Where to next?

31st May 2016 - Mindlab Graduation Celebration

Winter will be here tomorrow so this is a good checkpoint to stop and reflect. I'm celebrating the fact that I'm not studying at the moment and that I've thus had more time with my class and to concentrate on the kids' learning.  I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing with my focus group kids at the moment, particularly in maths, as the kids are responding so well.

It was exciting to finish MindLab, having developed a different perspective, and be moving into yet another phase of our great profession.  Learning and teaching is a challenging business to be in and I'm always growing as a result.  Learning alongside some great teachers over the past year has given me different experiences and I feel grateful for all my learning.

Looking back on times like these I wonder where I'd like to head next.

I particularly enjoyed studying and stretching myself into new learning territory.  I'm still interested in taking on a TeachNZ study award to try to go further with my learning.  I'm really interested in Leadership and in Change Initiatives in particular.  I had some interesting conversations with my ex-Principal, Nik House last week, when I visited him, and would love to continue to learn from him and his experiences.  He had a lot of important information to share and I would be interested in how I could best utilise this knowledge over the course of our change toward modern learning environments at GisInt in the future.  Collaborative teaching could be a great move for many of us.... AND will need significant scaffolding, support and inquiry learning processes to be in place in order for us to be successful.

He mentioned Michael Fullan, who writes on change leadership, so that will be an interesting next step.

Math and Learner Agency

Daily at the moment I am having these amazing math sessions with our learners.

Why is it amazing?
The kids are engaged, stretching themselves, seeking help and expressing their enthusiasm through their voices and faces.  As they are enthusiastic and stretching themselves, we're able to see how they're learning, how they're challenging themselves and to have important learning conversations around how that's happening and the impact it's having on the whole class.



Why are they doing this?
I can only offer an opinion on this one but I feel like they're doing it because many of them have already come with a great foundation.  On top of this though - we're providing explicit opportunities to learn, we've built on this learning from their assessments (IKAN) and are showing the application to real life and thus, demonstrating its relevance.

In fact, two of our boys stated that when they could see the question (context), they could see WHY they were learning about (for example, how to convert between fractions, decimals and percentages; or how to divide by ten by moving the decimal place).  One of them threw up his hands in horror at the idea of working with fractions or percentages, but when applied to a context he knew (buying and selling Speedway Stock cars) he intuitively knew an answer.

Following explicit opportunities to learn, and links to relevant real life contexts, we are also talking a lot about the process.  We have discussed what's important in math.  We've talked about how sometimes we feel nervous, decide we can't do it before we start, read a problem and read it wrong and so misinterpret it or make an error and decide that that x instead of tick means we can stop the learning there, instead of returning to the problem and reworking it.  So we are developing a culture of accountability, expectation, challenge (I know to learn I need to be in the PIT and it will feel horrible but that is where I learn  - so I'm going to choose a hard problem to challenge myself and if that's too easy then when I'm finished I'm going to choose another one!

Why is this working?
Again, I can only offer an opinion, but I'd like to put this back to the kids to answer sometime in the future.  Perhaps it is because our feeling successful is not just dependent on our right or wrong answer, but is in fact partly determined by our willingness to build our learning habits and as such, our agentic practices.  Also, we are building our knowledge slowly through games, activities, problem solving etc, so we are having many opportunities to practice our learning habits and our new knowledge.

It's exciting seeing our nervous learners making progress and being willing to share their challenges and their progress.  Smiles and lightbulbs all round!

Inquiry Reflection Update

As part of my learning around Learner Agency I've been looking at ways to help the kids to develop their ability to know where they're at, self-assess and how to move forward from here. On reflection, one thing I was confronted with quite strongly was that I was not providing enough formative assessment opportunities for our learners, so they were quite negative about assessment processes.  They often walked away from a test feeling anxious and that they had not been prepared well, even when I felt I had prepared them.

I've been working on finding short, sharp modes of assessment that enable the kids to have checkpoints in their learning.  One example of this is that following a couple of days of learning around a topic, I've begun the lesson with a little formative assessment where the learners pick the level they feel they can stretch to and complete the task, assessing as they go.

In working through the answers, I used our student name cards (a set that is laminated and put in a container by my front computer for ease of use) to select students for answers so most people had a turn even if it wasn't at their stage.

After a while I just went around the room asking kids in turn and the positive mood improved.  When Jasmyn nutted out a problem beyond the stage she was working and I congratulated her on "the stretch" she was visibly excited by her ability to move forward.

