There was teamwork in abundance in Sydney! As Kariene Gardiner (Kaikohekohe Education Network in Northland) and I were both presenting sessions on different aspects of blogging at the EdTech Team Summit, we decided to take time to attend each other's presentations. As well as an opportunity to learn from each other, it was also a time to offer a different perspective during question time.
It was so interesting to hear just how different our blogging presentations and stories were. As my presentation focus was how blogs are set up and organised at a cluster-wide level within the Manaiakalani community of learning, and shared research evidence that blogging is an effective tool in supporting achievement in literacy, it was particularly poignant to hear Kariene's examples and stories of student voice and the value that whānau places upon blogging as a means of communicating about their children's learning. There was also teamwork at play when I was able to support Clarelle Carruthers at her hands-on session about creating a Google site as, unfortunately, her co-presenter was sick. It was all hands on deck with about 30 attendees in the room ranging from complete beginners to experts. It was a timely reminder that everyone is an individual who has different learning needs and learns new things at a different pace!
As well as presenting my blogging session at the EdTech Team Summit in Sydney, there was much to learn from both experts at keynote addresses and presentation sessions delivered by classroom teachers.
Jesse Lubinsky, an American innovator and Director of Technology at a New York school district, opened the summit with his keynote address, Capes Not Required. What has shaped and influenced our lives as teachers? What extraordinary things can we achieve as teachers? Using his love of comics and superheroes as an analogy, Jesse believes that a learner’s journey through school is akin to the 12 stages of the hero’s journey:
Jesse asked us to think about how can we support learners as they travel the hero’s journey from the ordinary world to become superheroes when they reach the end of their journey through school. A teacher’s role, according to Jesse, is being the mentor along the way who nurtures persistence and accuracy. We are there to ensure that school doesn’t inadvertently become a difficult test for some learners. Our role is to get to know our learners as individuals because we want what’s best for them. We are the superheroes who encourage passion, provide opportunities, celebrate scars along the way and honour each learner’s individuality.
Lindsay Wesner, a keynote speaker from South Africa, also alluded to the power of a teacher’s story to shape the stories and passions of learners when she began her address, Once upon our time, by asking “What is the point of change technology?” Although we may fear change, worry that there is never enough time to make change, she encouraged us all to strap on our shark fin to face our fears because it is worth investing our time learning to use change technology because it matters for the success of our learners.
Lindsay expanded upon her thinking in this area during her Deep Dive session, The power of possibility - cultivating a growth mindset in your classroom. As a group, we collaborated to reach a shared understanding of a growth mindset, shared here in Lindsay’s graphic:
According to Lindsay, the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset is the power of the word “yet”!
We want our students to believe they can succeed so it’s about offering our learners multiple opportunities to follow a passion to success. Of course, to achieve success, learners need to have been involved in co-constructing a rubric, seen an example of a finished product (as long as this exemplar does not become a recipe) and enjoy opportunities to celebrate their success. Lindsay shared powerful ways in which change technology can support a growth mindset:
Google Forms can be used a little like choosing your own adventure story: a learner is taken on a different learning journey based on their answers to particular questions by using different sections within the form. If a learner is flying through, they will be taken directly to an extension and enrichment task. If a learner is struggling, the form will take them back to a support video and then the same questions will be asked in a different way.
Choice boards offer learners opportunities to present their understanding and thinking in different ways through differentiated tasks. Teachers don’t have to do or know how to do all of the tasks, we just have to think of what a learner needs to be able to do. We can give students tasks that are non-traditional.
As teachers, we need to show our learners that we value their learning process and not just the finished product. Kimberley Hall reiterated the importance of valuing the learning process during her deep dive into the digital tools we can use to support project-based learning.
How can we find out what students already know about a topic? Kimberley introduced us to a number of tools that synthesise previous understandings. AnswerGarden is one such tool in which students can share thinking and key words about a specific topic. The live word cloud is generated and regenerated as words are added. The font size changes depending on the number of times the same words repeat. Kimberley’s key recommendations when using AnswerGarden:
Keep the character count to 20 to enable learners to get to the crux of an issue.
The spam filter is off by default. It should always be changed to "on".
Change "browse other answer gardens" to hidden so that students are not searching and taking other ideas. They have to show their own thinking.
The default text is lower text, which makes it easier for the programme to collate data.
