Evidence - we do work in the holidays!

Above is a photo of Claire from St Bernadettes, Anna from Hornby High School and myself meeting on the first Wednesday of the holidays to put together the Teacher Inquiries for our Term 4 presentation. 

As School Leaders it has been our job to lead a group of teachers from the cluster in their Teacher Inquiry on Prior Knowledge. We have lead three meetings over the year and in the final term, it is our job to present the findings of the teachers. 

We spent almost two hours going over the work the teachers had sent us and putting it together on a Google Site. We really impressed with the quality and creativity the teachers showed in their presentations, as well as the evidence that shows that adding Prior Knowledge to the students learning process is increasing their understanding. 

You can check out the site we created here.

We've had to do a little bit of chasing around access so that all are seen and are now all fixed. Kelsey Morgan, our 'manager' sent us this email to congratulate us on what we had done.

It has been an interesting process leading other teachers from different schools as you only make connections with them a few times. It was a good thing to do and it has grown my confidence in speaking in front of other adults and leading them. It seems much harder than dealing with a room full of children. 

Data and the Board

As part of my role as School Leader I have had to attend Woolf Fisher data days alongside the Principal. Part of learning to understand and read the data is also being able to share the data with others.

Earlier in the year, I ran a staff meeting going over the Reading, Math and Junior data. I had assisted the Literacy Leader in sharing the Writing Data in her own session so I didn't need to share the Writing Data.

The staff meeting was a positive time, helping us focus as staff on what we need to do to improve how we teach different areas in order to help our students accelerate even more of their learning. Being able to lead the discussion, give the teachers a chance to really look at the data and draw their own conclusions from the data and discuss thoughts, ideas and solutions together.

Data is hard. Once you get past actually reading and understanding it, it can feel a bit overwhelming. There are lots of questions you need to ask about data. With this sort of data, it is also a snapshot in time and so it can be hard to know what comes into shape the data. It also can be confronting as a teacher to see raw data that tells you that your students aren't doing as well as you would want them to be doing. Especially when you are looking at a whole year's worth of data. When they plateau or even go backwards it isn't great. What do you do about that as a teacher, team or staff?

Following on from this staff meeting I was asked to present literacy data to the board. I did this on Tuesday the 24th of September. It had been a few months since the staff meeting so it took a bit of time to re-visit the data from early in the year and work out what is important for the Board to know. 

I produced the following presentation for the board and we spent 15 minutes going over it.

Again, it was confronting showing our board that currently many of our students are failing in literacy. They asked questions around why this might be, particularly with the difference between the Year 2 massive gains and the extremely low achievement of the Year 3 - 5 students. A few members of the board were quick to say it was because of the devices. This might be the case, but there is also a lot of other things that could have affected their learning; developmental levels, high needs of class, teaching methods, timing of tests, type of tests and the abilities to sit these types of tests, teachers competency, paper vs computer, attitude to tests ... the list could go on.

It is my belief that we can only do what we can do, making sure our students have exposure to these tests, create a growth mindset around tests, teach the skills to best sit these type of tests, make sure it is at the same time as the other schools are sitting them (so we compare like with like) but most of all recognise that for some of this data it is only one piece. A PTA Reading Test is one test on one day and our Linc-Ed data allows for a larger range of information to help shape the level our students are at. However, it is important to know how we are going and what we are doing with our teaching in the classroom. We don't want to teach to the test because that doesn't benefit students in the long run.

But what other things can we do to create a classroom where our students can achieve no matter what the activity or assessment? That's our job as teachers and it is the job of the Board to make sure we are asking these questions.

Leadership - some initial thoughts

This year my inquiry is around leadership due to my role as a School Leader in the cluster.

I love my role as School Leader. I get to work with brilliant, thoughtful teachers from around the cluster who challenge my thinking. We are led by the amazing Kelsey, who doesn't just let us sit around and have a chat but challenges us, supports us and helps us to be the best we can be. What more can you ask from a leader?

Which brings me to my inquiry ... or in fact, some pre-questions around leadership because after our first meeting where we went over the things we were to present at our PLG's I left feeling overwhelmed, unsure and a bit lost. Admittedly the information did go at breakneck speed and there were many voices in the room ... but it was more than that. I felt unsure as to whether I could actually lead a group of adults who know as much as I do, if not more. And that's a challenge and a question. Or two.

How do we lead if we feel insecure about our own leadership abilities?

How do we lead if we know the same as the people in the group?

As I've approached today (our PLG day, where I would have to lead) I have continued to feel unsure, but it seems that others do too. And that is reassuring. I think.

The PLG's went well. My group seem nice and listened to me. I think they are as unsure about what we are doing as possibly I felt last week. We worked through the slides and everyone was on the things they needed to be and people shared well. Which brings me to the next group of questions.

How do we know if we are doing a good job as leaders?

How do we measure our ability to lead?

I know what it feels like to be lead well and to be lead poorly. Maybe my next step is to write these things down and process what these things look like. Once I know these things, perhaps I can make sure I do/avoid these things when I'm leading. Maybe I should read some things around leadership. Might be time to raid my husband's leadership books.

Learn Create Share

Today I attended another fantastic Leaders of Learning session. I feel very lucky to be part of a group of people from my cluster who are diverse, supportive, thoughtful, caring and pretty funny. The thinking from many of them challenges me and I always come away feeling very privileged (and having learnt a lot) to be part of this group.

Today was no different, however, it was a day that I was especially looking forward to because I had missed out on 'The Day' (as we are calling it) where the group spent 7 hours unpacking the Learn Create Share pedagogy.

I had begun to grow my understanding through conversations with some of the members of the group and because of my involvement in the Delving Deeper presentation but I need more.

Prior to this session my understanding was:

Learn - what we know (prior knowledge) and what we need to know.
Create - All the things we create to share our learning.
Share - How we put our 'creation' out into the world.

But I knew it to be a little more than this, not linear but circular, all interconnected and intertwined.

This is now my current understanding (and I still don't think I have it embedded yet) based on our conversations and discussions:

Create = using and combining prior knowledge and new knowledge to synthesize the learning. It involves learners proving their understanding, creating brand new knowledge and learning skills as they create.

Share = connecting and collaborating with the purpose to gain feedback/feedforward and it is done on the learners' own terms. It's about the connections with others, their own agency and feedback/feedforward.

I believe I witnessed this in action today when two Year 8 girls worked near me putting together a video to explain bedmas to others. They came up with a plan, asked for permission to use a cell phone to create the video, worked on the video by discussing, correcting, editing as they clarified each part of bedmas until they had a finished product. Is this not a great example of Create & Share in action?

And finally, Learn.

Learn created a lot of discussion amongst the group, as those of us that hadn't been at 'The Day' had a different understanding of it. Learn isn't learning, learning is embedded in the whole process. Learn really should be called knowledge because it is about the prior knowledge the learners have.

For example when you take a guided reading session and you start the lesson with "What do you know about ..." you are at the Learn part of the pedagogy. Everyone shares and the group has then a shared knowledge. As soon as you pick up the text and start reading you are in create. Basically, 10% of a lesson sits in Learn. As educators, we provide access to Learn when we provide resources for children to access.

Now I'm thinking about Learn Create Share in terms of time spent to help me with the thinking around this. 10% for Learn, 70/80% on Create and 20/30% on Share.

Therefore my next step in my own learning and understanding is to begin to think about this as I work to improve the work the students are accessing. I also need to be able to explain it to my teaching partner and further to this help the whole staff have a shared understanding of this. The journey continues.

So School Leaders out there, have I got this right, or what thinking do I need to tweak?