Is it scratchy in here?

Did you know that sharing is a really important part of the Learn, Create, Share circle? I know when we first started this journey a number of years ago we didn't really understand that it was to be more than just a blog post of perfectly finished work. What we have discovered and learnt is that we don't just share to finish our learning, we actually share to learn. The brilliant thing about having a blog allows us and our students to share even further than just parents and teachers.

Something that really stood out to me was Dorothy sharing this:

As teachers, we ask our children to write for an audience and there is a compulsory audience who is forced or paid to listen or read this. An authentic audience is someone who chooses to listen/read your work.

This is so true. The students know and expect that we will read there work. In fact, they get frustrated when we don't read it, but they don't always have an expectation that anyone else should care about their work. But seeing the excitement on their faces when someone they don't know or someone they really care about, particularly an adult, writes on their blog helps us understand why it is so important to share with that wider audience. Authenticity is what these students need, in a world where nothing is really that authentic ... and they know that.

Do you agree?

Computational Thinking! 

This is something I've done two PD's in before, however, because I am not using it in my classroom I have forgotten most things. Because I am Learn Create Share leader and using digital technologies in the classroom then this is something I haven't thought much about. But today has been a good reminder that we have to teach this from next year and that you don't need to much stuff to be able to teach it. No need for fancy robots (though that would be fun).

We started by doing an unplugged exercise where we were sorted, just like a computer algorithm. In this exercise, we had to google the distance to where we were born and then 6 at a time got sorted from furthest to closest. It was pretty easy and you can see how that would be quick to do in a classroom with any sort of data.

Getting Sorted:

Kawana came to us from the Pam Fergusson Trust, who are working with teachers to get ready for the new digital technology curriculum. Kawana has a background in computer science and is passionate about helping Maori young people access this area. You can check more out at https://trailblazers.pamfergusson.org.nz/

A key part of today's learning was around exploring the concepts of computational thinking. This involved thinking about ethics and morals, understanding binary and the practical side of using different types of apps. We also spend some time looking at the new Digital Readiness site that the government has put together for teachers before the 2020 launch. 

My biggest learning was around using scratch to make something. This is definitely a learning pit area for me. I have spent a tiny bit of time exploring but it has been a couple of years. It is logical and involves problem-solving (as all math really is) and it wasn't as hard or as complicated as I remember it being. You can check out my process in the slide below. 

There is much that I've learnt that we can use in the classroom. In fact, we have put Computational Thinking into our Tuesday plan for Term 4, a great way to do some creative problem-solving in a different way. I am looking forward to this.

What do you to introduce computational thinking in your classroom? 

Three is a magic number for making sites about dung

Despite feeling a bit under the weather I was looking forward to another Tuesday of learning, and I haven't been let down.

We met Danni Stone, our Year 7/8 Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu partner from Point England. She was here to teach us all about Google Sites. It was lovely to meet her and to make the face to face connection. She is very knowledgable and helpful, also willing to share her journey of how things have evolved over the 5 plus years she has been on this Learn Create Share journey.

Dorothy introduced us to today's theme of create. Create is such a powerful tool to use. I took many notes as she spoke but here are a couple of standouts:

• Creativity is a doing word … the whole parts of our body, not just a screen.
• The digital world can give us a world that turbocharges our creativity … but it isn’t the be-all and end-all … it is one part of the wedge. (see graphic to see the different parts of the wedge)
• Digital can capture the creativity.
• We don’t want our learners to be consumers, we want them to be creators. 
• Students that take more responsibility for selecting topics to learn about and this lead to accelerated learning. 
• Create: empowering through choice, information/knowledge, developing skills, building capacity & scaffolding.

"Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery. In children, creativity develops from their experiences with the process, rather than concern for the finished product. Creativity is not to be confused with talent, skill, or intelligence. Creativity is not about doing something better than others, it is about thinking, exploring, discovering, and imagining" (Kohl, 2008).

All this information has made me ask the question: 

Does our YMS belief mean that we only think it is about the digital? Do we ignore the other wedges of creativity from the classes that are using digital devices more than the juniors?

Sadly, we don't get much time to verbally process this information. Sometimes I wonder if it would help me work through what we are already doing in our class/school before we move on. I know my brain can be like a sieve and things come and go as fast as Katy Perry changes her hairstyle.