Following this, I worked with those kids who have set Fractions as their goal based on their IKAN assessment results

and we made links between fractions, decimals and percentages, celebrated how using intuition helped the boys to solve problems, discussed how our attitude to a challenging subject helps / hinders our learning and demonstrated how applying a context (fractions) to a real-life subject (% off the price of a Stock Car) helped Seth to grasp the relevance of fractions and be willing to have a go...... and was successful instantly.

A $50,000 stock car is 75% off - how much will you pay?

This was an awesome math session with Malakai, Seth, Daniel, Josiah and Tapa - lightbulb moments were going off everywhere! Loads of the boys were saying "I get it now!"
My heart is happy.

Reflection on Reflection

Wow it seems such a long time since I've updated this blog - which doesn't bode well for my upcoming appraisal and attestation.  However, I think it will be obvious why when viewing my Team 17 blog and Agency to Learn blog - there has just been so much learning going on!

At the beginning of this year, my goals were wide and varied.  I had no real idea what the year was going to bring with:

• Mind Lab Postgraduate study
• e-Learning Co-Lead role (facilitating professional learning)
• a busy class of Year 8 learners
• commitments to Teach Xpo and Google Summit

My goals included:

Goal No. 1

Make learning visible to parents to encourage home school partnerships and increase impact and effective learning programmes.

Goal No. 2

Get students more involved in creation of learning in order to ensure greater depth of content knowledge and greater collaboration (who is working the hardest in our classrooms?)

Goal No. 3

Create positive classroom tone for all members to feel safe and secure.

Goal No. 4

Create a classroom where students are involved in facilitating their learning and have ownership over their learning.

Goal No. 5

Ensure adequate time is available and time management is well-planned in order to manage and balance:

Class learning

Team commitments

Any necessary professional development workshops for ICT/Chromebooks

MindLab commitments

Google Summit commitments

TeachXpo commitments

I remember when meeting with my lead teacher, Rae Black, at the beginning of the year, that Rae was concerned that there were too many goals on my list.  At the time though, I felt they were all viable and important and so persisted with them.

Reflections on these goals can be found on my Professional Goals document

One major reflection I have is that it's been challenging to be updating these regularly with all I've had on as my learning has raised new and interesting sidelines for me and I am not secure in my Inquiry Process. So that is one need to address next.

Genius Hour - Herman Fourie

So exciting to be here with Herman presenting.
Today we're looking at Genius Hour.


In order:
We looked at Genius Hour and how a lot of Google products were originally part of their 20% time. How this can apply to students in our schools?
Empowerment, passion, engagement.
Process - exciting and chaotic start, refining the process in later years.
Refining the planning
Using Blogs to plan Using Google Slides and videos as reflection Follow on - learning is catching - one student with a mum into pallet couches brought the idea to school and all students building on each other's learning.
Students negotiating timetables in order to maximise their Genius Hour time
"Demonstrates effort, learning and a mastery of skills" - video on slide 9


Video talks about:


Weekly Question problem
Whole Term Project - like a passion project - music etc
Group Projects - collaboration (arguing why a project is a good idea etc)

Following this, we looked at the making Open and Closed questions in order to develop our questioning process and developing great questions.

Doc with questions here

Excellent and relevant presentation - seriously inspiring! Google 4E for life!

Holly Clark - Redefining Assessment Using GAFE: Student Digital Portfolios

Holly's Bio for this

e-Portfolio
Name is awful - missing some key information.  What does the e stand for?

Use of Socrative to vote on preference for learning.  Very exciting tool!

Why Technology?

• Making thinking visible
• Student voice
• Sharing Work

Digital Citizenship

Using Common Sense Media

Conversations - rich conversations about what they're putting online because they're searchable.

If you search for your name - it will bring up information about you....

Design

Curation - what you choose for your portfolio needs to be something that reflects you and something you'll be proud of for a few years.

Meta tags to control my public profile.

Using Minecraft to build a the San Diego Mission - 

SketchUp?

Using ScreenCastify to narrate on Google Earth?

Showcase and reflection together?

3 Types of Portfolios

"Process" (like the old-school paper ones with reflection written on them)

"Showcase" the ones that show finished product.

Explaining essential lessons to whanau.... this is teaching your child about Digital Citizenship.

Adding to your portfolio  - thinking Critically about what you're putting on your portfolio.

Collect ----- Reflect ----- Publish

Drive ---- Snag IT ------  Sites

Explain Everything

Snag it

iMovie

WeVideo

Wes Fryer

Mapping Media

and here

showwithmedia.com

Talking about using Explain Everything - like Reading Fluency / Fluency Tutor

Mindomo?

