No one is an island in teaching and learning, and this year I have been especially fortunate to have Lauren Evans, assistant HOD English, bring to fruition something I've wanted for our students for several years: a culture of scholarship English. Here is her story:
When I think of Scholarship English, I generally think of higher decile schools and the privilege and access that these students have to such a wonderful opportunity. What about the lower decile schools with equally wonderful and intelligent students who are willing to work hard? My mission as an educator is to make sure that a student’s circumstances do not act as a barrier to their educational experiences and with that in mind, I endeavoured to set up Scholarship English at Greymouth High School. With the support and encouragement of my awesome HoD, and brilliant English department, off I went.
I pitched the idea to my Year 13 class and seven students took up the challenge. We met once a week for an hour to study a range of authors and directors: Schlink, Nolan, Le Guin, Shakespeare, Neruda, Jackson, Baxter, Ihimaera, and the students pulled on texts that they had personally engaged with. We also looked at philosophers, news articles, music, documentaries, and had many wonderful discussions and debates about the issues they posed.
I have LOVED running this programme and the students really valued it. The day before the exam, on a stormy Sunday, we met for four hours and ate food, talked, studied and when they left they told me that they weren’t worried if they didn’t get Scholarship because the learning and the experience had been fun and challenging. That’s how I knew I had succeeded.
Going into next year, I have opened the programme up to all senior students to come along. I emailed all students and their whānau to set interested scholars the challenge of reading a set of recommended texts over the summer. I explained what Scholarship was and called the reading challenge the ‘Scholarship Summer Challenge’ - students read the texts and then email me the answers to four questions:
What did you enjoy about the text?
Which character did you find the most engaging and why?
What major themes and issues do you think the text dealt with?
What does the text teach us about what it means to be human?
So far, I have had twenty students from all year levels email me to take up the challenge and say that they will join the Scholarship programme next year. Some of the students who have expressed a keen interest have really surprised me, in the best way, and that again reinforces why I believe that the programme should be an option for all students.
Are you also in a small or relatively isolated school, and wondering how to get scholarship up and running? Lauren and/or I are happy to talk more about our journey and support you with yours. It would be wonderful to have more of our provincial and/or lower decile schools involved in the fun our students have had this year.
Friday, 29 November 2019
Monday, 25 November 2019
KPMG Day #4: presenting my learning journey
Below you can view and listen to my updated Principals Wananga presentation. Since I shared my slide show last month, I've now updated the presentation with the end of year PAT results, and recorded my text instead of just adding it on alternate slides.
An explanation of reading on, between and beyond the lines is at 0:55.
If you want to zoom straight to understanding how a Team Game Tournament works, go to 1:42.
For information on how we collaborated as a team of teachers, see 3:00.
For student voice, see 3:30.
For information on the 12 step programme, go to 5:20.
An explanation of reading on, between and beyond the lines is at 0:55.
If you want to zoom straight to understanding how a Team Game Tournament works, go to 1:42.
For information on how we collaborated as a team of teachers, see 3:00.
For student voice, see 3:30.
For information on the 12 step programme, go to 5:20.
Monday, 18 November 2019
Data update
56%!
That's how many of my students made accelerated progress in the last 12 months in reading!
I've been nervous throughout the year as to whether I was making enough difference. What if Manaiakalani made all this investment in me (time, travel, energy, the trip to Sydney) and I was just tinkering around the edges? I'd seen evidence of progress at key points in the year, but the mid year asttle data wasn't as promising as what I wanted to see, and norm-referenced tests are what cuts it most when you are sharing your project widely like this.
So I was really thrilled to see huge progress showing up in the PAT reading results this term. As a leader, I've also been involved in supporting initiatives across English classes, particularly year 10 English classes, and so I'm thrilled to announce that we made a big difference across our cohort: 57% made accelerated progress across the last 12 months. Interestingly, the summer break wasn't a summer drop for us. The results for value-added from the beginning to end of year 10 are 32% accelerated progress for my own class and 31% for the year 10 cohort. That is because a lot of students made improvements between October 2018 and February 2019. Let them rest and read?
Highlights:
- working collaboratively with my fellow MIT teachers, and Dorothy, Anne, Dave & Gerhard.
- working with my super English team at Grey High. Special thanks to Lauren Evans, assistant HoD, who has led the implementation of common assessment tasks in reading each term this year. We have seen huge gains through this.
- Seeing my reluctant readers flourish. One student, who I had to persuade to attempt the reading test each term (whether it was PAT, Asttle or one of our common assessment tasks that we made ourselves) as he was convinced that he was stupid and couldn't do it, has made 20 points of progress since the end of year 9, and 9.7 points of progress from the beginning to the end of this year. He read his first novel ever, and wrote about aspects of that novel for me in class.
- The young man who did increasingly well in the termly common assessments and shared his tips for approaching a text in a test with the class made 21.9 points of progress this year alone (24.6 in 12 months), getting every single question correct in his October 2019 PAT reading test.
- My student who arrived part way through the year, not keen to talk to anyone or to focus on learning. We slowly built up trust and started to talk to each other, then we worked on writing volume, after months of her not writing anything. In the asttle writing test, she wrote 198 words. I am so proud of her. Next stop is some serious NCEA progress.
- Two very quiet boys who grew in confidence to ask questions about their learning through the year, and responded well to our class use of Socrative for formative assessment. They both made accelerated progress.
Next steps:
- Some more work on resources for use with my 12 step programme on my tool.
- Sharing my inquiry more widely in our Toki Pounamu community. I've been asked to present to primary teachers at a teacher only day in late January 2020, which I'm happy to do.
- Linking my work with T shaped literacy. We all read Aaron and Selena's article on T shaped literacy earlier this term in the English department. We are up for working this in with our 2020 junior programme
- Further study! I've been granted a study support grant for 2020 which gives me four hours of release time per week to undertake some postgraduate study in literacy education. I'm looking at doing one (maybe two) paper(s) at the University of Auckland.
Our Grey High annual plan hui is tomorrow, and my work collating and interpreting our junior literacy data information is here, with my bulletpoints for the slide show below:
- Results are improved on 2018.
- Looking across two years is valuable, which fits with the year 10 graduate profile approach.
- Maori achievement close to, and sometimes exceeding, overall cohort in year 9.
- Writing continues to be a challenge for year 10 boys, and this impacts their access to the full range of subjects from year 12. (Target?)
- Group of struggling year 10 girls evident in the data.
- Has year 9 achievement been adversely affected by very high levels of staffing changes across the curriculum?
- Higher than usual numbers of students absent across three weeks of offering the tests. Impact of truancy/medical/other attendance issues on achievement?
Sunday, 27 October 2019
On the shoulders of giants
It's been an amazing week. On Thursday we presented our MIT journeys to over 100 principals at the Manaiakalani & Outreach principals' wananga. I was very very nervous in the lead up to the presentation, and spent hours timing and scripting my pecha kucha speech, only to decide the night before that I should speak without the script so I could connect better to the audience. I've included the original script for each slide after each visual in the slide show of my presentation below.
Being at the wananga was an incredible experience. I'd not had the pleasure of meeting or hearing Russell Burt or Pat Sneddon before, and I'm really glad I had that opportunity on Thursday. Both men talked about equity and what we are here for in really powerful terms. I would recommend every Manaiakalani & Outreach principal find a way to attend next year because it is inspirational in terms of remembering what we are about. Russell reminded us that we are whanau and we are about finding solutions and sharing them, not waiting for something from above. The Pt England students sang beautifully and I was touched by Russell's warmth with them. In New Zealand society, it takes a great deal of confidence to tell your students you love them, and Russell did that again and again.
There is still more for me to focus on to get the best out of my learning so far this year and build on it in 2020, including sharing the reading research form Woolf Fisher. But something more important happened this week.
On Tuesday 22 October, Maureen Melse died. Maureen was deputy principal at Grey High when we arrived on the Coast in 2006. She also taught in the English department and marked NCEA English exams each year. She was a very quiet person who remained calm in the craziest of situations. Maureen was wise, and helped me many many times. Maureen helped me with marking guidance, and with organising teaching programmes, and with handling difficult situations with other adults. Maureen always ensured that she had enough timetabling information in time for me to organise childcare when I was part time with small children. She was kind and calm and organised relief when we had devastating family news and she always found time for my questions.
