2017

Wow it's hard to believe that 2017 has come around already!

Things to recap at this point:

Collaborative learning, New School Organisation, Deliberate Acts of Teaching, Digital Assessment to Support Math and Writing Development.

Collaborative Learning:
This has been awesome!  I'm so enjoying working with other people; bouncing ideas off each other, sharing successes and challenges, and getting to know the kids together.  I love that we're going about this process slowly, getting to know each other and undertake collaboration within curriculum areas one at a time.  At the moment we're more cooperating than collaborating for maths, but I think we'll evolve as time goes on.  This will present a bit of a challenge in maths around Student Learning Conferences... so we'll need to think about that.  Best practice would suggest that we should all be seeing the kids all of the time, so it will be interesting to try to work out out to do that.

New School Organisation
Glen and Herman and I had a productive and exciting meeting today, deciding on what our direction could be next for e-Learning.  My focus will be on how to integrate e-Learning with our other curriculum areas.  Now that our Learning Pathways etc are all up and running, it's going to be an exciting thing to work through.  I've started already and it would be amazing to design some samples that students could work their way through and track their own progress.  I'm also looking forward to designing an independent programme for our extension writers that would be motivating and personalized.


Deliberate Acts of Teaching
It was great to have this really spelled out in our Team Meeting today.  Many of these things we do already, but it was great to be able to talk through them, reading and sharing back on a section each.  I really enjoyed our Team Meeting Time being more about professional learning and less about the admin stuff which I could read myself.

The link to the TKI site where the Deliberate Acts of Teaching are covered is here

Digital Assessment to Support Math and Writing Development
This has been quite fun.  I'm trying to design some quite simple formative assessments that cover many of the aspects that our writers struggle with often and use this to support writing and maths.  Now that I have a clearer direction around our e-learning roles, I'm wanting to integrate that too.  It will be really cool to see how it comes together.  I'm hoping that it can be run quite simply and that I can find ways of putting HyperDocs together so that these can stem from our Learning Pathways.  This will help us to personalise the kids' learning.

It's been a busy term so far, but with camp and assessments done, it's really awesome now to begin to get down to some targeted needs-based group teaching. The kids are much more settled and I'm really enjoying my time with them.

Reflection Term Three:

So much to reflect on! What a busy place our great school is.  I really struggle to find time to get all the great things written down, due to all the amazing things we are doing.

I know our most important reflections are undertaken around our Inquiry, which this year is focused on improving student achievement in literacy and numeracy through improving teacher knowledge and application of assessment processes.

To be honest, it's been a constant struggle to be making big gains in target groups in three different areas of the curriculum, particularly with taking on the Accelerated Literacy Learning programme later in the year.  This feels like added pressure I didn't need.  My primary concern are my learners.... all of my learners and although I'm learning lots, it feels like a battle to be working so hard on a few learners and maintaining focus on the rest as well.  Hopefully in the long term it will pay off.

I feel like I've had greater success in getting my numeracy programme working well earlier in the year and some of the things I think have made a difference include:
Making an effort to continually upskill myself by using some of the NZ maths modules, the Pearson teacher books around Fractions and Decimals, always looking for new games to support the kids and undertaking more analysis into our different assessments.  I've gone back to using e-asttle now that our infrastructure is better supporting of this (internet is now amazing!) and it's been great to look at that data mid-year and use it to enhance planning.  I've also been using the e-asttle 'What Next' and ARB as additional forms of assessment.  What I'd like to do next for these learning areas is to have a goal set for the kids every week, which they know will be assessed at the week end in a snapshot, so they have a better idea of how they're tracking in achieving their goals.  I'm also working on student toolkits to help them to understand concepts, videos that they can return to, watching repeatedly until their understanding is consolidated.

In literacy, I must admit I struggle to get consistent time with my reading target group kids as two of them are absent more often than I had realised originally.  I have enjoyed using our silent reading time to work with the kids on quick reading workshops and hope to do this more consistently.  The start to the term has been quite busy with build-up for our school Olympic Day, which has taken more time than I'd like to admit.  This has certainly eaten into our literacy and numeracy time and I need to be more mindful of not allowing this to happen (though with Olympic speakers, Attitude speakers and Life Education I'm not sure how to go about this).  It's a busy place with loads of great opportunities for our kids.

