If They Can Do It, Why Can't I?

My visit to the local primary this week has me wondering: if they can do it, why can't I?

If they can personalise their lessons, why can't I?

If they can have several activities running at once, why can't I?

If they can have children learning several different ways, why can't I?

If they can have children follow a pictogram that shows their lessons, why can't I?

If they can have a range of different learning spaces in a traditional classroom, why can't I?

If they can have a couch and reading corner in their room, why can't I?

I don't believe that my tasks are any more difficult for my students than the skills the new entrants and year twos had to learn. 

I don't believe that my students can't have a personalised learning environment.

I don't believe that my students have to be learning exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

I believe a range of tasks is necessary to help students achieve.

I believe equitable opportunity means giving each student the means they need to succeed.

I believe that a course designed with stage-appropriate tasks will allow more engagement, more personalisation, and deeper learning because students will have what they need to succeed.

Year Two Class

Whiteboard not the focus of the room

Student teacher conferencing

Walls and hanging displays that teach

New Entrants' Room

 Alphabet puzzle

 Letter Bingo

My son, doing his own thing with duplo 

Teacher helping student with a floor puzzle and helping to read the words 

An alphabet programme on the class computer 

Thanks @geomouldey  (+steve mouldey) for the link to your blog on the same topic: Lessons From Primary

Writing Pedagogy at a Local Primary School

This week I was able to take a 'mummy day' (I had leave owing from being over-timetable in term one), and was able to go and do a class visit in both my seven-year-old daughter's year two class, and my five-year-old son's soon-to-be new entrant class (he's doing the transition visits at present). Even though it was supposed to be a mummy visit, and for the first half hour I sat in my daughter's class purposefully disengaging from pedagogy or thinking about how I could use the strategies in my classroom, I eventually gave in. Who says we can't multitask and see the same situation through the eyes of the mummy and the teacher?

In both blocks I was able to see how writing was taught. Perfect lessons for me! To make it even more special, my year two teacher was teaching my daughter's class - the regular classroom teacher was off on release time. It's been 26 years since I've been in Tracy's class!

What I really liked about Tracy's lesson was that she started teaching writing skills by reading a story. This was exatly what @mrs_hyde had been talking about in a twitter chat on the Sunday morning immediately before the Tuesday. Writing skills must not be taught in isolation because that makes them meaningless. What's more meaningful? Writing punctuation marks on the whiteboard and stating definitions and effects or reading a story and seeing how they work in practise?

Yeah - in practise sounds good to me too.

Tracy spent about twenty minutes reading The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe and talking about the pictures, explaining vocabulary, and identifying different parts of the story (eg stories need to have a problem otherwise they're boring). She then handed out writing books and sent the children to their tables. They had a choice of tasks: either retell The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe in their own words, continue to work on their own imaginative story if they have one, or tell the story of their birthday (this task was especially for my daughter as it was her birthday that day).

I sat with my daughter's table and watched as they wrote. I provided assistance if the children asked for it, but I didn't want to interfere with their ideation and creative process. What I saw was really interesting. None of the children at this table retold The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe. They all had their own imaginative stories to tell. They all worked at different speeds. They all knew what to do if they didn't know what to do (eg go and get an 'editing card' if the words they wanted to use were too difficult for them to spell on their own). Children collaborated, bounced ideas off each other, or worked silently on their own - whatever worked for them.

As the children finished, they had one-on-one conferences with Tracy where she gave them feedback on their writing and identified a small number of their errors that they could work on next time.












In block two, I took my son to his class for one of his 'transition to school' lessons. Because this class has only just been started, there are currently eight children in this class. With new entrants the writing lesson was quite different - they were learning their letters.


In much the same way as Tracy taught writing, Angela taught writing to the new entrants. They started with a reading book where Angela pointed out how the different font size signified the difference between loud noises and quiet ones. She also taught punctuation while reading the story: "What is the name of the tall-stick with a spot under it? ... Right - exclamation mark. What does it do? ... Right - shows someone is shouting".

The children then went off into group reading time - and with eight children there are currently only two groups. A board on the wall indicated what tasks each group was to achieve, and when each group was to be with the teacher. After reading time, the children all came back to the mat, collected their chalkboard and chalk, and prepared for the writing lesson.

So by the time they were doing writing, they'd had three different ways of engaging with letters and sounds before they began to create them for themselves. Point to note.

The letter of the week is 'C', which Angela modelled, then the children copied as they were able. Lots of time was given for practise, and because the children were using chalkboards, they were able to rub out and start again as often as they liked. If they didn't like the 'C' they wrote, they could do another. If they filled their boards, they could start again.

For me, the biggest thing that I took away from my visit was seeing contextual writing teaching. Tracy brought the story alive with all her voices; Angela did the same. The children were engaged because the stories suited their level, age, and ability. The children had loads of time to see writing modelled before they were expected to go off and do their own. They weren't expected to take notes on exclamation marks or to hear teaching on sentence structure and then apply it. They were shown it. And that I really liked.

Resiliency Muscle and Physiotherapists - for Students

I was thinking about resiliency muscles and physiotherapy again today. A little while ago I wrote one line on this blog asking the question "If resiliency is a muscle, are there physio therapists for it in the same way there are physios for physical muscles?". I'd had a particularly tough week where my resiliency was stretched to the limit. Because of the nature of the challenges, I decided to keep them on a private doc. I'm not sure how appreciative people would be of me publicising some of those challenges (5 challenges, 3 days, from 2 senior managers. Hard!!)

