New Zealand Principals' conference 2017

The recent conference in Queenstown, which was attended by over 600 principals throughout the country was fantastic, on a number of levels.
There was great mix of quality speakers, time with colleagues and an opportunity to refresh and learn in order to grow!  I had several lightbulb moments at this conference and I intend to put much of my thinking into action immediately.

I will briefly outline some of the key messages and their impact on my own thinking below.  I will also include some quotes that resonated with me.

Dr John Edwards
The learning pit was discussed again with Dr John Edwards, he stressed the importance of teaching students about why the pit is so important and that everyone goes into it when learning new things.  We need to make students feel comfortable in the "pit".  This develops resilience and confidence, core skills for being a successful learner. This made me reflect on how often we actually , explicitly teach students about meta-cognition and how they learn and the thinking process.  My feeling is we need to do this more often, showing them strategies and allowing them to gain the understanding that this is normal behaviour and what to do when this happens.  We need to remember that above all else, we are wanting to equip our students with skills for life, not just skills to get a task done.

Staff discussion-  What evidence to we have that we are teaching students how to learn?  What do we need to put in place?

"Work out what a student already knows and teach accordingly"  Do we do this authentically enough?

"Get close to them, ask great questions and listen" John Piaget.

Judge Andrew Becroft - NZ children's commissioner.

• 23% of all New Zealanders are under 18
• There is NOTHING more important than having children actively engaged at school
• Talk to students more, get their voice, at all levels.

There were some alarming statistics around ethnic groupings and various ages but we must be focused on the students in front of us, create passion and excitement.  The children we are teaching are the future, don't underestimate the enormity of that statement.

Mike King

I was completely captivated by Mike's speech.  I am sure most are aware of the work he is doing to work with our youth around suicide prevention.  Having lost friends to suicide when younger, and also students, I could relate to what he was saying.  Far too much of what we do is ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, waiting for something to happen then reacting. We must be pro active about this, fencing off the top of the cliff so that no one falls.  How can it be that in a country as beautiful as ours, we have the worst youth suicide rate in the world? We need a complete attitudinal shift here.  We need to be more and more positive, finding the good in every child.  Help them discover what they are good at and allow them to develop this.   As parents and adults, we need to let children, adults and friends know that we are there for them, that we love them and that if they need to talk they can, unashamedly and without judgement.

According to his findings, talks etc... 95% of people have had a suicidal thought at some time in their life.  It may have been once and fleeting or recurring.  Clearly the recurring thought is a major concern.  How often do we hear at a funeral "He was such a fantastic boy" "She had everything in front of her"  This effects everyone! We need to do better.

I also believe NZ's tall poppy syndrome has a role to play in this.  Too often when someone tells you their success, be it a colleague or a friend, people shoot them down or choose not to celebrate this.  We shouldn't show our envy and begrudge others, let's celebrate with them and build a new culture for the next generation!

Mike also spoke about the teacher that he loved and cherished.  He never skipped her class, he wanted to succeed because she believed in him, versus the teacher who he hated, he repeatedly skipped his class, failed tests and would avoid him at all costs because he made him feel stupid.  No one wants to be that type of teacher.

Self esteem is the solution to this problem, let them have a voice, listen, we need to create a society where it is ok to ask for help. Kids want permission to talk and express their feelings but they are following what US the adults do... we need to role model more positively.  Students learn by what they see, not by what they say or are told.  An unbiased view is important, what you would say to your best friends child is quite different to what you would say to your own...

Mike speaks with  thousands of students and there are two things they want :

1) They want to be loved

2) They want to know that their thoughts and opinions are valued by adults.

Staff discussion- Are any children without a friend?  Do we know what each child is good at?  How to we capitalise on this knowledge? Children in our community are dying, this is real,  enough is enough, we must do more to be pro active in being part of the solution.

I personally am going to reach out to more people and as a father I intend to do my best to role model for my boys... I will also be more deliberate in my discussions with others, especially students.

Dr Melinda Webber, researcher involved in MACS- Maori Achievement Collaborative's

MACS have been established throughout the country to lift the achievement of our Maori students. Schools are working in clusters, together to drive this.

The research is showing that increasing whanau engagement is the key to success, empowering them to support the learning process, vital.  Give them the skills that they need.  Lots of positive communication helps develop that bond between whanau and school.  Typically we contact whanau when a student is in trouble or we want something.  Let's turn that around and ask whanau - What can we do for you? How can we support your family?  Positive communication and dialogue increases the chances of them engaging with us much more often.

