Monday, January 16, 2017

Knowing Your Learners

It's that time in the southern hemisphere - summer holidays are coming to an end and teachers are expectantly planning for the new academic year with new classes, new learners and new whānau to engage with. Effective teachers should not need the NZ Curriculum to tell them that the implementation of effective pedagogy (p37) requires teachers to spend time knowing their learners and their whānau, and establishing relationships - whakawhanaungatanga. It is simply common sense and something most would do in any social setting when planning to spend a year in close quarters with someone(s) else. 

In light of this I have been reflecting on my first year teaching when I was super excited about the year ahead and my 'expert' mentor teacher told me to throw all the documentation that came from the primary schools about my learners into a back cupboard as  

  1. it will be inaccurate (implying primary teachers make stuff up) and 
  2. the children deserve to start with a blank slate and have a fresh start in a new year. 

I ignored that advise and pored over the information supplied, taking note of what was said and also what wasn't said. Hopefully even as a beginning teacher I was able to jump start whakawhanaungatanga with the limited information I had gleaned about the learners, rather than starting from nothing.

There is a no shortage of useful ideas online to support teachers knowing their learners, from locally generated kiwi ideas eg. "Whakawhanaungatanga - Getting to know our learners" led by Tessa Gray on the VLN through to international suggestions such as "Strategies For Getting To Know Your Students" by Mike Anderson. 

Teachers in Manaiakalani schools have a significant head start when planning for the new year. An advantage probably only equalled in small country schools where the class sizes are small and the children stay with the same teacher for several years. Manaiakalani children all have a personal blog, and over time these reveal a wealth of information about each learner, their whānau and their learning journey.

Over the Summer many of our young people have participated in the Summer Learning Journey - a blogging programme - and as I have read their posts and the comments and threaded conversations attached, it has dawned on me that Rachel's research team have made significant connections with our learners and know some of these learners very well now. If they were to become their teachers in February I suspect the learning would accelerate very quickly as they have learnt so much about these learners from their blogs.

Our curriculum also reminds us that "teacher actions promoting student learning include making connections to (children's) prior learning and experience". Even a quick skim or scan of a child's blog provides teachers with significant information about prior learning experiences. Not only the learning areas covered, but also the engagement and attitude to learning becomes apparent when a whole year of posts are viewed. And for those with multiple years of blogging some trends emerge of differences from year to year.

Blogging represents the learner's voice and gives an entirely different perspective from the teacher generated profiles of test scores, work samples and comments that were passed on in the pre-digital era.

"We have a unique opportunity to forge very real and meaningful connections with our students using the blog. I think that they are a rich resource for all teachers. The details present on the blogs, the frequency of blog posting, commenting and replying is quite indicative of the degree of engagement that our students have with their learning. They certainly signal the degree of self-regulation and personal drive for learning present within the student and offer us a glimpse into their personal worlds." Dr Rachel Williams, Jan 2017

I would love to hear from teachers 

  1. What you discover about your learners from reading through their blogs in the remaining time before school starts
  2. How you start the year differently with 'knowing your learner' activities when you can acknowledge the content on their blogs and the information they have chosen to share publicly prior to joining your class/es
I recommend taking a few minutes to explore some examples of the threaded conversations Rachel and the SLJ team have been having with our learners this month, using the links below as a starting point.





Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Another Summer of Learning

Following on from the success of the pilot one year ago, the Summer Learning Journey is underway again for Manaiakalani school children while schools are closed and everyone is on holiday. Rachel Williams has expanded the programme and her team, and they are supporting our children to continue learning during the Summer holiday period. 

The Summer Learning Journey utilises the embedded blogging programme existing in Manaiakalani schools and provides engaging activities for our young people to interact with throughout the Summer. Where this differs from other programmes which may provide stimulating holiday learning is the ongoing community building designed into the programme.  Every post shared is commented on by at least one adult and the children are encouraged to connect with each other and interact with the posts their peers share.

We look forward to the report that will emerge after school resumes as the researchers evaluate the impact on academic outcomes for the participants.

In the meantime we invite anyone with five minutes on their hands in the next couple of weeks to go to this URL : twitter.com/clusternz and follow the links to one of the 400 children who are currently participating in the programme. Become an active participant in their learning journey by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are a sample, randomly selected from the Twitter feed:


One thing that drew my attention was the number of boys participating (writing). Food for thought for teachers and CoLs beginning the year with a goal of "doing something about boys writing..."

We note that the Education Review has also published an article recognising this initiative.


Sunday, January 1, 2017

Teaching as Inquiry 2017

“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.

In 2017 for my inquiry I am focusing on how to use the affordances of digital technology to synthesise the expertise and knowledge emerging from teachers inquiring into their practise and make it visible, accessible and searchable for their colleagues.

The content below has been designed for teachers to use in their professional blogs so that we have common hashtags and labels that will allow us to synthesise their findings more accurately.
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The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.
The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.



I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Labels:
LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,
 CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,
SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

Label Key:


LEvidence
Learn - Gather Evidence
CPlan
Create - Make a plan
SPublish
Share - Publish
LScan
Learn - Scan
CTry
Create - Try new things
SCoteach
Share - Co-teach
LTrend
Learn - Identify Trends
CInnovate
Create - Innovate
SModel
Share - Model
LHypothesise
Learn - Hypothesise
CImplement
Create - Implement
SGuide
Share - Guide
LResearch
Learn - Research
CReflect
Create - Reflect
SFback
Share - Feedback
LReflect
Learn - Reflect


SReflect
Share - Reflect