Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Photographic Evidence of Managing Self

The New Entrant teacher at North East Valley Normal School, Fiona has been looking at the Key Competency "Managing Self" with her class this year. She wanted the children to start recognizing their own behaviours for learning, she has focused on self organization. She has taken pictures of the children putting away their bag and organising their reading books and equipment for the day in the morning, and not leaving this up to their parents. She has used graphic pictures to represent this to children, for example a ladder that children place their name on to represent how well they have managed themselves.

Next Fiona would like to change some of the behaviours she is observing during Reading time. Children are meant to work in twos at each reading activity and use 'inside voices', share etc. She would like to use the same system of photos to communicate what reading time should look like. Fiona was worried that her Action Research did not contain enough ICT. I think this is the perfect type of Action Research as it involved the children and teacher as a class solving a real issue. We discussed that perhaps Fiona could let the children gradually take ownership of the project, she will appoint photographers to collect the evidence for the class of how they are working during reading. The children can reflect on what they see happening in the photos before they decide how well they really did work during reading. Fiona has observed that all of the children immediately put themselves at the top of the ladder to please her rather than reflecting on what they have done. Fiona will use the resources on the Otepoti wiki on digital photography and will make up some of the viewfinders there so several children can plan and hunt for shots in the classroom despite there being one camera.

Best of all for Fiona, her students will be collecting the evidence for her Action Research she will be keeping her own notes but the children will provide photographic evidence of the change in her class over time.

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