Talking over the top of a GoogleSlide

Digital Binder

Learning Profile

Personal Learning Goals

Accomplishments

Interests

Reflections

Subjects

My Showcase

Social Media tab

Gets kids thinking about what they're putting up on Social Media

"Fugly competition" on SnapChat!!!  We need to teach kids about this stuff!

Easy Blogger Junior

Easy Blogger

If your work isn't online - it doesn't exist - Austin Kleon

Assessment - for learning, of learning, as learning

Process/Formative

Summative

Priority Learners

So my main focus this year is on engagement in the classroom.
To be perfectly honest I don't feel that engaging at the moment.  Our classroom feels more like a warzone some days with the behaviours we're coping with and I'm not sure how we're going to remedy it.

However, my main focus is on engagement, so my learning philosophy screams at me that if kids are engaged, they will be focused and the learning will be happening.

Priority learners are always at the forefront of this engagement debate, because engagement doesn't happen for all students in the same way.  Learners are diverse and as such, the strategies we employ to attempt to engage our students will need to be diverse too.

Technological tools have been suggested to improve engagement, but I think they probably only improve engagement if used in targeted ways.

This article suggests some of the ways these tools can be used for engagement.
One of the most difficult groups to engage are often our boys.

I've just finished watching this video about the impact on learning of culture - there is so much learning here!

I want to keep looking at Manaia Kalani and the practical methods of bringing te ao Maori, tikanga and reo into our classroom to improve the achievement of all our learners.

This video is about boys and writing and I think it's probably pretty relevant to my boys - it's hard to engage them all, but a lot of it is about getting to know them.
I'm hoping our blog can help us do that too.

Teachers as Learners

Teaching through learning and learning through teaching.

Getting involved in education for me.  My learning matters.  Choosing to get involved ourselves in education.

EdCamp
Google Summit
Facebook Cluster Meetings
TeachExpo Gisborne

What can we do so everyone can get involved and people learn from people.

Edcamp looks so cool!

This video is pretty awesome:


and there's a Wiki to help organise an EdCamp.
Lots of interesting things to think about for TeachExpo!

Speaking of learning, Mind Lab starts next week!  So exciting! We got at email the other day with our Unitech log in details etc.  I'm so looking forward to the pedagogy behind this - looking forward to getting involved in some learning myself.

The past couple of days I've:
mentored teachers in creating their blogs, 1 on 1
run workshops for teachers on Blogger and Google+ and
met with parents around how to use technology from our classroom at home to make sure learning is happening.
Its' exciting, it's invigorating and I'm enjoying the journey that teaching is taking me on - speaking in front of others, presenting ideas, sharing and talking and learning from each other.
It's exciting!

Persistence

At this time of the term, I'm having to model for my students what persistence really looks like.  It's hard to keep up with everything.  It's hard to be patient.  It's hard to feel like we're moving forward when there's so much to do.  But we are moving forward.

I have to persist in trying to find time for everything though.

I had two blocks of release today.  And although I got lots done, there are always more needs that keep popping up - more to keep up with - more to feed back to people about, more to teach and infinitely more to learn.

It's cool though, that in my job I am actually learning loads - and it's compulsory.

My priorities are challenging:
Meeting the needs of a highly challenging class.  I think they're wonderful.  I still find them challenging  - daily.
Meeting the needs in my role as a practicing facilitator of e-learning for my kids.
Finding ways to get e-learning to be practical and useful for them.
Meeting the needs of whanau around my core group of learners.
Meeting the needs of the school in terms of e-learning, when we are still relatively new to the opportunities around us.  Digital learning has been taking place for years.  I wonder if it's ever been so accountable and had such high expectations placed on in - to be the be-all and end-all of everything.

So I persist.

I persist in filling in endless forms and records around my kids.  Having endless meetings with specialists and parents, conducting endless Reflection Room visits and having many conversations with students about their choices.

I persist in trying to find time for e-learning myself.  To be able to back up what I'm saying with pedagogical evidence of what I'm doing!  It's all urgent and busy and requires patience and persistence.  I'll get there.

In the process, I'm learning what if feels like to be the real learner again - out of depth and frustrated with high expectations and too little time to make sense of it all, but persisting in embracing that feeling.  Because it's what my kids feel.  I'll have to throw up my hands occasionally, like them and say, "Miss! I'm in the pit! And I'm learning!"

Failure

I could have given up today

Put my lesson down to one learning curve

of something not achieveable with a classroom

of thirty students.