(or Mel Raisin 😊😊)

The rest of the day was spent with Danni taking us through Google Sites. I have some experience using sites but it was great having some sandpit time. The tips on this slide are fantastic, especially the size for headers and buttons.

In anticipation of the opportunity to do some creating, I had brought along a new Sharp Reading resource on Insects. We have been able to create our own site which we will be able to use for half our class for reading next week. It was great to be working on it with my fab work wife. Angela hasn't had a lot of time on creating sites and I think she found it helpful.

It was also interesting learning about Dung Beetles. We aren't quite happy with it but the bones are there. A bit of tweaking and we will be away.

Our Site

What do you think about it? What would you suggest?

Does motivation make a difference to students engagement in reading?

During the holidays I met with Kelsey to hear about some learning she had experienced a few weeks back. She shared her and Mark's notes with me, as well as explaining an overview of what they had covered. The discussion was around how we engage students in reading.

In writing we take time to hook the students in with something, we try and get them excited and interested in what they are going to write about. But we don't do it with reading. Usually, we give them a book or journal and tell them what to read. There is no choice left with them. But we expect that they will be excited and engaged with reading because it's reading.

The speaker Dr Rebecca Jessen said "Motivation does not predict reading achievement however engagement does. The hook gets engagement and leads to increased motivation and reading achievement. Relevance especially culturally is critical for engagement."

Kelsey shared about what Wigram Kereru community are going to be doing to engage their readers and it made me think about what we need to do. While we have given a little bit of choice around one or two things (the novel study group got to choose their book, they have a choice in the way they present activities) we don't really give them any choice about all of it.

Because of the timing, I didn't feel that we would be able to change everything for the term, plus our class runs a bit more traditionally than Kereru, however, I do want to see if creating excitement and interest before beginning makes a big difference in their achievement.

I decided to start with two areas that I could, without changing everything.

Shared Story: While we have decided to follow the Chapter Chat choice and read the book Holes to the class I wondered if I could help create excitement around this book by the way we introduce it to the class and the way in which they first engage with the follow-up work.

Novel Study Group: There are two books for the students to choose from, one we chose and one the students chose. I wondered if there was some way I could hook the students in, get them to choose the first book they read and get them excited about the reading for the term.

With these wondering questions in mind, I decided to try a few things.

Shared Story:

• I created the Slide to help engage interest and prior knowledge in the story.

• I decided to create excitement around the story by putting the book into a box and creating 'clues' that needed to be opened on the first day. 

The students were very intrigued by the box and curious to know what was in it. Lots of discussion and noise was created as we opened and talked about what the clues could mean. Watch the video below. 

The clues gave way to some discussion around what it all could mean. My class blog entry shared some of the ideas that they came up with.

It was great to hear everyone being creative, despite a few students knowing things about the book. I was open to having a student say they thought it would be a book called Holes but because it was amongst other suggestions we didn't dwell on that. It was helpful having Angela saying she thought it was going to be a puppy, the children got into this idea.

We read the first couple of chapters because they wanted it and so far they seem to be enjoying it. Tracking of the work they complete and the responses during discussions should give us some indication of how engaged they are with the book. I would hope to see an increase in the depth of answers and creativity in the creative DLO's. 

Novel Study: 

In light of the idea that we need to give ownership and choice to the students, I created this slide for students to choose to know about the books and knowing what work they would need to do. 

I also thought through how I could enhance the activities that the students need to do so that they don't just answer a bunch of comprehension and vocab questions. I want them to deepen their understanding of the book and to extend their creativity in the way they answer so that it shows their depth of understanding. 

Kelsey also shared that Dorothy Burt felt that teachers do far too much of the work and that we aren't allowing students to do some of this checking. After a term of struggling to keep on top of the marking, I would have to agree so I wanted to include this in the work. 

So my follow-up activities include peer checking, peer work and creativity with choice. There are still comprehension questions and vocab questions but I have encouraged pair conversation and will aim to use some of the critical literacy lessons with this group to develop more of these skills. I am thinking about testing them again at the end of the term to see if this makes a difference to their results, though we will test early Term 4 so I may wait till then. 

What about the rest of the class?

This is an area that currently I have left as is. I do need to develop this but currently, time and a question around how to do this well, while still developing the reading skills using Sharp Reading is stopping me from moving forward at this stage. I would like to explore how Wigram manage their programme further as I feel that will help me with some of my thinking. 

