NEXT Foundation and the Summer Learning Journey

The Summer Learning Journey for NEXT Foundation from Next Foundation on Vimeo.

What an absolute privilege to be a part of the launch of the Summer Learning Journey today at Panmure Bridge School. A huge thank you to the NEXT Foundation and Rachel and her team at the Woolf Fisher Research Centre for inviting us to take part. Very proud of all our Learning Space 2 students who feature throughout this footage. 

Revising structure and proof reading in context...

As teachers we always strive to set our students up for success by giving them the tools to make sense of the learning. Along the way some of these tools get used over and over again, while others are left unused and the knowledge of how to use them gets lost along the way. 

Writing is one area where this happens a lot. Once we master how to use a language feature, a punctuation mark or more sophisticated vocabulary, we use it over and over again to cement it's purpose in our own knowledge ketes. However, for many of our students the contents of their 'proof reading kete' are often sparse. I think that in many cases these students try so hard to get their ideas on paper, or on the screen, that they overlook the fact that what they have written often does not make sense to others. If you have used up all your creative energy completing the task, then there just isn't enough fuel in the tank to go back and check it. So what did I do about this? I adapted and repurposed a few of the ideas I had learned at the Jeff Anderson PD I went to earlier in the year. 

My learners had responded really well to the power writing and the 5-7-10 writing I introduced last term. With this in mind I got creative with today's task and introduced our 

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 timed writing challenge. The thinking behind this was that by breaking down the task into bite sized chunks it would add a 'fun' element to skills I needed my students to practise using. 

I have learned from my Reading inquiry this year that if I actively plan for front-loading opportunities, stronger connections are made to the learning. This is why I allowed for a total of 19 minutes of talking and planning. I tapped into aspects of the paired writing program so that each pair had a more able person who was able to guide, question and prompt. We agreed at the beginning of the lesson that this was to be a collaborative piece of writing, so must have input from both people to be done correctly. Initially the more able students took control so I intervened and included a role swap each time a new timed challenge began. This worked really well as it gave both parties an opportunity to record, read, notice, change and re-read along the way.

8-7-6-5 and 4 provided an opportunity for the structure and writing of an explanation to be practised, while 3-2 and 1 opened up the doors for proof reading to be revisited. This was derived from our LS2 adapted DRAFT process. The later part was where we got the most mileage today. It was empowering for me as a teacher to be able to hear the negotiating taking place as each pair took the time to look closely at their writing.

Once this was done I paired up the pairs and revisited the 3-2-1 again to allow our new audience to see if our learning intention of writing and DRAFTing an explanation that makes sense to the reader, had been met. I always find it interesting how tough my learners are on each other when they are giving feedback. They notice the small details in other's writing that are often overlooked in their own. Unfortunately at this time the bell rang so I wasn't able to capitalise on the immediate responses to the suggestions made. We did do this later in the day, but I think it would have been a more powerful learning opportunity if it was done straight away. 

Looking at the finished writing I can say this was most definitely a successful and 'fun' way to revisit learning. 

NOTE: I repurposed an activity I found here by adding the language of our classroom to the word bank. Each pair was given a word bank (that could most definitely be added to) and a blank framework (with no images or written prompts). I modelled how to use the word bank to craft paragraphs then let the talk flow. The reason I provided the content was that the learning was about structure and proof reading, and not on the ideas.

PBS Holiday Blogging Update

Wow! Just Wow! I can not believe how well our leaders and bloggers stepped up to this challenge. Last term I was trying to think of a way to keep the learning conversations and achievement gained over the term in our class, going over the holiday period. To do this I came up with the idea of creating our own holiday blogging challenge that was loosely based on the Woolf Fisher Holiday Blogging format. 

I know my learners and I know that if true buy-in was to take place the task design needed to be created by my learners for my learners using the language we use in our learning environment. As mentioned in my previous post our student leaders were challenged to set this up for their peers. We decided to go on a virtual trip around Auckland visiting the Sky Tower, Rainbow's End, Kelly Tarlton's, the Museum and the Zoo. Each task required my learners to use their smart searching skills to find and use the information provided on each of these websites to create a DLO or respond to a question that was then posted on their blogs.

This was not sold as a compulsory task but rather a way of strengthening their 2017 learning journey. 27 students signed up to take part and out of those 23 completed the challenge during the holiday break, with 5 more students electing to complete the tasks this week. 2 students took responsibility for not taking part and emailed me their reasons and 3 decided not to complete the challenge. Once again we had a significant number of boys take part. Our leaders had organised who would monitor which day and our participants had to take responsibility for adding their links to our Holiday Blogging Record. This worked extremely well and has given me a wonderful piece of learning evidence. 

The focus of my CoL inquiry this year has been to see how I could get my learners talking about their learning. In total our learners published 208 blog posts and between them made 924 comments on each other's blogs. From a teacher perspective that is 924 times that someone read a blog post, noticed the successes and errors, and gave their feedback and feed forward. Many of these comments are part of a thread which means learning conversations have taken place and are embedded in our learning culture!

Screenshot of the student managed blog post and comment record

PBS Holiday Blogging Challenge - created for our learners by our learners!

Our wonderful student leaders were challenged to create and manage our own mini holiday blogging challenge. They have done an amazing job by creating activities that will take our holiday bloggers on a virtual tour around Auckland. There was a wealth of rich discussion as tasks were created and a lot collaborative problem solving to decide who will be responsible for which role in helping to manage the commenting and feedback. 

This challenge has been put in place to grow our leaders and strengthen our literacy skills. To make managing this task easier we have created a spreadsheet where bloggers will post the links to their blog posts and record which blogs they have commented on. 

This morning AJ and Mia introduced the challenge to those who have chosen to take part. What impressed me was the engagement of the audience and the clarity of the instruction. We have borrowed the points system from the Woolf Fisher Summer/Winter Learning Journey that runs over the December and July holidays, so will be giving out prizes to our own holiday blogging challenge champions (and managers). 

Anyone who would like to copy and repurpose this resource is most welcome. Link

Winter Learning Journey... WOW!

Congratulations to all our Panmure Bridge Winter Learning Journey bloggers. We are so proud of you!

The images above reflect the participation in the Winter Learning Journey from Panmure Bridge's Learning Space 2. Congratulations to Daniel, Oh Hsen, AJ, Alex (LS1), Ofa and Eric our main prize winners; Nazella who got a special mention; and everyone who took part. Our top two bloggers, Oh Hsen and Daniel each commented 500 times on fellow blogger's posts!

A huge thank you to Rachel and her team for creating an exciting learning adventure that took our students on a virtual tour around New Zealand, and for the many, many comments made to everyone who took part.