Co-constructing Poutama Ako with Year 5/6 Students

School: Owhiro Bay School

Year Level: 5/6

Teacher: Thérèse Young

Focus area:

Authentic Learning: To investigate ways to improve student ability to develop assessment criteria for these key learning intentions.

Managing Self: To investigate ways to improve student capability to manage self by co-constructing and using a Poutama.

Research Questions:

Question 1: Implementation: How can Year 5/6 students be supported to learn how to develop and use poutama to reflect on their learning through establishment of class expectations and routines at the beginning of the year?

Question 2: Engagement: How engaged were students as they developed and used poutama when establishing expectations at the beginning of the year?

Question 3: Knowledge: Can they use a poutama to assess their knowledge of ‘Treasure or Waste’ – reduce, reuse, recycle?

Success Criteria for Competency

Expert: I…
Take risks and try to do my best at everything.
Know what to do if someone is annoying me.
Almost never break a rule in class and at school.
Know how to be a good role model.
Know the rules really well— and teach others to follow rules.
Know how to stay on task and remind others to stay on task.
Always shows respect to others.

Practitioner: I…
Know the rules.
May occasionally break a rule
Am mostly a role model to others
Work really well most of the time.
Focus my eyes and ears when someone’s talking.

Apprentice: I…
Listen to others most of the time.
Know most of the rules, learning the rest.
Can be really good at working but not always.
Role model some good behaviour.

Novice: I…
Am beginning to work independently
Am beginning to be on task
Am learning the rules in Room 3
Am learning how to behave
Am learning to control their voice.
Am learning to have all my stuff ready
Am learning the school rules.
Am beginning to listen to others.

Learning Story:

In our school this year we are looking at developing Poutama Ako with the students as a form of assessment. We are also looking at the Key Competency of Managing Self. I wanted to integrate these two areas, working with the students to develop a Poutama Ako to help them understand what Managing Self was all about, then use this as a basis for assessing other Curriculum areas, especially Science (our integrated focus for the year).

In weeks one and two we talked about routines and expectations within the classroom and school and created a class treaty.

Then we discussed what Managing Self is. We talked about what the new Curriculum said Managing Self was and what this might mean in our classroom.

I collected some baseline data using a questionnaire about the students understanding of a Poutama Ako, and the terms novice, apprentice, practitioner and expert.

From this I knew that the students needed to have a really good understanding of the terms novice, apprentice, practitioner and expert. So I asked them questions like “Who knows a lot about cars? Who is really good at making pancakes? Who is good at drawing, swimming, running?” and asked them to rate themselves using a ‘line up’ with the terms spread out on the floor.

Because the students had a good understanding of Managing Self and terms novice, apprentice, practitioner and expert we were able to co-construct a Managing Self Poutama Ako together.

The students then assessed themselves on the Managing Self Poutama Ako. They used this as a basis of their discussions for their three way conferences. They identified what they were currently doing and next steps they could take to improve their self management.

The next step in the research was to co-construct a Poutama Ako to assess the students’ knowledge in our Science unit on Recycling. What I discovered was that the students did not have enough knowledge about the topic to help develop the assessment tool.

So even though the students now have a very good understanding of how to assess themselves using a Poutama Ako and can develop a Poutama, I discovered that the students need to have a sound knowledge of the subject before co-constructing a Poutama. This means that if co-constructing a Poutama Ako with students it may be best used as formative and summative assessment tool rather than a diagnostic assessment.

Results:

I gave the students a questionnaire asking them to rate their knowledge of A Poutama Ako, A Noice, An Apprentice, A Practitioner, An Expert and Using a Poutama Ako at the beginning and end of the research project. The blue represents the beginning and the red the end. The results show a significant increase in their understanding of all the terms and how to use a Poutama Ako and what it is.

Conclusions:

Question 1: Implementation: How can Year 5/6 students be supported to learn how to develop and use poutama to reflect on their learning through establishment of class expectations and routines at the beginning of the year?

The students showed that they can develop and use poutama effectively to reflect on their learning. They can assess their learning using a poutama ako already developed in different curriculum areas, however if using as a diagnostic tool the students most probably won’t have enough knowledge to co-construct the poutama.

Question 2: Engagement: How engaged were students as they developed and used poutama when establishing expectations at the beginning of the year?

The students demonstrated high levels of engagement when developing and assessing themselves using the poutama. This was especially evident during their three way conferences where they discussed what a poutama was and what it meant with their parents. Parents commented that Managing Self was a skill many of them could work on at home and it was great to see that they had a framework to discuss this.

Question 3: Knowledge: Can they use a poutama to assess their knowledge of ‘Treasure or Waste’ – reduce, reuse, recycle?

The students showed that they can use a poutama to assess their knowledge of ‘Treasure or Waste’ – reduce, reuse recycle, but could not develop one with me as they did not have enough knowledge of the topic content to do this.

The video below shows one students know of Managing Self and how to use a Poutama Ako at the end of the research project.