The "H" word - Homework or as we call it at my school, Home Learning has been the source of many moans and groans from parent, child and teacher alike over the years.
What should it look like?
What is it for?
How do you record it?
How do you monitor it?
How do you get kids to do it?
The past few months has seen our school developing and refining the concept of Home Learning with staff, parents and students. Here is a summary of some of the things that we have trialled and developed with our year 4-6 students.
When we talk about Home Learning we are trying to stick to these principles:
- Home Learning extends upon what has been started at school (researching, finishing off work, developing a passion/interest, visiting a tourist attraction, going to the library, talking to experts in families/local community)
- Home Learning is a chance to consolidate skills and facts in a variety of ways (eg: Mathletics, gaming apps on iPad, shopping, cooking etc)
- Home Learning should be planned by the student rather than imposed
- Home Learning needs to be manageable and accessible
How do you do this in a contemporary or 21st Century fashion?
Blog it of course!
As a team of educators, we have set up a home learning blog and linked it to the school website.
We have discovered the convenience of posting to blogs using an email address and have set one up for our home learning blog. The blog has been set up so that there are 3 staff members who are contributors - this way we can play around with the design of the blog as the need arises.
So what about the kids?
Every Monday and Thursday we use our year 4-6 meeting/planning time as a chance for students to email posts to the home learning blog listing their home learning for the next few days.
They also talk about their home learning with a partner and comment on each others previous posts to give each other feedback about home learning.
The advantages:
- Parents can visit the blog to view their child's posts
- Students can email their home learning posts to their parents at the same time they email to the blog
- As educators, Learning Advisors can read through the comments and posts to quickly ascertain who is managing their home learning and who is not
- The students are accountable to each other and can help each other to refine and be realistic about how much learning they can do at home
It will take some time for the children to get into the habit of posting and commenting on the Home Learning blog without being directed to do so. It can take a while for the posts to appear on the blog as well, and the children have learned how important it is to have an appropriate title for their post so that it is easy for others to comment on.
In the long term we hope to see parents starting to follow our blog and making comments when they can. As Learning Advisors we also need to take a few moments to comment on some posts to encourage the children to keep going with it. It would also be great to see photographs of Home Learning starting to appear.
Isn't it amazing what can be done with technology?
What will this evolve to next?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
aidan's star quests: Learning story Kid Animation
Here is an example of how technology can engage kids. This blogger's posts have evolved from one sentence to this! And he's learning some complex cognitive skills at the same time. He also did this with minimal assistance from me so he is on his way to being self directed.
aidan's star quests: Learning story Kid Animation: "Learning story Today I learnt how to use Kid animation a bit more How I learnt how to use it I use kid animation a ..."
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Nat's Learning Profile: My Cupcake Break Advertisement...
Nat's Learning Profile: My Cupcake Break Advertisement...: "http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/12310943/cupcake-break Please watch and please give me some feed back ! Thanks"
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Another term over
Being on holidays is a great chance to reflect on the term that was and set goals for what is to come!
It was as always, an intense yet rewarding term.
I listened to a lot of fabulous speakers who are passionate about education and developing people rather than outcomes.
I was challenged to justify my approach to teaching & learning.
I tried to streamline assessment and share information and feedback online, in real time with students & their parents using blogs & google docs.
I had to think about the role of iPads in teaching & learning and discuss & develop lots of protocols for using technology with the students I work with.
I was challenged to think about how to make learning like Disneyland!
Parent meetings this term had more discussions about "what can we do at home to help our child with their project? How can I add info to the google doc or comments on their blog?" rather than talking solely about standards and outcomes shown in the school report.
So what am I working towards next?
Developing the quality & interactive aspects of student blogs (Thinking, reading & writing)
Continuing to get parents involved with conferencing and/or online interaction
Transforming Maths, Science & History into Disneyland
Planning RE with the children using our Spark sheets to make it relevant & meaningful
Getting out there into the local community (physically & virtually)
Helping build our school's new garden- now that will be Disneyland!
Not asking too much am I? (Those of you who know me can stop laughing now)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Nat's Learning Profile: What's Your Favourite Flavour Cupcake?
Please comment on this blog if you LOVE cupcakes!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Our Learning Journey in the Green Village: SDL time!
Here is a blog our junior school has started:
Our Learning Journey in the Green Village: SDL time!: "We have just come up with our SDL activities for our can do time. We have must do's and can do's. Zach"
Liz's Learning Adventures: Learning style citeria by Liz H
Liz's Learning Adventures: Learning style citeria by Liz H: "Check out what we think about learning at our school... Learning style citeria by Liz H"
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Liz's Learning Adventures: What makes a good blog post and what makes a good ...