On Friday afternoon, we gathered at the Anglican church in Greymouth to farewell Maureen. I was surrounded by people who have helped me develop as a teacher and as a leader at that funeral, as we all reflected on what Maureen meant to us.
As we learn in our classrooms and in our leadership practice, and work and challenge ourselves to pursue equity and excellence for our students, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Thank you, Manaiakalani Education Trust and thank you, Maureen Melse.
Being at the wananga was an incredible experience. I'd not had the pleasure of meeting or hearing Russell Burt or Pat Sneddon before, and I'm really glad I had that opportunity on Thursday. Both men talked about equity and what we are here for in really powerful terms. I would recommend every Manaiakalani & Outreach principal find a way to attend next year because it is inspirational in terms of remembering what we are about. Russell reminded us that we are whanau and we are about finding solutions and sharing them, not waiting for something from above. The Pt England students sang beautifully and I was touched by Russell's warmth with them. In New Zealand society, it takes a great deal of confidence to tell your students you love them, and Russell did that again and again.
There is still more for me to focus on to get the best out of my learning so far this year and build on it in 2020, including sharing the reading research form Woolf Fisher. But something more important happened this week.
On Tuesday 22 October, Maureen Melse died. Maureen was deputy principal at Grey High when we arrived on the Coast in 2006. She also taught in the English department and marked NCEA English exams each year. She was a very quiet person who remained calm in the craziest of situations. Maureen was wise, and helped me many many times. Maureen helped me with marking guidance, and with organising teaching programmes, and with handling difficult situations with other adults. Maureen always ensured that she had enough timetabling information in time for me to organise childcare when I was part time with small children. She was kind and calm and organised relief when we had devastating family news and she always found time for my questions.
On Friday afternoon, we gathered at the Anglican church in Greymouth to farewell Maureen. I was surrounded by people who have helped me develop as a teacher and as a leader at that funeral, as we all reflected on what Maureen meant to us.
As we learn in our classrooms and in our leadership practice, and work and challenge ourselves to pursue equity and excellence for our students, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Thank you, Manaiakalani Education Trust and thank you, Maureen Melse.
Tuesday, 8 October 2019
Purpose & audience
Lots of recording going on at my house this holidays. Tonight I completed a set of recordings detailing my process using Socrative to give lots of opportunities to respond in order to accelerate reading progress. I've made recordings to support student learning before, but never a series with as many aspects as this one.
I've created three different types of resource:
1. A slide show with no sound. Text heavy, with links to supporting resources. This was my first step after my notes pulling together the process that I've developed, trialled and refined this year. For me, a fast skimmer/scanner of written text who is impatient with sound recordings, it would have been easy to stop at this point.
2. A slide show which I used as the basis for my videos. This is much more visually oriented, but with links in it that I think the video watchers will want to access.
3. A set of eight recordings of my 12 step programme for accelerating reading through opportunities to respond & Socrative. There was a great deal of learning along the way.
The eight recordings are on my site - first time I've pressed publish on it. There is more to add to the site in terms of exemplars and resources, but the opportunities to respond process is the most important element.
I haven't yet worked out how I will set it up so that the three resources are available on my site and it is clear how they work together. If anyone reading has a chance to read and watch the resources I have made, I'd love some feedback. I need to identify where I've made assumptions rather than explained with useful detail.
I've created three different types of resource:
1. A slide show with no sound. Text heavy, with links to supporting resources. This was my first step after my notes pulling together the process that I've developed, trialled and refined this year. For me, a fast skimmer/scanner of written text who is impatient with sound recordings, it would have been easy to stop at this point.
2. A slide show which I used as the basis for my videos. This is much more visually oriented, but with links in it that I think the video watchers will want to access.
3. A set of eight recordings of my 12 step programme for accelerating reading through opportunities to respond & Socrative. There was a great deal of learning along the way.
The eight recordings are on my site - first time I've pressed publish on it. There is more to add to the site in terms of exemplars and resources, but the opportunities to respond process is the most important element.
I haven't yet worked out how I will set it up so that the three resources are available on my site and it is clear how they work together. If anyone reading has a chance to read and watch the resources I have made, I'd love some feedback. I need to identify where I've made assumptions rather than explained with useful detail.
Sunday, 29 September 2019
Successes & next steps
This year has been about stretching my practice in different ways, and sometimes that has involved me wondering how much I can stretch my sleep needs. But, quite a few things have come together recently and I thought I would grab a few minutes to share them here.
Te Ahu o Te Reo
The first has been Te Ahu o Te Reo. This has been a 13 week course delivered at our marae at Greymouth High School (Te Kura Tuarua o Māwhera) and I am really proud of finishing it, and growing in my confidence to use Te Reo in my classes and in my wider interactions as a teacher and person. I've also learned a lot more about local stories and loved spending time at the marae at Arahura.
Our reading goals as a department
When we were crunching data (I like that phrase, like I'm driving a bulldozer and I can hear the stats move underneath me) last week, we were really thrilled with the reading data. It certainly shows that what you focus on, you make a difference in. More on my role in that later, but for now, the news is good.
Team Game Tournament
This is being used beyond my classroom now. The key effect lies with opportunities to respond and a range of ways of looking at one (or multiple) texts. My tool will make that really clear.
Collaborating for success
Jo Newton (RTLB) and I worked together on building relationships and accelerating reading with 10QI this year, and last week we sat down and recorded our reflection on the gains we have made, particularly focusing on how our approach has been collaborative, student-centered and 'alongside' rather than hierarchical. You can listen to our discussion here and here. We want the practice of collaborating to be something everyone sees as valuable, not the idea that RTLB support is for 'weak' teachers. By recording our discussion, we want to be able to share that model more widely.
What's next?
My priority now is putting my work on using socrative and collaboration to accelerate reading achievement together online in a format which is user friendly for other teachers.
Then, my pecha kucha presentation to the principals. I want people to come away from that wananga with something that they can easily share with their English teachers that will make a difference to achievement.
Te Ahu o Te Reo
The first has been Te Ahu o Te Reo. This has been a 13 week course delivered at our marae at Greymouth High School (Te Kura Tuarua o Māwhera) and I am really proud of finishing it, and growing in my confidence to use Te Reo in my classes and in my wider interactions as a teacher and person. I've also learned a lot more about local stories and loved spending time at the marae at Arahura.
Our reading goals as a department
When we were crunching data (I like that phrase, like I'm driving a bulldozer and I can hear the stats move underneath me) last week, we were really thrilled with the reading data. It certainly shows that what you focus on, you make a difference in. More on my role in that later, but for now, the news is good.
Team Game Tournament
This is being used beyond my classroom now. The key effect lies with opportunities to respond and a range of ways of looking at one (or multiple) texts. My tool will make that really clear.
Collaborating for success
Jo Newton (RTLB) and I worked together on building relationships and accelerating reading with 10QI this year, and last week we sat down and recorded our reflection on the gains we have made, particularly focusing on how our approach has been collaborative, student-centered and 'alongside' rather than hierarchical. You can listen to our discussion here and here. We want the practice of collaborating to be something everyone sees as valuable, not the idea that RTLB support is for 'weak' teachers. By recording our discussion, we want to be able to share that model more widely.
What's next?
My priority now is putting my work on using socrative and collaboration to accelerate reading achievement together online in a format which is user friendly for other teachers.
Then, my pecha kucha presentation to the principals. I want people to come away from that wananga with something that they can easily share with their English teachers that will make a difference to achievement.
Sunday, 8 September 2019
From my head to my MIT tool
Getting the tool up and running involves me delineating the exact shape of my work, and that isn't happening rapidly. The image I sketched in July of how my tool could look is no longer what I want at all. This time I'm not just drawing squares in my book, but thinking about how another teacher is likely to access this tool and get the best use from it. Dorothy has encouraged me to create resources for visual learners, so I think an introduction for each section needs to be oral. So, screencastify -> youtube ->google site. I will have some classroom footage as well.
So I'm going to work with three categories as a serious draft:
Why reading?
What is on-between-beyond the lines and how does it link to student success?
How can we use Socrative to develop reading skills beyond surface features?