Meetings for ALL have helped to clarify what we are expected to do for this professional learning and I find myself seeking out lots of learning around the teaching of reading in order to continually upskill.  For example, in the past two weeks I have found myself reading The Book Whisperer, Learning in the Fast Lane, Essential Literacy Practice and Sheena Cameron's Reading Handbook.  If only there was more time for learning!

Two points of interest that I've come across include:

Ignition is important - how we start the reading session matters in terms of how engaged we will get our students (Learning in the Fast Lane)

Much of the comprehension follow-up work we do with our kids in reading actually turns them off reading... many kids just want to silent read and enjoy the simple joy of reading (The Book Whisperer).  This one really spoke to me - as a reader!  How can we help our kids to love reading?  I wish I could sit down and read this book until I was done as I feel like I am failing the kids in not knowing where to start!

I'm so excited by much of the learning we're doing.... time is the challenge, as always.

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!

Ande Ford- Learner Agency

This past week, we had a visit from Mrs Ande Ford at our staff meeting, who talked us through some information on Learner Agency and information found at Assessment Online.
It was exciting to again be immersed in some learning relating to my current passion of study and to have things to contribute to the learning discussions.  I enjoyed the 3, 2, 1 activity we came away with and look forward to using it with our class.

Note's from Ande's visit - thanks Mrs Devery
Link to Assessment Online - there are some wonderful resources here and some confronting material for prompting important thought!

Immersed in agency again!

Kimberly Hall - Improve Reading and Writing with Google

Kimberly Hall

Presentation is here:
https://docs.google.com/a/gisint.school.nz/presentation/d/1liyFpDw2kaGPqxVoQ8EGKY1fGDe91o6az3lJ2llVN44/edit#slide=id.g4782119f0_20


Using a table to get planning happening quickly without the issues


Change names to Heading1

Then
Insert
Table of Contents

Could use this for dates and headings etc in a personal doc,
Then you can click on these in order to hyperlink quickly to this area.  Great for feeding back to students quickly.

Google channel - watch cool Google clips here


Every time the kids add a new piece of writing they can add it to the same doc and every time they write they give it a heading "Descriptive Writing task 08/04/15"
Click Heading 1
then it will take you straight to that piece of writing.


Using
'mention comments'

+your.name@helpeachother.com

"This idea is similar to yours - maybe you should collaborate"

Lots of tools I've used before:
Sharing
Commenting
Suggesting edits
Revision history
Draftback

Awesome to play back for students to see history though - encouraging recrafting :)


Could we use a doc and for example - use adjectives to describe (colour code) then that will help kids to see what an adjective is and how to use more of them in their writing etc.
Collecting highlights using Google Read and Write - takes highlights in a similar colour and puts them in a new document - this would be a cool way to attempt to get as many new adjectives as possible without doubling up etc.

Using Kaizena for feedback - does this help reach more students by allowing them to access feedback regardless of reading ability?
Also, providing personalised touch to feedback in order to prevent that relationship level from being lost?

Accessing the Kaizena blog here may give extra ideas
Rubric criteria on Kaizena - click here

Use Clearly or Readability to clear up webpages so they're not so cluttered.  Allows saving or printing without the clutter.

Loads of cool ideas - extensions etc.  Looking forward to seeing now how I can implement these in order to best present ways for people to maximise their use of these and find shifts in pedagogy through my presentation at Tairawhite TeachXpo - hopefully!

How to make the whole process convincing and attainable and interactive?
Lots of fun to be had!

Digital Learning Communities

I really wanted to call this post 'brain explosions' as I really feel as though what's in my head is overflowing tonight. I'm really learning this year. 

I'm sure I learn every year, but in my role as co-leader of e-learning as well as facilitator of learning in our classroom (with an e-learning emphasis) I've been thrown: 
* into the Pit
* onto the silly bridge
 * out of my comfort zone

However you want to put it - I'm a learner again in the true sense of the word and it's exciting to be undertaking this journey alongside my students.  We are redesigning learning; together, and as a team. Co-constructing, it seems.

