Welcome to 2016- A visit to Waitakiri

Kia ora everyone and welcome to 2016.

This year will see us take significant steps forward with regard to the quality of teaching and learning happening within our school.

Our junior hub will function from the hall as a collaborative team and the seniors will be likewise, doing the best they can given the spaces in the senior block.  As we continue to learn, a lot can be achieved regardless of the space, I look forward to seeing how this develops.

A trip to Waitakiri school yesterday was the ideal way to kick our year off and get the brains thinking about how these teams might function.

The following were some of the key messages I took from yesterday :

1) Maintain a strong focus on ensuring that we have a high quality teaching and learning programme, collaborative teaching, technology etc... all play a part in this but as with any system, it relies on the people to use the tools in effective ways in order to maximise learning.

2) The notion of private honesty and public unity was discussed, I loved the way that Neill put this.  We must have strong trusting relationships within the team, we must feel that we can try new things, make mistakes, voice opinions and that they will be confidential to the team.  When talking with parents we are a team, we are united and always speak positively of the rest of our staff.  Private honesty and public unity...I like it!

3)The roles of the adults in each collaborative team must be explicit, these roles should be made clear to the students, systems and structures are vital in these environments, they must be visible and clear to everyone.  I liked the notion of a "learning coach" and "learning assistant".  Student learning coaches where possible is also a fantastic way to promote leadership and utilise the skills of the students.  Peer teaching has be found to have huge impact on student learning. Done well it can up to 5 months of value over the course of the year *http://australia.teachingandlearningtoolkit.net.au/toolkit/

I loved the way Neill presented, it was easy to follow and entertaining.  He asked some great questions e.g. Does co- teaching work?   Does teaching work?   The answer....yes and no.  Again emphasising that the people and the way in which the environment is set up must "cause learning" if not, we are wasting our time.


So what are some of the aspects for us to mull over here @ Gilberthorpe...

1) Co-teaching strategies, Neill shared 5 that they are using.  All teaching staff have the book the co-teaching book of lists which provides a detailed explanation of several strategies and how they function.  I think we need to look at how to trial these.  Do we use one over 5 weeks or a term, allow everyone to experiment with it and monitor its effectiveness?

2) Ensuring our priority learners are at the forefront in these environments, they should received significantly more instruction and support in this environment.  We have already begun work on using google slides to show that we  "know our learner", I look forward to seeing this develop.

3) I'd like to begin hosting a regular afternoon tea, a chance to chat with whanau about what we are trying to achieve, why we are using these environments as well as other topics that are relevant throughout the year.  I will welcome parent feedback into what these might cover.

4) The staff have already done a lot of work on setting up groups for the year, using prior knowledge so that we can begin teaching and learning from day one.  Part of this process will be the use of anecdotal notes, looking at the content of these will be important as they may be able to be directly transferred to reports....

But most importantly, let's give things a go, try things out, evaluate their effectiveness, make mistakes and use each other to create the most high quality teaching and learning environment possible!

Building Blocks Course

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Building Blocks Course at Casebrook Intermediate. I went along as part of next year’s Junior Hub staffing team.

Building Blocks is all about making sure that children have all of the foundation skills that enable them to be ready to learn, such as Oral language, Listening, Looking, Moving and Print. Without these foundation skills children are unable to access the curriculum and tend to struggle throughout their time at school.

We heard from staff at other schools that are currently using Building Blocks. This was for me a valuable way of learning how it can be incorporated into an, in class activity that is fun for the children, through action stations etc.

It was great to be able to attend this course as a group of staff members that will be working together next year with our very young learners.

Maximising Potential Course

Maximising Potential in Maori Learners Workshop

Presented by Ralph Pirozzo

from Promoting Learning International

In term three I attended a workshop which looked at Maximising Potential in Maori Learners.  What I found, was that the strategies and the ideas shared, are actually relevant and effective for all learners. 

Some of the main ideas are not new but the way of using these is new to me.  It was good to have a reminder about some things that I have not really used in recent times.

The workshop was around Bloom's Taxonomy, Multiple Intelligences and a planning matrix that considers preferred ways of learning and incorporates the different levels of thinking.  It combines the two to ensure learners are able to develop deeper level thinking while learning in ways that comes naturally to them while also presenting some challenge.

The way that I intend to use this learning, is to establish the top three learning preferences of learners and plan units using the matrix to ensure learning experiences are varied and are deliberate in allowing learners of all styles to be exposed to a range of opportunities in which their preferred styles can shine.

These are my notes that I took throughout this extremely refreshing and interesting day.

Lee-Anne Waho October 2015

Refining the Growth Mindset Theory

Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset theory has become very popular among educators. Her research provides us with information that can assist us in giving quality feedback to our students; As we have learnt from previous readings, quality feedback can accelerate a child's progress by eight months. In this article Carol Dweck addresses some of the misconceptions around Growth Mindset and provides practical ways to develop a learning focused and progressive mindset in our children.

Carol Dweck Revisits the Growth Mindset

Hautu~ Maori Cultural Responsiveness Self Review Tool

Hautu~ Maori Cultural Responsiveness Self Review Tool

for Boards of Trustees

NZSTA Workshop 31 August 2015

 NZSTA are holding a number of workshops to support boards in their governance role within their schools.  One of these workshops in Christchurch recently was around the Hautu resource which is a tool for Maori cultural responsiveness and self review for Boards of Trustees.  

