Week Six Culturally Responsive

Culturally Responsive

I was reading an article for next weeks team meeting on Innovative Learning Environments. 

One section is headed: Is the design culturally responsive? Does it encourage and support practices that allow learners to draw from their culture and background to achieve as themselves? 

My class description: 

There are 15 Male and 11 Female students.  

Nationalities are:  1 Other European    8 NZ European     6 Korean    7 Chinese    1 Cook Isl Maori    1 NZ Maori     1 Indian     1 African/African Origins 

3 students are ESOL funded. (Jeremy, Robin and Suyheok) 

From EOY 2016 data:

Reading:  
Above - 5 students (3 girls, 2 boys)     
At - 13 students (5 girls and 8 boys)        
Below - 5 students (2 girls, 3 boys)      
Well Below (1 boy)

Writing:  
Above - 2 students (1 girl, 1 boy)        
At -  12 students (7 girls and 5 boys)
Below - 10 students (2 girls and 8 boys)  

Math: 
Above - 3 students (1 girl and 2 boys)  
At - 15 students (7 girls and 8 boys)
Below - 4 students  (1 girl and 3 boys)
Well Below - 2 students (1 girl and 1 boy)

There are 2 new students to Forrest Hill school this year. (1 girl and 1 boy) 

Reflection: 38 percent of the class are below expection in writing. This would seem to be the greatest area of learning need in this class. Of these students identified as below the nationalities are:
1 African (Anthony)
2 Chinese (Danny and Abby)
3 Korean (Jeremy, Jaehee and Robin)
1 Cook Is Maori (Zayliah)
1 European (Cameron)
1 Other European (Matthew) 

So there will be a focus on writing this year and the culturally responsive aspect will be an area to look in to how to put this into the learning programme. 

Initial work with the class suggests they have a good understanding of PIE - persuade, inform and entertain, however do not know what forms of writing come under each piece of the pie. They also have a learning need in knowing what the features are of specific genre and how to recognise features in a piece of writing. This will be Term one focus to expose to different forms of writing and the features.