I'm hoping to work with my students to improve the quality of their blog posts and comments - please visit this link and leave your thoughts...
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Prologue to conferencing
My last post explained how I use conferencing to make personalized learning happen. It's been a few weeks since those first few conferences were set up as goals in google docs. The children have suggested the inclusion of an additional comments column to leave questions and feedback about their work. More students are telling me that their parents have asked for direct access to the document which I am able to provide as there is one document for each child.
I am now wondering about the impact this will have on my reporting - what I have realized is that I am creating a real time anecdotal record book for each child, which their parents and the child themselves can access at anytime. This means that the children are getting feedback about how they are performing and parents can see what their child is working on, my focus for their child and join in with the assessment process. Perhaps in the future the commenting on my reports will be shorter as I can "refer to google doc"????
Imagine the time that would be saved....
And imagine, reporting less more often instead of being expected to produce a detailed report each semester - imagine reporting as the actual learning process is taking place.
Ahhhh.....the possibilities........
 |
| A year 4 example of the goals doc - priorities are in pink |
 |
| A Year 6 example (their wondering: Is make up worth the $$$$?) |
I am now wondering about the impact this will have on my reporting - what I have realized is that I am creating a real time anecdotal record book for each child, which their parents and the child themselves can access at anytime. This means that the children are getting feedback about how they are performing and parents can see what their child is working on, my focus for their child and join in with the assessment process. Perhaps in the future the commenting on my reports will be shorter as I can "refer to google doc"????
Imagine the time that would be saved....
And imagine, reporting less more often instead of being expected to produce a detailed report each semester - imagine reporting as the actual learning process is taking place.
Ahhhh.....the possibilities........
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Conferencing and Assessment
It's been a busy start to the term and I am just getting into the swing of getting the children on track with working towards their learning goals. My visit to Discovery 1 really helped me get some inspiration for this.
Firstly, this round of conferences is all about goal setting. The students have been asked to set three goals (Numeracy, Literacy and Project/Personal Learning). They have continued to use the PLD (Personal Learning Diary) format I distributed last year to help them audit their learning and help set goals.
Now that they have identified their goals, I have asked them to think about strategies, which has been difficult for some students to get their heads around so they have needed prompting from me to help them figure it out. Their strategies become a 'list' of activities they can undertake at home and at school to enhance their learning. (Sort of like an ILP)
How have I been documenting this? I have created a table in google docs and shared it with the students and if they request, their families. On this document the goals are listed beside strategies for each goal. There is a code next to each strategy in brackets to indicate if it's Home Learning (HL) or Student Directed Learning (SDL).
The last column is titled "Evidence" and this is where the idea of shared responsibility comes in. LA's, the student and their parents can comment in this box when they see/do a strategy listed on the document. They can access the document on their ipad or a computer wherever they are and make changes or add information. Eventually it would be great to see hyperlinks to work on their digital portfolios.
It's been great to see the students become more focused on planning ahead and using their SDL time in a valuable manner. This has enabled more focused teaching in workshops and focus groups to happen because we are not having to police behaviour and the children are coming up with more authentic ideas for projects such as creating basketball uniforms, going to local chess tournaments and finding experts to help set up a school radio station. One group of children are even looking into setting up their own business creating products to sell online.
Hopefully this will make the assessment process more streamlined as children select goals directly related to the curriculum (which we expose them to through criteria sheets) and obviously this is a way of documenting personal learning and when you include the process leading up to it, Thinking (particularly Reflection, Evaluation & Metacognition).
It has taken time to set up the overarching culture, processes and structures in our village but it's been worth it because we can really get into the nitty gritty business of using assessment efficiently to guide everything that we do.
Firstly, this round of conferences is all about goal setting. The students have been asked to set three goals (Numeracy, Literacy and Project/Personal Learning). They have continued to use the PLD (Personal Learning Diary) format I distributed last year to help them audit their learning and help set goals.
Now that they have identified their goals, I have asked them to think about strategies, which has been difficult for some students to get their heads around so they have needed prompting from me to help them figure it out. Their strategies become a 'list' of activities they can undertake at home and at school to enhance their learning. (Sort of like an ILP)
How have I been documenting this? I have created a table in google docs and shared it with the students and if they request, their families. On this document the goals are listed beside strategies for each goal. There is a code next to each strategy in brackets to indicate if it's Home Learning (HL) or Student Directed Learning (SDL).
