iExperience Observation

In term 4 I was observed by Diana Wilkes during an iExperience workshop that I taught. The Purpose of Observation was Taking Action phase of the Spiral of Inquiry collaborative iExperience

My next steps from this observation are:

• Use of PB4L language and giving of caught being #oresomes
• More learner choice in the showing of what they know, some learners need support with this
• Differentiation and responding to different needs.  How were ELLs and HLN learners catered for in this (in practice and in design)? Capable learners extended?
• If the goal is for more learners to have more autonomy, consider how to provide scaffolds for those not ready for the immediate launch.

Teacher talk moves

During an ELT we learnt how to use the talk moves during Maths problem solving lessons. I am using it during my lessons and have found it really useful as the learners are now doing more talking during group discussions when I use the 5 talk moves:

1. Revoicing - clarifying
2. Repeating
3. Reasoning
4. Adding on
5. Wait time

Spiral of inquiry presentation

My team discussed the above google slides during our spiral of inquiry presentation to the staff at one of our ELT meetings.

Promoting well being of students

What do I do to demonstrate commitment to promote the well being of all akonga (students)?

I provide programmes appropriate to students learning ability by planning for groups in literacy and numeracy.

Learner led conference

I used the learner's Learning Pathways (with artefacts and reflections) in my Learner Led Conferences that was held on Thursday, December 8th 2016.  

The conversation started 'from' the Learning Pathway, with the learners using their pathway to discuss (and celebrate) their learning and to share their narratives via the blog.  

During the conference, I considered:

-having the learner teach their parent to login

-using this as an opportunity to show/teach parents how to comment on a blog

-to show the parents where the reports can be accessed (My Progress) page.

I had clear expectations of what the learners needed to put into their Learning Pathways eg. most learners should have an artefact and reflection for each term in each of iExplore, iDevelop and iExperience [12 in total] and a bilingual intro on their 'About Me' page.

PB4L

I use the PB4L matrix to ensure that learners are #oresome during Learning, Playing, Eating, Meeting, Moving, Well-being.

This also ties in with our vision principles of capable, connected, curious and collaborative.

Our habitat and individual blogs for 2016

Read about our learning on our LH1 Blog and our individual blogs ! There are posts about all areas of our day! Be curious and check it out!!!

Cultural Art

For our cultural week I designed a cultural art plan where:

• Students had to create 3 circles - one about them,one about their culture and one about their family culture 
• I glued the art onto black paper with their names on it.
• Learners had to make their scratch border with different colours and black on top.
• Learners then selected a colour to enhance their scratch and they glued the final two pieces together.

Problem solving

After the ELT session on problem solving, I have been using the group roles during problem solving lessons in Maths.

The students have been assigned the following roles during the session:

• Team Captain
• Facilitator
• Recorder/Reporter
• Resource Manager

They enjoyed participating in these roles and it made all of them to take responsibility for their learning.

PB4L

Last Friday for PB4L my group focussed on curious well-being. Below is an image of what the learners thought curious well-being looked like to them at school,  at home and in the community.

Spiral of inquiry

Our hunch

Stage 1:
We wonder if …one open iExperience spark would encourage learners to take agency and collaborate in new ways and create an atmosphere where more self driven learners can guide their own journey around the provided open iExperience Spark while providing an opportunity for learners to have a directed task to have the safety net to take risk and develop their own learner agency ?

Stage 2:

#1: We wonder if we respond collectively to learner voice and then collaboratively design and teach to include the learners’ ideas in planning prior to a new experience will create an atmosphere where learners have greater autonomy and agency over their iExperience learning (a more utopic iExperience )?

#2: We wonder how we can gather learner voice  and collaborate together about “Where to next?” at the end of every iExperience session .

Reflection documents:
Week 4-5: Reduce, reuse recycle: Is it worth it
Week 6-7: Fighting fit

These are the things that we did differently in weeks 4-7:
We gave the learners the topic and gathered their ideas as to what they were curious about. Then we planned using an open-ended question as our spark or provocation. We tried different co-teaching strategies. We also got learner voice and LC reflection at the end. We tried to collaboratively meet at the end of each day and collectively gather reflections and write them into a document. We also gathered learner voice

 

We know from Halbert & Kaiser that developing hunches “involves getting deeply held beliefs and assumptions out on the table. It doesn’t involve a general brainstorm of all possibilities.” We need to consider what we are contributing to what’s working and what’s not in relation to collaborative practice.

How did we (endeavour to) create the conditions that fostered collaboration?
We changed the groupings

We worked with LCs we hadn't worked before
We started from the same ideas the learners generated prior to our design
We planned in pairs
We practised co-teaching strategies after doing some research about it.
We collected learner voice
We attempted to complete joint LC reflections

What will we do differently?  

We discovered that it was better when all LCs were committed to spending time to do collaborative face to face reflection sessions as the discussions generated us to think more about changing our co-teaching strategies and changing our roles. In future we need to ensure that all LCs are committed to having face to face discussions daily after each iExperience session.

What will we change?
Ensure that all LCs are committed to having face to face discussions daily rather than online collaboration. Document the reflections together.
Explore other ways of gaining learners ideas around a topic other than brainstorming in a larger.
We discovered that the learners had ideas about the specific things with on our provided topics that they were curious about. We realised that when we collected learner voice only a few students contributed so maybe next time we can think of a other ways of collecting learner voice such as using a google form, a grid or using sticky notes so that every learner has a chance of contributing. (slide 16)

What is our plan?