I was thinking about again today though because one of my students crumbled under the weight of two NAs on practice Response to Text essays. He had enough words to tell me he was angry, but the rest of his demeanor showed devastation. After some minutes he had picked himself up just enough to ask me what went wrong - and there was no nice way to put it. He'd completely misinterpreted the texts. Of course I used as nice a tone and vocabulary as I could to explain this to him, but the pain was really hard to watch.

In my weak attempt to reassure him and give him strength to go again, I told him that I wasn't surprised that he fell flat on his bum. We didn't have term 2 exams, this was his first attempt at a closed book timed essay, and I expected there to be holes. He's done plenty of other essays, but using a different skill set. Open book and using as much time as he needed.

For me, when my resiliency muscle hurts, I need people in positions of trust who know stuff about what's going on to give me a boost. My 'physios' 'massage' my resiliency muscle and ease the pain usually with one sentence. Because of who my 'physios' are, that's all it takes to get me up and moving again. They are ladies in positions of trust and authority and who know me well enough to know the right words at the right time. My goal has to be to know my kids well enough to do the same. To know what 'massages' their resiliency muscle when it gets injured.

Maui's Dolphins - It's been a long time!

Quick catch up on all the things that have been happening with Maui's Dolphins over the past two weeks:

Year 9s

They have started a research project which culminated in a presentation of some kind. They were given the have-to-dos (formal writing and creative writing) and the other want-to-dos as options. My poor year 9s got so confused with this. They took two full lessons to get their heads around the mode of submission. I didn't think it was that difficult - and they'd had a go at it before with the Learning to Learn project so I was surprised. Eventually they managed to get themselves off the ground and started moving forward. I think once they've had a go at this, they will get idea and get on with it more easily. It's taken a huge amount of energy and impoetus from me though to keep it going. Almost enough to be off-putting, so I'm going to have to really look at what happened and what I do in the future.

Year 10s

They have finished their research and it has produced some stellar pieces of work. Really impressed with them. They are now onto the film analysis and identifying how the issues that faced the Maui's Dolphins can be seen in Gorillas in the Mist. I started the film analysis section off with an "I see, I think, I wonder" session with film stills, Maui's Dolphins clips, and postits. The students really enjoyed it. Now we're doing the slow process of analysing the film and I think there must be a better way. I have some ideas, but because I can't guarantee safety with copyright issues, they have to go on the back burner for now. This is the one frustrating bit about film study - without multiple copies of the text it's hard to engage all the students. I'm sure there's a way - and I'm sure some of you reading will leave me some ideas! There's always room for playdough, right?

Whoops - Hopping back on the wagon!

Wow. Crazy two weeks - have hardly opened the blog page since #edchatnz. Don't actually have a purpose in mind right now - Just need to get the words flowing so that I can get to the blogging and reflecting on things over the past couple weeks. I did take some photos so hopefully that'll trigger my memory.

I've been doing some new projects, assessing all my seniors as all their portfolio pieces come up for final submission, going slightly loopy with darling Miss 6's birthday party and darling Miss 1 having a breathing difficulty. Barely come up for air; and if it was it was only to argue my point about what suite I want to use at school (Go GAFE!)

As usual with so many things going on, my words have rescinded into the backs of nowhere, not even talking to friends, family getting minimal words; enjoying the silence of internals because it means I don't have to talk to my students either, for most of the day. Oo - bad teacher; did I just say that? Ah well. It is what it is at the end of the day. Sometimes we just fall down and forget about everything that is unnecessary to the day to day running of our little kingdoms.

What Would Education Be Like?

At faculty meeting today, we were posed the question: what would teaching be like if there were no formal assessments, no inflexible timetables, no credits, endorsements or targets?

Great - I should have been right in my element. I talk with friends at school about this on an almost daily basis. I'm inspired by and *listen to* others tweet about this daily. But today - block. Frozen. For what? For why?

Was fear immoblising me?
Was I concerned about being scorned, ridiculed, or rejected?
Why is it so easy to talk to SMT about these issues, but not faculty members?
Did the personal rebuff cause my silence?

I have ideas about all of these things - and in theory this was the forum to voice these ideas.

Creativity a team sport?
Guess I still have to work on that...

#edchatnz Conference Day 2

Another epic day - there was so much on today it was hard to know where to go! Just as well I'd sorted my timetable beforehand! Having changed my profile picture to a photo of me, a few more tweeps found me, often telling me they couldn't find me because they'd 'been looking for a football'! :D I'm an introvert through and though - so I enjoyed sitting in the anonymity! So when one presenter talked about creativity in groups - that was probably the biggest challenge and most amount of discomfort I felt all weekend. Work with other people? Say what now?!

First Session on Saturday was great. Mandy Heim's presentation focused on bringing the emphasis back around to the people. That to start the year off well, to give the students confidence to succeed, we must build the relationship with them. This made perfect sense to me - This year I've also focused on the idea "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care". It's something I've been taught for years, and something Maya Angelo posted on Facebook earlier this year before she passed on. Our first few days at school were setting the 'tikanga' of the room - and for me, the most important 'tikanga' is I've got to know the students. Got to. No point doing what I'm doing without it. So, names are first. Then a Google Form quickly gathering important info (I've got 150 odd students in a day to get to know as quickly as possible). And by important info I mean things like 'what did you do last year', 'who do you live with', 'what language do you speak', 'what is your favourite thing to do on the weekend'. Little hooks for me to get into the students' worlds. So what Mandy spoke on affirmed what I'd done - and makes me realise why my kids follow me. They try hard - they try damn hard - to do their work. They are not scared to get things wrong - they just want me to show them how they can go away and try again. Sure they get disappointed if they get lower-than-desired grades at the end, but the learning process that goes on before that process is stellar. One student this week brought me a piece of work six times to get it better and better. Whoops - sorry Mandy! This was supposed to be about you, not me!