Take a screenshot of the word cloud as a record of ideas, thinking and learning.
Here is an example of a word cloud we generated at the conference:
Further information on all of the digital tools explored and shared by Kimberley can be found in my copy of her presentation.
We all like to create exciting and engaging learning opportunities by using the full range of tools within GAFE. However, John Meng, Deputy Principal at Rooty Hill High School, shared how he uses the Google suite of apps for a different purpose - formative assessment. He introduced his session by exploring the differing approaches to providing feedback put forward by Professor John Hattie and Dr Douglas Fisher. John Meng’s preferred model is Doug Fisher’s Gradual Release of Responsibility because he believes that Doug Fisher puts common sense in a sensible order:
This approach to teaching and learning is supported at Rooty Hill High School through a common way of planning across the school in all learning areas: every child walks into class to see the same planning format up on the screen. Students are hooked into learning through digital technology, collaborate digitally and in person and select how they will demonstrate their learning from a range of digital options:
Thinkwell - Maths videos on youtube
Google Slides
Google Slides voiceover
Prezi (very impressive but can cause vertigo)
Powtoon
Screencastify
Keynote
Google sites
Voki (language teachers love this)
Lucidchart (maths teachers love this)
Google photos - story
Podcasts
Infographics
Kahoot! (If questions are written carefully, answers can be used as formative assessment.)
Google sheets (Data validation - like comments)
These options offer multiple formative assessment opportunities from peers and the teacher. John also uses individual commenting within Google as cues for learners (for example, "Have you thought about ... ?, Go and ask ...) in a way that is similar to Linsday Wesner setting up different sections within a Google form.
Having listened carefully to many interesting ideas and presentations, it now remains for me to assimilate my new learning about Google Apps for Education from the conference to leverage my creativity and efficiency to support individual learners as they strive to succeed. No cape required!
As a closing activity at my session at the EdTech Team Summit in Sydney today, we created a collaborative blog post to share the reflections of attendees.
Blogging is how learners at schools within the Manaiakalani community of learning share learning, wonderings and thinking on their educational journey. Digital artefacts shared on individual learner blogs are a rich record of student learning and growth as they voyage through school from age five until they leave school. At the EdTech Team Summit in Sydney I was able to share some background about the what, why and how of our blogging journey.
It was wonderful to reconnect with our fellow Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers today at our first session at KPMG's head office to further challenge our thinking in relation to our inquiries: As we have faced the reality of the cohort of learners (and teachers) we are spending 2018 with, how has the thinking you developed ... gelled when ‘the rubber hit the road’?
My thinking, ponderings and wonderings returned to my identified problem: the need to lift the achievement in Maths for all students in Years 1-13 within the Manaiakalani Community of Learning. What does this mean for my inquiry? Am I on the right track? What is the most effective way of getting our waka to move through the water faster? While getting to know my learners and gathering data for my target students, it has become evident that the language of Maths needs building up in order that learners can express and explain their mathematical ideas and thinking appropriately and clearly. For example, when asked to find a quarter of a set, two of my target students asked "What is a quarter?" In answer to the same question, another explained that the answer is 4 because a quarter is written 1/4. These examples have thus caused me to return to the problem and progress my thinking by choosing to focus on four areas, the first of which is the language of Maths:
This focus on the language of Maths will also build support for our school-wide Teaching As Inquiry. Now that my thinking has progressed and clarified, my next step in the inquiry process is to prototype a digital framework to support my learners acquiring the language of Maths.
At yesterday's staff meeting, we were given the opportunity to explore how the leaders of learning within our Manaiakalani Community of Learning (CoL) are inquiring into the achievement challenges facing our learners. I identified Achievement Challenge 6 (Lift the achievement in maths for all students in Years 1-13) as an area of interest as it relates to my teaching as inquiry. It was inspiring to read about the research, hypotheses and reflections of Paula @ Glen Taylor to gain an insight into her collaborative inquiry.
