2018 Goal (Student Access to Content)

Aim: To make it easy for my students to access content and know where to find things.

Rationale: In the past some students have struggled to make progress and from time to time their inability to find information / instructions has been a contributing factor. Often these students will be too shy / embarrassed to ask for assistance.

Action Plan

  • Set up Teams and a classroom OneNote so that it is easy to find material
  • Observe students when they try to find information instructions and make changes if things are hard to find
  • If a student asks where something is, ask “Where is the first place you looked” – then put the resource where students are looking for it

Year End Reflection
I started the year at Westlake Boys where the only option for delivering content was via the Microsoft Ecosystem. This meant that for the first term I was forced to use Teams despite finding it hard to use.

I successfully set up my courses and structured them so that students could easily find material. The strategy of asking students where they were looking for content was successful as students got very good at looking for a resource / instruction and then telling me if it was hard to find.

One unanticipated effect of this approach is that students became more confident in asking where things were and telling me where they should be. Often students did not need to ask for help as they would look for content before asking where it was and would only ask for help if the location was not obvious. Including students in the decision making allowed them to have more control over their learning and the environment and the response to this strategy was overwhelming positive.

It is worth noting that this strategy was also effective when I shifted to Massey High School where Google Classroom became a viable option.

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