PAC Conversation

Jessie McClintock Maihi- PAC visit Term 3 2015

Practice Analysis Conversation: Part 1 of 3 - Pre Observation Conversation
Develop purpose and process (housekeeping)	Class will go straight into independent activities with the target group working with the teacher. Corrina to join them at the table. Writing in the session will be based on the reading that the group did yesterday.
Students’ learning goals? Reasons for the practice?	Developing independence in writing. Modelling how to move from an idea to writing that idea down in a story.
Effectiveness of the practice - evidence.	Students will be confident to get started and will be able to transfer their ideas independently. Teacher will use prompts to get them to extend their ideas. The goals is for a 50:50 talk ratio with a focus on whole-group discussion.
Goal and criteria	Create and use a graphic organiser to gather key words and ideas that students can draw from to construct their own sentences. Record key vocabulary from the reading text and use that to construct sentences.
Practice Analysis Conversation: Part 2 of 3 - Analysis of the practice
Revisit goal and criteria	Students involved with co-constructing the brainstorm of key vocabulary, using their reading text to support them. The teacher used the modelling book to record and there was an initial reference to it for some words. Students were keen to come up with their own
Effectiveness of teacher’s approach	Quick review of yesterday’s text and the teacher highlighted key vocabulary. Students were doing a lot of the research of vocabulary and very motivated to participate. Lots of positive encouragement and reinforcement for the teacher. Be aware of the risk of using too many closed questions. The rest of the class had very clear expectations and they moved straight into independent learning - clearly a strong routine and culture of independence in the class. A new student came to interrupt - “you can manage yourself, think about what you can do” (teacher). The teacher also modelled using descriptive language to make the writing more interesting - high expectations.
Impact of the lesson on students	Students were extremely engaged and motivated. They were very keen to write independently. They were a little unsure of how to use the support materials and how to sound out the words they didn’t know. Teacher continually used prompts and praise to draw them to trying to write independently.
Practice Analysis Conversation: Part 3 of 3 - Co-Construction of New Practice
Next focus for the target group	The group did extremely well in transitioning their ideas to writing which was a big part of their focus today. Some of the students did become more focused on getting spellings absolutely right rather than focusing on their ideas but the next step will be to balance the two - encourage the quick transfer of ideas but using simple language initially that they can spell.
Feasibility and understanding of ideas for the new practice	“I didn’t model enough and I forgot to model with key words for some sentences” (teacher). Sticking to the plan and using the modelling more throughout the lesson. Using some prompts to support the editing of writing after the ideas have been recorded: “What did you notice?” “How did you know it was______?” “How could we finish that word/sentence?” etc
New goal and criteria	Clarifying from the outset that recording interesting ideas is the goal and editing and improving can come later.