The last column is titled "Evidence" and this is where the idea of shared responsibility comes in. LA's, the student and their parents can comment in this box when they see/do a strategy listed on the document. They can access the document on their ipad or a computer wherever they are and make changes or add information. Eventually it would be great to see hyperlinks to work on their digital portfolios.
It's been great to see the students become more focused on planning ahead and using their SDL time in a valuable manner. This has enabled more focused teaching in workshops and focus groups to happen because we are not having to police behaviour and the children are coming up with more authentic ideas for projects such as creating basketball uniforms, going to local chess tournaments and finding experts to help set up a school radio station. One group of children are even looking into setting up their own business creating products to sell online.
Hopefully this will make the assessment process more streamlined as children select goals directly related to the curriculum (which we expose them to through criteria sheets) and obviously this is a way of documenting personal learning and when you include the process leading up to it, Thinking (particularly Reflection, Evaluation & Metacognition).
It has taken time to set up the overarching culture, processes and structures in our village but it's been worth it because we can really get into the nitty gritty business of using assessment efficiently to guide everything that we do.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
It really did sink in!
Today I re-introduced something I trialled last year to record personal learning to the 4/5/6 students at my school. It was the forms we used as our "Personal Learning Diary" or PLD.
It was so rewarding to see their eyes light up when I put up the templates and actually approach using them again with enthusiasm, rather than the groans I got when I introduced it last year. After being without this format for recording goals and auditing their learning time, they saw a need to use some form of recording to keep them on track. The importance of tracking their learning and setting goals for themselves has finally sunk in without me needing to nag them about it.
Best of all, I didn't have to do much talking because the children who trialled the templates last year explained how they used them and where they fitted in to preparing for Learning Conferences and reflecting on Learning.
They also brought up the topic of needing to re-define our work standards (last year we used medals as an analogy for indicating the standard of work), so already we have a focus for our first day back after the holidays.
I am pleased now - I felt that there were times when the conferencing sparks were lost and not being followed up and when I pulled last years PLD templates out, I remembered how we structured our conference preparation time. However, I think that if I forced this upon them on Day 1 this year, that it would not have been received as well as it was today.
I have learned that sometimes we don't always have to invent a new way of doing things and that children are really good at articulating expectations and structures and routines that shape the culture of a Learning Community - well done kids!
It was so rewarding to see their eyes light up when I put up the templates and actually approach using them again with enthusiasm, rather than the groans I got when I introduced it last year. After being without this format for recording goals and auditing their learning time, they saw a need to use some form of recording to keep them on track. The importance of tracking their learning and setting goals for themselves has finally sunk in without me needing to nag them about it.
Best of all, I didn't have to do much talking because the children who trialled the templates last year explained how they used them and where they fitted in to preparing for Learning Conferences and reflecting on Learning.
They also brought up the topic of needing to re-define our work standards (last year we used medals as an analogy for indicating the standard of work), so already we have a focus for our first day back after the holidays.
I am pleased now - I felt that there were times when the conferencing sparks were lost and not being followed up and when I pulled last years PLD templates out, I remembered how we structured our conference preparation time. However, I think that if I forced this upon them on Day 1 this year, that it would not have been received as well as it was today.
I have learned that sometimes we don't always have to invent a new way of doing things and that children are really good at articulating expectations and structures and routines that shape the culture of a Learning Community - well done kids!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Liz's Learning Adventures: Staying safe in the blogosphere
After going to the #clrp11 Professional Learning day today and exploring the Global2 website it reminded me of a few things that were important to reiterate with the students at school - it will be interesting to see if any of the children actually comment!
Liz's Learning Adventures: Staying safe in the blogosphere: "Hi guys, Now that most of you are starting to blog I thought it would be a good idea to bring up a few things to keep in mind when you are p..."
Liz's Learning Adventures: Staying safe in the blogosphere: "Hi guys, Now that most of you are starting to blog I thought it would be a good idea to bring up a few things to keep in mind when you are p..."
A Twitter Novice am I
Today I joined up on Twitter as part of the Contemporary Learning Project #clrp11
I'm not sure how I will use it yet, but I might start by following some educational gurus and see what I can learn.
If you are a tweeter I'd be interested in following you and finding out about your views on Learning and Teaching @lizhinds74
Any tips on how to use twitter in a school setting? Please comment below! Thanks
I'm not sure how I will use it yet, but I might start by following some educational gurus and see what I can learn.
