Visible Teaching and Learning

This is my third year Team Teaching (Collaborative Teaching) with my colleague Kate.  We have made many changes over this time to make this work for us, but more importantly for it to work for the children. One of the philosophies that we have held dearly to during this time, is that all teaching and learning is visible.

Why is this important to us?  Firstly we wanted children to have a clear understanding of what they are learning, why they are learning it and their next learning step will be.  Secondly we wanted learning and teaching to not only be visible to the students, but also the parents and whānau.   Essential visible teaching and learning strengthen the home and school connections.

Understandably our understanding and implementation of visible teaching and learning has changed significantly during this process.  The most significant changes that have occurred are due to the integration of devices into learning programme, which gave us better opportunities and a platform to create an environment that promotes visible teaching and learning.

Initially we had limited resources, 6 Ipads (2014).  We then introduced 10 chrome books into our classroom as a pilot to gain a better understanding of working in a digital environment.  In 2015 we we fortunate enough to have enough Chrome books for 1:2.  This gave us more opportunities but we were still limited, as we had one foot in the digital classroom and the other foot in the analogue classroom, which creates twice the work.  Thankfully this year we are 1:1 (chrome books) over half of them student owned.

The most important  part of this process hasn't been the technology, it has been the pedagogy  that now drives our teaching and learning, which is Learn, Create, Share.  We are on our second year of the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.  Learn, Create, Share is visible teaching and learning. With our assistance and guidance from our Manaiakalani outreach facilitator Mark Maddren, we have been able to develop a better understanding of what this looks like and how we can implement it into our programme.

This year we have built a learning site where the children access their learning.  This alone has made teaching and learning more visible.  Children are able to continue their learning at home and have access to the resources that we have used to enhance the learning. We have also used a class blog over the past two years to share with the parents and whānau what the children are learning.  But the problem with the class blog was it wasn't personalised for the individuals in the class.  Parents could see what the class was doing, but not necessary what the individual child was doing or how they were progressing. This term the children all have their own personal blog.  This has opened up a lot of doors for us as their teachers, there whānau and more importantly them.

We have learnt pretty quickly that you can have a class site, and blogs but that doesn't necessarily make your teaching and learning visible. Especially if the parents and whānau don't know about them, or know how to access them.  Initially we were encouraging the children to go home and share both the site and their blogs with the parents with limited success.  Luckily for us we had learning conferences at the end of term 2.  This was the perfect opportunity to not only expose the parents to the learning site and their individual blogs,  but also to showcase how they are used in our programme but more importantly how they can access them.

We are required to report to parents for National Standards twice a year, but we didn't want the children's leaning conference to be just about that.  We wanted it to be a showcase of what they can do and to celebrate their achievements.   We wanted the parents to have a better understanding of Learn, Create, Share, and what visible teaching and learning is.   We wanted to show them how they can access and connect with what their child is doing in the classroom.  We wanted them to leave those learning conferences with the confidence to connect with their child's learning.

Traditionally we get around  70%-80% of parents turn out to learning conferences if we are lucky, which isn't ideal.  Traditionally Kate and I do the heavy lifting for the children in preparation for these, and a significant amount of the heavy lifting during the conferences.  Traditionally after Learning conferences we feel completely washed out as most teachers can relate to.

Things were significantly different this year.

All of the children created a slideshow, which consisted of 5 slides.  The first 3 slides covered there learning goals for reading, writing and maths.  Children had to find evidence to show whether or not they had achieved their goals or still need to work on them.  The children were able to link blog posts and blog comments they had written as evidence, they were able to link their digital modelling book, and anything else in their drive that could be used as evidence.

The forth slide was a mid year reflection where they had to describe what has helped their learning and also what they are most proud of.

The final slide was an opportunity for the children to teach the parents how to write  blog comments using the formate the children use (positive, thoughtful and helpful).  We gave the children plenty of time to create their presentation and practice presenting it, ensuring that they highlighted their evidence they collected and explain their next learning steps. We felt comfortable allocating as it was easily justified as it essentially covered our schools key characteristics.

Learning goal template


The end result was great.  We had children excited about learning conferences, nagging parents to make sure that they turned up.   We had the best turn out we have ever had 52/54 of the children's family and whānau turned up and we are confident of catching up with the final 2 families. Both of those children have shared their presentation with their families.

As for heavy lifting and feeling feeling wiped out after two days of learning conferences.  Not at all! For the first time our student led conferences were in fact student led. Students were able to justify why they have achieved goals or why they were still working on them.  More importantly the parents and whānau left the conferences knowing how to access the site and their child's blog.  They also had a better understanding of what visible teaching and learning is.

 

 

Is it perfect?  Far from it and we have a clear understanding of what our next steps are, such as creating a parent portal on our site.  There are a few families who do not have internet access, so we need to adapt to cater to them.

We can definitely be more visible with teaching and learning, but we have come a long way since our journey began in 2014.  Having had individual blogs for children since the beginning of term 2 has made a huge difference.

Has this created more work for us?
I personally don't think so, we aren't working harder, we are working smarter.  The initial set up  of the blogs was a lot of work but now the children are doing all the heavy lifting.


Resources that we are using to promote visible teaching and learning:

• Google apps (Docs, slides sheets etc)
• Classroom site
• Class blog
• Individual blogs
• Screencastify

Other things that we use to also promote visible teaching and learning:

• Sight, sound and motion
• Rewindable learning
• Children creating digital learning object

Presentations for parents about what learning looks like in Ako Ngātahi.