It also made me reflect on the type of student we want to leave our school, let's brainstorm what that would like like and ensure we are giving authentic opportunities for this to develop.

The final speaker was Sir Graham Henry.  A man who has developed arguably the most successful "team" in the world and there are huge amount of similarities between the two professions.
It is also worth noting that he, along with Mike King and Judge Andrew Becroft described principalship as the most important job in the world.  Food for thought.

I really enjoyed the blunt, matter of fact way that Sir Graham spoke, "be solution focussed" "no excuses" "get it done" "do the business" if there are issues with staff or performance , ask the question- "How can I help?, what's holding you back?"

"What do you need to do to be the best that you can be?"   He made a strong connection between the physical and the mental, we need to be on our toes, have a spring in our step.  His leadership team exercised daily in order to be physically fit as well as mentally fit.  This hit home with me and I have made my own goals here. For me personally, too many excuses, for too long.  I need to "do the business" I need to "get it done"

"We need to be careful that the little things don't hold us back, what are the things that are going to make us go faster?"

The All Blacks use a simple system to reflect on performance - Keep doing, stop doing, start doing.  I am going to use this with our staff, a great chance to be able to stop and reflect under a simple but effective framework.

The more that our staff are empowered, the better they perform.  The All Blacks look out for each other, they want to support each player to improve their performance, they are held accountable when this doesn't happen, within a supportive environment. Sounds pretty to similar to school if you ask me!

All in all, a great few days of professional development.  Several goals and targets set for myself and I look forward to getting stuck into them.

Uru Månuka Student Summit

Twelve Gilberthorpe students were privileged to attend the first inaugural Uru Månuka Student Summit, at Hornby Primary today. 6 students presented Toolkits to other åkonga in pairs. 

They attended (and presented) Toolkits on topics ranging from robotics, voki, scratch coding, using apps... 

Afterwards, the 90 students were able to take their new knowledge back and share it with the åkonga in their classrooms.

Check out the article!

You can read our earlier posts about the Student Summit here.

Unpacking Learn Create Share in a way thats not so scary

Recently, I ran a staff meeting around Learn Create Share.

Ironically, it was the first staff meeting that I'd attended since joining my new school. The upside to this was that there was no precedent to follow... No pre-existing notion of what it "should" look like.

Here's the basic presentation to guide the discussion:

We looked at each definition, without the "Learn" "Create" or "Share" attached to it, in order to ensure that we weren't overthinking it. 

Within our cluster, our Uru Manuka Leaders of Learning PLG has identified that we do have a shared understanding of what Learn Create Share is... it just differs slightly from what it should be, by the Manaiakalani definition. After much robust discussion, we came to the conclusion that the initial definition was accurate and we needed to align our own understandings with it. After all, the immense research that has gone into the concept backs it up... who are we to question it through our own ignorance!

What next... How on Earth were we to take this eye opener back to our schools!

We were all in agreement that going back and telling our colleagues that everything we had thought about what Learn Create Share was wrong (after two and a half years of building that pedagogy, I might add...) was not an appealing option.

My approach, was to utilise the feelig that I had that everyone was doing a lot of things already, but they didn't understand how their great practise actually aligned within Learn Create Share.

I decided to take each definition and put it to the teachers: 

What happens in your hub that falls under this heading?

We compiled our ideas onto large sheets, using post-it notes...
Here's what we came up with... Compiled into a piktochart Infographic:

My next step is to align my Critical Inquiry etc, with a lens that accommodates a Learn Create Share view, from a teachers perspective also:

Learn Create Share fliped on its head

So... it's Friday. You walk into a room of your colleagues, leaders of learning within your cluster. You all have like minds; excitement and passion to drive successful practice etc... Within an hour, we were all sitting back thinking we'd all been on the wrong mindset for the ast two and a half years!

We cracked a can of worms (which obviously needed to be cracked!) around whether, as a cluster, we had a shared understanding of Learn Create Share.

On the bright side... It was quite apparent that the schools across the cluster DO have a shared understanding. However, our shared understanding does not align with the Manaiakalani definitions:

Learn: any activity where the objective is to access and engage with existing knowledge.

Create: any activity that results in remixing existing knowledge, the development of new knowledge, and the use of imagination.

Share: any activity that involves the sharing of knowledge.

The result is often building new knowledge

We had huge discussions... and came to a few conclusions.We questioned their definition... but by the end, concluded that the definition was sound, but we needed to shift our thinking around our own understandings. We believe that we (as teachers/schools) have been operating under a literal definition of each term, with a heavier weighting on the "Learn" component.
I challenge that, in actual fact, the gold nuggets... the Direct Teaching Practices actually occur within the "Create"phase as this is where knowledge and understanding is synthesised. When looked at with a visual, until now the Learn bubble would have been larger, with the Create and Share bubbles feeding into it and each other... Now It is the other way around.