If you are a tweeter I'd be interested in following you and finding out about your views on Learning and Teaching @lizhinds74
Any tips on how to use twitter in a school setting? Please comment below! Thanks
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Learning the Blogging Moves- Take Two!
Today we finally managed to create blogs for all of the students in my home group. At last they are all blogging!
At the beginning of the session I asked the students to work towards these goals:
- create a blog if they didn't have one
- follow five new people
- follow each LA with a blog (including myself)
- post a relevant comment on more than one blog (a must do was to comment on a post on my blog about Earth Hour)
- type their blog address into our school bloggers google doc
I worked with the students who had not created a blog yet and another LA assisted the other students to create learning stories and follow and comment on other students' blogs.
It was really interesting to see which students were confident enough to tackle these tasks on their own and which students felt they couldn't learn from anyone but an LA. It's taking some of the newer students some time to adjust to the concept that every adult and student at my school is a learner and that we all can learn from each other.
The LA who was working with me during this session commented at the end that she had learned so many new things about using blogs from the students and asked some of them to plan workshops for other staff members about using google docs and blogs. How many schools would that happen in?
Blogging is such a valuable way for students to express their thinking and also to develop the concept of writing for an audience. It is interesting to note that even though they may not be writing a rough draft in their books, they are proofreading, editing and adjusting their writing without being prompted to do so. It is also a great way to engage parents in their child's learning. I will be emailing the parents of students in my studio over the next few days and encouraging them to follow and comment on their child's blog.
Another thing that is evolving is that some students (mainly blogger veterans from last year) are starting to create blogs for specific purposes such as explaining their cultural background, sharing their passion, a diary of their life or as a travel diary.
Now the challenge for me is to keep up with reading them all!
If you are reading this and thinking it sounds interesting why not give blogging a go yourself? Blogger is free and easy to use. You can also change the settings to make your blog available only to those you choose to give your address to.
Could be a good way to reflect on professional practice, spark learning interests or get your students excited about interactive writing.
Go on! Jump in and give it a go! (I would be happy to follow you)
At the beginning of the session I asked the students to work towards these goals:
- create a blog if they didn't have one
- follow five new people
- follow each LA with a blog (including myself)
- post a relevant comment on more than one blog (a must do was to comment on a post on my blog about Earth Hour)
- type their blog address into our school bloggers google doc
I worked with the students who had not created a blog yet and another LA assisted the other students to create learning stories and follow and comment on other students' blogs.
It was really interesting to see which students were confident enough to tackle these tasks on their own and which students felt they couldn't learn from anyone but an LA. It's taking some of the newer students some time to adjust to the concept that every adult and student at my school is a learner and that we all can learn from each other.
The LA who was working with me during this session commented at the end that she had learned so many new things about using blogs from the students and asked some of them to plan workshops for other staff members about using google docs and blogs. How many schools would that happen in?
Blogging is such a valuable way for students to express their thinking and also to develop the concept of writing for an audience. It is interesting to note that even though they may not be writing a rough draft in their books, they are proofreading, editing and adjusting their writing without being prompted to do so. It is also a great way to engage parents in their child's learning. I will be emailing the parents of students in my studio over the next few days and encouraging them to follow and comment on their child's blog.
Another thing that is evolving is that some students (mainly blogger veterans from last year) are starting to create blogs for specific purposes such as explaining their cultural background, sharing their passion, a diary of their life or as a travel diary.
Now the challenge for me is to keep up with reading them all!
If you are reading this and thinking it sounds interesting why not give blogging a go yourself? Blogger is free and easy to use. You can also change the settings to make your blog available only to those you choose to give your address to.
Could be a good way to reflect on professional practice, spark learning interests or get your students excited about interactive writing.
Go on! Jump in and give it a go! (I would be happy to follow you)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Hit the ground running - a typical day
Do you ever feel like you don't stop until the end of the day? Time has just flown since my last post and so much has happened on my learning journey in between!
Where do I start?
One of my teaching friends emailed me a few questions that I know they are looking for answers to - so I am assuming that other people may be wondering the same thing?
What does a typical day look like at your school?
The first answer that springs to mind is - no two days are ever the same. My year level colleague and I often head off home each day with a rough idea of where we will go the following day, but as is the nature of school life, the best laid plans are often laid aside or re organised for another day.
We believe in authentic and personal learning so sometimes, we change the structure of our day to give our students the chance to go deeper and maximise their engagement so that they can learn, extend and elaborate upon what they have done and explain themselves to others.