My Takeaway from Mandy: Introduce myself in 10 seconds, put it on a QR code on my window, so before the kids even get into my classroom, they know a little bit about me the person.

Session Two was with Mark Orsbourne and Modern Learning Environments in Every Classroom. That was very cool. I especially loved the thought of going on Trade Me or pillaging places for cast-offs to create a modern learning environment in a traditional classroom. First step - Liquid Chalk for my windows. Next step - asking builder friends for wooden doors that they might throw in a skip so I can use them as partitions for own-place spaces. Then maybe ask for that couch that I know is lurking, and find a spot for it. There are no limits - 65m2 doesn't have to be a limit; only mindsets limit us.

Session Three was with Steve. Easily my most challenging session of the weekend. All because of one little sentence: Creativity is a team sport. Tumy tightened into a knot, breathing quickened and soon turned into hyperventilating, as I fought to gain control over my reaction. Team sports and I have never been good friends. I'm really happy being creative when I'm sitting on my own, envisaging the classes I have and what works best for them. I can manage to share the creative process with tweeters, but only because I can (or could) hide behind a little anonymity. But to do it with real people? People who I can physically see? Yeah, that scares the crap out of me. I have to have things perfect and proven to feel confident in my ability. I'm not confident to share the process until I know it works. Yet what Steve was saying is quite the opposite - and hence the poster I had to make.

By the time I arrived at the book track session, I was knackered. I managed to follow what the presenters were saying - more or less - and I'm looking forward to giving this a run with my classes next time a computer lab is available. Most of them have writing of some description due this term, and they all need to read. I'm really interested to see how it goes down with all my levels. Booktrack is a product which enables students to add a sound track to their writing or to a book from the Booktrack library, with the aim of making reading more fun and engaging - and hopefully picking up a few more readers.

For me, the biggest thing that I keep feeling challenged my is creating the atmosphere for creativity, curiosity, and change. My 9s, fresh out of intermediate and primary, know how to do all the things I'm asking them to do. They know how to create amazing projects, they know how to research, they know how to be curious and creative. My 10s have been doing creative stuff with me all year, so they're still adaptable to.

How do I keep the curiosity alive? My 9s are going to leave me at the end of the year - are they going to still be creative next year? Will my 10s be as engaged? Or will the fear of NCEA and credits drive all their creativity from them? Will I have set them up to be creative, engaged, responsive learners who are prepared for their next level of schooling?

#edchatnz Conference Session 9: Booktrack A new way to Learn Make reading and writing fun!

Session Notes

An immersive reading experience
A new way to learn
to engage kids in reading and creative writing - good for deep reading too.

Booktrack classroom
add layers of music to the stories you write
Share creations with the world.

Booktrack studio
Open platform

BT Classroom
Reading and Writing focus
Ability to set it up in classroom that is set up and controlled by teachers
35% of engagement
70% increase in reading comprehension

Lots of hands on creation and playing.
Too tired to focus anymore - will reflect and play later!!

#edchatnz Conference Session 8: Unleashing Curiosity and Creativity in the Classroom

Steve Mouldey
Session Notes

Creativity is something that can be developed and worked on

Can computers Keep secrets?
Creative confidence
A more beautiful question - the power of the questions that you ask

Kids are naturally curious and creative
As they grow up and get older, that quickly disappears - the way they look at the world
Little children look for every single thing, they notice everything
How do we keep the whole idea of noticing everything out there

No matter how many answers you give a small child, they can still find more questions
Trying to find the mundane task a little more interesting

Creativity enables you to create change in the world around you
Curiosity enables students to find their own learning paths.

Delve deep into what you value really strongly
Creativity helps you to create change in the world

Creative + Innovative thinking = change.

Depending on our experiences, our learning journies will go in different directions.
As long as they're doing the learning, what does it matter what method they're using to get there.

Get the students used to whatever they want to use

Problem solving - what is the most important problem?
Most important part of problem solving is problem finding.

By valuing what the students want to do builds the confidence for taking the risks.
Giving them full choice of modes gives confidence to start journey and take risks.

Try not - Do or Do not; there is no 'try'.
Do it, if it doesn't work, pick it up and try again.

30 circles starter

Question generator
what do you want to know - the hardest thing to do is start - so get them used to starting.
That's what the 30 circles does - helps get the starting process going.
Need to get through starting to get to the really deep questions

Little silly tasks to get things started can have quite powerful impacts later on

Creativity no matter what subject you're in.
Questions are a way of unlocking creativity

Design Thinking
Empathy, Action, Radical Collaboration

Clumsy solutions
Get something going - you can work it through it to elegant as you go

Creativity is a team sport
Important to have a group of people to bounce ideas off of.
By sharing the idea you're getting a whole lot of other perspectives on it that can help bring you through to that breakthrough.
Find that group of people who can help you with your ideas
Importance for creativity of working with other people.

Reverse Mentoring
People come in and are paired up with older, more experienced teachers.
Often it should be the other way around - those with fresher eyes can see things that older teachers could be reminded of.

Critical Friends who meet 2-3 weekly
The two words together are really important - supportive and challenging
Completely separate to appraisal.
Critical Friendship is forward-looking - where am I going, where do I want to be?

The people make the place, not the environment.
Experiments are to try new things - not to solve a problem we already know the answer to.