I've put wellbeing and cooperation to the side for now in terms of website design. I think these are super important parts of the equation, but I don't currently think that they are the aspects which would draw a teacher focusing on reading to dig into the site beyond the heading. I've been looking at the tools developed by MIT 2018 teachers. We discussed tools being either 'teacher facing' or 'student facing' at our last KPMG day, and that has been useful. I've identified that my tool is teacher facing. It's a support for teachers to dig deeper into reading comprehension with their students, with strategies showing them how to do this using Socrative, cooperation and competition. You could use it any level from about year 4 upwards, but I have focused my tool and resource development on years 9 & 10, which is an under-resourced area in New Zealand.
I have been trialing different aspects of reading and Socrative throughout the year. I expected to be launching straight into Team Game Tournament and doing that all year, but that turned out not to be the case at all. My learner feedback took me in different directions as I found that they struggled with groups outside of friendship clusters but they did respond really well to scaffolded and structured reading and writing activities. Over time, I came to the conclusion that there are other ways to use Socrative to deepen reading comprehension which are valuable, and that I could see a gap in the 'market' in that in the academic literature and on line resources I could find, Socrative was being used for surface level thinking, and that there wasn't much around on using it for reading activities. Thus, my tool will give examples which use New Zealand based resources, and it will give tips for teachers on how to make their own.
This afternoon I've drafted up a shape for the tool, and put together the why. The resources I have created, trialled and refined during 2019 will be uploaded under the what and the how sections in the near future.
I've spent a while going back to make clear the why as before I put together the resources for the what and how. This felt really important to me, so that I was anchored in my purpose for this project. I played Simon Sinek's fabulous presentation on the importance of why for my Level Two class last week as part of our preparation for our speeches. I think his work is relevant for every time we want to sell something, whether in the classroom or online or on a shop floor.
Starting with the why of adult literacy is super important, and comes from a session I ran as Literacy Leader at Greymouth High School a few years ago when we looked at the Survey of Adult Skills report for New Zealand, and considered how well equipped our students were for handling the depth and range of text in unfamiliar websites, and what that means for the extent they can participate in new experiences, whether in the workplace or in political life, or as volunteers or as members of families with complex legal or medical needs. It took us away from thinking about how to 'get students through' the next assessment and into the serious need for life skills that are independent and flexible.
The Literacy Learning Progressions and the New Zealand Curriculum English are Learning Objectives also flag clearly a need for a repertoire of reading strategies and confident, independent and flexible use of those strategies. In my next post, I will discuss how these strategies link to the on-between-beyond the lines reading comprehension model and some 2019 resources I have developed to support this.
(There is more why, linked to learn-create-share, but I have to put this aside and do some senior exam marking so that my wonderful students can indeed make more progress on their Level Seven reading skills)
Thursday, 5 September 2019
Progress check: it's about deep learning
How did that happen? Blogging was working as a great way for me to track my progress with my project on accelerating reading. But suddenly I blinked and it is almost eight weeks since I have actually posted (those drafts which were interrupted don't count!).
In August, the MIT team met at KPMG to share our progress so far. It was a rich experience in terms of learning so much about our own work as we listened and gave feedback to our peers. I already feel a bit sad that we don't have many more times together as a team.
I talked to these notes about where I was up to at that point. I came away clear that getting more mileage in with my own classes and with other classes at my school is my next priority.
Next stop on the sharing back front was a Term 3 toolkit. This went so much better than the first one. I was shaking with nerves on the Term Two toolkit because I was utterly unused to presenting to people where I could not see their faces. But after I presented my Term Two toolkit, I attended Dorothy Burt's toolkit, and got some tips on presenting from here. For my Term 3 toolkit, I took care to set up a patter with each attendee as they signed in, and that helped me sustain connections throughout the session. My focus for the Term 3 toolkit was on Team Game Tournaments, and I included some material on Socrative, as no one who attended my Term 2 toolkit was attending the Term 3 toolkit.
This morning, as my fabulous colleague Dan Hanson and I were planning for the Team Game Tournament we are running with both of our classes together next week, Dan shared that there was some discussion about Team Game Tournament at the South Island Sport in Education conference that he attended earlier in the year, and that the recommendation there was that it was best for Maths and Science and for surface knowledge. Dan has used it for punctuation practise with success. He and I both think it can be used for deeper level thinking, and that is part of our work next week with our classes.
My reading on the use of Socrative has indicated that it is most frequently being used in the tertiary sector and in STEM subjects. I haven't seen anything that has really laid out how it is being used to develop deeper level reading, and so that is where my project has evolved to - how can we use Socrative to develop our skills at reading on, between and beyond the lines? These are the skills needed for gaining Excellence in NCEA English, and thus for the year 10 class that I am focusing on, these are key skills that we are building our capacity with.
So far, the aspect of using Socrative that I think has prompted the deepest learning and engagement has been when we have written responses and then voted on the best response, based on a shared rubric, and analysed why that response is effective and what the next steps are.
My year 10 class are currently focused on dystopian novels, and everyone has selected their own novel to read, after we spent the first part of the term on Mark Smith's Road to Winter. I was so excited yesterday to see really high levels of engagement, and students confidently using their own blogs to share their books and to explore setting and describe the protagonist and the protagonist's challenge.
In week nine, we have our termly reading comprehension test, and I will be interested to see to what extent our reading progress in class is reflected in the results.
In August, the MIT team met at KPMG to share our progress so far. It was a rich experience in terms of learning so much about our own work as we listened and gave feedback to our peers. I already feel a bit sad that we don't have many more times together as a team.
I talked to these notes about where I was up to at that point. I came away clear that getting more mileage in with my own classes and with other classes at my school is my next priority.
Next stop on the sharing back front was a Term 3 toolkit. This went so much better than the first one. I was shaking with nerves on the Term Two toolkit because I was utterly unused to presenting to people where I could not see their faces. But after I presented my Term Two toolkit, I attended Dorothy Burt's toolkit, and got some tips on presenting from here. For my Term 3 toolkit, I took care to set up a patter with each attendee as they signed in, and that helped me sustain connections throughout the session. My focus for the Term 3 toolkit was on Team Game Tournaments, and I included some material on Socrative, as no one who attended my Term 2 toolkit was attending the Term 3 toolkit.
This morning, as my fabulous colleague Dan Hanson and I were planning for the Team Game Tournament we are running with both of our classes together next week, Dan shared that there was some discussion about Team Game Tournament at the South Island Sport in Education conference that he attended earlier in the year, and that the recommendation there was that it was best for Maths and Science and for surface knowledge. Dan has used it for punctuation practise with success. He and I both think it can be used for deeper level thinking, and that is part of our work next week with our classes.
My reading on the use of Socrative has indicated that it is most frequently being used in the tertiary sector and in STEM subjects. I haven't seen anything that has really laid out how it is being used to develop deeper level reading, and so that is where my project has evolved to - how can we use Socrative to develop our skills at reading on, between and beyond the lines? These are the skills needed for gaining Excellence in NCEA English, and thus for the year 10 class that I am focusing on, these are key skills that we are building our capacity with.
So far, the aspect of using Socrative that I think has prompted the deepest learning and engagement has been when we have written responses and then voted on the best response, based on a shared rubric, and analysed why that response is effective and what the next steps are.
My year 10 class are currently focused on dystopian novels, and everyone has selected their own novel to read, after we spent the first part of the term on Mark Smith's Road to Winter. I was so excited yesterday to see really high levels of engagement, and students confidently using their own blogs to share their books and to explore setting and describe the protagonist and the protagonist's challenge.
In week nine, we have our termly reading comprehension test, and I will be interested to see to what extent our reading progress in class is reflected in the results.
Monday, 15 July 2019
Putting the 'tool' together & reflecting on reading data so far
I've come back from the EdTech Summit energised about the next steps on my MIT project. Tonight I've been looking through the tools designed by MIT participants in previous years. Whereas earlier on, I'd been interested in what they had proposed, and understanding what each teacher was wanting to achieve, now I'm looking at how they have presented their tools, and what I can learn from the way they have each presented their thinking and the model of how teachers can use their tool. The most gorgeous, I think, is Heather Matthews' story of how to be a better self-manager, led by Nukutāwhiti. I love the idea of all the work being captured by a story.
Rebecca Spies starts her site on augmentation boards with the what, the why and the how as key headings to bring her audience into the project, and I like that. Hinerau Anderson has collected together all the tools for Visible Teaching & Learning into one place, with a description for each section, and I can see how this is really useful for someone coming into Learn-Create-Share for the first time.
