Setting up and moving into a year 2 & 3 ILE

During last term the decision was made to move our y2 and y3 classes into an Innovative Learning Environment. After countless hours in the holidays setting up and planning, and 3 weeks learning together I can truly say I am enjoying my days!

We currently have 41 learners; we are using two connected classrooms with a large opening between them, and we have a large covered verandah out front with beanbags our children use as quiet space. We gathered a variety of furniture from our previous classrooms and elsewhere around the school, and we are eagerly awaiting the imminent arrival of some additional items we have ordered. While we don't have separate breakout spaces, students have been making use of the spaces we have created within the classroom, e.g. my little green tent is well frequented. I am still watching in regards to catering for introverted students, but so far I have not seen any issues yet.

For continuity and administration we still have two official form classes, but we are mixing for many activities. We decided to run the class(es) loosely based on the UDL principles, with a particular topic / strand / concept for all learners but then adapting this for where these students are at. As a simple example, we were working on multiplication in maths, and while everyone worked on skip counting etc. the stronger learners had to go further than the less strong ones. As my experience is more with older learners, I mainly work with students at the upper end of the spread of abilities. Being able to focus on this has been real game changer for me as I feel I can now start to extend them where previously achievement data showed that while my students at lower levels were making accelerated progress, the students at the higher levels were progressing at a considerably slower rate.

One of the concepts I am still trying to get my head around more is 'acceleration' vs. 'remediation'. I originally come from a school system where everyone was expected to reach the same level at the same time while being taught in the same way. If you did not achieve the level, you either scraped through and continued to struggle in the next year, or if your 'failings' were severe enough in at least one subject, you had to repeat the full year in all subjects. Working at an individual student's level was the solution to this problem in my eyes.

However, one of the very valid points made was that if the expectation is that every student will reach at least a certain level of competency in a particular area of learning, keeping them 'at their level' and not exposing them to enough new, higher level learning can set them up for failure. Socially it can also be an issue when a student is working with children that are several years younger than them - what does it do to your confidence when the younger ones keep on moving ahead of you while you are still treading water? So how do you 'accelerate' a child's learning without going back to the 'one size fits all approach?

In our current environment, the children are up to 16 months apart in age, socially close enough in age (though it is relatively easy to spot the 6y olds from the 7y olds, and not just by size). As part of the ALL programme we are giving extra time to our struggling writers (most, but not all boys), and as of late I have started to see a difference in the way they approach writing in class. While we do group the students by level in reading and in maths, and in writing with the ones working towards or at the beginning of CL2 in my room, we are trying to have mixed ability within that and / or offer opportunity for mixed ability work. We are setting pretty high expectations, and I believe this has an impact on to what level the students aspire.

I am still working on my understanding of how to accelerate students, and I'm starting to think that the acceleration and working at their level are not the polar opposites I believed them to be when I first heard about it.

We are really trying for the students to develop agency, to know where they are at and where they are going next. We have many different displays where they are tracking their learning, where their goals are displayed, and with not much art work on the walls yet, most space is now taken up. On my recent visit to Stonefields School I had a glance at their app in development which will show this online; it was really intriguing, but I am not sure yet that would meet our needs best at this point in time. There is something quite satisfying about moving your avatar up on the Reading Eggs Skills Bank display, or moving your named rocket to the next level sight words? (We go through lots of blue tack, velcro and staples!). One of our rooms has a lot of visuals e.g. for 'interesting words', and I am struggling to find space to put more up. I have been wondering if I should move this online, especially as 'my' learners are using their own Chromebooks. Maybe I could connect an older unused laptop to my TV or the Chromecast and just have the relevant tab on our class site open during Writing, freeing up my laptop for when I need it? What works for others working with a similar age group?