#edchatnz Conference Session 7: Modern Leaning Environments in every classroom

Mark Osbourne
Session Notes

How we can use the principles of mle in every space - regardless of shape of space
take existing classroom space and adapt it.

Start with a future-focused vision.
What is teaching and learning?
What is our future vision?
Equip the learners to cope with the changes that are likely to happen

What are the features of 21st Century learning?
Student Agency
Learning to Learn
Learning Disposition - content is created too quickly for us to teach it.
The new illiterates will be those who can't learn, unlearn, and relearn.
You've always had to learn on the job - but the need to adapt is increasing hugely. Crucial things for our learners to have.
More choice, more flexibility

Innovations Unit
10 ideas for the 21C
Flexiblility to think outside of 50 minute lessons

1. Open up Lessons - whole day for a subject
Understand what it is to think like a scientist / mathematicians / english all day long.

2. Thinking outside the classroom box
Can't change the physical rooms perhaps, but can think outside the box
Giving learners experiences to outdoor learning settings increases the learning connections / learning speed.
Outdoor learning settings increases the rate of learning.
Having daylight in the classroom increases the rate of learning.

3. Get Personal
Who is this person in front of you?
What do the learners want to learn?
Design thinking starts with the user - what does the end user need?

4. Tap into students' digital expertise
What are we looking at.

5. Get real with projects
Real-world, engaging, authentic, learning

6. Help and expect teachers to be students

7. Expect teachers to be students too.

8. Measure what matters

9. Work with families, not just children

10. Power to the student

All of these can be done in a traditional 65m2 classroom.
One of the values of MLEs is the power of watching other people teach.
Opportunities to come together and teach with one or two or three other teachers is rare - we need to bust down these results and get wroking together and learning from each other.

The variance between schools is much much lower than the variance within schools.
A bit of a lottery as to whether a teacher is going to succeed well - even within the same school. All comes down to the teacher in the school.

Project-based learning is coming more and more common
Friday Passions - kids bring the things that they are passionate about and the teachers wrap learning around it.

The MakerCrate
Can get the makercrate to arrive at your school for a term to do cool stuff.
Who have you got in your community?

Modern Learning Practise:
Educational Philosophy - our vision for our kids and community
   How do we convene learning so real, authentic learning happens?
Pedagogical Vision
   Our vision for learning
Pedagogical Practise
   Our work to achieve this vision
Physical Environment
   Our spaces - desks in groups as opposed to in rows
   Colours, paints, creative equipment
Experience
Learning

Learning Settings:
A particular space or environment supports or promotes a particular way of doing things.
buildings designed for keeping kids inside, and for one-to-many teaching

What learning settings are a must-have in a learning environment?
Time and place for one-to-many
Many-to-many ie whole class discussions
what activities do you want learners to be doing?

collaboration group soacek
one to man
quiet reflection
peer tutoring
active learnign
outdoor learning
messy play
conferencing
display
research
social space
resources and storage
performance / drama space

The importance of the walls communicating the values and expectations
Walls are teaching all the time - what are they teaching?

Learning settings are important.
What can I provide in my environment?

Julia Atkinson
Vision: Mutually agreed upon and owned by school community.
eg. Actively involved learners
Principles: Derived from values adn beliefs
eg Learning by doing
eg success for all learners
eg Student Voice
Practises: Living expression of your values and actions, and events.
eg solving community problems, messy play solutions
eg grouping by stage not age, holding regualr breakthrough assemblies, using eportfolios and blogs

TradeMe furniture
easy chair
partitions for desks - solo mode
standing table
providing access to outside space
ability to work on floor

Kids need an anchoring to the classroom - if it's not a desk, then what?

#edchatnz Conference Session 6: The start of the school year and the shift to greater student agency.

Mandy Heim from Elim Christian College
Session Notes

Who Owns the Learning
Alan November @globalearner
If you get the start of the year right, you have so much more potential to get the rest of the year right.

The kids never felt welcomed in the classrooms where the teaching was taking place and so they 'failed' on what they were expected to achieve. No sense of self-worth. Never acknowledged as a person - Mandy's sons' experiences.

Something has to change - the start of the year has to change
How can you love people if you don't start off by loving the child
Love God, Love People

Allan Peachey
Colin Prentice

Welcome the student - Maxwell: Doesn't matter how much you know until they know how much you care. - Yes! That's what I have in my classroom too. :) It doesn't matter if you like the kid or not.

Tell the story. Encourage the buy in; the personal human warmth.
If there's no passion, no real commitment to the learner at the beginning of the year, the rest of year is going to be really difficult.
The first few days concept - very first day:
Balloons, welcome sign, photos from last year and holidays if the kids have posted online
First day welcome written by the kids - harsh protocol moved back a bit - not there on day one.Go to different classes and hear the same messages, but NOT subject specific. About learning - goals, "I matter", not "I have an assessment due in 9 weeks".

Aim for next year is to get every staff member to introduce yourself in 20 seconds - QR codes
Empowering the students to know they own the learning process because relationships matter most.

Introduce the personality, introduce the person
Alan November - the First Five Days
Entry ways into 'you' - build the connection
In order to be successful, start with small steps - introduce with 20% to start with.

15 seconds
Short and impacting
Keep it real

Introduce to kids via video
Let them see the mistakes
When we present a polished performance the kids feel so much pressure to perform.