I could have put my enthusiasm aside

cast down my determination to give my students

a voice

and a purpose in what we're doing this year.

Exclaimed that it was just too hard.

That it couldn't be done.

That I was doing my students an 

injustice 

by forcing them to 

struggle through

this difficult space

we have nicknamed 'The Pit'

that I was 'wasting their time' 

or

'letting them down'

But I persevered.

And I will persevere still.

Because when we spoke of the outcome

I saw light in their eyes

and I will chase that light

even though it's hard.

Because if they should fail

along this road of learning

they will simply learn that 

failure

is a necessary part of learning

nay, of life.

And failure is just one step in the long journey we call

learning

and life.

Amie, 2015

On reflection, speaking with a teacher later, who had visited last week and then took some of this learning back into her classroom, she shared with me her experience of starting out with Chromebooks.  About how she said she won't apologise; for noise, for frustration, for it being a bit chaotic to start with.  That they would muddle through because they were learning.  We talked about resiliency.  About how easy it is to ensure there is so much scaffolding for our students that they can't 'fail'.  About how now, they have become so helpless that when they approach a computer and it won't work, they throw up their hands and exclaim, "It won't go!" before walking away.  About how she then asked - "What have you tried?"

What a great opportunity we're now giving our students. 

To struggle...

To try...

To fail...

To try again....

To persevere....

To succeed....

To see the relevance this has to life.

And I saw the light in her eyes too.

We are learning.  Together.  I can't think of a better space to be.

Leadership

Throughout the past year I've really been thinking about the idea of leadership.  How it works in schools on a staff level, but also within a classroom.  I came across a quote today in a leadership book I'm reading on iBooks called "The Leadership Challenge" by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.

'The best leaders are simply the best learners, and life is their laboratory' p 88

This fits well within a school setting, particularly one like ours, which is undergoing such change.  The leadership within the classroom relates to me as well as the children.  They have their own pockets of leadership, and I have a part in leading the class too.  So what makes great learners great leaders?  Probably the fact (as the book alluded to) that they 'learn from their errors and failures as they experiment, try new things, and incrementally move projects forward'.

So in order to be one of the most effective leaders in our class, where we are in the guinea-pig-phase of a new project, it's important that the kids can see me making mistakes and moving forward, having a goal I'm continually working toward.  And it's important for me to create opportunities for them to fail and then persevere, sharing those failings with others in a way that is proactive, positive and collaborative.  How to?  Hmm.

The goal is such a big one:
Create a classroom where students set their own goals based on their needs, work consciously and consistently towards these goals, driving their own learning and reflecting along the way, so that at the end of it, they are able to be in control of their own learning - engaged - and MOTIVATED to do so.

So where to from here?

It's important to break it down I think.... to make it into smaller goals where I actually feel I can be successful.
Goal setting
Tools
Habits
Reflections
Identification of needs
Goals

Well that's a start.
Now to attempt to lead the way ;)

Motivation & Engagement vs Routine & Expectations

Early in the year as a teacher it's easy to fall into the trap of embarking on the learning journey full steam ahead... Leaping into the engaging aspects of learning rather than reining it in and taking the time to go over routines and expectations.

As I go over the expectations and watch the frustration of students who have done it all before; their eyes eager for the opportunity to 'just get on with it', their school-ready personalities honed in on what all the teachers before myself have expected of them and their stationery and mindsets at the ready. A few of them try not to but I notice the eye rolls and the placid expressions that belie the 'brakes only barely held on' beneath the surface. And I can't blame them. I remember what that felt like.  

My eyes lift from theirs and roam the fringes... And then I am reminded why I do this. The students that are hanging back, dubious. The ones who are already distracted... Poking their neighbour in the ribs. I think about the importance of this. And then I try to find a middle ground.

How can I get the classroom agreement done, the expectations set, the team building done... While maintaining the focus on the ground-rules for those that need that constant reminder... And still allow the brakes to come off a little for the others... So that they CAN get on with the business of learning and experience the exhilaration and success they are capable of. So that I'm not holding them back... And the ones who need the constant reminders are not holding them back... So that everyone gets what they need? 

This, I feel sure... Is the most important part of personalising learning. Research suggests that children are born with the instinct to learn... Every day, all day. Inherent ability. So the first thing I must do is not squash that by holding them back or letting them go too soon. To create a programme where the balance is in favour of each individual. This, I feel, will not be an easy task.. But one I need to master to feel successful as an educator. How to? This will be next.