What questions do you think I should be asking? What ideas do you have around Critical Literacy and engaging readers? I would appreciate peoples thoughts on what I have written. 

How many tabs can a teacher have open at one time?

Following on from last week's learning we continued the journey of working smarter, not harder.

Our main focus was on learning how to use Google Hangouts, plus a few extra tips and tricks.

Google Hangouts:

Today we experienced Google Hangouts, firstly 'hanging out' with Dorothy, where she spoke about LEARN and we listened and followed on a shared screen. Following this, we then 'hung out' in small groups learning how to share our screens and speak about our favourite place. You can see below some screenshots of our first conversation as a group and what it looks like. It is amazing how something simple like turning a microphone on and off and sharing a screen seems so complicated for the first time.

Later on in the day, we had a go discussion a students blog post from the Summer Learning Journey and having it recorded at the same time. I don't think it was truly successful, for a number of reasons; lack of understanding around the task, tech issues (the recording didn't do the sound initially), nerves around most of us not wanting to 'fail' or 'look stupid' ... or maybe that was just me. But it could be a great thing to try with students and for staff to use at different times. 

Workflow:

We continue to be given skills/extensions/apps/ideas to make our workflow better. We focussed on three things; emails, calendars and Keep. Many of the things in email and calendar I had already explored so it didn't feel so helpful, though I did get to change my email background to a personal photo so that was nice.

Keep, however, was a different story. This seems to have many uses - list-making, note-taking, a place to keep ideas and lists and the ultimate hack ... turning text from a picture into text! That is mindblowing and we can't wait to try it out with our Sharp Reading sheets. We have already started to make a list of comments or pictures that we want to use often. Another member of our group uses it to drop digital stickers into their students work because the children missed the stickers. You can share lists between others so that is helpful for Angela and I and our workflow. 

In terms of thinking about the pedagogy that sits behind all of this, I would like to take some time to reflect on what Dorothy talked about. 

Learn is the sticky idea that most people struggle with. We are all, always learning but Learn is the bit where we access what we already know. Dorothy spent some time breaking the idea of Learn down a bit more. 

Exploring the idea of RATE was a good reminder.

R - recognising effective practise

A - when we have recognised it then amplifying that effective practice. This does include understanding the data and then amplifying that across other classes

T -  Turbocharge is where technology clicks in and allows us to amplify our effective practice

E = Effective Practise

What do we do that does this in our class? Do I do this? Having some time to explore this would have been helpful. I also wonder if it is something that we should be exploring as a school? What does YMS see as Learn? 

Hmmmmm, more to process around some of this but the tables are being packed up and my brains stopped working.

And the answer to the screen title is .... Many, many, many tabs (though One Tab or Toby Mini will help you to control the many).

DFI ... a new journey for me.

Beginning today I started walking a 9-week-long journey exploring digital fluency. Even though I have been teaching using digital devices for over 5 years I still have a lot to learn. Angela (my work wife) is also attending, which is and will make our teaching stronger. Already we have created a google doc for Maths Week using what we have learnt.

Today's session was called: Core Business. 

It has covered the origin story of Manaiakalani, shared succinctly and passionately by Dorothy Burt. Gerhard Vermeulen and Mark Maddren took us through a very full day. Mostly we were going over some google basics and how to work smarter not harder. I found it to be helpful, a reminder of things that I've forgotten, and new things that I want to use to be smarter in my teaching and work life. 

There was some simple learning; how to make your bookmarks icons only, how to copy and paste without formating (a key for blogging), how to use the explore tool in teaching and for our own work. I'm sure I've been shown these things before but these things slide out of your mind when you don't use them regularly. 

Some new learning for me was: 

• Using tables in docs but colouring the lines white and having the boxes coloured so it changes the way they look. 
• Getting a free icon sourcing page!
• How to use commenting and explore tool together for extending learning.
• Voice typing now has a New Zealand option. This is so great for us and for students.
• How to keep my personal and work Google accounts totally separate user account change in the toolbar, not just in the account. This is really great, especially to keep searches and work-life separate. 
• Command + number allows you to jump between tabs. This can make life faster when you are moving between tabs.

It was a good learning day. I am looking forward to what the journey ahead is going to bring. I feel that it will enhance my teaching greatly, as well as making me a more efficient teacher. I look forward to what it brings. 

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?