U Learn 2016 - Students at the heart of learning; growing learning through passions, interests and curiosities.

ULearn 2016

5th October 2016

Students at the heart of learning; growing learning through passions, interests and curiosities.

1:1 devices from Years 4-8  (Google Apps school - Ngatea School)

It is the people and how they interact which makes a successful learning environment.

Flexible learning settings - Mi Space, Presentation Space, Lounge, Creator Space, Meeting Space … All spaces are used for different things and the students know what kind of learning should be taking place in these areas.   Cloak Bays - now quiet learning space

Single Cell classroom - mixed cell classroom ( 75 students:3 teachers)  The kids are divided into 3 homerooms.

Inclusiveness - Pastoral care is  key factor in making the learning environment successful.  Acknowledge different feelings.  Everyone identifies how they are feeling when they arrive at school and places their name on an emotion along with identifying strategies with how they can deal with their emotions during the day.

Lots of time spent on building the team.

• Learning teams - group works, tasks, blogs, challenges, support group
• House Team Challenges
• Building a positive learning culture
• Play - encourage play, encourage games (Had a playdough area, brain breaks - go and play a game of cards)

• Building the team with parents
• Relationships with parents
• High Tea with mums for mother’s day
• Grandparents day
• Welcome parents to see learning in action
• Family amazing races

• Building the team with technology
• Student Voice- Class Twitter - live feeds
• Parent Voice - Class Blogs

• Building the Team through the school
• Relationships with younger students - interact with younger classes, leadership teams/mentoring team who run workshops in the junior school
• Giving back - helping younger students, mentoring, tutoring.
• Being leaders of the school

Encouraging and modelling a positive environment.

Students at the heart of learning.  

• It’s Good to be Me!
• The Marama (team) way
• Goal setting
• How do I learn best?
• What do I do when I am stuck?
• What am I curious about?
• Does my teacher know about me, my family and my interests?  All of me.  Does my teacher know the after school routines?

Growth Mindset is key!

Growth language used.  Being open minded.

Building students learning power.  Students understand that they are the key to that.

• Multiple intelligences  (Kids do a SMARTs test at the beginning of the year).  Teachers try and tap into that as much as they can.  Building students own learning power and knowing what makes them tick.
• The learning brain:  What helps me learn: Sleep, water, food….
• Students learn what to do when i’m stuck.
• Our learning powers: Creativity, resilience, being me, connecting, curiosity  (Co-constructed with kids and parents - what the students will be like when they leave school - Graduate Profile)

Being Me:

• Is knowing myself and how my decisions and actions affect my environment
• Being true to myself
• Managing myself
• Learning SMARTS
• I can choose my attitude
• What interests me
• What rocks my world
• Ignite!!!

Curiosity:

• Learning Smarts
• STRETCH myself to learn
• Questioning
• Making sense

Connecting… is creating a link within and across the community

Creativity… is the use of one’s imagination to think of and explore alternatives or new possibilities

• Learning SMARTS
• Being different

Resilience… is when I work through challenges and find ways to keep going even when the going gets tough.

• Guts and Grits
• Learning SMARTs

Graduate Profiles.

“What we learn with pleasure we never forget”  -Reading, writing, maths and the other curriculum stems from students interests and curiosities.

Individual Endeavours

• Inquiry
• Re-desgin curriculum - 1st steps - then school wide
• To use passions/interests to drive the curriculum

Conceptual curriculum (Inquiry)   (Being me)

Learning about:     Learning by:  

Question/Inquire:    (Curiosity)

• Pose real questions - refine questions, key words, what’s not a googleable word/question?
• Find Resources
• Learn with experts

• Planning - what will you make/create from this and how will you share it?

Inquire & Dive   (Connecting)

• STRETCH LEARNING
• Interpret information
• Experiment, explore and investigate (not just researching)  
• Connect new learning - connect with an expert
• Workshops
• Live docs- students record their findings, new words etc on a doc.
• Curriculum Mapping - Recording which curriculum areas are covered - individual for each student depending on what their topic is.  Conferenced with the teacher - students opting into workshops and track their learning themselves.

Create (Creativity)

• Create/make/design/build
• What have you learnt?
• Plan workshop to share learning  -run this with another group of kids

Share and Reflect (Resilience)

• How?
• Who? - Audience
• Share learning - Something you believe in important
• Reflect on learning

IE (Individual Endeavour) Assessment Rubric  

Being Me

Questioning/Inquire

Learn

Create

Share

Reflect

Google Forms to gather student voice and gather data.

“If we have learnt something we can teach it…”

Group Endeavours

A collaborative inquiry project, based on my interests and passions.

• Real context
• So what?
• Key Concepts.

GE ignition afternoon

• Lots of hands on stuff, books, pictures, things to touch, different stations - students look at what they were curious about,  students wrote questions about some the of things they saw, sparked curiosity.

Students then wrote down 2 things on post it notes that they were the most curious about from the afternoon.  Teachers then organised groups based on this.

Students got together then came up with some big overarching questions : (This took a lot of time, thinking, re-questioning and discussions)

How could we reduce our carbon footprint?

What impact does piracy have on society?

How do natural disasters affect us?

How can we support NZ made?

What influence does technology have on sport?

Trips to make the learning more purposeful.

Learner Agency

How?

Students at the heart of learning.

Collaboration

Kids plan their daily timetable and book themselves into conference slots and workshops.  If they are not in a workshop they are working independently on their Individual Endeavour - inquiry

Each student has a blog.  Their parents get a copy of everything that is posted on the blog so parents get updates in real time.  Parents can comment on the blogs and give feedback.

Students have a weekly goal that they are going to work on.  Teachers can also select a goal that they feel the student needs to work on.  The goals are around the learning powers - creativity, collaboration, resilience… The students then reflect on their goal at the end of each week and post their reflection on their Blog or Twitter.

Teachers refer to the goals everyday so it is at the forefront of the learning.

• Set goals each week
• Sharing learning
• Student led conferences
• Twitter
• Blogs

Personalised Learning Report

On Google Doc.  Updated all the time.  On student’s blog and parents can see this at anytime.  When a student sits a test, it can be updated once that test has been sat, or can be updated after the unit of work is completed and the work shows progression in learning.  Doesn’t state if the child is below, above national standards - this can be seen visually instead.

What has helped:

• Professionalism in collaboration
• Understanding what makes each other tick
• Tapping into different strengths
• Sharing the load
• Supportive environment for learning support and relievers
• Supportive leadership
• Consistency of personnel for more than a year (Team remains the same)
• Opportunities to learn in many and varied ways
• Flexibility

A Trust has been set up so that students can buy a cost effective device and the school can buy the devices in bulk - Chrome Books.  Students all have the same devices.  Devices are 1:1

Juniors have ipads but not 1:1

HOT Spot workshops run alongside individual endeavour projects - these workshops cover algebra, statistics etc.  These can be separate to the individual inquires - based on data, students needs etc.  There are also responsive workshops that teach students what might help them with their projects.

Each Individual project/group project runs for a term.  I big theme/unit per term.