 Today, Saunil Hagler (iseeteaching.com) from Cyclone came to Gisborne to work with us on the next step in our e-learning journey.  (The whole idea of e-learning journey is an interesting one really - as many of us feel that the technologies we're using are simply tools for learning - there is no e-learning anymore, just learning).  We defined, we critically analysed, we discussed, we theorized, we idealised, threw aspirations around and developed and refined plans.  It's an exciting journey.

By the end of the day I'd learned everything from how to fix my GMail problem to how to shut all tabs to the right on my busy browser, to how to create links to learning to autonomise learning for our students in a digital learning community.  Never, have I been part of such a huge paradigm shift in education that has taken place over such a short space of time.  True, my "e-learning journey" began last year, but the bulk of my shifts in practice and pedagogy have taken place in the few short weeks since the beginning of term one.  Seven weeks.  The critical thinking I'm engaging in, the designing I'm doing and the collaboration and reflection in effect throughout this process is phenomenal.  I've never been more excited about my role in our classroom, in education in general.
Daily, life is chaotic, blurry and overflowing with learning.  Daily, I have to mentally 'shut tabs' in my head that force my brain to work overtime.  Daily, I am invigorated by the learning that I am doing.  I'm so encouraged by that, because I know that in order to be enthusiastic about learning, my students need to see I'm enthusiastic in my role as facilitator of that learning.

Saunil was knowledgeable, a patient teacher and an engaging facilitator.  We began the skeleton of our learning community.  As a staff and for our students, this platform could open up learning to all of us.  How effective would that be in terms of shifts in our practices as both teachers and learners.  Giving the steering wheel back to our students means they will regain autonomy in their learning.  It's scary to let go of that wheel for some of us.... but I'm excited about the journey - where will our students' learning journeys take us? I can't wait!

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!

Best Evidence Synthesis

Taken from the Best Evidence Synthesis Website:


"The ten research-based characteristics of quality teaching derived from the research are generic in that they reflect principles derived from research across the curriculum and for students across the range of schooling years in New Zealand (from age five to eighteen). How the principles apply in practice is, however, dependent on the curriculum area, and the experience, prior knowledge and needs of the learners in any particular context. The body of this synthesis provides examples from the research on learning and teaching to illustrate the principles for different curricular areas across schooling from junior primary to senior secondary classes.

The ten characteristics generated out of the synthesis are summarised below.

1. Quality teaching is focused on student achievement (including social outcomes) and facilities high standards of student outcomes for heterogeneous groups of students.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching is focussed on raising student achievement (including social outcomes).
• Quality teaching facilitates the learning of diverse students and raises achievement for all learners.
• The teacher establishes and follows through on appropriate expectations for learning outcomes and the pace at which learning should proceed.
• High expectations are necessary but not sufficient, and can be counterproductive, when not supported by quality teaching.

2. Pedgogical practices enable classes and other learning groupings to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.

The learning community concept has arisen out of the research literature and denotes both a central focus on learning and the interdependence of the social and the academic in optimising learning conditions.

Research-based characteristics

• Pedagogical practices create an environment that works as a learning community.
• Student motivation is optimised and students' aspirations are supported and extended.
• Caring and support is generated through the practices and interactions of teacher(s) and students.
• Pedagogical practices pro-actively value and address diversity.
• Academic norms are strong and not subverted by social norms.
• The language and practices of the classroom are inclusive of all students.
• Teachers use class sessions to value diversity, and to build community and cohesion.
• Teaching and tasks are structured to support, and students demonstrate, active learning orientations.
• Teaching includes specific training in collaborative group work with individual accountability mechanisms, and students demonstrate effective co-operative and social skills that enable group processes to facilitate learning for all participants.
• Students help each other with resource access and provide elaborated explanations.
• Pedagogical practice is appropriately responsive to the interdependence of socio-cultural and cognitive dimensions.

3. Effective links are created between school and other cultural contexts in which students are socialised, to facilitate learning.