I've got my scribbled document in my hand from the EdTech Summit where I started to think about how my site could look.
I go back to my MIT proposal moonshot template. Of the three approaches I proposed, I've focused in on the second:
Digitising the team game tournament process to support reading, using collaboration amongst students to lift achievement. (working with my students to build a collaborative culture which raises reading achievement)
The tool I proposed to digitise the team game tournament process is Socrative, and I've explored this for both reading and writing to develop student confidence to share and to give and receive feedback in class. I would like my tool to reflect the progress we have made in developing an effective sequence of activities in terms of writing as well as the collaboration for the reading acceleration aspect.
We ran an asttle reading test with our students at the end of Term Two. We've seen some good progress and useful next steps from our own common assessment tasks in Terms One and Two, but we ran asttle as well to give us a norm-referenced point of comparison and to give the students more familiarity with the multi-choice format which is used in the PAT reading test at the beginning and end of the year.
There are some really pleasing results, but not enough to start dancing on the roof with joy. Amongst other possibilities, I am going to ask my top male student (6B) to share how he approaches each question. This student has a fabulous combination of mathematical and creative skills, and I think there is a good chance he can break the process into steps which others can try for themselves. With his permission, we can record the discussion and make it rewindable.
Also for Term Three, I can see that I want a lot more exposure to new vocabulary, and to forming inferences within and beyond the texts.
Digitising the team game tournament process to support reading, using collaboration amongst students to lift achievement. (working with my students to build a collaborative culture which raises reading achievement)
The tool I proposed to digitise the team game tournament process is Socrative, and I've explored this for both reading and writing to develop student confidence to share and to give and receive feedback in class. I would like my tool to reflect the progress we have made in developing an effective sequence of activities in terms of writing as well as the collaboration for the reading acceleration aspect.
We ran an asttle reading test with our students at the end of Term Two. We've seen some good progress and useful next steps from our own common assessment tasks in Terms One and Two, but we ran asttle as well to give us a norm-referenced point of comparison and to give the students more familiarity with the multi-choice format which is used in the PAT reading test at the beginning and end of the year.
There are some really pleasing results, but not enough to start dancing on the roof with joy. Amongst other possibilities, I am going to ask my top male student (6B) to share how he approaches each question. This student has a fabulous combination of mathematical and creative skills, and I think there is a good chance he can break the process into steps which others can try for themselves. With his permission, we can record the discussion and make it rewindable.
Also for Term Three, I can see that I want a lot more exposure to new vocabulary, and to forming inferences within and beyond the texts.
Wednesday, 10 July 2019
Sydney Edtech Summit Day Two
Day Two of the Edtech Summit was great. We started with an inspirational talk from Kim Pollishuke about believing in the possibilities of the impossible. One example which appealed to me was Carly and Charley's odd sock project, where two ten year old girls took their own distinctive style and turned it into a fun, ethical and successful business.
I went to a session by Dan Jackson on Flipping with Edpuzzle, and another by Kim Pollishuke on Flipgrid. Both offered me some new tools and helped me in my thinking about my Term Three project with 10QI.
Then it was time for me to present. Despite all those nerves as I juggled the busy-ness of Term Two school life, I had a great time with a fabulous group of teachers from (mostly New South Wales) as we all explored the possibilities of Socrative. I focused on sharing how it can work as a teaching sequence in the classroom, including how we can use it to gauge well-being and strategies to lift confidence on feedback. I'm pleased about this part for me personally as it reflects a big focus for me in my inquiry this year.
I've got my feedback on the session and have thought about the tweaks I would make if I was doing it again. I would add some more information on Space Race and importing other people's quizzes in the notes section, and the part where I read everyone's answers out, I would just give a sample and then explain how I do this to build up student confidence in the classroom. I'm realising just now that I didn't put a link to my blog on my presentation, and that if I was fully thinking about giving people a way to link to my teaching and reflection work beyond the presentation, that is what I would have done. I don't think I had that kind of confidence before the session!
After that, one more ignite presentation, some prize draws and then we were done! Twelve fabulous people who had been supporting each other, learning and laughing over the time of the conference, ready to hit Sydney City. And what a beautiful city! Joanne and I walked around the waterfront, checked out a late-opening art gallery, admired the sculptures and then met the rest of our MIT group for dinner.
I've got a sketch of what my tool will look like in terms of making a site to share the process with interested people, and a list of the next jobs on this for Term Three. The time at the Summit really helped with developing that.
My huge thanks to Dorothy, Anne and Jenny at Maniakalani for giving me this opportunity, to Gerhard and Dave for supporting us on tour and to my MIT colleagues who have made this a really special few days.
Now, it's some more Sandra-the-tourist time!
I went to a session by Dan Jackson on Flipping with Edpuzzle, and another by Kim Pollishuke on Flipgrid. Both offered me some new tools and helped me in my thinking about my Term Three project with 10QI.
Then it was time for me to present. Despite all those nerves as I juggled the busy-ness of Term Two school life, I had a great time with a fabulous group of teachers from (mostly New South Wales) as we all explored the possibilities of Socrative. I focused on sharing how it can work as a teaching sequence in the classroom, including how we can use it to gauge well-being and strategies to lift confidence on feedback. I'm pleased about this part for me personally as it reflects a big focus for me in my inquiry this year.
I've got my feedback on the session and have thought about the tweaks I would make if I was doing it again. I would add some more information on Space Race and importing other people's quizzes in the notes section, and the part where I read everyone's answers out, I would just give a sample and then explain how I do this to build up student confidence in the classroom. I'm realising just now that I didn't put a link to my blog on my presentation, and that if I was fully thinking about giving people a way to link to my teaching and reflection work beyond the presentation, that is what I would have done. I don't think I had that kind of confidence before the session!
After that, one more ignite presentation, some prize draws and then we were done! Twelve fabulous people who had been supporting each other, learning and laughing over the time of the conference, ready to hit Sydney City. And what a beautiful city! Joanne and I walked around the waterfront, checked out a late-opening art gallery, admired the sculptures and then met the rest of our MIT group for dinner.
I've got a sketch of what my tool will look like in terms of making a site to share the process with interested people, and a list of the next jobs on this for Term Three. The time at the Summit really helped with developing that.
My huge thanks to Dorothy, Anne and Jenny at Maniakalani for giving me this opportunity, to Gerhard and Dave for supporting us on tour and to my MIT colleagues who have made this a really special few days.
Now, it's some more Sandra-the-tourist time!
Tuesday, 9 July 2019
Sydney Edtech Summit Day One
So much to think about!
First time in Sydney for me. I'm feeling very grateful for the opportunities the Maniakalani Innovative Teachers programme has given me. The last time I was at a similar conference (GAFE, early 2015), I was at the beginning of my learn-create-share journey. That 2015 conference was really inspiring and I took back some tools to my classroom and carried on learning.
This time round, I am presenting, and I'm part of a fabulous team of ten Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers and two Manaiakalani facilitators. We have had a lot of fun together and lots of thoughtful conversations about our classroom practice and what we value about our developing learn-create-share pedagogies.
On the first day, I've learned to create a pivot table with Santi Vega. My next google sheets project is going to be how to make a box and whiskers graph.
I've had a play with squibler, particularly the dangerous writing prompts. Fiona Thomas had an inspirational suite of tools on offer for us to play with. I'm already a fan of one her key tools - ReadWrite, but I hadn't known about the dangerous writing prompts before.
If you stop writing, you fail. It helps you keep on writing, no matter how challenging. No space for anguishing over an empty page/screen. It's possible but not simple to save and share what you have made. Fiona was clear that this doesn't always matter, given that I was thinking (obsessed with?!) about formative assessment and feedback. I am going to have a play with my students next term, and get them to decide what it will be most useful for. It definitely has good potential for starters at the beginning of a lesson.
In the afternoon I supported Amber Wing, who shared a range of digital creativity tools, and gave us all lots of space to create something for our own classrooms. I learned to make sure I have a bit.ly link for my presentation for Tuesday, so that participants can access my resource on laptops as well as via the phone app. I got to spend some time with the participants in Amber's session, and loved seeing people learning how to put a sequence of tools together to make an effective sequence of learning in their classrooms.