Today we each shared our latest Teaching as Inquiry wonderings and reflections within collaborative groups. It was empowering to listen to Pt England's CoL teachers provide an insight into their hypotheses, hunches and thinking as part of Collaborative Inquiry Meeting #5. Such sharing has gifted me the knowledge that I face many of the same teaching and learning challenges and opportunities in Maths as other teachers at Pt England - and that all opportunities to collaborate further to unpack and explore would benefit all of our learners. It particularly resonated when Rob Wiseman commented that students do not always demonstrate that they have fully understood a new concept or strategy when completing follow-up tasks independently. When learning strategies to solve number problems within levelled ability groupings, I have also noticed that students are mostly able to explain clearly how they have used an efficient strategy to solve a particular problem. They are able to do this using materials and appropriate language based on our learning intention and seem ready to move off and complete follow-up tasks independently. However, their full grasp of the strategy is not always evident in their completed follow-up tasks. How can I do my best to provide students opportunities to create their own meaning in order to enhance their mathematical understandings? 1. Create rewindable opportunities for learning. Dorothy Burt recently shared her wisdom that creativity empowers learning with Pt England staff. A next step for my inquiry and my target learners is to plan for them to be creative, to make their own meaning using a SISOMO approach to explaining their problem-solving strategy and mathematical thinking. My hunch is that the benefits will be twofold. Those learners creating a screencast or video will affirm their own mathematical thinking. Their peers will have access to authentic rewindable resources to support learning any time, any place, anywhere. I have created a first Maths tutorial, explaining subtraction by breaking up a number, as a starting point for such creativity to empower learning:
2. Teaching and learning using rich, worthwhile Maths tasks. At our most recent Maths PD session with Jo Knox, she gave us practical advice about integrating Number and Strand in a fun and collaborative way using the NZ Maths unit, Giant Mystery. As well as planning opportunities for creativity, it is time for a rethink about the types of learning tasks used for teaching and learning within my Maths groups. By providing groups of learners with rich, open-ended tasks in a collaborative setting, will they be able to make their own meaning and retain those conceptual understandings? To begin to answer this question, I will need to reflect upon how I organise my Maths groupings and the flow of a typical Maths session.
This week has seen the final Spark-MIT meeting for the year at Spark HQ - a time of sharing and reflection for our cohort of 11 teachers from within Manaiakalani and its outreach clusters. An updated video of my uLearn presentation shares my reflections.
So what have I achieved through my inquiry since August? Two more families have enjoyed whānau training with Manaiakalani's Whānau Learning Kaiarahi, Yayleen Hubbard. Whānau have begun to engage with blog commenting in response to student-created support resources and homework tasks! Year-end reading data has been collected and analyzed.
So what have I learnt from this data? 57% of the control group (currently 14) has made accelerated gains of 1.5 years in reading achievement since February 2016. Significantly, Alex’s new-found positive attitude to learning combined with whānau engagement and digital affordance caused a 1.5 year shift in reading. This model of engaging whānau with their child’s learning while striving to meet individual student needs will remain the central theme of my teaching practice.
And what next for my inquiry? Learners are excited about blogging through the summer holidays with the launch of the 2017 Summer Learning Journey. Further reading assessment in February 2017 will tell the final chapter of this inquiry’s story.
The second half of Term 3 offered some challenges which impacted on life and learning in Room 10: five Year 5 learners joined the class from a neighbouring class in Week 4 and are in the process of buying personal Chromebooks; and we relocated to Tamaki Primary and then Ruapotaka’s library during Weeks 7, 8 and 9 due to asbestos risk.
However, these challenges were put aside during the school holidays with the excitement of attending my first uLearn conference. Sharing my Spark-MIT IGNITE presentation as part of the Spark-MIT 2016 cohort has been the highlight of this Manaiakalani inquiry to date, but there was so much more to learn about, reflect upon and take away from uLearn.
Listening to internationally-renowned keynote speakers as well as teachers from around New Zealand sharing innovative ideas and their best practice was a catalyst for wonderings and ponderings in relation to my learning context. What can I learn from Larry Rosenstock’s philosophy at High Tech High in San Diego after watching the documentary Most Likely to Succeed? Regular exhibitions of student learning engage whānau and community on a large scale. Closer to home, the Ako Fakataha initiative at St Pius X within Manaiakalani is a striking example of teacher persistence in engaging and empowering whānau to connect with their children’s digital learning journey.
While learning how coding and robotics can be introduced into learning at school, I experienced my “aha” moment of uLearn: Knitting is coding! To achieve success at knitting, learners have to follow instructions exactly and persist in carrying out an often repetitive activity. Feedback is instant for self and peers: it is easy to spot if the pattern has varied unexpectedly or stitches have been dropped. Of course, the free coding and creating programme, Scratch, offers learners opportunities to code, create and animate digitally!
