2017 Teaching Action Inquiry - Writing

This year my teaching inquiry continues to focus on accelerating writing.  This is because my class and the school wide data shows that writing is the greatest need.

Below is the link to my teaching inquiry. 

Collaborative Teaching Inquiry 2017

Apple Towards Transformation

Term 1 2017 reflection

As I am about to embark on the second term for the year, I felt it was a good time to reflect on term 1.
2017 is a year of many new challenges and experiences for me.  For the first time, I have taken on the role of team leader where I have the honour of leading the Year 5 team and have the pleasure of working alongside four amazing teachers.

I am also the Responsive Learning Leader for Literacy across our school.  My role is to oversee the accelerated literacy programme across the school; report to the teams/BOT/Principal on the literacy programme including student progress and achievement; and to support teachers to make cross curricular links in literacy (reading, writing, oral language).

As well as my new roles, I am currently on two PD courses.  First is the Apple Towards Transformation course which sees me working with an Apple facilitator to learn a range of new apps for enhancing learning and teaching practise.  All of my students are using 1-1 ipads.   The second course is the Voyager course run by Dr Vikram Murthy.  This course is about cross-school collaborative inquiry and collective wisdom which uses action science, action learning, and appreciative inquiry methodologies to solve intractable problems and realise organisational opportunities.

Whilst I am really enjoying all my new roles, I have found that I tend to be out of my classroom a lot.  This has made planning trickier as I don't want my professional development to be detrimental to my students because I am not in the classroom.   Trying to set up an effective teaching program that sees my students continuing with their in depth teaching sessions and which focuses on accelerating learning, has been a challenge at times, however by spending most of term 1 ensuring students know how to identify their learning needs based on formative and summative assessments, student rubrics and goal sheets, as well as students learning how to plan their own learning day and book their needs based teaching sessions, the class is starting to run more smoothly and my absences from the classroom aren't so disruptive.  Whilst students are beginning to become self-reflective, independent learners, I am not sure the rate of acceleration is as good as it would be if I was in the classroom the whole time.  Now that routines and expectations are established, going into term 2, my big push is going to be around accelerating learning both within my own class and across the other Year 5 classes.

U Learn 2016 - Rewiring Education: Every child can succeed

Rewiring Education

Every child can succeed

Presenter: John Couch

ULearn 5th October 2016

Apple’s Leadership Model:

Vision - Mental Bicycle

Mission - One computer, one person

Directions - Strategic (Consumer, education)

Steps - Tactical (creative)

People - Companions, not competitors

Guidelines - Think Different

Focussed on a shared vision.

If the students are engaged, they are going to learn!  (Result from Apple’s 12 year longitudinal research project)

“Education is what people do to you.  Learning is what you do for yourself”

Education - Overall paradigm: delivery, Social structure: hierarchy , Context: classroom, Environment: simulated

Learning - Overall paradigm: discovery, Social structure: community, Context: world, Environment: real.

Santa Fe Christian School Vision:

Vision - Beyond Potential

Mission - Develop the leaders of tomorrow

Directions - Academic, Operational

Steps-...

People - Education evangelists

Guidelines - Bible

They got the people all moving in the same direction.

Went from being a school with 100 people and several thousands of dollars in debt, to toady one of the largest, most successful Christian schools in the US.

• Look at the student that needs to be challenged and then deliver them the program that they need to succeed.

Technology should be used to do something in the classroom that you couldn’t do in the classroom without the technology.

Steve Jobs:

“... All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time”.

Apples Classroom of Tomorrow Today:

Relevant

Creative

Collaborative

Challenging

Apple’s Vision for Apple - Education

Vision - Unique Genius  (Every student is uniquely gifted)

Mission - Personal Learning Environment (unleashing creativity through content, community and context)

Directions - Institution and Individual

Steps - iBooks Author, iTunes U, Classroom, Swift

People - Evangelists

Guidelines - Think Ahead

Content should be distributed in a relevant, challenging context to get value.

Collaboration and Personal Learning:

• The more collaboration, the more exposure, the more internships, = the greater the student’s knowledge.

Teachers and students : Students and students

“Knowledge is not a commodity that is delivered from teacher to student but something that emerges from the student’s own curiosity-fueled exploration”.  Joshua Davis, Wired Magazine

Context

Challenge based learning - the student picks the challenge

• Feel
• Imagine
• Do
• Share

(Pedagogy Framework)

“Never again is someone going to pay you to give them answers they can look up online.  They’ll only pay you to solve problems that don’t yet have answers” Seth Godin.

“...individuality matters - the individual is not error, and on the human qualities that matter most (like talent, intelligence, personality, and character) individuals cannot be reduced to a single score”.  Todd Rose

Everyone should have the opportunity to create something that can change the world.

Everyone can code.

apple.com/nz/education/everyone-can-code

Swift  -program to teach coding.

Book Creator

World’s largest taxi company owns no taxis (Uber)

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.