Examples of children's presentations.

2016 Inquiry

Can reporting digitally to parents over 4 terms be more effective at informing parents/caregivers about the child’s progress/ performance at school than the traditional written reports?

The following inquiry will be run by Kate Weaver and Simon Scott in 2016:  

We will run a Teacher as Inquiry for the year seeing how effective reporting to the parents digitally will be in terms of the understanding the parents have about their child’s capabilities and how they can assist their children in their learning.  

We will be using the children’s individual blogs to share the children’s learning over the year.  Each term we (teachers) will be adding links to these blogs where they will have access to digital reports in the form of Learning Stories, videos and National Standards reports.

Children will also be taught how to find evidence of their learning and relate it to the Learning progressions.  This will mean the children have a better understanding of what they are able to do and what their next step is.   This will ultimately have a huge impact on student led conferences, as the children will be sharing this evidence with their parents.

We want to talk to as many parents as we can and survey them about how they feel about the traditional written reports and how we could improve them.  Also, what do they want to know about their child's learning and what is their understanding of National Standards in regards to their child’s achievement.

Their will be a survey about parents/caregivers satisfaction and understanding of reporting and the feedback they are receiving from us.  This will be done beginning, middle and end of the year.

We will also continue to develop parental understanding of chromebooks/ Blogs and how to access and interact with their child’s learning, through workshops (Tekkie Breakie) that will be run throughout the year.

This will run nicely with where we are heading with ‘learn, create, share’ and the importance of visible Teaching and Learning for children and caregivers.

Click here to see the parent survey:

Have you heard about the word?

One thing I have learnt as an educator, is that educators love buzzwords like agency, ubiquity, inclusive, thinking tools, innovative learning, elearning, open plan, self directed learners, inquiry based learning, 21st century learners, MLE’s, digital technology, collaborative teaching, the list could go on and on.  

But which one of these words has had the most impact on teaching and learning, or is having the the biggest impact on what you do at your school and in your class in terms of strategic planning or even the day to day practice of your classroom delivery?

Don’t get me wrong, the words that I have mentioned and of course the hundreds of other buzzwords that I haven’t are important (some more than others), and some of these words have shaped and influenced me as a leader and as a classroom teacher.  But for me, there is a much more influential word.  In fact it sits above all of these words and should actually be used when looking at anything that influences change, curriculum delivery, strategic decisions, long term planning and the day to day running of your classroom.

The word is ‘WHY’ (and no it’s not bird, I do like Peter Griffin, but he has little impact on my teaching and learning philosophies!).

The Power of Why!

The word ‘why’ has been part of my vocabulary since I was a toddler, but its true potential has really only been brought to my attention and used effectively in my profession over the past 2 years.

I was listening to a presentation about strategic planning  in developing an effective ICT plan and it was stressed about the importance to answer ‘why’ before you get to the ‘what’ or the ‘how’.  

A few months later I found myself talking to a Principal about collaborative teaching and MLE’s, and he stressed the importance of going back to ‘why’.

When planning our new learning space at the beginning of our team teacher journey, we used ‘why’ during all of the design process.

Then we began the the process of planning our moderate redevelopment of our school (Rebuild) and guess what, all ideas, concepts and discussions around what we wanted learning to look like, came back to ‘why’.

But wait there's more,  there is even a Ted Talk about ‘why’.

This 3 letter word definitely punches well above its weight. So why is it so important and influential?

As leaders, an important part of our job is leading change and also to ensure that the school vision is the driving force of the actions we take and the decisions we make.

Leading change can be difficult, but I have found that by answering ‘why’ first, it gives a clear message to all stakeholders, of where we are going and why we are doing it.  ‘Why’ is now second nature to me in all that I do professionally and has had a significant impact on what learning looks like in my classroom and how I deliver the curriculum.  

When I ask myself ‘why?’  and the answer comes back to raising student achievement or motivating and engaging learners to raise student achievement, then I know I can justify my decision.

Here are some examples of ‘why’ working in our school.

“Why do we do the Peters Spelling Test?”

“Because it’s been on our assessment schedule for years, we always do it in term 1 and 4”.

“How do you use the data that’s collected?”

“I don’t really use it for any of my planning or my spelling programme, because we use the Essential Spelling Words Programme”.

“So tell me again, why do we do the Peters Spelling Test?”

The Peters Spelling Test is no longer on our assessment schedule.

“Why do we need to use e-asTTle for our writing assessment?”

“We are underachieving in writing, and e-asTTle provides us with the data to show us gaps in individual children’s learning, it also breaks down weaknesses and strengths in sub groups.  This information provides us with a clear pathway for the children’s next learning step. Essentially it makes me question my delivery of writing and it will help raise student achievement in writing.”

Last week I was at a cluster meeting about the ‘Me and My School’ survey that our cluster had undertaken.  Cathie Johnson  was there to unpack the data and to begin the discussion about what we do with this information.  She then talked about leading change and asking yourself why? Not once but 5 times. If by the fifth time the reason for change still sits well, then you have a good reason to make change.  

Maybe its time to do some reading and stop thinking of ‘why?’ to the power of one, and start thinking of ‘why?’ to the power of five.