“…almost one in five students are leaving school without the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need.”

Wow, that’s pretty fantastic!  That means that over 80% of all New Zealand School children are leaving school with the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need!

Of the 20% who are not achieving at the expected level for their age group, I will safely estimate that a quarter of them are  special needs or have been identified as having learning difficulties.  So we could probably bump that 80% closer to 90%.

Let’s put this into a real classroom, my classroom.

Fractions, Proportions and Ratios Stages 5-6:

I have 30 students – Year 3 and 4 (7, 8 and 9 years old).

(Well actually I have 28, but we will use 30 as a nice round number, I don’t want to make this to hard for you Mrs Tolley, I know that you are too busy to speak to or listen to us) (Also 30 is closer to the average class size in little old NZ).

1 out of 5 of them is below expected age levels in literacy and numeracy.

30 divided by 5 equals 6.

6 students are below – yep that’s my lowest reading group.

Of those six almost two of them have been identified as having learning difficulties.

(Luckily for me almost all of my students come to school after having a good nights sleep, breakfast, are well dressed for the weather and have a good healthy lunch in their bag).

Which means 4 of them are below.  So that’s 4 out of thirty? (correct me if I am wrong Mrs Tolley).

Yep I knew that!

That’s why I differentiate my teaching.  That’s why I get them as much extra help as possible from the funding that’s available to my school.  That’s why I have spoken to their parents and have given them strategies to help their children.

If the government wanted to know this, all they had to do was ask.

Hey! Brain Wave!

Instead of wasting millions of dollars on reprinting existing resources and renaming them as National Standards.  Why don’t you use that money to reduce my class size to 22 so that I can spend more time with my struggling students.

Makes sense to me …

Camtasia is easy to use, has great support and tutorials.  It runs seamlessly with my Mac and uploads directly to YouTube.  At one easy payment of $99.00 (Education Pricing) I do believe it may be a keeper, though it may have to wait until after I recover from my little trip to Christchurch (only 9 more sleeps!).  O, and after we wallpaper the living room.  Below is my weekly-ish offering to the Blog-o-sphere.  My third ever Screen Cast on how to add a Wordle.net Word-cloud to a post.  So readers, I would really like some feedback here, how did I do?  It’s a lot harder than it looks.

elearn09 is approaching rapidly and I am feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety.  Excitement because this is my first ulearn experience and I get to have some face to face time with the many awesome NZ Educators.  Anxiety because for some strange reason, must of had one too many coffees that day, I applied to be a presenter and was accepted! Eek!

My presentation is called An eWindow into my Classroom (Breakout Five for any of you who are interested in attending).

Join me as we create a classroom blog that allows parents and whanau to be an active part of classroom learning. We will be using a variety of Web2.0 tools that are free and easy to use. There will be tips and tricks on how to make your blog appealing to students and informative to parents. I will also talk about ways you can engage an audience in the global community. Your classroom blog can be so much more than another publishing platform, it can be an interactive environment that enhances student learning.

Teacher Inquiry is further advocated by the research of Professor John Hattie and the late researcher Graham Nuthall (both Kiwis!).  Now I am not going to waffle on about the research justifications, not my style though it needed to be mentioned, as you are all intelligent enough to Google it for yourself (that was a compliment …).  What I will share with you though is a wonderful statement announced the other day by Intrepid Teacher – “Group Brain Activate!”.  As a 21st Century Learner and Teacher I can see no other way to conduct a Teacher Inquiry other than collaboratively.  By collaboratively I mean by using the Web2.0 to publish, discuss, review and share my process and findings.

Over the past couple of years I have come to realise that I am not alone in my search for Educational Enlightenment.  Not only are there people out there struggling along on their own journey but these people are sharing, thinking, communicating and learning from one another.  I want to be part of that crowd!  So Group Brain Activate, lead me to the promised land … or at least give me few good tips on Oral Language?  Oh yeah, that’s what my Teacher Inquiry will be about – The improvement of Oral Language through Video Conferencing and any other Web2.0 gizmo my hopefully enthusiastic Group Brain may suggest.

I have set up a Wiki as my Individual Teacher Plan (formally a flimsy piece of paper, Save The Trees!) where I will document my thinking, planning, progress and reflection.  Pop in, have a look, make a suggestion, correct my spelling or just stay for a cup of tea, you are all welcome! (just as a quick note for all you speedy readers out there, I haven’t got anything on there yet, I am planning to set it up this weekend after the in-laws have gone, but never fear it will be done asap!)