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!’.

Our Writing Journey Continues

It was great talking with the staff today about our Writing Journey with Murray!

We were able to reflect and think and share ideas around...

🤔   What excites us from what we have learnt
🤔   What challenges us with what we have learnt
🤔   What we want to try with our writing programmes
🤔   What we have tried already
🤔   Our AH HA moments

Here are our ideas below

I am looking forward to many more great discussions throughout this year.

Murray Gadd comes to town!!!

For those that have not met Murray Gadd yet, please do!  A top man with expertise within Literacy that is highly sought after all around the world.  This year alone he will venture between Waiheke Island- where he is based, Sweden, Scotland and of course Hornby!!! ( And many more I am sure)

Murray brings such a wealth of knowledge and understanding which allows us all to benefit.  For me personally, this is the second time to work with Murray and I am very thankful that I have the opportunity.  Staff came away from the session buzzing, which is no mean feat on your first day back for the year!

You will be wondering why working with him is so powerful, so I'll try and outline that in a few bullet points :-)

His experience :
He has worked in almost every role within education and was responsible for developing the writing exemplars which are used nationally.  He also developed the effective literacy practice book which is widely used by educators across the country.  Through all of this, he is able to break down what really makes a difference when helping to teach students how to write.

Expert advice... some of Murray's messages :

• Make sure everyone has something to say
• Have a clear and authentic audience
• Effective teachers are aware of the writing stages that the students will go through. Planning to crafting etc...
• We need to have good content knowledge in order to teach others
• We must understand what students should be able to demonstrate and achieve as developing writers

Students in Year 1-3 are learning to write, Year 4-8 are writing to learn.  This is echoed in reading.

• Effective teachers have high expectations of their writers
• Students need to be given the opportunity to write freely and for extended periods, own topics of their own choosing as appropriate
• Instructional writing needs to happen 4 or 5 days a week and can be integrated
• The instructional programme should include a range of teaching approaches, for us, giving students experiences is right at the top of the list (Writers MUST have something to say!!!)
• Write for a purpose.  I loved Murray talking PIES- not steak and cheese :-) This referred to the dimensions of Persuade, Inform, Entertain and for Self, imagine students being able to identify which piece of the "PIE" they are biting off today!

Do we make sure that at all times students are aware of the purpose, the audience and why we have chosen that type of text???

• Let's look for authentic and purposeful writing topics
• Students must get a chance to write on student selected topics as well as teacher selected topics
• Have fun with it -  Talk about ... your first birthday party, the naughtiest thing you have ever done, a person or place that is special etc...
• Get outside, walk around, talk about what you see, prior to writing about it!
• Motivate your writers through story telling, discussions, you tube clips etc...
• Talk with the students so they know what they need to do, in order to be successful at the task
• Differentiate lessons through writing groups
• Ensure instructional lessons are focused and direct
• Make the links between reading and writing explicit, after all, everything written is for someone to read...
• Quality writing floats on a sea of talk- Make sure an oral language programme is in place
• Use available resources wisely
• Be passionate!!!  Make it fun!!!  We have the world at our fingertips.

Some great adages provided by Murray

‘You’ll never be a writer unless you have something to say’.

‘No student ever got excited by a learning goal or a genre.  What excites them is the topic and the task’.

‘A good writer re-reads, reflects and re-crafts.  In doing this, they think continually about the reader’.

‘We need to continually ask ourselves: Who needs what teaching, when and how?’

Murray himself also comes into our schools, models and allows others to watch best practice in action, something often missing as part of the PLD component.  He then returns later in the year to watch our staff in action, offering feedback to the staff to support their teaching.  Watch this space!

Writing is the area that our students struggle the most with, I am excited to see what the teachers achieve with our students over the course of this year!

2017 has arrived - What does it have in store for us?

When reflecting on 2016 in order to prepare for 2017, there were some really common threads coming through.

2017 is a huge year for the Gilberthorpe school community in so many different ways. We have been on a fantastic journey and this year will see us walk further on this pathway together.

2016 highlights noted at our staff development day.

• Staff relationships
• Collaboration
• Building project
• Student achievement information
• Use of the online world
• Our library
• Use of technology
• The freedom to experiment, try things out and review and reflect :-)
• Our systems and many new and improved documents

2017 Goals and targets

• Developing our school gardens and enviro school concept
• Having the junior school and senior school hangout together more
• Embed key systems and structures
• Establish a school leadership group similar to a council
• Connect with our whanau even more, develop strong learner centred relationships
• Use the information we know about our learners to improve outcomes for students
• Timetable well so our priority areas are protected

Some final wonderings around some big ticket items...

1) Time to embed
We were very happy and proud of many systems and structures that were put in place last year and this year is all about embedding those.  These allow us to know exactly where are students are at and where they are heading.  These documents are regularly reflected on, with action taken to ensure we are meeting the needs of each individual child. We really do know our learners, now what will we do with the information?

2) Learn Create Share - Manaiakalani Outreach
Our work with this amazing programme continues and 2017 will look to make bring the learn, create and share model to the fore.  What does it look like @ Gilberthorpe school? What would you see?  How are we ensuring that the research is informing our practice?  We are receiving high quality feedback from the Woolf Fischer research team about what is making a difference, it is vital that we do something with the information we are getting. How else will we move students forward?

There are 5 key areas to delve into :
Engagement - More time on task, student choice, interesting and purposeful activities.

Powerful teaching conversations-  More time for interactions- digital and face to face, greater knowledge of "where to next" for each student.

Complex tasks- accessing scaffolds, multiple text types, multi modal - so things can re presented and of course the ability to share their learning.  Using students as experts of new knowledge!

Increased collaboration- Use of google sites to scaffold, collaboration to support learning.

Visibility- A genuine audience, use of blogs.  This informs us and others and obtains other points of view.  Visible teaching and learning.

This link takes you to a fantastic summary of the progress being made within Manaiakalani and a great statistic shown about the impact of "Manaiakalani medicine"  The bottom line being that students who stay within the programme- at the same school make accelerated progress, which is absolutely vital in order for students who begin school behind the eight ball if they are going to catch up and work in line with their age expectation.
http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2016/11/digital-pedagogy.html

We look forward to making this work at our place!


3) Our rebuild.
Happening right in front of our eyes is our rebuild, which will allow us to work in much more purpose built spaces.  We look forward to working in these at the end of this year.