Alan November
Who Owns the Learning
Digital Learning Farm
Scribe
Tutorial designer
Collaborator
Students have different roles because we've got to collaborate and involve the kids

First Few Days
1. Welcoming is the most important thing day 1.
Shift to getting to know each other - how do you learn? What are your goals? What do you want to achieve this year? NOT a focus on assessment.
2. More learning, more connections - put the person at the front before introducing the academic content
One chance to make one impression - create challenging engaging learning centre
Welcome student - sell self - sell subjects

If students don't get given opportunities to lead, how will the learn to?
All the students arrive at one place to start with
Students put into their year groups then rotation stations started

Based on their perceptions about you, there's a relationship there that already exists without you knowing.
having one person giving the same message to the whole year group makes it all consistent - people with passions can champion the thing they're championing.
eg one person tells all the groups of kids about learning to learn

Learning Mentors
Every member of staff from principal pa to library assisstant has a group of kids to do stuff with

How would I introduce myself in 10seconds?
How would I let the students know how they can learn in my subject?

How do we reach this generation who listens with their eyes?

Divide the class up and have more 1to1 connections
There are about 40% of their kids who can go a week and not be talked to by a teacher - and this is WITH form teachers
Learning mentor sessions

Relationships matter most
If you ask the right question, you might unlock the right answer
So what if you fail?
Relationships matter most

Commitment to helping students know that they matter most
If we don't invest in the individual before content, what are we churning out? Statistics.
Learning Mentor sessions - 20 minutes with 12-15 students.
If you can't talk to me - write it down.

What do you do with your time?
Introduce your personality before your professional status

Evaluation of the 1st few days of school year
Real-time proper evaluation

Edmodo is like facebook
Upload and make available your resources very quickly
Heavens Fall
The students can invite others to look at their contributions
Good Reads - lists to find PRR books.

#edchatnz Conference - Day 1

Slipped to HPSS early today, on day 2 of the conference, to give me a quick minute to reflect on yesterday's highlights without four children jumping all over me!

What a stunner you have pulled off, Danielle! Conferences are mammoth in the organisation and from this perspective - this one is seamless. You probably have been running around feeling like a chicken with her head cut off keeping everything going - and hats off to you lady! Sessions have been stellar, the organisation has been impeccable, and who cares that occasionally the technology gave problems, as technology is wont to do.

From Di's session on Design Thinking, I found new ways of approaching UDL. As I've been dipping my feet in with some classes this year, I've been doing the design - finding the problems for the kids and creating the solutions for these problems. Her session showed me ways to get students identifying problems and creating solutions - complete with hands on blended learning where I was able to practise the skills being spoken of.

From Amy and Erin's session on Personalised Learning, I was inspired by the way the children planned their days, knew exactly what they needed to know and where they were at on their learning journey. I would love to see this working; now I need to organise a time to sit with Amy (and probably bring one or two other members of staff with me who are looking at working on the same project) and learn how to do this. I know if I try and do it by myself I will make all kinds of mistakes and get frustrated because my mind does not think in a timetabling kind of way.

Then it was off to do a lesson observation in Megan's and Kylee's Art and English class. A very cool lesson which I really enjoyed. Here's the reflection on Keep Your Ideas to Yourself?

The day ended with an unconference - a spontaneous decision as the Student Led Workshops wasn't there. Slinking in the shadows I listened to others as they talked about the different ways they threw their learning, planning, lessons over to their students. Very interesting to hear how other newbies are finding the same difficulties and coming up with similar epic fails to me. But pretty cool - and affirming.

So now - Day 2 awaits! More awesome, more learning awaits.

#edchatnz Conference Session 5: Student-Led Workshops

** Come back to this to write proper reflection **

Student-Led Workshops were cancelled

Student-Led Learning Unconference Instead
Student voice without guidance can go in places that you don't want it to go.

Cards with NCEA LOs - order the cards in the way that the kids want to learn to do it
2 days of planning
Build their own units

Can do creative things with NCEA
successful co-construction at year 12/13 starts at year 9

Zetaboards

Identify where they're at on SOLO
Identfiy where they want to be
And then learn all the things they need to in between

#edchat Conference Session 4: Keeping Our Ideas to Ourselves Lesson Observation

Keep Your Ideas To Yourself?

Session Description

Researching and analysing a variety of politically based art works to understand why they were made. Then we will use that information to discuss and debate points of view and perspectives.

Type of Session: Hobsonville Point Secondary School Learning Module (see a cross curricular, team teaching in action)

Instead of going to the political debate which was on at this time, I decided to go and do a lesson observation. I choose this class: Keep Your Ideas to Yourself which was awesome! Today's lesson was broken into a few components - listening to a speech, learning about the Solo Rubric in relation to oral presentations, having a group discussion about a piece of art through the use of role play, and then scoring themselves against the solo rubric.

At the beginning of the lesson, I was also fortunate enough to be shown through the artspace by Kylee, the art teacher who was one half of today's teaching duo. Very cool use of space with an open wet area, a locked off wood and metal area, a mac suite and open spaces for graphics, fabrics, and dry art. It was interesting listening to Kylee and to another art teacher from another school as they dissected the use of the space from differing perspectives. There was dialogue about the safety and security of the open space. As I listened to the conversation, I couldn't help but feel the open spaces would be safe because the way the culture is being set. As HPSS establishes its footprint with this group of year 9s, the next group of year 9s will look at the year 10s and see 'this is how we do things here' and follow the examples. So on and so forth until the school is years 9 - 13.

When we returned back to the lesson, Megan, the English Teacher was teaching about Oral Presentation techniques, and going through the solo rubric to show the students what she expected. I really liked seeing where everyone was around the room. Megan was on an ottoman, students were on swivel chairs, beanbags, ottomans, or at tables. It didn't really matter where they were - and I wouldn't be surprised if being on a beanbag allowed for higher student engagement for the children who chose to be there instead of on a chair at a desk.

