Learning from Home with LS2

Over the last few days, like everyone else in NZ, my class and I have been teaching and learning from home. My aim for this week has been to get my class engaged and comfortable with their new 'normal'. 

In place of formal teaching, I challenged my class to collaborate online and create their own version of the Summer Learning Journey which we call our LS2 Blogging Challenges. A few years ago our student leaders created and ran their own 'Winter Learning Journey' so rather than reinventing the wheel we added to these slides. Having exemplars from students that my current class knew has helped this activity become a success as the connections to the tasks were in place. So, rather than focusing on what is all around us, we have instead been focusing on the awesomeness of Aotearoa through our virtual tour. 

75% of my learners were actively learning at home on Day 1. To keep the motivation going I added a new challenge for Day 2. Grant Ogilvie updated our school sports site with fitness challenges that can be done at home so I picked the one that encouraged my learners to complete the name challenge. A lot of us took part in this challenge (including me), with many people turning it into a whanau challenge to make it more fun. Fau and her sisters made this clip to show how they took on our LS2 fitness challenge. 

           

 Fau's blog

The emails I received on Day 2 showed me that my class enjoyed the idea of a daily challenge so I set another one for Day 3. This time I used an idea from I saw shared online from NZ Geographic to create a picture of an animal using leaves. I tweaked this by asking my students to list three facts about the animal they created. Again this was really well received.

     

                                     Sakina's blogpost                     Victoria's blogpost

These challenges have not only kept my learners engaged, but have also kept me extremely busy answering emails, giving feedback and commenting on blogs. In addition to this we have a wide variety of learning opportunities that can be accessed on our class site.

Chris and Victoria have some great examples on their blog to show how this is working.

If you would like to use any of the blogging challenges created by my awesome students, click here and make a copy.

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #2...

#2... Collaborate with your senior leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

For the last 5 years Panmure Bridge School has claimed the Summer Learning Journey's overall prize for top blogging school, something we are extremely proud of and value highly. The Summer Learning Journey (SLJ) is a blogging challenge that runs over the summer holidays. This programme 'was created in response to concerns about the annual drop, slide or slump in literacy achievement experienced by students in New Zealand schools' and encourages our students to use their literacy skills which helps set them up for success and by maintaining the gains made over the school year.

The feedback from the SLJ team was that our participants had strengths in blogging, however, seemed to drop the ball when it came to the commenting component. Many of our learners either overlooked responding to comments made on their blogs, or simply replied with a thank you. Why did this happen? Not because our students were 'lazy' but possibly because as teachers, we had not set them up for success in this area. With that thought in mind I want to build on the learning from my 2019 inquiry and align our school-wide professional development focus of maths to find out if strengthening connections to Smart Relationships will help our tamariki to understand and use maths language and vocabulary in context?

Over the next few weeks I will be working alongside all our teachers to help them create their own backwards maps. This tool helps individual teachers to narrow the inquiry pathway they wish to travel along and they personalise their connections to our wider shared focus. 

After speaking with Hannah West, who kindly shared the blogging rubric she created for her learners last year, my plan is to work with our PBS team to co-construct a rubric that is personalised to our school. This will allow our learners to see where they have met the success criteria and what it is they need to do to move their own learning to the next level. By creating a rubric specific to the shared language of Panmure Bridge School, our teachers and students will have ownership of the tool that will allow us to measure student progress, and help our tamariki see that learning linked to vocabulary, instruction and strategy used in one area can be transferred to another. 

In class we actively plan for, and teach our students how to participate actively in a dialogic learning discussion. They are skilled in this area when asked to do this in class, but as yet most of our students are not carrying this thinking through to their blog commenting. In addition to actively planning time to allow our students to use maths language and vocabulary in context a number of our teachers are participating in the Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu ('Write to me, Write to others') programme. Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu helps connect learners across the Manaiakalani and outreach clusters through blog commenting and will help provide authentic opportunities for learning conversations to take place under the cybersmart umbrella.

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #1...

#1... Use the ‘inquiry stocktake’ doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

This year my plan is to continue to keep a clear and detailed record of all stages of inquiry so that I am able to evaluate shifts in my own teaching and in student learning by monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches to the way I deliver the Manaiakalani Cybersmart programme. In the past I have found that using a backwards map is the best way to do this as it not only keeps me on track but also allows me to see the direction forward that I want to travel in.

During our last COL meeting we reflected on the aspects of an inquiry, what worked well, what challenges we faced and what support would be helpful. Doing this not only allowed us to tap into the successes of our colleagues but also allowed us to share challenges and reflect on areas we might benefit with additional support. I particularly liked the idea of having a central “bank” that we could all add to so we can see the breadth of reading being done and dip in. This would not only work well across our COL but as our school has a shared inquiry would definitely be something we would benefit from and should set up.

Last year after working with all our staff on their own teacher inquiries, I asked everyone to share the practices we want to carry forward. What emerged was a common thread. We all want students to see that learning used in one area can be transferred to another - linked to vocabulary, instruction and strategy. This shared understanding has helped guide our way forward and has determined our school’s focus for 2020. This year our 'umbrella focus' is to explore if 'strengthening connections to Smart Relationships help our tamariki to understand and use content specific language and vocabulary in context?' Having a broad shared focus allows us to not only learn with and from each other, but also allows us the freedom to add our own twist and try new ideas.

Teaching as Inquiry 2020

Click here to see how I align my inquiry with the Manaiakalani framework.

“Recognising and spreading sophisticated pedagogical practice across our community so that students learn in better and more powerful ways...”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning. 

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CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

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