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.

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.

SOLO Taxonomy - Day 2

Hooked on SOLO Maps

Essentially the maps are strategies they are not SOLO.  They are strategies to help children understand the academic language of school (General Language of Learning).

All maps can link with other maps interconnecting into one big map.

When introducing children to the maps do not use complicated material  this will cause cognitive overload.  Keep it simple such as what you did in the holidays.  Give the children several experiences using the same map.  You may focus on one map for a long period of time before introducing a new map.  Ensure that they understand what its purpose is and when it would be appropriate to use it.

Children may get to the stage where they are creating their own maps.  By scaffolding the process by providing them the symbols for bringing in ideas, connecting ideas and taking them somewhere else, then children are able to build their own.

An important note is no to forget what rich teaching is.  Give the children those experiences, let them explore, get their hands dirty.  Do not start with the map!

Time to play in the sandpit and work on a range of map.

Define

The first map that we are attempting is define.

         

Cause & Effect

    

Prediction Map

Generalisation Map

SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO Taxonomy

The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes

Presented by Pam Hook

http://pamhook.com/

Resource Links

Solo Taxonomy Resource

Solo Maps

Solo Rubrics



SOLO Taxonomy
Why:  To accelerate student achievement.
What:  A simple learning model that can be used and adapted to all learning.  Research based with clear evidence that it works.

You need effort to learn,  the first effort is coming up with your ideas no matter how simple it may seem, then to connect your ideas, then finally extending your ideas.  Essentially this model create life long learners.

'Bring in' activities -  Bringing in ideas about a topic .  Whats your next step?  I need to 'connect my ideas'.

There are 3 types of negative label that learners often put on themselves that could be found in our classes:

Fixed ability 'Smart' - These children are essentially damaged because they have been told that they are smart and have often found school easy and boring.  But when challenged they do not show resilience and do not take risk, risk adverse.  Use excuses like I'm bored,  too easy ,  I'm still finishing it.  Rejects opportunities to learn if they might make mistakes.

Lucky -  I got a good mark or result because my teacher likes me or the work I did.

Fixed ability 'Not Smart' - These children have a negative attitude towards learning because they find learning difficult and when challenged by learning they use diversion tactics to avoid being made looking silly in front of friends.  They may make jokes about it to make their friends laugh, or refuse to do it,  have a melt down.  Essentially anything to avoid the learning process because they find it difficult.

SOLO doesn't label the learner it labels the learning.

Praise or feedback given by teachers has a huge effect on all learners in your classroom.  Praise the effort not the result.

Learning is not about being smart, dumb or lucky, its about bringing in ideas, connecting them, then extending those ideas and pushing them out somewhere new.

"The most powerful model for understanding these three levels and integrating them into Learning Intentions  and Success Criteria is the SOLO developed by Biggs and Collis 1982"
Hattie 2012 p54

Sandpit Pedagogy (Brainstorming on steroids.)  SOLO Hexagons
Students put ideas, information  or data onto hexagonal shapes.  They then try to join their hexagons depending on what the information is.
We tried this as a group,  we had to come up with ideas about morning tea.  We were able to link all our ideas.

              

This was an absolute light bulb moment of how these could be used in all areas, especially reluctant learners.  

Engagement

As teachers if a student is prestructural ( have no ideas about a topic)  then it is your job to engage the students.  But that is the only part of the SOLO model that engagement is important.  What is important is the what the students are learning and the progress they are making.  Children can be engaged but making any progress.

What SOLO looks like for Primary school Children.

Prestructual -

Unistructural - Define

Multistructural - Describe

Relational - Sequence, classify, Compare & contrast, Cause & Effect, Analysis, Analogy

Extended Abstract - Generalisation, Prediction, Evaluate and create

A link to the Learning Intention Generator, that is an amazing tool for planning.  This produces a range of learning intentions for all area of the SOLO taxonomy model, which inevitably caters for all children in your class that would be working at different parts of the model.

SOLO Maps

SOLO Maps helps children unpack the different parts of SOLO Taxonomy.  It gives them the skills to define, analysis and all of the other skills at the different stages of SOLO.  Maps are a great way for students to organise their ideas, it scaffolds the planning process. 

Solo Maps

The Declarative Knowledge Rubric helps children understand where they are on the SOLO model when using the maps.  It gives them a clear pathway to their next step.

Functioning Knowledge - The ability to do it physically.  I can surf.

Declarative Knowledge - is the ability to talk or explain, write about a topic.  I can write about a surfer.

The Functioning Knowledge Rubric creator help children understand where they are when demonstrating something and what they need to do to move forward.

• Its not just getting children to bring in their ideas but getting them to reflect on these ideas.
• Don't give the children blank maps, give them clues in the maps such as technical language.

Achieving the learning goal.

• Prior Knowledge - prior skills, prior competencies, prior attitudes, prior behaviors.
• Link: ideas - relate - extend
• Metacognition:  What I am doing? How well is it going? What should I do next?
• Feedback:  on learning goals, with peers, with teachers
• Multiple Ways: of knowing about a goal, of interacting with a goal, opportunities to practise.

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.