We use Google calendar to put together a basic framework of the day. My colleague and I share our calendars with all of the children in both of our homegroups so that they can see what workshops will be offered that day and who we need to come to those workshops. We always start off by making the "Must Do's" (tasks they HAVE to get done) explicit to the students after morning prayer and roll call each day. Sometimes it is listed on the board and sometimes the kids read our calendars and look for MD's on each event. The children then plan their day. At this point I give the students 2 options: the ical app on their ipad (which has a great notes section that they can add more detail into) or a timeline chart on paper divided into half hour blocks. Some children might have a modified planning sheet for a while where I type in particular tasks they have to do at a set time each day which acts as a transition to planning independently. I rove around and target particular students I need for workshops to make sure they understand they have to attend and I also check in with the children I think need a little help to plan what they need to do.
There are routine things that the children need to do every week. This includes getting focus tasks on Mathletics completed, drafting learning stories, taking a photos of their work and publishing learning stories on blogs. I also stipulate that they must make sure that they do at least 1/2 an hour of maths, 1/2 an hour of writing and 1/2 an hour of reading each day. After lunch each day the students audit what they have managed to get done and then get cracking with the activities they haven't devoted much time to yet.
We have built a culture of trust so the expectation is that if you are not with an LA, you need to be on task. This is where the ipads are great because the children have one to one access to the internet for research and blogs. They are also eager to create texts in keynote and pages, then email or show them to their friends for editing. We also have staff who rove whenever possible and because our building is open plan, we can see what everyone else is doing. Quite often there will be a few LA's working with small groups and one (sometimes 2 if we're lucky) adults roving and dealing with questions, asking for day planners to check children are on task etc. There is an understanding among staff that we are all responsible for every child so it is ok to discipline children who you see are not respecting or adhering to expectations even if they are not in your homegroup.
At the moment children are working at proving that they are worthy of a trust license. We are developing criteria with the children who are keen as mustard to get one after listening to how they are used at Discovery 1 in NZ. They know that if they are off task they lose their chance to have a trust license for a time and also lose the power to plan their day. There are always children who will try to work the system so that is where teamwork and communication between Learning Advisors is vital. "It takes the whole village to educate the child."
We don't often follow a "whole small whole" model every block every day. We work in a more fluid fashion but make sure that we gather as a village at the beginning of the day and after each break to reinforce expectations and discuss any "issues" that may arise. There are often times when we work in cross age groupings as well and the children are very capable of redirecting each others behaviour when necessary.
I think it's the culture that we have built that enables this to happen and the commitment to student voice and purposeful learning. We are all, adults and children alike, expected to be able to justify everything we do. If there is not a purpose to what we are doing, we need to ask is it worth doing? Why? What value will we gain from this? A culture of Learning sits alongside a culture of Respect and Trust.
Please post any other questions you would like me to answer in the comments section - I will get to them eventually.
Where do I start?
One of my teaching friends emailed me a few questions that I know they are looking for answers to - so I am assuming that other people may be wondering the same thing?
What does a typical day look like at your school?
The first answer that springs to mind is - no two days are ever the same. My year level colleague and I often head off home each day with a rough idea of where we will go the following day, but as is the nature of school life, the best laid plans are often laid aside or re organised for another day.
We believe in authentic and personal learning so sometimes, we change the structure of our day to give our students the chance to go deeper and maximise their engagement so that they can learn, extend and elaborate upon what they have done and explain themselves to others.
We use Google calendar to put together a basic framework of the day. My colleague and I share our calendars with all of the children in both of our homegroups so that they can see what workshops will be offered that day and who we need to come to those workshops. We always start off by making the "Must Do's" (tasks they HAVE to get done) explicit to the students after morning prayer and roll call each day. Sometimes it is listed on the board and sometimes the kids read our calendars and look for MD's on each event. The children then plan their day. At this point I give the students 2 options: the ical app on their ipad (which has a great notes section that they can add more detail into) or a timeline chart on paper divided into half hour blocks. Some children might have a modified planning sheet for a while where I type in particular tasks they have to do at a set time each day which acts as a transition to planning independently. I rove around and target particular students I need for workshops to make sure they understand they have to attend and I also check in with the children I think need a little help to plan what they need to do.
There are routine things that the children need to do every week. This includes getting focus tasks on Mathletics completed, drafting learning stories, taking a photos of their work and publishing learning stories on blogs. I also stipulate that they must make sure that they do at least 1/2 an hour of maths, 1/2 an hour of writing and 1/2 an hour of reading each day. After lunch each day the students audit what they have managed to get done and then get cracking with the activities they haven't devoted much time to yet.