As Term 4 begins and we have returned to our usual place of learning in Room 10, what is the most important thing for me to do as we approach the final weeks of this school year? It is time to hold my ideas lightly as we focus on creating further opportunities and resources to support whānau engage with their child’s learning.
As part of the Spark-MIT 2016 cohort, I am inquiring into raising reading achievement while enabling family and whānau to engage with and support their child's digital learning journey. Each of the Spark-MIT 2016 teachers was tasked with sharing key learning and reflections from these individual inquiries to date in a five minute IGNITE presentation at uLearn 2016. Here is my presentation:
It was a privilege to share the progress, successes and wonderings so far of my Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (Spark-MIT) inquiry at Manaiakalani's annual hui yesterday. After sharing my thoughts for a second time at uLearn in early October, along with all other Spark-MIT 2016 inquirers, I plan to share my presentation via this blog.
The Spark-MIT 2016 cohort was tasked with creating an IGNITE style presentation to share this journey at the hui. Quite a challenge to share all that has happened in five minutes using only 20 slides! Such a challenge focused the mind on the key ideas, the important milestones, expressed succinctly - to avoid having to speak at a hundred miles an hour. Thank you, Dorothy, for demanding this of us. It reminds me of those classroom learning conversations when teachers are inspiring learners to craft, recraft and reorganise their writing ideas to meet the writing purpose!
As well as a time to reflect upon my inquiry and its progress, yesterday was a wonderful opportunity to listen to the successes and wonderings of others - my fellow Spark-MIT teachers, student ambassadors and research experts from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre.
Yesterday, digital training to empower whānau within Manaiakalani was undertaken for the first time by a family at Ruapotaka. After much persistence on the part of the student, a one-on-one training session was organised between a parent and Yayleen, Manaiakalani's Whānau Learning Kaiarahi. Alexandra's mum spent an hour with Yayleen learning about kawa of care and setting up a personal email account. It has been two months since our Chromebook hui, but this significant meeting is further evidence that whānau do want to engage with and support their child's learning. As well as being a milestone for whānau, it was a proud moment for Alexandra too. She is now able to take her Chromebook home more frequently: Training with Yayleen. Time will tell whether other learners follow Alexandra's model to facilitate such whānau meetings!
Saturday, 23 July 2016
As we look forward to new learning and new opportunities in Term 3, it is exciting to report that all learners in Room 10 @ Ruapotaka now have a personal Chromebook. Parent interviews at the end of Term 2 enabled me to catch up with those families/whānau who were unable to attend our whānau hui earlier in the term. This development affords every student the opportunity to learn at home using a personal digital device from now on. Whānau will continue to have opportunities to find out more about their child's digital learning journey by training with Manaiakalani's Kaiarahi/Whānau Engagement Facilitator. Our whānau blog is supporting the connections between home and school too: A group of students recently shared their screencast to explain the basics of a Chromebook for whānau. Despite the Chromebooks remaining at school during the holidays, three learners have been actively blogging about the Olympics as part of the Winter Learning Journey blogging programme run by Rachel Williams of the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. In Term 3, while we learn about the challenges faced by Olympians going for gold, learners will be challenged to go for reading gold by taking the opportunities afforded by ubiquitous learning. The future looks rosy - and golden!
Room 10 @ Ruapotaka held a Chromebook celebration last Thursday to engage with family and whānau and in order for learners begin taking their Chromebooks home to experience ubiquitous learning. To strengthen connections with whānau, two of the Manaiakalani team, Fiona Grant (Professional Learning Team Lead) and Yayleen Hubbard (Kaiarahi/Whānau Engagement Facilitator) offered support at this hui.
Creating
Students were actively engaged in preparing for this event by creating personal invitations for whānau. A small group of students also created a video invitation in English, Māori, Samoan and Tongan to maximise whānau understanding and involvement. To encourage learners to reflect upon the transition from homework to learning at home through this digital affordance, each student created a screencast to share with their families how and why their learning would benefit by taking a Chromebook home. Here is an example shared through individual learner blogs.
Each student led the experience for their family. To promote student independence and agency, learners were scaffolded to present learning and work through a series of tasks and activities with their visiting whānau.