First time in Sydney for me. I'm feeling very grateful for the opportunities the Maniakalani Innovative Teachers programme has given me. The last time I was at a similar conference (GAFE, early 2015), I was at the beginning of my learn-create-share journey. That 2015 conference was really inspiring and I took back some tools to my classroom and carried on learning.
This time round, I am presenting, and I'm part of a fabulous team of ten Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers and two Manaiakalani facilitators. We have had a lot of fun together and lots of thoughtful conversations about our classroom practice and what we value about our developing learn-create-share pedagogies.
On the first day, I've learned to create a pivot table with Santi Vega. My next google sheets project is going to be how to make a box and whiskers graph.
I've had a play with squibler, particularly the dangerous writing prompts. Fiona Thomas had an inspirational suite of tools on offer for us to play with. I'm already a fan of one her key tools - ReadWrite, but I hadn't known about the dangerous writing prompts before.
In the afternoon I supported Amber Wing, who shared a range of digital creativity tools, and gave us all lots of space to create something for our own classrooms. I learned to make sure I have a bit.ly link for my presentation for Tuesday, so that participants can access my resource on laptops as well as via the phone app. I got to spend some time with the participants in Amber's session, and loved seeing people learning how to put a sequence of tools together to make an effective sequence of learning in their classrooms.
Thursday, 30 May 2019
Stealth reading
When I call an activity "reading," it's not proving to be the best sales pitch for my students. But when I feed some reading activities in that have film study as the big context, and involve learning through moving pieces of paper around to make sense of some exemplar texts, then my covert sales pitch works better.
In 10QI, my focus class for my 2019 inquiry and MIT project, we have been looking at a range of film techniques and building our skills in writing SEXY paragraphs showing our understanding of how meaning is made in a visual text.
I've been experimenting with different ways of students acquiring the skills to discuss film techniques. Earlier this month, I set up the class with resources for students to read and make their own notes on a range of film techniques. The class looked very "compliant" - they were reading the documents, everyone was quiet and no one complained. But when I looked again at their work afterwards, I could see that many students had stopped at the reading activities, a few had made notes which were in phrase form rather than sentences which could help another person learn and no one had gotten all the way through to explaining how the technique developed meaning in the trailer for Akeelah and the Bee.
We then spent some time practising identifying film techniques, describing how they were used and explaining what we learnt from them, using the opening scene from Akeelah and the Bee (which we have already watched in its entirety - great film). This section was strongly teacher-led, so that no one was left behind on identifying two visual and two verbal techniques and understanding how they were used and with what effect.
Several students identified that when we went slowly, looking at one technique at a time, as a whole class, with everyone drawing visual techniques and writing to describe verbal techniques, they felt much more confident about their learning. In a parent-student meeting later that day, one student identified that when she could just see one task at a time, it worked really well for her, such as our one that day. Conversely, when the whole lesson/series of tasks was laid out at once, she felt overwhelmed and, often worried that she would appear stupid, she sometimes opted out of attempting the learning. It was a helpful insight that has guided my planning since.
I wrote two sample paragraphs so that my students could see what I was looking for. This is important preparation for two NCEA English assessments for these students next year and, of course, for having the tools to analyse how we are positioned by visual media texts in our leisure time and on social media. I broke my paragraphs into separate sentences, and then printed each one on a different coloured piece of paper and cut the sentences up. As we started the lesson, each group was engaged in organising their sentences into logical order and there was a satisfying level of conversation about the choices in each group. My paragraphs (as originally constituted) are below:
Now that we have put these together and discussed the use of the SEXY paragraph structure (Statement-Explanation-eXample-whY it is important) for writing an effective paragraph, we are each writing our own paragraphs. This time there is a lot of scaffolding, but later in this film study, students will be ready to write more independently.
I like that the examples have helped students see what is possible in a really concrete form. One previously frustrated student who had been thinking it was silly to be doing this much analysis of a film can now recognise the process and skills involved.
In the next 1-2 lessons, each student will write their own SEXY paragraph showing their understanding of how the director uses visual and verbal techniques to help us understand the Akeelah's world. I am going to bring Socrative in to this process, getting all students to submit their answers on Socrative, and then using their voting function to get students to decide which is the best paragraph and why.
There is a lot of detail in this blog post. My purpose in linking to the actual exemplars and describing the process in quite a bit of detail is to make the resources as well as the thinking available to others.
In 10QI, my focus class for my 2019 inquiry and MIT project, we have been looking at a range of film techniques and building our skills in writing SEXY paragraphs showing our understanding of how meaning is made in a visual text.
I've been experimenting with different ways of students acquiring the skills to discuss film techniques. Earlier this month, I set up the class with resources for students to read and make their own notes on a range of film techniques. The class looked very "compliant" - they were reading the documents, everyone was quiet and no one complained. But when I looked again at their work afterwards, I could see that many students had stopped at the reading activities, a few had made notes which were in phrase form rather than sentences which could help another person learn and no one had gotten all the way through to explaining how the technique developed meaning in the trailer for Akeelah and the Bee.
We then spent some time practising identifying film techniques, describing how they were used and explaining what we learnt from them, using the opening scene from Akeelah and the Bee (which we have already watched in its entirety - great film). This section was strongly teacher-led, so that no one was left behind on identifying two visual and two verbal techniques and understanding how they were used and with what effect.
Several students identified that when we went slowly, looking at one technique at a time, as a whole class, with everyone drawing visual techniques and writing to describe verbal techniques, they felt much more confident about their learning. In a parent-student meeting later that day, one student identified that when she could just see one task at a time, it worked really well for her, such as our one that day. Conversely, when the whole lesson/series of tasks was laid out at once, she felt overwhelmed and, often worried that she would appear stupid, she sometimes opted out of attempting the learning. It was a helpful insight that has guided my planning since.
I wrote two sample paragraphs so that my students could see what I was looking for. This is important preparation for two NCEA English assessments for these students next year and, of course, for having the tools to analyse how we are positioned by visual media texts in our leisure time and on social media. I broke my paragraphs into separate sentences, and then printed each one on a different coloured piece of paper and cut the sentences up. As we started the lesson, each group was engaged in organising their sentences into logical order and there was a satisfying level of conversation about the choices in each group. My paragraphs (as originally constituted) are below:
I like that the examples have helped students see what is possible in a really concrete form. One previously frustrated student who had been thinking it was silly to be doing this much analysis of a film can now recognise the process and skills involved.
In the next 1-2 lessons, each student will write their own SEXY paragraph showing their understanding of how the director uses visual and verbal techniques to help us understand the Akeelah's world. I am going to bring Socrative in to this process, getting all students to submit their answers on Socrative, and then using their voting function to get students to decide which is the best paragraph and why.
There is a lot of detail in this blog post. My purpose in linking to the actual exemplars and describing the process in quite a bit of detail is to make the resources as well as the thinking available to others.
Monday, 20 May 2019
KPMG Day #2 What difference does a day make?
Sunday night/Monday morning: the South Island MIT contingent meet up in our motel, walk to breakfast, share notes, wonder if we are going to be ready or sufficiently progressed for Dorothy and Anne.
8.30-midday - we are all together and sharing what is working, what we are struggling with. We play the Inquiry game called Catalyst and keep on digging into our project and challenging our own assumptions and each other's.
By the time we stop for a delicious lunch soon after midday, I know that we can all do this. The digging deep approach reveals those things we had not yet thought of, or fully exposed, or developed an action plan for. But it doesn't reveal weakness. It reveals strength and courage, because we don't shy from these revelations, we take them seriously and use them to improve our thinking and our tool project. We get so many ideas from each other, noting down thoughts and reconceptualising our next steps and challenges. We relish this and I see people strengthened by the process, including feeling it myself.
After lunch we are all about the Edtech conference at Sydney. One thing I was curious about was the 'why' for this conference. Dorothy talked about Manaiakalani's goal of growing us (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) as leaders, and building our confidence to address large groups. We will address a large group of principals at the end of the year when we present on our tool to raise achievement. In the interim, we have the opportunity and encouragement to present online toolkits, both in Term Two before Sydney and in Term Three on our progress on our tool development.