More collaboration with LCs if they are away. Separating the disruptive learners from each other so that it does not affect the learning of the more capable learners. Catering for ELL's and HLN learners and extension activities for high fliers. Setting up mini workshops to cater for different ability groups.

How will we ensure that we are doing something different?

More research on co- teaching strategies. Research other ways of collaborative teaching and design our own #oresome format. Reflect collaboratively and continually change our mindset - being open to try new things. Talking and problem solving to other habitat LCs.

What do you need to learn to test your hunch?

We learnt and tried different team teaching strategies
Come up with different ways to gather learner voice.
We had to plan collaboratively.
We had to be reflective

LH 1 team's presentation to staff

Co teaching strategies

6 Co-Teaching Structures

Once my co-teacher and I have decided what we are teaching, we also have to decide how we are going to teach. Six co-teaching models exist for co-teachers to maximize the impact of adults:

• One teach, One observe: One teacher teaches while the other collects purposeful data
• Station Teaching: Educators teach in different small groups
• Parallel Teaching: Class is split, and educators instruct groups
• Alternative Teaching: A small number of students are selected for intense instruction by one educator
• Teaming: Both educators instruct class together for fast paced group instruction
• One Teach, One Assist: One educator provides assistance to individual students

Co teaching strategies

6 Co-Teaching Structures

Once my co-teacher and I have decided what we are teaching, we also have to decide how we are going to teach. Six co-teaching models exist for co-teachers to maximize the impact of adults:

• One teach, One observe: One teacher teaches while the other collects purposeful data
• Station Teaching: Educators teach in different small groups
• Parallel Teaching: Class is split, and educators instruct groups
• Alternative Teaching: A small number of students are selected for intense instruction by one educator
• Teaming: Both educators instruct class together for fast paced group instruction
• One Teach, One Assist: One educator provides assistance to individual students

Spiral of inquiry

Our habitat hunch for our spiral of inquiry is:
We wonder if we respond collectively to learner voice and then collaboratively design and teach to include the learners’ ideas in planning prior to a new experience will create an atmosphere where learners have greater autonomy and agency over their iExperience learning?
Our goal is:
To leverage educator collaboration to provide more Utopic iExperiences for our learners.
Our approach would be:

1. Collect learner voice the week before and then plan for iExperience.
2. Educators collaborating to create the experiences for the learners.
3. The learners must explain to the LCs how any new curiosities relate to the iExperience topic/pitch. If it relates then they can exert agency over the pathway they take.

Steps we would take to achieve this:  

• Learners having input on the Wednesday prior to the next week’s  design of  iExperiences
• LCs to get together to construct design to include learner voice from Wednesday feedback.  This will include LCs collaborative designing together during our LH1 meeting post LH3 combined meeting. NB: this will not happen every  week but only when a new design is required. As part of the design we will be cognisant of including open ended big question to introduce and spark curiosity.(as per our previous probe and experiemnt)
• Decide on which of the 6  co-teaching strategies to be used by LCs
• During the experience learners will be required to pitch where their curiosities are taking them and how they are linked to the original provocation.
• LCs will take the approach of using questioning techniques with the learners often specific to the co-teaching strategy we are following to encourage  learners to take agency over their growing curiosities and learning process from the initial spark .

                                   -

PB4L

Some minor behaviours observed and experienced in

our habitat

1. Constant whistling
2. Continuously tapping pen or pencil
3. Calling out
4. Disruption of learning-constant talking
5. Going missing - hiding - walkabout.
6. Inappropriate language
7. Misuse of equipment
8. Throwing stationary/ habitat resources/equipment
9. Riding wheelie chairs

Some strategies we can use to overcome these behaviours are:

• proximity control
• signal or non verbal cues
• proximity praise
• prompt
• redirect
• reteach
• provide choice
• conversation

Hunches for LH 1

Today for our collaborative spiral of inquiry our learning habitat came up with the following hunch.

We wonder if …one open iExperience spark would encourage learners to take agency and collaborate in new ways and create an atmosphere where more self driven learners can guide their own journey around the provided open iExperience Spark while providing an opportunity for learners to have a directed task to have the safety net to take risk and develop their own learner agency ?

#1: We wonder if learners perceive us as learners participating together in the process of the iExperience with unprescribed outcomes?

#2: We wonder how we can get learner voice about next steps and collaborate together about “Where to next?” at the end of every iExperience session and

3# How do we respond collectively to learner voice feedback and  other LC responses to collaboratively plan next steps?

Week 2 Term 4

I had a great start to term 4, week 1 at Ormiston Primary School. I know the names of all the students in my Hapu group and I am now trying to find out more about them. The students are getting used to their routines and are following their daily designs as planned for them. They are learning to work more collaboratively during their workshops and are sharing their learning with the rest of the group.

My first week back

I am really excited about starting as a learning coach in an awesome school, Ormiston Primary. I am enjoying working collaboratively with other learning coaches in an innovative learning environment designing learning opportunities for the students that I teach. The staff and students have been friendly and welcoming so far and I have had a great start to the term. I am looking forward to  the rest of my time here being a part of Ormiston Primary School.