In our jam-packed days, things do fall by the wayside, and for example posts to the children's individual blogs have not been happening as much as I would have wished. The students working towards or at the beginning on CL 2 in writing have been assigned their own Chromebook, and we had one session so far for students working in Google Docs. After the initial decision to go 1:1 last term, we I had held out assigning them as I very quickly realised that students needed much more than just the technical ability to operate a Chromebook, they needed to be able to manage themselves and get on with their learning. Btw, being in the shared space has really had a positive effect on those students that are still learning how to themselves, they had to learn that their actions affect a larger number of others and that some students younger than them were 'showing them off' :) I hope to incorporate the GAFE tools better in our days in the coming days and weeks. I had also intended to contact parents regularly, and in the busyness of my days I have really neglected this - something I definitely want to get back into.

On Friday we finally started my little passion, it was the first time we visited our new Minecraft Lab which my oldest son set up for us. All our learners present on Friday had a turn, and it has been very interesting observing them in their interactions. It also reminded me not to underestimate their skills as they were happily spawning all sorts of creatures - something we will curb with a bit of server tweaking :)

Inquiring into your practise has to be a way of life in order to be an effective teacher, so planning something like a whole term ahead in great detail is simply unthinkable to me. There are few days when our DP +Angela Nunn who I share the space with and I have not discussed how to tweak things to better meet our learners' needs. It can be very tiring, but there is nothing better than them succeeding or seeing the little light bulbs appear above their little heads - like when a 6y old just this week explained to me what 40 +36 was: "76!" he told me. "How do you know?" I asked. "Well, you have 30 and 30, that's 60, and then there's 10 and 6 more, that's 76!" Do I need to say more?

(Pictures will follow)

Fine lines; to blog or not to blog

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Do you blog, and if so, why? For me, blogging is an extension of talking through an issue or a problem. Yes, I am pleased when my visitor count spikes up. Yes, I am pleased when someone leaves a positive comment. But ultimately, blogging is one of the ways for me to make sense of the world around me and what I am learning, and I like putting this out there publicly as others might be interested in it.

You obviously read blogs if you are reading this post, why do you read them? I have many blogs in my Feedly, and while I don't always get to read everything, I pick up on bloggers' ideas, tips, links and resources, and I surely have learnt lots from them.

Many educators take to Google+, Twitter, Facebook etc. and voice their opinions and concerns there. I visit many of them on occasions, and in addition to my private FB account have a professional one (simply a second FB profile, connected to a different email) which I use infrequently only, but amongst many other things I have recently read about NZ teachers fearing they might get restricted in what they say online, similar to restrictions some other occupations seem to have.

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There is a fine line between being a private person and a professional and the things we can and cannot say. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two of them, e.g. I have blogged previously about being a parent and a teacher. I have been in professional roles where everything I sent out or posted online has been scrutinised as to how it might affect my employer's image. This had a marked effect on what I was blogging about, and the amount of posts. There was no option to be a 'private professional' without association to that particular organisation as in our networked world connections are made with ease. Having returned in the classroom, everything I write about my thoughts and questions in relation to my role can easily be connected back to my school (to save you the search, it's Mangonui School, one of the coolest little schools in the Far North of New Zealand). But I don't think there is anything wrong with thinking and asking questions, as teachers we are inquiring professionals.

I am strong believer that social media is fundamentally just another form of communication; just as a conscientious professional would not speak inappropriately of their employers or their clients in public, the same ought to apply online. I doubt that in New Zealand a profession would be restricted on voicing their opinion, thoughts and questions on a matter if it was done in a thoughtful and courteous way (and I hope I'm not wrong there). The thoughts and discussions created by such posts can be extremely rich and can help lift the whole profession. There is another fine line though: If we only blog about 'appropriate' matters, potentially where goes debate, discussion and healthy disagreement? 

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Often young people are accused of using social media inappropriately but I don't believe it is an issue of age. We all need to think about how we word what we say - no matter what the medium is. I am afraid though that some professionals could remove themselves from social media in fear or misunderstanding of what they can and cannot say online and how to say it. I for myself have to say that I would be a much poorer learner and educator in a world without the rich online discussions.