For me, the prospect of presenting at Edtech in Sydney is a little daunting, but the prospect of using my passport for the first time this century, and meeting my daughter afterwards in Melbourne for her first ever use of her brand new passport, outweighs any nerves. We all know that teaching involves huge hours, and that family life can suffer, and the opportunity to link my new adventure with MIT to a new adventure for my daughter who is often sick of me being at work for too long (gosh teachers at your school have to go to a LOT of meetings, Mum!) is awesome.
8.30-midday - we are all together and sharing what is working, what we are struggling with. We play the Inquiry game called Catalyst and keep on digging into our project and challenging our own assumptions and each other's.
By the time we stop for a delicious lunch soon after midday, I know that we can all do this. The digging deep approach reveals those things we had not yet thought of, or fully exposed, or developed an action plan for. But it doesn't reveal weakness. It reveals strength and courage, because we don't shy from these revelations, we take them seriously and use them to improve our thinking and our tool project. We get so many ideas from each other, noting down thoughts and reconceptualising our next steps and challenges. We relish this and I see people strengthened by the process, including feeling it myself.
After lunch we are all about the Edtech conference at Sydney. One thing I was curious about was the 'why' for this conference. Dorothy talked about Manaiakalani's goal of growing us (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) as leaders, and building our confidence to address large groups. We will address a large group of principals at the end of the year when we present on our tool to raise achievement. In the interim, we have the opportunity and encouragement to present online toolkits, both in Term Two before Sydney and in Term Three on our progress on our tool development.
For me, the prospect of presenting at Edtech in Sydney is a little daunting, but the prospect of using my passport for the first time this century, and meeting my daughter afterwards in Melbourne for her first ever use of her brand new passport, outweighs any nerves. We all know that teaching involves huge hours, and that family life can suffer, and the opportunity to link my new adventure with MIT to a new adventure for my daughter who is often sick of me being at work for too long (gosh teachers at your school have to go to a LOT of meetings, Mum!) is awesome.
Saturday, 18 May 2019
Collaboration: first lessons
This week Dan and I trialled our first collaborative teaching lesson. The idea had come from some of our students who wanted to combine the classes. Dan and I decided that we would run a series of weekly combined skills sessions, as we only have one hour per week where our year 10 teaching slots align.
We wanted to support students to read a range of unfamiliar texts (poetry, prose & non-fiction) and show their understanding of the ideas in each text and how they are developed. Secondary English teachers will be familiar with the dearth of publicly available resources targeted at level five of the New Zealand Curriculum. A few ARBs (Assessment Resource Bank) and that is it. Primary schools have the School Journals, and senior secondary schools are well resourced with NCEA activities.
Dan has the Sport in Education class and has done a great job of orienting texts and topics for study towards the sports interests of his students. When you look at the non-fiction resource Dan has created, you can see how he has used SOLO thinking to explicitly scaffold students into higher order thinking. We did a lot of work on SOLO a few years ago in the English Department at Grey High, and while we still value it hugely, it hasn't had the same centre-stage focus as new initiatives and their accompanying vocabulary have come through, such as Learn-Create-Share and UDL (Universal Design for Learning).
I made a poetry resource. The idea is that all students will develop their skills across poetry, prose and non-fiction, but they will be able to exercise choice about the order and the texts they use to develop their skills.
Our chosen shared platform for delivering the content to our students was workspace, part of the Hapara suite of tools for online classrooms. Whereas I find blogging to be the most useful access (live and rewindable) point for my classes, Dan has honed his skills with Workspace and uses it effectively for all of his classes. BUT...... Thursday was router change day for Grey High, with no internet for a chunk of the day, and unreliable access for other parts. The photocopiers were running red hot across the school!!!!
We had a quick starter in my class with both groups together and then students could choose which task they wanted to do. Poetry students stayed with me and non-fiction students went with Dan to room 15. Some students wanted to stay as close as possible to their safe and familiar classroom, and expressed reservations, while others jumped with both feet and set up mixed groups for their learning. My favourite new learning for the day was going through the poem (Mother to Son by Langston Hughes) with a young man who I'd only ever known in a duty discipline context before and discussing stairs and skateboarding. I will look at all stairs a little differently after that thoughtful conversation.
It was the first paper session in a long time, and what frustrated me is that out of the session, I have no evidence of who completed what and with what level of understanding. On chromebooks, whether we used forms, workspace, smartsharing into google folders, Socrative, Padlet or Kahoots, I would have information which I could use for identifying next steps in our class learning.
The class was loud! But it was a cheerful learning noise and it was a start.
We collected some feedback at the end, using a method Jo Newton had used with my class a few weeks ago, that gave students a low stakes opportunity to identify which aspects of the lesson they had enjoyed and would do again (see image above).
Dan and I reflected afterwards that we had made a good start, and are now ready to make some modifications. Our first activity was in substitution mode (using the parlance of the SAMR model). We gave students enhanced levels of choice, and gave them more scope to tap into the social nature of learning, but our learning activities were the same as if we had been running separate activities. Before next Thursday, we are going to research and come up with a starter which has students moving and mingling, and then think about how we can take advantage of having two teachers across a larger group (c.48 students) to give the students different opportunities to learn, to create and then to share their learning.
I would like to do some Socrative work across the larger group, and then run some team game tournaments. Then we could get some blogging going, sharing our progress on digging deeper into texts and developing confidence with showing understanding in extended paragraphs.
Dan's class have explored using movement in their learning, and I'm keen to learn from both Dan and his class to get some ideas to literally spread our wings.
If you are reading this and are at another Manaiakalani Outreach cluster secondary school, please get in touch. The primary schools have done a lot of successful work with Tuhi mai tuhi atu, but we have yet to make connections across schools in our junior secondary learning environments, and I'd like us to build some more bridges for ourselves and for our students.
We wanted to support students to read a range of unfamiliar texts (poetry, prose & non-fiction) and show their understanding of the ideas in each text and how they are developed. Secondary English teachers will be familiar with the dearth of publicly available resources targeted at level five of the New Zealand Curriculum. A few ARBs (Assessment Resource Bank) and that is it. Primary schools have the School Journals, and senior secondary schools are well resourced with NCEA activities.
Dan has the Sport in Education class and has done a great job of orienting texts and topics for study towards the sports interests of his students. When you look at the non-fiction resource Dan has created, you can see how he has used SOLO thinking to explicitly scaffold students into higher order thinking. We did a lot of work on SOLO a few years ago in the English Department at Grey High, and while we still value it hugely, it hasn't had the same centre-stage focus as new initiatives and their accompanying vocabulary have come through, such as Learn-Create-Share and UDL (Universal Design for Learning).
I made a poetry resource. The idea is that all students will develop their skills across poetry, prose and non-fiction, but they will be able to exercise choice about the order and the texts they use to develop their skills.
Our chosen shared platform for delivering the content to our students was workspace, part of the Hapara suite of tools for online classrooms. Whereas I find blogging to be the most useful access (live and rewindable) point for my classes, Dan has honed his skills with Workspace and uses it effectively for all of his classes. BUT...... Thursday was router change day for Grey High, with no internet for a chunk of the day, and unreliable access for other parts. The photocopiers were running red hot across the school!!!!
We had a quick starter in my class with both groups together and then students could choose which task they wanted to do. Poetry students stayed with me and non-fiction students went with Dan to room 15. Some students wanted to stay as close as possible to their safe and familiar classroom, and expressed reservations, while others jumped with both feet and set up mixed groups for their learning. My favourite new learning for the day was going through the poem (Mother to Son by Langston Hughes) with a young man who I'd only ever known in a duty discipline context before and discussing stairs and skateboarding. I will look at all stairs a little differently after that thoughtful conversation.
It was the first paper session in a long time, and what frustrated me is that out of the session, I have no evidence of who completed what and with what level of understanding. On chromebooks, whether we used forms, workspace, smartsharing into google folders, Socrative, Padlet or Kahoots, I would have information which I could use for identifying next steps in our class learning.
The class was loud! But it was a cheerful learning noise and it was a start.
Dan and I reflected afterwards that we had made a good start, and are now ready to make some modifications. Our first activity was in substitution mode (using the parlance of the SAMR model). We gave students enhanced levels of choice, and gave them more scope to tap into the social nature of learning, but our learning activities were the same as if we had been running separate activities. Before next Thursday, we are going to research and come up with a starter which has students moving and mingling, and then think about how we can take advantage of having two teachers across a larger group (c.48 students) to give the students different opportunities to learn, to create and then to share their learning.