Under this thinking, If the direct teaching and learning opportunities aren't utilised then the Create phase in just skimmed across the top.

So What...

Well, we are certain that there are a number of teachers who don't understand what Learn Create Share is. They probably believe that they "don't do it". We are quite sure that they do, without realising where it fits.

The danger is that if this was brought back to our teachers, they would freak out!

However, if they were given the definition only (without the title) e.g.:

• Any activity that results in remixing existing knowledge, the development of new knowledge, and the use of imagination. (without the word "create")

and asked to find things that they do that falls under that category...

...Repeated with each of the other two definitions... And then place the "Learn" Create" or "Share" above afterwards, this may draw understanding.

It may still install panic attack or ten!

Uru Manuka Leaders PLG

As always I had another very interesting and motivating session with the Uru Manuka Leaders. It was a fantastic day with the Woolf Fischer Research team providing very clear examples and ways to imbed the affordances of Learn, Create, Share to make a difference for our learners.  

The day began with us looking at and analysing the data from the end of last year. Within the cluster there are some really positive things happening across all learning areas! The focus of the day was "What can we do to change teaching to have the most impact on students." It’s about fine tuning and making things more effective.

Here are the notes I took from the session: 

Implications from the Data - how can we address it - affordances 

1. Engagement - interesting, purposeful, student choice is evident. High levels of “on taskness” - doing learning activities more of the time.  Increased mileage of Writing - shown in data. 
2. Powerful conversations - more interactions, teacher knowledge of what students can do, extending opportunity for thinking by talking. Because of high engagement and complex tasks, teachers have more time to talk with and work with students. Students can give groups full focus because other students are on task. 
3. Complex tasks - learn- reading and writing from multiple places, more scaffolding tools, create- synthesis and evaluation through DLO , share - blogging, authentic audience. 
4. in-site and on-site support - scaffolds in & out, collaboration. As teachers we are better at scaffolding in than scaffolding out - we need to work on this. 
5. Connections and visibility - real audience, inform others about learning, visible teaching & learning, make a difference, purposeful  

Students have to use key comps to be successful in Learn, Create, Share pedagogy. High focus on the first half of the curriculum. 

Purpose of blog posts - we are sharing learning not sharing a finished product. 

Purpose of a discussion - do students understand how to have a discussion? There is an uncomfortableness of not knowing something. Students need to understand process of learning and the purpose of discussing thoughts that are not finalised. 

Feedback - Powerful Learning Conversations 

Patterns of feedback - what we need to know - what our next steps are. 

Data from classroom observations 

Evaluative - e.g. “you have done a good job on this writing” Least effective form of feedback. 

Descriptive - e.g. “I really like the way you began each paragraph ”

Generative - most of this was also evaluative e.g. “You have done well in... Next time it would be good to see… ” - most effective form of feedback 

A lot of the descriptive and generative feedback is also evaluative. The data does not take out the behavioural feedback. 

We discussed how this links to positive, thoughtful, helpful model of feedback on a blog - This is what we are teaching students but do we follow it as educators? 

Page 57 - The power of feedback model 

Feedback is not just what a teacher says to students. It is also what others may say or could be feedback from yourself. 

Page 58 + 59 - as a task we were allocated a statement and then discussed and shared back 

Importance of the success criteria to break down the goal and learning that has occurred. Students can use the criteria to give themselves feedback. 

Transfer - near and far. e.g. Talking about problem + resolution as a goal - transfer from one narrative to another is problematic. Students struggle to transfer feedback across tasks. It is better to give feedback at a less specific task level so that it can be transferred to other situations. Teaching needs to allow for generalisation of the desired skills. 

Praise the effort not the outcome. Otherwise there is a fixed mindset of what the criteria for being intelligent is. 

Give feedback when the students have time to think it through and respond. 

i.e. not before morning tea or at the end of a session. 

Students need to be actively willing to change their mindset (not fixed) and make changes to make it better. All students have things to improve on. 

Affordances of technology and Learn, Create, Share allows for increased opportunity for - face to face feedback, real time feedback, peer and self feedback.

Inquiry questions on giving feedback across the cluster 

Google app that allows for aural feedback to be given - called talk and comment. Record the feedback so that the student can go back and listen to what is said. Audio record - use phones. 