Megan explained the speaking task - which was a pretty cool task that I'm going to take back and find a way to use in my classes. The students have been studying art theory (awesome!) and so today, they were put into groups of 6, and given a set of cards. Each card had a role of a person the student had to pretend to be - Artist, Art Critic, Mayor of Auckland, Tourist, Police Man, and Building Owner. The students had to speak about a piece of street art from the perspective of the person on their card. The topic: Street Art is Flash Graffiti.

The groups went off, and I joined in with one of them. Couldn't keep this art historian away!! Art Theory? Yes please!!

The group I followed chose their cards, and then decided that starting with the artist's perspective on their art would be the most logical. They then followed around the circle, ending with the art critic. I have to say, the artist role and the art critic role were my favourite! The artist wasn't sure what to say, so I was able to guide her through techniques, purposes, artist intention, pulling the info from her. The Art Critic wondered if she had to criticise the art, not aware that an art critic critiques a piece of work. I had great fun critiquing an image on the wall for her so she could see what an art critic does.

If I wasn't already hanging out to help construct the art history course at school...
Well, it's a fire that's never gone out really. It was really cool to see how Art and English worked seamlessly and has definitely got the wheels churning for next term and creating an art-based unit for my juniors for after exams. The English curriculum lends itself brilliantly to that kind of cross-curricular contact. Oh, be still my beating heart.

Thanks HPSS for giving me the freedom to join in with your lesson!

#edchatnz Conference Session 3: Personalised Learning in Action

The young children from Hobsonville Point Primary have come to share their experiences of Personalised Learning
Students from Amy and Erin's class which is a year 2-5 class.

Our role as the -teacher- Mentor
Value relationships above all else.
Expect the kids to be risk takers so the teachers model the risk takers.
Expect the kids to collaborate so they collaborate
Live and breathe what it is to be a learner alongside them.

How do we prepare the students for a world that we don't know what's in store for them.
School life replicating real life.
Projects, immersion, needs-based projects.
Still learning all the same areas, but mashed together. Not reading time, maths time.

What informs our teaching?
Relationships
Knowing learners and what makes them tick
Make everything as visible as possible - planning, everything all online.

Involve families as much as possible
Visible Learning wall - putting everything up so that parents can see exactly what's being done and why it's being done.
Descriptions of lessons, evidence of lessons.
Visitors to school can see what's happening, parents can see what's going on and talk to their parents about.
A way to document their immersion process.
Keeping documentation so that children can remember their highlights.

Curiousity, Creativity, and Risk-Taking - Inventive thinking
Show how all the curriculum links together and to home.

Visual Planner
child #1 explains the visual planner
Can choose the workshops - can have an extra maths/reading/writing as well as 1 of each maths/reading/writing
Negotiated workshops - things that they are really interested in and want extra time at.

Visual Planner Record
Child #2 explains what she does
Colour coded cards - helps them to know what they've chosen.
Record their choices for the day.
Have bits of feedback on them to help them structure the day
Helps the students making choices to plan their day.
Students usually done before school even starts - They've become really quick at it.
5 people on an activity at a time
Negotiated criteria for the visual planner
If the activities get interupted with a teacher workshop then they go back to the job they were doing until they're finished.

The children are really clear about what they're doing - the freedom has done them really well. They are managing themselves beautifully.

Daily Planner
Follows on from the visual planner for the more able planner.
Put their have-to-do tasks in first, then fill in the rest of the day with what they want to do.

Past
"Teachers planned the whole day, all had to do the same thing, and never got to do anything I liked. It made me feel really bored. If I got things wrong I had to write them on the whiteboard 100 times or maybe 36"
Present
Can plan what we want to learn, can do a project, keep on researching, and show it off to everybody. Child who wants to be a doctor is allowed to go on a device and find out about being a doctor.
Children plan their whole entire week.
Any free spaces - they can put in any projects they want to do.
At the end of the day they have to do reflections to write down what the favourite part of the day was and what was hard.

Child was really interested in WW1 and WW2 so negotiated with Amy when that was going to fit in during the week.

Year 8 students
Come in, look through the google calendar, sort out what they are going to do in the day. If they finish what they're doing, then they do 'learning on top' - and do extra things.
Sort out a project in terms of maths, science, and literacy and outcomes.

I'm really struck by how well the students know what they are doing.

#edchatnz Conference Session 2: Design thinking: think agile, discover & innovate

Design thinking comes from the world of design - Di from a design background.
Got opportunity to go back and strip away the layers and try and do things better by designing teaching based on the curriculum.
Never fully trust technology :)

Design thinking come really fashionable because business found they needed designers to keep things innovative. Education now realised they need to innovate or die.

Design thinking is getting people innovating
Really challenging - reflect on journey. Go back to the beginning and figure out what the really important stuff is.
Be agile, be able to flex, a sense of discovery and play inherent in the processes - allow you to innovate.
Once the process becomes embedded, it becomes natural.
What's going on in designers' brains that allow them to innovate?
How did we get to the inventions that we have today?

What the *** is design thinking?

People who can do this really well are able to flex incredibly quickly between types of thinking
Deduce / Induce
Designers can flex very quickly between the two and feel very comfortable of discomfort, change, not knowing what the solution is, "let's scratch beneath and find out what the problem might really be".
Empowering to teachers and students - need to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, happy to be in the state of not knowing what the answer may be.