I would like to do some Socrative work across the larger group, and then run some team game tournaments. Then we could get some blogging going, sharing our progress on digging deeper into texts and developing confidence with showing understanding in extended paragraphs.
Dan's class have explored using movement in their learning, and I'm keen to learn from both Dan and his class to get some ideas to literally spread our wings.
If you are reading this and are at another Manaiakalani Outreach cluster secondary school, please get in touch. The primary schools have done a lot of successful work with Tuhi mai tuhi atu, but we have yet to make connections across schools in our junior secondary learning environments, and I'd like us to build some more bridges for ourselves and for our students.
Thursday, 16 May 2019
It takes a village
Inquiry season is all go at Grey High this term. We have a professional development programme of late starts every Tuesday morning for students so that teachers can attend professional development sessions. The PLD committee work on aligning our annual plan with inquiry and teacher needs and then creating sessions and time for us all to extend our practice. We work on incorporating teacher feedback as much as possible so that we are offering sessions which are what teachers are looking for in order to pursue successful spiral of inquiry work and be more effective in the classroom.
For my year 10 class, we have had two meetings this term where all the teachers of 10QI have met and shared our observations on the strengths and challenges in the class. Like the other groups meeting to share their scanning so far, we used the Seven Principles of Learning as our lens. From our work with the class, we knew that we needed to zoom into the 'Social Nature of Learning' and 'Emotions are Integral to Learning.' After the first staff late start session, Jason (PB4L & Wellbeing specialist in our school) ran a workshop with 10QI in my lesson time where he collected a range of student perspectives to help inform our next steps on what the students wanted from their school programme. We met again and discussed next steps across our classes and people chipped in to support each other with offers of watching lessons and sharing resources.
Tomorrow we start some more activities where Jason leads a session on wellbeing with the class, sessions that teachers of 10QI, including myself, will carry on with and develop further.
I'm learning and experimenting all the time with this class. It's not the classes which run smoothly which teach us the most, but those which surprise us, where the road is rockier and relationships and learning journeys require more preparation and re-evaluation. Lots and lots of students in this class don't like reading, which is quite challenging when my big project for the year is about raising reading achievement.
Last term we focused on a study of the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and during that time I had lots of requests for a film study. This term we have started with the film Akeelah and the Bee. Lots of interesting material on going outside of our comfort zones and of resilience and determination in both texts, and we have been drawing those elements out.
I've been including some stealth reading activities amongst the film study, and I saw some good work on paraphrasing yesterday. We have done some work on how to write a clear definition for a film technique, one which the reader can learn from. If we can keep up the shift from jotting down key words to writing clear descriptions and explanations in complete sentences, we will have the necessary skills in place for tackling unfamiliar texts in year 11.
Our weekly focus on skills has been supported by Jo Newton, our RTLB who is running a sequence of lessons with a small group from 10QI to build up their reading and writing skills, with the idea of sharing what they learn in this sequence with other teachers and supporting transference across classes. Jo has been using a School Journal on Bruce MacLaren which has been going really well.
I have been developing resources to extend students while Jo is working with the smaller group, and familiarising students with Socrative at the same time. I developed a comprehension resource on Maya Angelou's 'Still I Rise' (This link will work if you have a Socrative teacher account) which enabled me to collect information via the Socrative report function, showing me how students got on with the multichoice at a glance, and to read their paragraph responses. At a glance I could see that I hadn't taught the terms "stanza" or "verse", which is easily fixed. The paragraph work was slower reading for identifying next steps, but it is still really useful for zooming in on a few students per lesson and identifying with them how they can use the SEXY (Statement-Explanation-eXample-whY it is important) paragraph formula to show their extended thinking.
Next up: round one of our experiment with cross-class collaboration.
For my year 10 class, we have had two meetings this term where all the teachers of 10QI have met and shared our observations on the strengths and challenges in the class. Like the other groups meeting to share their scanning so far, we used the Seven Principles of Learning as our lens. From our work with the class, we knew that we needed to zoom into the 'Social Nature of Learning' and 'Emotions are Integral to Learning.' After the first staff late start session, Jason (PB4L & Wellbeing specialist in our school) ran a workshop with 10QI in my lesson time where he collected a range of student perspectives to help inform our next steps on what the students wanted from their school programme. We met again and discussed next steps across our classes and people chipped in to support each other with offers of watching lessons and sharing resources.
Tomorrow we start some more activities where Jason leads a session on wellbeing with the class, sessions that teachers of 10QI, including myself, will carry on with and develop further.
I'm learning and experimenting all the time with this class. It's not the classes which run smoothly which teach us the most, but those which surprise us, where the road is rockier and relationships and learning journeys require more preparation and re-evaluation. Lots and lots of students in this class don't like reading, which is quite challenging when my big project for the year is about raising reading achievement.
Last term we focused on a study of the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and during that time I had lots of requests for a film study. This term we have started with the film Akeelah and the Bee. Lots of interesting material on going outside of our comfort zones and of resilience and determination in both texts, and we have been drawing those elements out.
I've been including some stealth reading activities amongst the film study, and I saw some good work on paraphrasing yesterday. We have done some work on how to write a clear definition for a film technique, one which the reader can learn from. If we can keep up the shift from jotting down key words to writing clear descriptions and explanations in complete sentences, we will have the necessary skills in place for tackling unfamiliar texts in year 11.
Our weekly focus on skills has been supported by Jo Newton, our RTLB who is running a sequence of lessons with a small group from 10QI to build up their reading and writing skills, with the idea of sharing what they learn in this sequence with other teachers and supporting transference across classes. Jo has been using a School Journal on Bruce MacLaren which has been going really well.
I have been developing resources to extend students while Jo is working with the smaller group, and familiarising students with Socrative at the same time. I developed a comprehension resource on Maya Angelou's 'Still I Rise' (This link will work if you have a Socrative teacher account) which enabled me to collect information via the Socrative report function, showing me how students got on with the multichoice at a glance, and to read their paragraph responses. At a glance I could see that I hadn't taught the terms "stanza" or "verse", which is easily fixed. The paragraph work was slower reading for identifying next steps, but it is still really useful for zooming in on a few students per lesson and identifying with them how they can use the SEXY (Statement-Explanation-eXample-whY it is important) paragraph formula to show their extended thinking.
Next up: round one of our experiment with cross-class collaboration.
Tuesday, 2 April 2019
KPMG day#1
Three weeks after our fabulous Coromandel hui, we all came together at the KPMG offices on the Auckland waterfront. No bells, no late notes, no uniform passes. All those times we talked in the staff room or on bedraggled corridors about how much better meetings would go if they were not on site - all TRUE!
As we worked on our prototypes in groups of three, I came to see that my innovation tool had to be a process, not just the cooperative task at the end. Otherwise, if I only developed, modelled and shared the end product section, other people might try it once and give up, thinking it just isn't suitable for their students.
My focus on process, starting with the skills of working in groups, works really well with our thinking at Grey High that student wellbeing is a critical pre-condition for engagement and achievement, and thus that our inquiries in 2019 all need to link to wellbeing. It also links to my work on the social nature of learning in 2018.
Then we use some storytelling tools. The things that I loved about Liz Swanson's storytelling workshop was the focus on deepening. We learned to get the students to make story maps (sketching out the plot in a series of quick pictures), to 'step out' the story by identifying key elements to the plot and expressing them in a step, a word/phrase and an action, and by using interviewing to pull out more information from a key character. All of these activities require students to summarise, to prioritise and to identify and name key changes in mood in a story. As the teacher goes around groups as they prepare, they can support the students with these skills in readiness for sharing back with the whole class.
Then we work on reading comprehension and paragraph writing skills. I've been trying to put multi-choice questions into the mix as much as possible so that students improve their skills at this type of assessment. We know from student voice that if the first question on the PAT test is difficult (it certainly is in the year 10 test we typically use beginning and end of year), then some students will guess that answer and then go down guessing everything. I'd like to change that approach!
Finally, we have the team game tournament, a tool in use in education for many years for which I am exploring benefits of digitising the process. This is where the students work in groups to learn the material with practice questions, and then do the test under test conditions to earn points for their team. Within each team, students rank themselves in terms of their skills at the skill to be assessed, in case reading. The 'ones' have the strongest skills. In a class of 20, you could have four teams with five students in each.