I will continue to blog about my thoughts, questions, about what puzzles me, because to paraphrase the amazing +Manu Faaea-Semeatu unless you give something to the online world, there is nothing for you to take. How about you?

My notes from Changing Spaces 29 April 2016

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Playing with Story Bird

1:1 with 7y olds

(Reflection & planning post, any feedback & suggestions very welcome!)

My very supportive principal has given me the opportunity to turn my classroom into a 1:1 environment (I have 18 y3s in Literacy, and 21 mixed y3-4 in Maths). I have 10 new HP Chromebooks as well as a share of currently 13 iPads (I hope to permanently assign 8 of them to some of my students with Literacy at the lower levels) as well as 6 older but still reliable desktops. How can I use this technology so that it not only enhances my students' learning, but transforms it?

So far, we have been using our devices mainly to re-inforce and practise skills, e.g. Xtramaths and Mathletics, Wishball 10 and Slide 100, online Listening Post and websites as part of our Reading Programme. Looking at the SAMR model, I would say we have been at the Augmentation level. We have also been posting examples of our learning to our individual blogs, but we haven't done anything further with that yet; this might be touching into Modification, but we're definitely not Redefinig yet.

Sharing devices between classes and using different devices in every lesson has been a barrier (you probably can imagine how much time it takes to rediscover the iPad with a particular student's work on it? They're only just learning to use Google Apps.) This barrier is hopefully gone now.

Another barrier is typing speed and / or limited literacy. I want to make time for improving typing skills, probably as one of the Must Dos. I personally like BBC Dance Mat Typing, but I would prefer sth. that's as engaging but has a Teacher Dashboard with it. I also need to find sth. that works for the students with iPads. Does anyone have any suggestions, please?

I regards to limits in literacy, I want to make more use of speech to text functionality. I really like Voice Input in Google Docs, and I have pushed out the Read & Write Extension to all our students (y3-5) esp. for text to speech. One of our y4s proudly showed me his writing during my CRT on Thursday, and he learnt from it that he needed a blank after a full stop as the voice 'would not take a breath' (talk about a target student being excited about writing!). I'll have to doublecheck, but I'm certain the iPads have voice typing in Google Docs.

My littelies have had limited experience working in their Google Drive yet, so that is sth. I have to address. I'm tossing up between a 'WALT use GDrive', and just using it as a tool in a task. Given what I know about them so far and how they learn, I think they need a session on the former and then lots of little practise tasks.

With only a couple of days at school before we go on camp, this could be the ideal time to introduce some of these ideas and tools to them - and have some of them promptly foget it all by the time we're back lol. But that will give me a good idea of who the experts in the class are, so that we can start using our devices more effectively and give us a better chance to move to a higher level on the SAMR model. I also want to teach them about quality commenting so that they can start using their blogs for richer learning.

Sometimes blogging for me is all about sorting out the muddled thoughts in my head; please feel free to comment with any ideas and suggestions - thank you!!!

The other side of the fence

Our year long Australian adventure is over, and we are happily settled back home in NZ. My blogging had been severely impacted by company expectations about what kind of messages were (commercially) suitable, I am somehow surprised I even made it to 26 posts for all of 2015!

5 weeks into term 1 I finally start to rediscover my blogging head space. Returning to 'the other side of the fence' aka the classroom is mind boggling: It's busy, never dull, challenging, stressful, full of smiles, frowns, hugs, tears, 24 hours are never enough in a day. Many times over the last five weeks have I asked myself "will I ever be good enough?". I have learnt and grown, though the bar is very high, and it seems to keep on rising - every time I feel like I have climbed one mountain, another higher one looms ahead.

I started out in an MLE y3-5, teaching students grouped by ability. For a number of reasons the leadership team has recently revamped this, and I am now teaching mainly y3 students in my own classroom for pretty much all day every day, supported until lunchtime by a wonderful teacher aide. Some of the areas of my practice I am especially working on are classroom management and writing. I am thankful for the support from colleagues, there is just so much to learn and they are usually there lending a hand when I need it.

