 is always a busy term at school with seniors starting to realise they don't have a lot of time left and lots of different events and competitions on. This term I was in charge of organising our schools 'Celebrating Success' Evening. This is a chance for students to share their talents with their whanau and the wider community. We run an hour long performance and then our hospitality students serve nibbles and dessert to our guests. All in all it was a great evening, we had a huge turn out of family coming to support and our students really did us proud. My senior students had organised a thank you present for me for organising the event and some one snapped a pic of me going up to get it.

The same week we had our annual haka comp where our four hapu stand face to face and have a chance to represent their hapu and haka off against each other. I was very proud of my hapu especially the two year 7 boys who led our haka it definitely gave a difference it was an awesome event

Best Practice Workshops

I was asked to present at our PLD 'Best Practice Workshops' this week. I shared about my musician hubs individual learning programmes and how they set their own goals and plan what they are doing when. These were my notes from the workshops:

Restorative PLD

I was given the opportunity to go on a PB4L Restorative Practice Workshop on Restorative Conferences: Mini Conferences. It was an extremely useful workshop and refresher for restorative practices. We held mini chats and practiced facilitating restoratives. We were given an extremely useful resource: a restorative conference card:

We got a chance to think about a genuine situation we have been in recently with a student where we have held a restorative conference and go through the motions using this card. I keep this in my bag now and used it for a restorative the other day. I think the best thing I took away from the day was that it is okay to use this card openly and tell the participants you are going to use it and it sort of keeps everyone safe and makes the structure of the restorative clear for all.

Student Feedback

As we are pretty much at the halfway point of the year for our seniors (as they leave very early in term 4). I thought it was a good time to see how they were finding Musicians Hub and whether they were enjoying the way our year was structured.  Here are the results I got from them:

I was really stoked to see that students feel successful in music and that the majority know what their goals are and what they still need to do to achieve their credits in our class this year. They are enjoying deciding how they organise their day and booking their own spaces and managing their own learning. I'm really glad that it looks like its working!

'Where R U @?' Doc

As our first term wraps up I thought i was a good time to have students reflect on their term. I wanted them to think about what they had set out to achieved and what they had actually achieved. I want them to have the power to make these realisations about where they are at rather than me telling them. So at the start of our final day they will reflect on the term and then readjust any plans for the next teem in accordance with what they have accomplished.

 

Booking Room Schedule

The other thing we have set up in the last few weeks is a booking schedule for practice rooms and the studio. As students have finished group performance and all students are busy on different assessments it became apparent we needed to have a system for booking spaces for everyone was getting a chance to practice in a room and could organise their day rather than leaving the use of rooms to chance. We have labeled all of the rooms and then they can be booked on the whiteboard at the start of the day. There have been times when we have to be creative and use our outside space like last week when we moved our drum kit outside so a student could practice.

Individual Education Plans

So far this year I have been really happy with how my multileveled senior academies are going. There are times that I have felt a bit 'stretched thin' but I think that was more a teething period where students were still learning how to set assessments up or where gear was stored and the protocols in our classroom.  I have introduced a couple of things so far to help my students become self-managing machines!

Firstly a year planner:

In our first full day academy I had students sit down and look at all of the assessments they could potentially do this year and look on our website to see what each assessment entails. Then they had to decide when they were going to do each assessment and add mile stones for each specific assessment.



This was a really effective thing to do, every morning of our music hub days we sit down and look at our planners. Students are reminded what they want to achieve and by when and then they plan their day. So before they start work for the day they let me know what they are planning to achieve and what they are working on each block. Then I spend the day making them accountable for what they have said they are going to be doing! Having all of our assessments set up on the website give students the opportunity to create their own IEP without even realising they are doing it. The best part is they are taking control of their learning. They are steering the waka.

I think the best example of this is one of the year 11 boys in my class, Richard. His attendance is not great and he does music on Thursdays and Fridays. Last week was the first time I saw him fully engaged for the entire day. He work for two and a half blocks (out of three) on his composition 'beat' that he is going to rap over. He came inside half way through block three and said "I'm bored of that I need to do something else now, I am going to work on my solo performance on the piano" and he did right up until the bell at the end of the day. To see Rich take control of his learning like that and have the choice to direct his work so he continued to be productive for the whole block was awesome. 

2017 Goals

As the 2017 year kicks off I have reflected on 2016 and what my goals and inquiry was and how effective and successful I was. This is all part of our appraisal documentation which I will attached to my next post. When I look at 2017 there are a few aspects that I know will be challenging and require further development on my behalf and extra support within the school. These areas will become my goals for the year as things I am aiming to develop whether they be skills, a culture or resources.

For 2017 I have three goals, they are;

Goal 1

To develop a multi-leveled  (Level 1, 2 & 3) music class that is ‘self-sufficient’. Students who can set their own goals, decide what they are working on and when, know how and where to get help from and who are successful learners!

Goal 2

To develop a website for my level 1, 2 & 3 course that has all of the resources needed to achieve in musicians hub  (anywhere, anytime, any pace).

Goal 3

To develop my skills in restorative practices as a hapu leader.

WHAKAARI

Hapu photo of Whakaari at Athletics day  wearing our colours (yellow)

Year 13 Citizen Camp

Our year 13 camp was held the week before school commenced to get our year 13s back on board for the year. We were very lucky to get to stay right on Ohope Beach at the surf life saving club. As the teacher in charge of senior prefect co-ordination I was part of the team over seeing the camp. I also was TIC of the camp (had to organise the budget, schedule, oversee camp and evaluate/reflect on it afterwards). As a hapu dean this was a great way to build relationships with the seniors (in my hapu) and hopefully who I will be able to use for tuakana teina and as leaders during the year.

At our camp accomodation on Ohope Beach



Senior students from Whakaari ready for our rafting Competition

                                               






















Sorting out our trailer on the way to camp!

Restorative Practices

Our start back to 2017 was filled with an excellent day of professional development on Restorative Practices. Most important things I took away from it (which could be relevant in any situation!) were:

Connect before Correct

Build
Maintain
Restore
Sustain
RELATIONSHIPS

Took a sneaky picture of some of Tarawera's staff notes from the day!

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