As you can see in the points table above, each person in a team competes against the other class members with the same rank. So the winning person in each rank gets the most points, in a descending scale. At the end of the process, there is a winning team, and the best way to win a tournament is to work closely as a group to make sure that everyone understands the material that is being assessed. Also at the end of the process, each student has information on what they are doing well at and what they could improve on in terms of formative assessment. The teacher has the information for each student as well as for groups and the class as a whole. The raw data above has always been available via a paper and whiteboard (or blackboard, if you were using this tool long long ago), but I can see benefits for digitising the process in terms of breakdowns of which questions students achieved well on and where there are gaps. I've trialled using google forms, with some success. My next step is to use Socrative.
My focus is on my year 10 class, with some work with my Mawhera Services Academy class (mixed year group, but with a majority of year 11 students). As I create the contexts and tests, the other benefit I see is building up a bank of new resources focused on Level Five of the English curriculum. Primary schools are well served with School Journals, and NCEA is well served with tasks and exemplars. For years 9 & 10, outside of the relatively small number of resources in the Assessment Resource Bank, there is nothing provided that is focused on Level Five.
Thursday, 14 March 2019
The good news & the big challenge
Good news first:
Today I did the taster day training for the storytelling method. Liz Swanson blew me away. I loved her work on storytelling, I loved her work on pedagogy, on the steps for listen-speak-read-write, and the rich opportunities that the story telling approach offers.
Although the link to writing is often what prompts the storytelling approach, I am really interested in it because of the potential for viewing reading skills acquisition in new ways. I'm about to do a sales pitch within our school and our kahui ako for delving deeper into this approach.
As Liz spoke, she was working with oral stories, and I was thinking about when I read aloud a novel to my class, and what we could do with mapping, and using familiar text, and front loading vocabulary in new ways, and so on and so on. When I get students to turn a section of the novel into a cartoon, I start to go in the direction of her story mapping, but now I see how I can develop that into a much richer opportunity for learning.
Big challenge:
Earlier this week I put my students into groups, splitting up all the social groupings, ability groupings and asking them to work cooperatively to answer some reading comprehension questions.
Oh Sandra. So much to learn. Again.
My students basically went on strike in terms of the cooperative learning aspect. Their body language was shouting at me that I was asking way too much. So I scrambled through the lesson, gathering student voices while they protested, hugging their devices or question sheets close to their bodies and sitting as far away as possible from the peers I assigned them to work with as possible.
It was a revealing lesson, and I'm reminded again that the social nature of learning isn't like a worksheet or online game to roll out, it's careful and slow work with individuals and groups to build a collective learning culture which must start again every year, with each class.
So, next step are some collective activities to respond to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian where the students choose their own groups. One student suggested they could choose pairs and then I could put pairs together into a four, so people had support as they went outside their comfort zone. Great suggestion, which I will try out soon.
I really want to try out the storytelling method mapping activity for when Junior has his first week at Reardon High School though...
Tomorrow's learning goal: to show our understanding of the clash of conformity codes between Reardon and Spokane in a multi-media context.
Success criteria:
1. We can retell the story of Junior and his dad driving to school OR the story of meeting Penelope and the debacle of his name OR the story of the Spokane rules for fighting OR the story of Junior responding to Roger's racist taunt.
2. We can create an image or performance to show the conflict inside Junior's head as he negotiates a new world, with its new set of rules.
3. We can create paragraphs about one of the events in success criteria #1, describing the event and explaining why it is important for our understanding of Junior's challenges.
Sharing is coming... I will do stealth blogging again like last year. As we experiment in class, I will be looking at where I can introduce rich vocabulary. I've only done the taster day so far, but that doesn't have to hold me back!
Today I did the taster day training for the storytelling method. Liz Swanson blew me away. I loved her work on storytelling, I loved her work on pedagogy, on the steps for listen-speak-read-write, and the rich opportunities that the story telling approach offers.
Although the link to writing is often what prompts the storytelling approach, I am really interested in it because of the potential for viewing reading skills acquisition in new ways. I'm about to do a sales pitch within our school and our kahui ako for delving deeper into this approach.
As Liz spoke, she was working with oral stories, and I was thinking about when I read aloud a novel to my class, and what we could do with mapping, and using familiar text, and front loading vocabulary in new ways, and so on and so on. When I get students to turn a section of the novel into a cartoon, I start to go in the direction of her story mapping, but now I see how I can develop that into a much richer opportunity for learning.
Big challenge:
Earlier this week I put my students into groups, splitting up all the social groupings, ability groupings and asking them to work cooperatively to answer some reading comprehension questions.
Oh Sandra. So much to learn. Again.
My students basically went on strike in terms of the cooperative learning aspect. Their body language was shouting at me that I was asking way too much. So I scrambled through the lesson, gathering student voices while they protested, hugging their devices or question sheets close to their bodies and sitting as far away as possible from the peers I assigned them to work with as possible.
It was a revealing lesson, and I'm reminded again that the social nature of learning isn't like a worksheet or online game to roll out, it's careful and slow work with individuals and groups to build a collective learning culture which must start again every year, with each class.
So, next step are some collective activities to respond to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian where the students choose their own groups. One student suggested they could choose pairs and then I could put pairs together into a four, so people had support as they went outside their comfort zone. Great suggestion, which I will try out soon.
I really want to try out the storytelling method mapping activity for when Junior has his first week at Reardon High School though...
Tomorrow's learning goal: to show our understanding of the clash of conformity codes between Reardon and Spokane in a multi-media context.
Success criteria:
1. We can retell the story of Junior and his dad driving to school OR the story of meeting Penelope and the debacle of his name OR the story of the Spokane rules for fighting OR the story of Junior responding to Roger's racist taunt.
2. We can create an image or performance to show the conflict inside Junior's head as he negotiates a new world, with its new set of rules.
3. We can create paragraphs about one of the events in success criteria #1, describing the event and explaining why it is important for our understanding of Junior's challenges.
Sharing is coming... I will do stealth blogging again like last year. As we experiment in class, I will be looking at where I can introduce rich vocabulary. I've only done the taster day so far, but that doesn't have to hold me back!
Wednesday, 13 March 2019
Leaping in to the reading challenge
At the end of 2018, we started work on our 2019 reading challenge at Grey High. We knew that our efforts hadn't yielded sufficient results in 2018, and that doing the same thing but expecting different outcomes wasn't a viable approach.
You can see here where we pulled apart the PAT test.
Towards the end of 2018, I was awarded a place on the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers programme. Initially, I put in a proposal to develop online resources to engage students and whanau in our Mawhera Services Academy. However, as our end of 2018 reading data emerged showing that we had not made the gains in reading that we really needed, I moved my proposal to accelerating reading.
Earlier this month, the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers group of 2019 met in person. We had been communicating online, working in pairs on our proposals and it was fabulous to finally meet in person. I think I wasn't the only one who was nervous, but also ready to turn the proposals and online chat into something more tangible and more strongly developed.
Our first hui was on the beautiful Coromandel coast, which for a South Islander used to cold and rough West Coast seas, was swimming heaven.
We used the Design Thinking process to critique our projects and get ideas rolling for responding to each of our now quite carefully identified problems. The energy in the room every session was really positive and I got a lot out of the process.
I came back to Greymouth ready to make a powerful difference in my classroom and my school.
You can see here where we pulled apart the PAT test.
Towards the end of 2018, I was awarded a place on the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers programme. Initially, I put in a proposal to develop online resources to engage students and whanau in our Mawhera Services Academy. However, as our end of 2018 reading data emerged showing that we had not made the gains in reading that we really needed, I moved my proposal to accelerating reading.
Earlier this month, the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers group of 2019 met in person. We had been communicating online, working in pairs on our proposals and it was fabulous to finally meet in person. I think I wasn't the only one who was nervous, but also ready to turn the proposals and online chat into something more tangible and more strongly developed.
Our first hui was on the beautiful Coromandel coast, which for a South Islander used to cold and rough West Coast seas, was swimming heaven.
We used the Design Thinking process to critique our projects and get ideas rolling for responding to each of our now quite carefully identified problems. The energy in the room every session was really positive and I got a lot out of the process.
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