How to find answers to these inquiry questions - e.g. asking students how they would prefer the feedback - record, write notes etc. - could create questionnaire. Students who are being tracked could be used to discuss how they are interpreting the feedback. Observations of feedback - class. Teachers could record themselves giving feedback and analyse how effective it is. 

The reason for the inquiry process: It is important to think about what you want to know and how you will find out before taking on an inquiry. 

Collaboration 

Patterns of collaboration (for students) - my work both using computer (review/feedback), my work discussion (face to face discussion FTF), our work - both using computer, our work discussion FTF. 

What are the theories for more collaboration aiding student achievement? 

Opportunities in digital space for collaboration -   

gifting words - sharing vocabulary, children more likely to take risks when working with other students, use others strengths, key comps - collaboration is what is needed in todays world, quick access to feedback, breaking a task in to chunks, tui mai tui atu.

Cluster twitter - inquiry blog post, google plus community - join other cluster.  

Are teachers capitalising on the affordances of technology for collaboration? 

Depends on the school culture - the type of collaboration that is happening. What the students are seeing is how the classrooms are working. 

Talk about text - affordances and collaboration 

Reading + Writing across the curriculum 

Opportunities for higher quality talk in classrooms. 

We need to channel Discussions - the aim is to explore rather than ‘test’ 

To increase comprehension focus on dialogic not stratgey - have discussions where students talk about the ideas in the text. 

Most students see talk as performance - won’t speak unless it is the right answer, this limits the discussion - Need to use I wonder, or I think… to explore ideas and thinking. 

Properties of really good talk - less of the IRE format - Initiate, Respond, Evaluate - Higher level thinking is authentic and where the teacher does not know the answer but wants to explore the discussion. e.g. “Which character did you find the most powerful and why”. Wait time is given for students to respond. The text needs to be referred to in the discussion. 

Texts used need to have a voice that motivates the students to have an opinion so that they can be an active participant in the talk. Students need to be using the text to support their ideas - the text is referred to and the students use it as a reference point. 

There is a place for stratgey instruction, but there is also a place for using the stratgey to begin a discussion.  

Why multiple texts 

You do not have to have one of each - sometimes you have have two types with multiple texts. 

Students need to be accessing their own texts - link to managing self and increased discussion around language. Ability to criticise texts and judge sources is crucial in a digital environment. 

Scaffolding - can have toolbox at the top which breaks down vocab or video to support or re-written etc. 

Really good resource for teacher - strategies for teachers to use to increase discussion 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56n24EPZaYGbHY2LU44OFJLcEE/view

Inquiry questions for talk 

International research shows that teachers find this really hard to change - amount of teacher talk vs. student talk. 

We need to nurture talk to arrive at an understanding… Students at high schools are afraid to share ideas- most conversations are being led and moulded by teachers - allow students to give evidence about how their idea fits with the subject. There should be sometimes where discussions are allowed to take their course. 

Digital Learning Objects

Digital learning artefact vs. Digital learning object - transformative nature of the task. 

DLA - record of time/learning - finished - static - summative - finished product

DLO - focus on object of learning not a record of time, created, transformed - in producing the object students learning has deepened. Process of learning  - extended abstract thinking - going further and making connections. 

I left the day thinking about the inquiry and the variability between the classes - tapping in to where the teachers are making the most difference - what is powerful to the students learning? How do I use feedback? Am I giving students create tasks that are challenging there thinking? Are my discussions allowing students to think deeper? 

It was such a great experience to be involved in the discussions in this group. There is a lot to think over. 

Another great Uru Manuka PLG

Manaiakalani Uru Manuka PLG 

It is always fantastic to meet with the leaders of learning each term. I get so many ideas out of the day and can't wait to come back and start implementing them. There are exciting things coming up for our cluster... 

We heard about a new apple classroom for devices in the junior school. This works on ipads like hapara works on chromebooks. I can think of so many benefits for this in the junior school with the ability to check in and see what students are on at any given time. I will be looking in to this over the next few weeks and talking to Rebecca about the potential it has. 

Another thing we learnt is that the filters have changed on google images. If you look up the top there is now an extra 's' https - s for secure. This means that the search is secure and that there is more privacy when searching the net. What this means for us is that it is more important than ever to ensure that students know how to be cyber smart because the filters do not work as well as they used to.  

