Welcome to my epic journey of self discovery, developing my understanding of education, how we learn and ways to grow as a professional alongside other like minded people that I meet along the way.
Excel in teaching so our learners will excel in the future
The power of a quote to start dialogue about the role of leadership
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. Ralph Nader
Trues leadership lies in guiding others to success, in ensuring that everyone is performing at their, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. Bill Owens
A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself. Joel Barker.
Classroom Observations
Timperley (2013)
Routine Experts
Teachers transmit content and skills to students and give them opportunities to respond to that knowledge and practise these skills
Adaptive Experts
Teachers who focus on
promoting valued outcomes for each learner
continual learning professional
promoting outcomes for each learner
know each learner
find content or way of teaching them that will help them
ongoing inquiry to advance how their student outcomes
adapt their teaching for every learner
acquire more sophisticated knowledge of the learner and their learning
Start with the WHY; Great leaders inspire everyone to take action
Why?
Protocols
Feedback
Why do we moderate?
Tasks get more complex over time
How consistent are we in our understanding of the literacy progressions?
Do we align with National Standards?
Our OTJ's need to be defendable and justifiable
PACT tool has a literacy exemplars that are awesome
The people that we lead have....
- diverse perspectives
- make assumptions
This is a mum who sold the last shovel at a hardware store during a snow storm.
The Ladder of Inference Creates Bad Judgements
Question your assumptions and conclusions
Seek contrary data
How do the roles within our school with dual roles
Collaborative Activities
Buy, Sell and Exchange - 6 statements each then meet with a buddy to reduce to 6 then meet with four then eight. At the end 8 people 6 statements. (What is the role of Literacy Leader?)
What do we think a Literacy Leader does?
Rich dialogue and Conversations
- provide provocations to challenge current beliefs respectfully and reach new depths of understanding
Quality PD
- content knowledge (what)
- pedagogy of learners (how)
- moral purpose (why)
- current curriculum knowledge
- developed from needs analysis and analysed school wide data
- meeting student and teacher needs to raise student achievement
Be a Learner
- grow, inspire, develop in and out of school
- online
- professional development
- conversations with colleagues
- build a team around you to support the journey
Support and guide
- open to learning relationships
- humour
- interpersonal skills
- children at the heart of all that we do
- effective communication - celebration or difficult conversation
Multiple perspectives
- awareness of up to date approaches
- understanding of neuroscience of how children learn new information
- respectful of journey of teacher
Systems
- growing capabilities
- assessment and tracking and monitoring for student achievement
- support that is appropriate and timely
- distributive leadership
A Literacy Leader has very strong focus on.....
- focus on student outcomes
- leaders as learners
- leaders of learning - what is worth doing and what is not. Being able to say NO
- collaborative relationships with fellow teachers and collaboration encouraged
Robinson's Leadership Dimensions
establishing goals and expectations
strategic resourcing
planning, coordinating, evaluating, teaching and the curriculum
promoting and participating in teacher learning and development
ensuring a supportive learning environment
How Great Leaders Inspire
We believe -
each and every child deserves the opportunity to become empowered in their own learning journey to success.
Leadership Strategy
Put together a portfolio of readings relevant to school / teacher needs
invite staff to flick through and choose a reading to read over the holidays On the first week back we will have wine and cheese and have discussions around what you found out and how it will impact your classroom practice.
Connecting whanau to our learning
Invite parents to write a brag letter about their child.
Protocols of Observations
Have a clear procedure for observation visits
1. Pre-visit conversations 'the why'
2. Sharing and the conversation that happens afterwards
DO NOT ask - How do you think that lesson went?
3. Remember this is a sample - one piece of evidence. You need a series of evidence to know what is going on. Formally and informally.
What else would you add to this?
Having protocols around observational practice keeps personal being in tact.
It is the actions and outcomes as a result of these actions that we are interested in.
The best in a child can be seen in many different ways. They may be strengths that you don't even value. On reflection of our classroom culture - is it inclusive?
What is going on for our learning in all of their contexts? How can we provide them with poker chips to help them the risks and build resilience?
Is there someone in the room who believes they will become a success in their lifetime.
Gathering student voice is the data for important conversations. The students you ask will be the ones who need the support the most.
Equality and Equity!