The workshop was basically looking at this tools but it also encompassed much more.  

THE RESOURCE~
This resource supports boards of trustees to meet their accountabilities by reviewing cultural responsiveness in their school.

Hautū is designed to be flexible and to help boards assess, plan and increase their cultural responsiveness no matter what level they are at now. Hautū aligns with the four key areas of governance; Board leadership, representation, accountability and employer roles.
By strengthening and fulfilling their roles effectively as trustees, boards will deliver stronger governance. Working with Hautū also supports boards to meaningfully implement Ka Hikitia - Accelerating Success 2013-2017 within their work and to make decisions that support Māori learners to enjoy and achieve education success, as Māori.
Boards have a responsibility to:
~set future directions for successful learning of Māori students
~be accountable for the performance of Māori student achievement
~ensure Māori stakeholders in their community are represented in governance, planning and decision making
~ensure their school is a good employer by supporting school staff to teach and support Māori students effectively.

Key ideas and learning for me~

I particularly liked the use of the waka hoe as a concept for understanding and strengthening the roles and responsibilities of culturally responsive Boards.

We had discussion around what evidence we have that we are meeting our accountabilies for Maori student success?  What implications do Boards face?  We looked at the importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and what this means for Boards.  The National Administrative Guidelines showed us our legislated responsibilities. 

For us at Gilberthorpe School~

The next step for us at Gilberthorpe School is to ensure all our Board members and our teaching staff are familiar with the Hautu tool as well as a good understanding of Ka Hikitia Accelerating Success 2013-2017.  These documents will help guide us in our journey to raising achievement for our Maori learners.

See here for more information~ Hautu Tool and Ka Hikitia

Lee-Anne Waho

Mahuru 2015

Hornby Cluster eLeaders Workshop

Hornby Cluster eLeader Workshop

August 2015

The Hornby Cluster of Schools eLeaders met to share what we have all been doing and look at learning successes within each of our schools.  Literacy was a specific learning area that we looked at.  The day was made up of these three components~

Story Hui~ 

We were introduced to the Story Hui process of sharing.  For this task we used a success story in literacy.  As one person shared verbally, another member of the group drew pictures to visualise the initial evidence, the inquiry and the evidence of progress.  This structure allows group members to ask questions to seek clarification and for the story teller to identify next step ideas.At Gilberthorpe, we will be using the Story Hui process in our next staff meeting to share our Teaching as Inquiry.This is a link to the Story Hui site which has detailed explanations of the benefits of this process and how it is implemented.

Story Hui

Effective Feedback~

Garry Taylor took us through a session about providing effective feedback and what this could look like.  The main points that I took from this session were:

~Feedback should make students think

~It needs to be descriptive not evaluative

~We need to eliminate judgemental feedback

Feedback should be goal referenced

~The first comment should be in relation to what is being learned

~Feedback needs to be timely

~90% of feedback is oral

~Giving feedback is a skill that needs to be taught

~There needs to be evidence in relation to the goal...what is being done well, needs improving, criteria needs to be used

~Feedback should offer guidance on ways to close the gap. It needs to be specific, actionable and have the scope for being good to being better

~We don't want to give too much feedback...too much is overwhelming so prioritise, 2:1 2 positives & 1 other

~The learner needs time to act on feedback and the opportunity to respond. This should take place during the task, not at end,

~There is a place for evaluative feedback. Descriptive feedback is not appropriate on the final published product. Commenting on blogs etc should not have feedback about punctuation etc as this feedback should take place before public sharing.

~There are opportunities for technology to transform feedback. At Gilberthorpe School we have been exploring these and are looking forward to trying recorded audio and video feedback.

Learning Tools~

In the afternoon we had a session of looking at different tools that we could use in our schools.  One iPad app that we looked at was Aurasma.  This app allows users to create a trigger so that when the iPad hovers over the trigger, a previously created clip appears.We thought that we would try using this during our end of term Celebrations of Learning.  Whanau can wander around learning spaces, hover the iPad over a trigger and their child can pop up in a video and share their learning.  Another way for us to all Learn, Create and Share.Here is some more information about Aurasma:

Aurasma

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou~ Lee-Anne

Teaching and learning toolkit- Australia- Fantastic food for thought.

Hi everyone.

I stumbled onto this website via the Virtual Learning Network (VLN).  It is fantastic!  It provides a variety of readings that looks into a wide variety of interventions/teaching techniques and their impact.

I have provided links to 4 here that I would like everyone to read and make comment on.

Essentially what you see below is that, done effectively, feedback can accelerate progress and achievement by 8 months when compared to "normal" or traditional approaches.

Interesting to see that the physical environment has 0 months.  I believe this is due to limited research because of how recent many of these environments are and also the fact that as we are learning, the environment doesn't accelerate progress on its own, what we do inside that environment has the greatest impact.  The environment however makes many things possible e.g. collaboration.

Enjoy!



Feedback   + 8 months

Meta cognition- Self regulated learning  + 8 months

Collaborative learning   +  5 months

Digital technology  + 4 months

Physical environment   + 0 months