21C requires:
flexible, resilient thinkers,
Creative fluency and innovation
Problem solvers and problem finders

So how might we?
Develop these fluencies
Mover from what to what if?
Embrace failure as valuable learning?

Developing agile thinkers
end user > user centered
understand > insight
solve > find
adapt > innovate

How is the experience for a kid? Follow a student for a whole day or whole week and see what the day looks like for them.
Moving from problem solving to problem finding then problem solving

Challenge set the Stanford Business school  - develop cheaper incubators for the babies
But there were incubators without babies - why do they need more?
Babies weren't getting to hospital because they were too rural.
Designed embrace baby warmer to keep the baby warm while they transport the babies to the hospital and into the incubator to help.
What's the real story?

Literacy rates are horrible - but why is that?
Go back to the problem, don't band aid the apparent problem. What's causing the problem?

Empathise, define, Ideate, Prototype, Test
1. Discovery: I have a challenge, how do I approach it?
2. Interpretation: I have learned something, how do I interpret it?
3. Ideation I have an opportunity, What do I create?
4. Experimentation I have an idea How do I build it?
5. Evolution I tried something, How do I evolve it?

If you wait until you've got the perfect product, you're 10 years too late!
The kids already know - just open the doors and let them get on with it.

Explore: What's your story?
Discover empahise, seek stories, explore feelings, ask why
Define: zoom in, insight, problemfinding, reframe
Ideate: quantity for quality
Prototype: Test possible solutions
Iterate: Feedback and refine

Experience: Gift giving
Pen and Paper - blended learning and hands on thinking time! Photos to come.
Disconnect happens when the product doesn't match the expectations of the recipient.


Makerspace!!

How can we learn this to help our teaching? - We should be focusing on what we do for/with the kids rather than what we are doing TO them.

Kids love modelling stuff - I do too! Had lots of fun creating my prototype.
What are the real questions we're asking?
We've got to get our literacy rates up - did we actually talk to the students and find out why they didn't do well? What is the real problem? Resonate with and meet the real problem rather than put a band aid over the problem.

How do we close the gap? You can't change a person's values and feel for learning - what they enjoy and what works well for them. You close the gap by bridging the gap by designing your lessons for the kids in your class.

HPSS
So what? (Critically reflect and evaluate)

• share
• explore
• make sense
• focus
• generate
• test
• refine

Common language - frame all the learning within it - across the school - everyone says the same thing.

#edchatnz Conference Session One: Keynote

TedEd

How to make a movement
Have guts to stand out and be ridiculed
Then not about the leader, about them, pluaral
First follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader
2nd follower - need the followers, new followers follow the followers, not the leaders
the more people who join in is less risky
- Fence sitters will feel comfortable now because they won't be different or embarrased, they will now be part of the in crowd.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to stand up and join in.

Danielle 

Mihi by Danielle - nicely done!

What if teachers weren't isolated? What if teachers were connected?
This is what EdchatNZ is

Danielle wants to talk education 24/7 - but family didn't - twitter helped her to meet up with other teachers to talk to. :D
America: Flipped learning
UAE: Project based learning
NZ: What is NZ doing? hence #edchatnz on Twitter

Not a two-day conference - a never-ending conference because every fortnight we can meet and chat on twitter.
#edchatnz about empowering teachers to stick together, to empower the teachers in the classroom, inspiring other

I need a tshirt that says "I'm tweeting while you're talking because I find what you're saying important enough to share with 100s of others"

We believe that school should be warm, challenging, adventerous.

Be a contributor and share and communicate with others, be reflective rather than critical - we're all still learning and we all need to take risks. By being reflective rather than critical you'll find you learn more from others mistakes as well as their successes.

Maurie Abraham
We all have a vision for education, that's why we're here. The challenge we all have is to lead the education revolution. Being a visionary is the easy bit - next is the hard yards.

"These is no longer a good fit between the education we are currently providing and the education we need."

Three period days, small group learning advisories, decile one achievement rates became equal to the decile 8-10 through the changes.
We have the opportunity to change the world and yet there are kids who are still missing out.
The 21st century learners are already here - what are we doing to be 21st century teachers / schools.
The paradigm of one is holding us back across the country - how does '1' create confident life-long learners? It's time for the timeline of 'many'.
Many ways of learning; many ways of teaching.
All learning needs to make use of the natural connections between subjects - not separate them into silos.
When designing and reviewing their curriculum, schools select achievement objectives from each area in response to the identified interest of the learners in the classroom.

Innovation, creativity, and responsiveness should be the norm in all schools and for all students - ERO

Building is designed to be open, visible, flexible, and connected - easy part.
Challenge was to create teaching that was the same - first to admit this is still a big work in progress.

Wordle from the kids about what schooling was like in the first half of this year:
Fun, different, interesting, new, awesome, exciting (biggest words).

Acknowledges Danielle's stunning work of being the 'lone nut' and starting the movement.

ERO: "saw some magic" in learning hub and learning coach model - key foundation stones that holds everything together - how they hold onto the students and don't let any of them fall through the gaps.

Mark Osbourne

Is just around and everywhere

The thing that's brought us altogether today is Twitter - it's direct, immediate, right there

 - but that's also it's downfall.

One of the tricks with twitter - the more inclusive you are, the less you can say. The more you want to say, the less people you can include

The thing that's brought us here #edchatnz is a great way to bring people together.

Story telling - how we encode culture into the generations

Stories - far more memorable than listening to bullet point list. We are designed to listen to stories.

Think about the stories you're telling - the story telling animal

Tell stories - the most important way to tell things

How storytelling affects the brain

Neural coupling

Mirroring

Dopamine

Cortex Activity

Just watching each other, hearing stories and experiences creates good brain things to happy.