Providing the right scaffolds will assist all children to access the learning.
English is a learning activity. Literacy is the glue that holds the NZC learning areas together - reading, writing, oral language. This is how you gets lots of opportunities to write throughout the day.
Not one is more important than the other.
These should be evident in all classrooms.
Literacy is the last things to put on your planning.
What writing skills can we deconstruct and then apply to this teaching to become the glue for other teaching.
Teaching of literacy skills is different from teaching English.
Every piece of writing has a structure is organised, language features, mechanics of writing.
Making a shift
What can we do in our area of the school that we don't have to do it that way.
A blanket statement will not work
Change the people you are responsible for first
Great tool for classroom observation
I see, I hear I wonder
No judgements made just questioning. Remember to have conversations before the observation and after.
How are
identity, language and culture embedded in literacy practice?
What are the students doing in response to the teaching?
How are the students engaged in their learning?
OECD - new approach needed to deliver technology potentials for school
'In 2012, 96% of 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported having a computer at home, but only 72% reported using one at school. Overall, students who use computers moderately at school tend to have somewhat better learning outcomes than students who use computers rarely. But students who use computers very frequently at school do much worse, even after accounting for social background and student demographics.'
Context for teaching needs to be responsive and engaging
"you need to know me to understand me"
The final word strategy
- underline one phrase that really sits with you.
- 2 mins to tell people why you think this is important
- 1 person in the group takes 1 min to expand on your ideas
- 1st person gets the final word.
Without evidence you are just another person with an opinion
What is our philosophy in literacy as a school?
What is literacy? Do you have a shared understanding of what literacy is?
A Positive Learning Environment. People learn best in a positive physical, emotional, and social environment, one that is both relaxed and stimulating. A sense of wholeness, safety, interest, and enjoyment is essential for optimizing human learning.
Total Learner Involvement. People learn best when they are totally and actively involved and take full responsibility for their own learning. Learning is not a spectator sport but a participatory one. Knowledge is not something a learner passively absorbs, but something a learner actively creates. Thus A.L. tends to be more activity-based rather than materials-based or presentations-based.
Collaboration Among Learners. People generally learn best in an environment of collaboration. All good learning tends to be social. Whereas traditional learning emphasizes competition between isolated individuals, A.L. emphasizes collaboration between learners in a learning community.
Variety That Appeals To All Learning Styles. People learn best when they have a rich variety of learning options that allows them to use all their senses and exercise their preferred learning style. Rather than thinking of a learning program as a one-dish meal, A.L. thinks of it as a results-driven, learner-centered smorgasbord.
Contextual Learning. People learn best in context. Facts and skills learned in isolation are hard to absorb and quick to evaporate. The best learning comes from doing the work itself in a continual process of "real-world" immersion, feedback, reflection, evaluation, and reimmersion.
Accelerated learning has really one aim, though: to get results. Accelerated learning is paying off handsomely for many organizations. Here are just a few examples.
1. Learning Involves the Whole Mind and Body. Learning is not all merely "head" learning (conscious, rational, "left-brained," and verbal) but involves the whole body/mind with all its emotions, senses, and receptors.
2. Learning is Creation, Not Consumption. Knowledge is not something a learner absorbs, but something a learner creates. Learning happens when a learner integrates new knowledge and skill into his or her existing structure of self. Learning is literally a matter of creating new meanings, new neural networks, and new patterns of electro/chemical interactions within one's total brain/body system.
3. Collaboration Aids Learning. All good learning has a social base. We often learn more by interacting with peers than we learn by any other means. Competition between learners slows learning. Cooperation among learners speeds it. A genuine learning community is always better for learning than a collection of isolated individuals.
4. Learning Takes Place on Many Levels Simultaneously. Learning is not a matter of absorbing one little thing at a time in linear fashion, but absorbing many things at once. Good learning engages people on many levels simultaneously (conscious and paraconscious, mental and physical) and uses all the receptors and senses and paths it can into a person's total brain/body system. The brain, after all, is not a sequential, but a parallel processor and thrives when it is challenged to do many things at once.
5. Learning Comes From Doing the Work Itself (With Feedback). People learn best in context. Things learned in isolation are hard to remember and quick to evaporate. We learn how to swim by swimming, how to manage by managing, how to sing by singing, how to sell by selling, and how to care for customers by caring for customers. The real and the concrete are far better teachers than the hypothetical and the abstract - provided there is time for total immersion, feedback, reflection, and reimmersion.