Research-based characteristics

• Teachers ensure that student experiences of instruction have known relationships to other cultural contexts in which the students have been/are socialised.
• Relevance is made transparent to students.
• Cultural practices at school are made transparent and taught.
• Ways of taking meaning from text, discourse, numbers or experience are made explicit.
• Quality teaching recognises and builds on students' prior experiences and knowledge.
• New information is linked to student experiences.
• Student diversity is utilised effectively as a pedagogical resource.
• Quality teaching respects and affirms cultural identity (including gender identity) and optimises educational opportunities.
• Quality teaching effects are maximised when supported by effective school-home partnership practices focused on student learning. School-home partnerships that have shown the most positive impacts on student outcomes have student learning as their focus.
• When educators enable quality alignments in practices between teachers and parent/caregivers to support learning and skill development then student achievement can be optimised.
• Teachers can take agency in encouraging, scaffolding and enabling student-parent/caregiver dialogue around school learning.
• Quality homework can have particularly positive impacts on student learning. The effectiveness of the homework is particularly dependent upon the teacher's ability to construct, resource, scaffold and provide feedback upon appropriate homework tasks that support in-class learning for diverse students and do not unnecessarily fatigue and frustrate students.

4. Quality teaching is responsive to student learning processes.

Research-based characteristics are specific to curriculum context and the prior knowledge and experiences of the learners.

• Teachers have knowledge of the nature of student learning processes in the curriculum area, can interpret student behaviour in the light of this knowledge and are responsive, creative and effective in facilitating learning processes.
• Examples of teaching approaches that are intended to exemplify this characteristic are the dynamic or flexible literacy models, the numeracy strategy focus and the Interactive Teaching Approach in science education.
• Classroom management enables the teacher to be responsive to diverse learners.
• Responsive teaching is important for all learners and particularly critical for students with special needs.

5. Opportunity to learn is effective and sufficient.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching provides sufficient and effective opportunity to learn.
• Management practices facilitate learning (rather than emphasising compliant behaviour or control).
• Curriculum enactment has coherence, interconnectedness and links are made to real life relevance.
• Curriculum content addresses diversity appropriately and effectively.
• Quality teaching includes and optimises the effective use of non-linguistic representations by teacher and students. (This assumes the concurrent and rich use of oral language and text as central to literacy across the curriculum.)
• Students have opportunities to resolve cognitive conflict.
• Students have sufficient and appropriate opportunities for practice and application.

6. Multiple task contexts support learning cycles.

Research-based characteristics

• Task cycles match developmental learning cycles of students.
• Task cycles enable students to engage in and complete learning processes so that what is learned is remembered.
• Optimal use is made of complementary combinations of teacher-directed groupings, co-operative groups, structured peer interaction and individual work (including homework) to facilitate learning cycles.

7. Curriculum goals, resources including ICT usage, task design, teaching and school practices are effectively aligned.

Research-based characteristics

• Curricular alignment: The use of resources, teaching materials and ICT is aligned with curriculum goals to optimise student motivation and accomplish instructional purposes and goals.
• Curricular alignment optimises rather than inhibits critical thinking.
• Pedagogical strategies are evaluated in relation to curricular goals.
• ICT usage is integrated into pedagogical practice across the curriculum.
• Quality teaching is optimised when there is whole school alignment around evidence-based practices.
• The school maintains an 'unrelenting focus on student achievement and learning'1.
• There is whole school alignment and coherence across policies and practices that focus on, resource and support quality teaching for diverse students.
• Pro-active alignment across the school supports effective inclusion of diverse students within the school community.
• Whole school alignment optimises opportunity to learn, particularly in language immersion, literacy, ICT, social studies and health.
• Whole school alignment enables a common language, teacher collaboration and reflection and other synergies around improving teaching.
• Whole school alignment minimises disruptions to quality teaching and sustains continuous improvement.
• School policies and practices initiate, and support teachers in maintaining, school-home partnerships focused on learning.

8. Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students' task engagement.

Research-based characteristics

• Tasks and classroom interactions provide scaffolds to facilitate student learning (the teacher provides whatever assistance diverse students need to enable them to engage in learning activities productively, for example, teacher use of prompts, questions, and appropriate resources including social resources).
• Teaching develops all students' information skills and ensures students' ready access to resources when needed to assist the learning process.
• Students receive effective, specific, appropriately frequent, positive and responsive feedback. Feedback must be neither too infrequent so that a student does not receive appropriate feedback nor too frequent so that the learning process is subverted.