The ability to empathise with others are closely related to story telling.

Think about the stories that you're telling - great, powerful way to communicate information

"I have a dream" NOT "I have a strategic plan"

What is your dream?

Who was the hero - knowledge? Skill? Dispositions

Metaphors for learning spaces

- Watering holes, Mountain tops, Campfires

Tell a story, involve others, let others tell their stories

Tell simple stories and tell them well.

Overcome the shortcomings of 140 characters.

The little #hashtag that could.

:D

Thanks to Danielle for being the great leader that has created more leaders.

Maui's Dolphins Day 13

Year 9s

Wrote the Research task with the Year 9s. Very superficial at the moment, need to talk to the task and pull it apart with the 9s when I'm back from conference.

Year 10s

Very good speech from Aimee and Ella today where they role played a conservationist and a fisherman talking about the issues facing Maui's Dolphins. They have agreed to share with the Sustainability Action Group, and SAG has agreed to have them. They will share their speech with the group on Friday 15th August.

After the last speech was done, we started watching Gorillas in the Mist.

Maui's Dolphins - Co-Construction Day 12

Year 9

We started learning how to analyse the film today through the lense of Issues Facing the Maui's Dolphins. However, I'm not really happy with the way I started this. I'm giving them the issues, rather than letting them explore the issues for themselves. We did nice analysis and showed how four techniques worked together in one short clip - and even on one still shot - but without the contextual links to Maui's Dolphins, this is going to be weak. I'm going to have to address this and do the next part of the co-construction: write a research project with them.

Year 10

Finished most of the speeches today - Some really nice ones being given. I wonder if they would have been better with longer to practise. Though, the last lot of speeches weren't great and they had oodles of time to practise.

We also made links between what they have learned about Maui's Dolphins in their project and what they 'saw', 'thought', and 'wondered' about the gorillas from the still shots yesterday. The class has some really strong ideas already about how the two completely different groups are connected.

I was stoked today when I finally got around to checking off their assignments. 100% submission rate! Never had 100% in without having to chase them. I think a BIG contributing factor was that they had ownership over the process and could choose their mode of assessment. I wonder how well this will work when they start to having to do have-to-do tasks that they aren't as thrilled about.

Maui's Dolphins - Co-Construction Day 11

These titles are starting to get a bit monotonous. Oh well, At some point I'm sure I'll bring all the experiences together and write something a bit more 'wow' factor and 'jouzy' (how do you even spell that word??). In the mean time, this will serve my purpose to remind me of all the things that happen.

Year 9s

We took a completely different road today - commemorating the centenary of the beginning of WW1.

Year 10s

Because I knew that I was having a visitor come in and watch today's lesson, I mixed up my plan a bit. We stopped speeches for the day and jumped ahead to the lesson where I link the issues facing the Maui's Dolphins to the film, Gorillas in the Mist. The coloured post-its proved to be a hit!! All that colour therapy...

We started the lesson reviewing what the issues were that the Maui's Dolphins faced.

The main part of the lesson was spent looking at eight different pages. On four pieces of A3 paper I printed a different screen shot from the film, each representing a different idea from the text. On another four pieces of A3 I printed URLs to clips with similar issues that are facing the Maui's Dolphins. For five minutes, groups of students looked at one image and on post-it notes wrote answers to the following questions:

• What do I see?
• What do I think? (include what issue you think this page relates to)
• What do I wonder?

They then stuck the post-its around the edge of the picture. Each group was able to look at 4 pictures in the time we had this lesson. At the end we started to create a venn diagram with the issues that the Maui's Dolphins faced on the one side and the issues for the Gorillas on the other.

It was really awesome having my visitor in today because he started team teaching. Perfect - he is a media teacher and film is my weakness, so he could bring in other ideas that I hadn't thought about or didn't know about. What was also really good is that he looked at my pages with really long URLs on them and saw how to make it better - QR codes! Such a great idea!

The students really got into the lesson today - quick paced, blended, colour. 

Thanks Alyx for the post-it inspiration.

Thanks (someone else on Twitter - I can't remember who posted it :/ ) for the What do I see? What do I think? What do I wonder? inspiration.

Maui's Dolphins - Co-Construction Day 10

Year 10s

They began to present their speeches today on The Issues Facing Maui's Dolphins. Some really good facts and research coming out. Not a lot of personal response so far. Interestingly, they are behaving just like the research presented in staff meeting - children with access to a large pool of information become very black and white. The speeches so far have been very factual, and are showing the students' ability to fact find. They haven't gone any further than the google-able question and they haven't developed the information into a personal response.

What is the ungoogleable question?
What will get them thinking creatively?
What will shift them beyond the black and white and get them creating in colour?

Maui's Dolphins - Co-Construction Day 9

Year 9s
Today we did a vocab quiz, testing their ability to define the new words they'd had to learn this week. Most of them did very well - showing they'd picked up a lot of the new film vocabulary they'd been taught this week. The range of new words learned was 2-20 - so everybody learned something this week. Most sat around the 15 mark, so that was pretty good. From memory a person can be expected to learn 5 new words a day, so they weren't far off that.

Year 10s

The written submission for their Issues project was due in today. As most are presenting speeches in pairs, they had the time to practise their speech with their partner. Those who aren't doing a speech did finishing flourishes on their written or visual presentations.

*Remember to print a separate mark sheet to check off who's handed work in and who hasn't.

Maui's Dolphins - Co-Construction Day 8

Thursday