6. Positive Emotions Greatly Improve Learning. Feelings determine both the quality and quantity of one's learning. Negative feelings inhibit learning. Positive feelings accelerate it. Learning that is stressful, painful, and dreary can't hold a candle to learning that is joyful, relaxed, and engaging.
7. The Image Brain Absorbs Information Instantly and Automatically. The human nervous system is more of an image processor than a word processor. Concrete images are much easier to grasp and retain than are verbal abstractions. Translating verbal abstractions into concrete images of all kinds will make those verbal abstractions faster to learn and easier to remember.
Thanks to http://www.alcenter.com/whatisal.html for this detailed explanation of top tips for accelerated learning
Although we write sentences daily, do we truly understand what we are teaching?
If we know the language of grammar, writing sentences will be really easy.
Because writing records our language, writing a sentence is easy.
Mmmmmmm!
This clip demonstrates clearly the difference between simple, compound and complex sentences.
Important notes
- compound is very different from complex - compound is joining 2 complete ideas or independent clauses
- subordinators, and relative pronouns are used for creating a complex sentence. Do you know what these are?
Very simple way to understand how to construct a simple sentence and the different types we can build. I really like how it teaches the language of grammar. I believe this is really important from a very early age even Year 1. This helps understanding how to build complete sentences with comprehension of what they are trying to achieve, ie; they know what success looks like.
Shared Best Practice at Canterbury Science Week workshops.
Lisa M, Shane B, Urmi S, Hannah M - Brilliant presenters from Merrin School
What was going on?
ALL
Primary schools criticised for not teaching science well
Wanted to achieve:
motivate stimulate and excite children especially reluctant writers
sustainable
improve teacher practice
explicit teaching of science
building relationships with monitored students
provides clear specific steps
parents involved - notified with fish and chip evening and experiments. Explaining how we teach.
students come to value 1-1 time and small group teaching
Experiments must have ...
- WOW fact
- a little bit naughty
- targeted mostly to boys
- smelly, noisy colourful
- doing not showing or telling
- fun
- new
Improving Teacher Practice..
- research great sites
- focus on writing reading was part of researching
- keep reading program going for lower level readers
- Frame experiments through conjectures and inquiry mindset
- visuals to support text student created - explain everything app
- video and pics created greater involvement and ownership
- developing oral language through apps
- Had expectation that there would be progress
- layout of classroom was important to access visuals
- Monitored students around teacher desk
- Growing and dev t knowledge concepts and big ideas
- Skilled up to ask the right questions prior to the learning.
Process
Whanau intro and gain support
select 15 experiments
send out google form for students to select top 10 developing student agency
Making it sustainable -
- meeting Monday to ensure success for all
- reflected on issues to modify and to extend and make easier
also on how can we use this approach in other areas of the school
- creativity embraced
- explicit teaching of Science see slide
Mon - model and conduct experiment, set and review goals. Slow and deep modify designs, what if.... Tuesday - Discuss experiment revisit review things done, bring in conceptual vocab, modelling books, develop action command verbs (get is toxic and grab), concept words, nouns in one colour, verbs in one colour, etc, must be visual procedural process, group work for those who need it or modelling, Thurs - review scientific explanation and write conclusion. Don't give answers get them to research it. Always ask How can we make the world a better place now that we know this. Fri - publish
Must See Science Websites
You tube clips
Royal Society - top 20 science primary activities
science kids
www.sciencebob
stevespangler
nanogirl
Goals
One piece of writing published a week on blog
draft edit publish must use technology
assessed own writing
used google docs to write collaboratively - peer feedback
We drew some balloons on the ground and then lay down like they were carrying us away. It makes a great photo if you can get your position right. The children had so much fun. Couldn't wait to write their stories about it. So easy to do. There are heaps of ideas on chalk art if you google it.
Finding great writing exemplars and models for students has been challenging. On my quest to raise student achievement I wanted to ensure my students are exposed to what quality writing actually looks like. A good model can introduce and give examples far superior to my expectations or my abilities.
I stumbled upon this great website that has models of student work. Short simple and effective for students in all genre.
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