There are a number of issues I am grappling with; I feel that the Arts, Science and Technology definitely are suffering in my timetable at the moment as I am focusing on Maths and Literacy to ensure students are accelerated to their NS targets as per the school expectations. I want to learn more about integrating across the curriculum, but with just 2 weeks of y3 under my belt, I have neither found time to plan them in an integrated way, nor have I had a chance to observe innovative y3 classrooms. Any recommendations out there?

My school have adopted an acceleration model over a remediation model, which has influenced the decision to return to year level based learning. I am still getting my head around this as I would have thought that working across ages would foster a tuakana-teina relationship and allow younger students to be extended beyond their age peer's interests and knowledge. I am quite keen to hear if other schools are following this acceleration model and what it looks like in their context, esp. schools that have MLEs and MLP?

We're off to camp week after next - if I make it through this, I should be able to last the year? Jokes aside, it is very interesting to be so far out of my comfort zone after spending three years in an 'expert type' role. While we tended to preach that challenge is good and to learn with and from children, it has taken me a bit to get more comfortable with this (I'm obviously a 'do as I say not as I do' person lol). My Social Media presence has definitely taken a back seat, and while I am missing the contact with my tweepsy, by the end of the day I just run out of steam. Thanks heaps to +Kassey Downard for reminding me of the upcoming GAFE Summit, I hope to reconnect with my friends there!

(Most of the time) I enjoy what I am doing, I don't regret having changed (back) to the other side of the fence though I think it will take a number of years before I will feel as confident as I was facilitating... or I might return to facilitating one day...

New year, new challenges (as well as some ponderings and navel gazing)

The new year is 20 days old, so not all that new anymore. Many people use New Year as the time to make resolutions - and quickly abandon these. Resolutions can be made at any time, but people seem to like to hook them onto a particular date (e.g. we celebrate 'round birthdays', but isn't every birthday worth celebrating?). I don't believe in making NY resolutions, they don't tend to work for me, but I still have some resolutions - believe in yourself, and look after yourself so you can look after others, too.

This year will be a new chapter in my learning journey, I am joining the team at Mangonui School, a fabulous school in the Doubtless Bay, Far North of New Zealand. I will be what I call a 'lead learner' in the Taniwha MLE (years 3-5), and believe me, I have LOTS to learn. It brought me to the realisation that while I have been talking about learning with and from each other for a few years now, my biggest worry is that I am not the expert, that I don't think I know everything I need to know. How do I change my own mindset??? It also made me ponder whether in my work with teachers I have done enough of the learning with & from them, or did I model 'listen to the expert and do as she says, not as she does'?? 

A couple of years ago #hackyrclass was prominent on Twitter in NZ Ed, from memory started by Steve Mouldey (@GeoMouldey). At that time I was thinking about #hackyrPLD; how can we expect teachers to change their practise if the PLD they receive perpetuates the 'sit in rows and listen to the expert at the front' approach to education? Take this the next step up and think about the PLD that facilitators receive - how can we change professional development / learning for them so they can applies this in their work with teachers?

Admittedly, traditional education has been well ingrained in society, and it takes time to change attitudes - which might lead to blending traditional with more innovative approaches to learning esp. for adults. However, this considerably slows down the change I believe is necessary in our children's education now, trickling down to them. What would students say that teachers need to know / do? The lovely +Hazel Owen and I recently pondered what would happen if students were running teacher PLD or even facilitator PLD? Wouldn't teachers benefit from all the things we always talk about, understanding the purpose of meetings / hui, workshops etc. beforehand, directing their own learning, receiving feedback, collaborating? What support would students require to set this up with teachers as their learners?

These thoughts don't extinguish my anxieties about my possible shortcomings completely, but they help me remember that I don't want to be the Sage on the Stage. I'm looking forward to the new challenges, and I'll work on believing in myself. Where are you at? What are you pondering? Are you working on changing your mindset?