An important aspect of this celebration was gathering data from whānau through a whānau survey to gauge attitudes to learning at home, and information about digital learning, use of public libraries and languages spoken at home.
Overall the celebration was highly successful as a model for engaging with whānau. Although there are a few students in Room 10 who have yet to complete the paperwork to purchase a Chromebook, only one family (of those students with a personal Chromebook) was unable to attend.
To reflect on this event, all students have been asked to write about their experience at our Chromebook celebration: here is Alexandra's writing. It is poignant that at this exciting and unique milestone event in their digital learning, a highlight for many students was sharing afternoon tea.
Learning
Through this Chromebook celebration, I have learnt that:
Learners co-operated and collaborated with new-found confidence when creating the various DLOs for this event as it represented a significant milestone in their personal digital learning journey.
Parents were excited to come and see digital learning in the classroom and excited that their child was able to begin learning at home using a Chromebook.
All learners were proud of their achievements and proud to share their digital skills with their visitors.
Google does not offer translation into Tongan.
Learners need a password to access the Tamaki Learning Network (TLN) on their Chromebooks at home!
Next steps
Learners will create additional screencasts to support whānau engagement with their child’s digital learning. Additionally, primary caregivers will attend some initial training with the Manaiakalani Kaiarahi/Whānau Engagement Facilitator to enable learners to take Chromebooks home more than twice per week. While maintaining relationships with family, it is now time to begin addressing the reading aspect of my Spark-MIT 2016 inquiry.
An engaging afternoon was spent sparking connections with Rachel Williams at the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at the University of Auckland yesterday to support my Spark-MIT 2016 inquiry. Rachel is addressing the summer slide in literacy specifically within Manaiakalani and created a pilot holiday blogging programme, Summer Learning Journey, which ran over three weeks in January 2016. Blogging was chosen for this initiative as a positive way to hook learners into creating and sharing more writing. Eight 1:1 digital classes across three Manaiakalani schools participated in the pilot programme with approximately one-third of those learners actively blogging during this time. How does this relate to my inquiry? As the programme is set to expand during the July holidays, it offers learners motivation and a framework for authentic and fun reading and writing activities in addition to any holiday leisure reading. Rachel is excited to have an opportunity to connect with the learners in Room 10 @ Ruapotaka and enable their involvement in this ubiquitous literacy journey, taking advantage of digital affordances at home and in the community. We will collaborate to enable whānau to engage and connect with this blogging journey.
The backstory: although moving with the same student cohort from Year 5 in 2015 to Year 6 in 2016, the number of learners in Room 10 has decreased since the end of 2015 as five students have left the area over the summer holiday and during Term 1. One student has returned to learn at Ruapotaka after a short time in Room 10 earlier in 2015.
The digital context: as at the 7th April 2016, 59% of Room 10 is learning with Chromebooks. 41% of the class continues personal learning traditionally. There is a digital divide within Room 10. Once 90% (or more) of students have access to a personal Chromebook in Term 2, family and whānau will be invited to share their initial ideas, thinking and expectations about their child’s learning and any opportunities to engage and connect with this within a ubiquitous digital learning environment.
The data so far: just under half of Room 10 read at their chronological age; just over a quarter of the students read at a level well-below their chronological age; no learners are reading above their age. Just over half the class maintained their reading age over the 2015/2016 summer break. For those students whose reading age declined between December 2015 and February 2016, the downward shift was either 6 or 12 months.
Anecdotal evidence about reading habits over the 2015/2016 summer break: two students participated regularly in Dare to Explore, a summer reading programme at Auckland Libraries; approximately half of the class said they read occasionally over the holiday; and around one-third of students did very little or no reading during the summer break.
The specific problem of my inquiry was identified, deliberated and refined at Spark-MIT 2016 Day 1: how do my Year 6 learners in a Decile 1 primary school make and sustain accelerated gains in reading?
The easy answer, of course, is to read more. Therein lies the problem: how will that happen? The cycle of inquiry begins.
My initial thoughts on unpacking the problem have evolved into a series of questions which will focus my inquiry over the course of 2016:
Today was Day 1 of Spark-MIT 2016. This year's cohort of Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers gathered at Spark's Head Office in the city to share the focus of their inquiry, challenge and support each other in finalising their research problem for 2016.