9. Pedagogy promotes learning orientations, student self-regulation, metacognitive strategies and thoughtful student discourse.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching promotes learning orientations and student self-regulation.
• Teaching promotes metacognitive strategy use (e.g. mental strategies in numeracy) by all students.
• Teaching scaffolds reciprocal or alternating tuakana teina2 roles in student group, or interactive work.
• Teaching promotes sustained thoughtfulness (e.g. through questioning approaches, wait-time, and the provision of opportunities for application and invention).
• Teaching promotes critical thinking.
• Teaching makes transparent to students the links between strategic effort and accomplishment.

10. Teachers and students engage constructively in goal-oriented assessment.

Research-based characteristics

• Assessment practices improve learning.
• Teachers and students have clear information about learning outcomes.
• Students have a strong sense of involvement in the process of setting specific learning goals.
• Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students' task engagement.
• Teachers ensure that their assessment practices impact positively on students' motivation.
• Teachers manage the evaluative climate, particularly in context of public discussion, so that student covert or overt participation is supported, scaffolded and challenged without students being humiliated.
• Teachers manage the evaluative climate so that academic norms are not undermined but supported by social norms.
• Teachers adjust their teaching to take account of the results of assessment."

This challenges me because so much of this could be done without technology.  But I feel strongly that students are so engages by technology now and it's such an integral part of their lives now that it's vital to integrate the use of e-learning in order to bridge the gap between student lives and school life.  How do we do that in a way that is collaborative and creating a culture of learners where learning is valued and shared?  I feel this must be the next part of the equation. 

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.

Learning Conversations

Our time is so full.  Camps, learning programmes, CAP's, interclass sports, assessment, meetings with parents, meetings with RTLB's.

Now I understand that this is all learning-related.  However, our greatest challenge is that everything we do needs to be related to learning.  Learning-focused.  And the challenge is, to fit the 'learning' into what we do so that it is the central focus.  So that everything we do is learning-focused, not just some things.

We had an awesome learning conversation today.  In team meeting, we discussed the decisions we make in relation to our math data.  We talked about IKAN, Pearson, PAT, snapshots and group learning versus whole-class learning.  We talked group structures - composition.

What really struck me is the fragile nature of learning itself.  As teachers we are hugely aware of the impact of what we do.  That our discussions affect learning, that our groupings affect learning, that our relationships with their students, their parents and their friends affect learning.  That how we act affects learning.

Mindful teaching involves having these conversations.  The most amazing part of it is that we so rarely have time to actually talk about the learning.  And when we do.... we all exclaim how valuable it was.  That we viewed something a different way.  That the opportunity to reflect meant that we changed our practice... or reinforced it.

Engagement

Wow I'm really enjoying this!  My blog really makes me feel like writing!  I'm wondering if the kids will feel the same thing!  Could I find a way for them to create a one page spread newspaper too, which could be added to the class blog? There is so much scope for entertainment and engagment.  And if I'm feeling it - hopefully the kids will too!

We've been really busy with the roll-out of the Chromebooks - so much work to do behind the scenes - unpacking, labelling, allocating, stickering.  I'm so grateful that we have such an awesome team who work together so well, it could be a bit hard otherwise!

I've created a blog for the staff too, to try to put information all in one place.  I'm not sure what will work best yet, but it's all a work in progress while I try to get the role sorted really.

I'm so enjoying the learning I'm doing though and I'm sure it will really impact on the kids too, as I learn and can pass it on to them.

This is such great professional development! MindLab starts in just a few weeks, so it will all be pretty full-on from there!  I can't believe it's week 3 already- next week is camp and not long afterwards we'll be halfway through our term! Time to be pumping out the learning I think!

Are you engaged?

Planning

Planning:

Where to next?  Beginning the year, I know I have a desire to move towards a model where all my students can learn at their own pace.  Where I can act as the facilitator, allowing; perhaps aiding in the development of their learning so that they are all engaged and motivated and determined in their learning process.

I find myself in a quandary though.  I currently have some lower level learners - one or two who are quite disruptive to myself and the other students.  My issue is - how do I cater for these learners as well as allocating enough time to ensure the others - 95% of my students - are able to access and excel at mastery of the learning we are planning on doing.

Catering for the individual while promoting the group ethos?

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.