There is an exciting new research out in the Canterbury community due to the behaviour that we are seeing - it is linked to the earthquakes. Some of the main ways to help support teachers and learning are to change the eating and playing times so that students are eating after they play. This means that they are having food for learning not using the energy during play time. An example of this is Rawhiti school. Their timetable 9-1030 learn 1030 play then 1050-11 eat 11-12 learn 12-1240 play then feed 1240-140 learning 140-2 play 2-3 learning. They are finding that students are focused and that the unwanted behaviours have stopped over the 6 weeks they have trailed it so far. Another bonus is no rubbish in the playground!!! 

We also discussed the PAT's and administration guidelines for sitting tests. We found that Google forms has a new feature that marks quizzes. We discussed making some cluster quizzes for reading to test multi choice - so that students get this before they do PAT. Side note: what a cool pre-test. 

We looked through a Template for recount writing - shared by Scott yr 9 & 10 and discussed how to write a recount using language features and scoring well on the rubric. Across the cluster we want our students to be successful. Teaching students about the ways of testing will help them to be successful.  

There is a cool online learning program which lets you earn apple teacher badges… Some great up skilling for junior teachers - you can do the test, interactive books to learn skills (use personal apple id). Once teachers have one badge they can move on to swift playground which is coding etc. Also, senior teachers will benefit from earning these - looks great on the CV! Here is the link https://appleteacher.apple.com/auth/#/signin/  It is recommended that you use a personal account - that way you do not loose it if you change schools. 

Whanau Toolkits - Exciting opportunity for our families.  Mark Maddren is running these on Thursday 6 April at St Bernadette's 7:30am, 3:30pm, 5:30pm, 7:30pm. These sessions would be for around 30 caregivers to be manageable and would require a minimum of 10 pre registered for the toolkit to run.

Module 1: Kawa of Care and the Digital Immersion Learning Environment

This is an introductory course split into two parts.

Part One in this session covers all the physical features of the Chromebook. It also covers important aspects of The Kawa of Care and ways to practically apply the values of this document in the home.

Part Two is a basic introduction in accessing children’s work from relevant sites. In this session, parents will be shown a classroom site, a classroom blog and then a child's individual blog.

From here parents will be shown the difference between all three, how each site or/and blog may be relevant for different times and how to effectively use them as a means to engage with children’s learning, to to stay informed.

I will also include some support for commenting on blogs as well as answer any questions at the end of the session if required.

To help us get more parents signed up here is the registration form - https://goo.gl/forms/yJmj0sWtMXCQV7Bq2

Visiting Sockburn School

Following our Murray Gadd observation on Wednesday 22 February, Rebecca and I were welcomed for a visit to the Junior classrooms at Sockburn School. We were lucky to be there during their Literacy time and able to observe the implementation of their Action Stations and their Learning Coach and teaching groups in progress. 

They have a wonderful play based learning setup that I found so inspiring, particularly as it fits so well with my beliefs in the importance of play for younger students. It seemed easy to manage with the number and type of stations that they had set up and they shared how they plan for the stations together each week, with examples of their planning sheets as well. 

They began and ended each session with a variety of learning songs for alphabet, colours, rhymes etc. The children were engaged and learning by rote without even realising. 

Each station was set up with a visual prompt and a large number attached that represented the maximum number of students allowed at any one time at that station. Students opted into each station and were able to stay and play as long as they wanted. If they were called away for a reading/writing/maths group they could choose to leave their name there or remove their name and change to a new activity when they returned. They were able to swap activities at any time, provided there was enough space left in the group they wished to join. 

Students were able to choose from: 

Listening Post - headphones and stereo set up 
Quiet Space - couch and library corner 
Literacy - drawing activities for pencil control 
Fit Kit - Jumping outside with skipping ropes 
Tray Play - materials to pick up with scoops 
Role Play - family corner set up with kitchen/beds/dolls etc 
Fine Motor - threading beads onto pipe cleaners 
Creative - creating collage faces 
Snack Cafe - fruit and milk 
Science - Wonder table set up for exploring nature items 
Construction - Lego 
Maths (2 stations) - Snakes and Ladders game & Crocodile teeth counting game 
Inquiry - Puzzles 
Literacy - Reading hut 
Tech Ideas - iPads 

The activity headings stay there each week, but they change up the content in some or all as the weeks progress or they see a need develop in the students’ learning. 

I would love to see us take steps towards implementing some of these ideas when we enter our new learning space. Unfortunately we lack the space required to implement them now - hurry up new building! One of my favourite things about learning through play is that the children are pursuing their own interests and learning while having fun. I loved listening to some of the conversations that they were having - play based learning is fantastic for oral language development and social skills. I have had many years of experience with play based learning at the preschool level and have read so much about it at the school level but never seen it in action until now. I walked away thinking ‘This is how I would love to teach!’.