What is Success and Why?

2016 was a really big year for the Senior School at Hornby Primary School. Lots of new learning for teachers and students and more importantly, students and teachers getting out of their comfort zones.

So what is the 1:1 digital classrooms and the learning model of  Learn, Create share doing for our learners?   The answer, 'Bucket loads' and the best thing is that we have the data to show this!

The data from our E-asttle results shows us that we have accelerated learning and our Year 5 and 6 students are now achieving above the national norms.   Our Year 4's have also made significant gains.

But what was more pleasing and satisfying for me, was our 'Me and my School survey results that all of our year 4, 5 and 6 students completed.   The results were outstanding especially in our year 6 group.

Year 6 (n=38)

Scored higher on 27 of the 28 questions than NZ norms

The one question was 1% point lower than NZ norm

Significant responses - agree/strongly agree

• I have a lot of respect for my teachers: 100%
• My teachers help me learn: 100%
• Doing well at school is very important to me: 98%
• At school I always try to do my best: 98%
• I feel like I am making progress at school: 95%
• When I’m learning something that’s hard I keep on trying until I get it: 94%
• I feel my culture is valued and respected at my school: 92%

So what's happening at our school that is causing children to accelerate their learning and also be extremely happy to attend school.    I took my time to reflect on this and have come to a couple of conclusions.  Our children are hooked.   The digital platform that we have created  caters for all students.  They are engaged but more importantly teachers are activating learning.

As teachers we are spending more time teacher and less time managing the class.  The learning is authentic and has a purpose.  The students see themselves as teachers and learners and the have a voice with a world wide audience.  This directly relates to Learn, Create, Share and the affordances of digital technologies.

So what does learning look like?  why are we making significant shift?

I created this presentation after discussions with the other teachers in the senior school team, which is essentially a reflection of our writing practice.

We had a really good reflection session at our last staff meeting run by Kate Mclachlan our literacy leader.  What got me really excited was that although we have had significant success, everyone of our staff was reflecting on what they could do to improve their practice.  We all had a clear idea of what our next steps were.

That in my books is a recipe for success.  Not being happy with status quo,  but striving to better ones practice collectively.  A great example of teacher as inquiry.

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.

Blogging! Has it made a difference?

I have been on this journey for a while now and it's time to reflect on the changes that have occurred, or difference that it has made in my delivery of the curriculum and more importantly  student success.

This term my class all started blogging on their individual blogs.   The children were very familiar with the blogs as we had a class blog that we used successfully last year and the beginning of this year to promote visible teaching and learning.

The impact on engagement was instant.  Children are highly motivated to 'share' or post on their blogs. They have an authentic global audience.   There is more purpose to what they are working on and are connecting with friends and family across New Zealand and in some cases overseas.

The most important part of this process has been teaching the children how to comment on other children posts.  They follow the 3 steps of write something positive, thoughtful and helpful.

By following this template it has stopped children from giving shallow feedback like 'Good work',  'Awesome, well done!'.  Their comments now are full of advice or questions that promote further learning or initiate a learning conversation.  But the biggest impact to the students learning has been the improvement of punctuation in their writing.  This has been transformational!  Through the combination of the  3 steps to writing a comment and having an authentic audience the children's punctuation has improved out of sight. 

Here are some examples.

This had made me make changes to my delivery of writing.  I have stopped giving children constrained practice activities (worksheets), related to surfaces features like punctuation.  These have been replaced with blog commenting.  Not only is this a more authentic writing activity and engaging, it has lightened my workload in terms of finding or creating the activity and then making them all.

Finally, my ultimate aim as an educator is to cause learning.  My biggest change that I am currently working through is ensuring that all teaching and learning is visible.  Why?  Because not only do I want to engage the students, but I also want to engage the Parents, Caregiver and Whānau, so they can play an important part of the learners journey.  

So is this happening?

This is gold!  How does a comment like this make a student feel?  That's easy to answer.  It motivates and drives them, it gives them a huge sense of pride, they see themselves as a learner, an author and a teacher.  They have a voice and a world wide audience that is listening!

I would like to acknowledge Mark Maddren for his ongoing support as the Manaiakalani Outreach facilitator.

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:

Manaiakalani Outreach Programme Toolkit Presentation

             

This week Kate and I presented at the MOP toolkits.  We shared this presentation which gave an insight into the Learn Create Share journey and the integration of Chrome books into our delivery of the curriculum.

For some of our audience this wasn't anything new, but for others it gave them some practical ideas they could take and adapt into their own programmes.

On a personal level I found this a good reflective activity of how far we have come this year.  Using the chrome books in our programme on a day to day basis has become second nature.  The children's ability to use the devices has also improved significantly and they now expect to use them.

I am definitely looking forward to being in a 1:1 classroom next year and be in a fully digital environment.

Learning at Hornby Presentation (PD)

The following is a presentation that I used for all the staff at Hornby Primary (Teacher Aides included), as an introduction to the new learning model that we are beginning to implement.

I discovered the 'Movenote App', which I intend to use in my classroom, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to practise using it, to understand its functions.

I have attached both the Movenote presentation and the slideshow presentation.

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.

Universal Design for Learning.

UDL (Universal design for learning) What is it and how can we use this in our classroom?

Learn, Create, Share.  What is it and how can we use this in our classroom?

Can these be married together?

Do they need to be married, or can they sit nicely beside each other?

Before we look at these in more depth, we need to answer the WHY?

To raise student achievement.  Motivate and engage all learners in our classrooms especially students who are disengaged in education, have learning disabilities and have high learning needs.  

If we get it right for these children, we get it right for all children.

As educators we need to ask ourselves this one question.  How can we remove barriers and provide support that will enable all children to learn?

UDL is made up of three principals as shown on the diagram below.

When looking at the curriculum (learning) UDL has 4 main components, each that needs to be universal.

1. What are the goals (of the learning)?  How do we translate standards (learning intentions) into things that are important to do in the classroom.
2. What are the materials? (books, websites, videos, posters, pictures wall displays)  Are they key to learning, if so are they universal?
3. Methods.  How does the teacher deliver the curriculum? Lecture, collaborative groups, experiences, practical activities.
4. Means of assessment.  How are we sure learning has occurred?

So what might this look like in your classroom?

Maths

Principal 1 - Engagement

Why do you need to learn your basic facts?

It’s important because we use maths everyday.  Shopping, measuring, driving a car, cooking.  Many jobs require you to use maths, e.g. trades, truck driver, accountants, retail, teaching and even doctors.

Principal 2 - Representation

Giving children opportunities to learn in different ways.

Instructional lessons, videos (teacher tools), using materials, digital tools, flashcards, singing table songs, rote learning.

Principal 3 - Action and Expression

What the children do to show their understanding, using equipment (counters, rods, abacus etc), number lines, tests, Explain Everything on Ipad or making a video explaining the strategy that they used.

So where does Learn, Create, Share fit?

I see that it plays an important part of the Representation stage and an even more significant role in the Action and Expression stage.

What does this mean for the learning in my class?

Creating learning activities with less barrier (no barriers in a perfect world).  Allowing agency for children to express their understanding.  It’s ok if someone wants to use Puppet Pals, while others use slide show and someone else draws a picture.

This is not rocket science, this is quality teaching and learning for all those in our classrooms.

I want to acknowledge Mark Maddren from Core Ed, for his presentation on UDL.