We have built a culture of trust so the expectation is that if you are not with an LA, you need to be on task. This is where the ipads are great because the children have one to one access to the internet for research and blogs. They are also eager to create texts in keynote and pages, then email or show them to their friends for editing. We also have staff who rove whenever possible and because our building is open plan, we can see what everyone else is doing. Quite often there will be a few LA's working with small groups and one (sometimes 2 if we're lucky) adults roving and dealing with questions, asking for day planners to check children are on task etc. There is an understanding among staff that we are all responsible for every child so it is ok to discipline children who you see are not respecting or adhering to expectations even if they are not in your homegroup.
At the moment children are working at proving that they are worthy of a trust license. We are developing criteria with the children who are keen as mustard to get one after listening to how they are used at Discovery 1 in NZ. They know that if they are off task they lose their chance to have a trust license for a time and also lose the power to plan their day. There are always children who will try to work the system so that is where teamwork and communication between Learning Advisors is vital. "It takes the whole village to educate the child."
We don't often follow a "whole small whole" model every block every day. We work in a more fluid fashion but make sure that we gather as a village at the beginning of the day and after each break to reinforce expectations and discuss any "issues" that may arise. There are often times when we work in cross age groupings as well and the children are very capable of redirecting each others behaviour when necessary.
I think it's the culture that we have built that enables this to happen and the commitment to student voice and purposeful learning. We are all, adults and children alike, expected to be able to justify everything we do. If there is not a purpose to what we are doing, we need to ask is it worth doing? Why? What value will we gain from this? A culture of Learning sits alongside a culture of Respect and Trust.
Please post any other questions you would like me to answer in the comments section - I will get to them eventually.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Learning Stories - in the beginning...
Last week I started talking about Learning Stories with the children in my home group/studio. The idea for using Learning Stories with our students came from discussions with staff from Discovery 1 school, NZ.
Here is the summary of what we discussed: I posted this in a school based blog as we were talking and the students told me what to type:
Here is the summary of what we discussed: I posted this in a school based blog as we were talking and the students told me what to type:
Today we had a chat about Learning Stories.
We thought about these questions:
What is a learning story?
What does it need?
How could we do it?
This is what we thought:
A learning story is a story about learning (like a recount).
It is similar to a journal.
It's a record of work that you are proud of.
It doesn't have to sound like a recount - it could be written like a narrative.
It's a description of a person's learning.
A learning story needs to have
Describe what you've learned about.
It needs to be a decent length.
A picture/example of the work
You can include a plan if it's a big model
It needs to tell us what skills you learned along the way
It needs to have good writing.
It needs to have information.
It may contain pictures and diagrams.
A comment from another person, confirming that they saw your work and what you learned.
It could be done with a friend or a group.
We are going to experiment with learning stories in the following ways:
Blogs
Written in a book
Movies (Video logs)
Comic strip (Comic life)
Use the puppet apps on our ipads
Digital (keynote/pages)
Podcasts
Drawing
Typed in Pages/keynote
We actually set up profiles on blogger today - tomorrow I'll help the children set appropriate privacy settings and they will start publishing online! My idea is that Learning Advisors can comment, focusing on naming outcomes covered/proven in their learning story and a suggestion about where to go to next. Parents will be able to read them and comment on them at their convenience from work and home.
Other Learning Advisors and students will be able to read everyone's learning stories and leave comments too.
Possibilities are endless and the children are motivated as they love the idea of publishing online to a live audience and understand why they need to edit and check their work before publishing. It will be interesting to see how they develop their stories and experiment with different ways of presenting them. I'm sure that in time they won't all choose to publish online but look for other ways to share their learning. I wonder what they'll come up with??
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Student Selected Learning - Getting kids started.
Where I work the vision is that children will get to a point where they can plan their learning and challenge the boundaries of what they know and what they think they can do. There's a lot of research out there that shows students learn more effectively when they are given opportunities to make choices as they become more involved in the learning process instead of just waiting for an adult to decide what it is pertinent for them to know and what they "should" be able to do.
Think back to when you were a kid - was there any way you could possibly have predicted what today's world would be like? We live in an age where information is growing at such exponential rates that we can hardly keep up, yet todays kids, when given access to tools to process this information, such as hand held technologies, lap it up and adapt to new tools and processes quickly.
Now that we live in an "instant" world, how can we mere humans keep children interested in learning? Once again, by giving them a say in how and what they learn and allowing them to explore "new" technologies.
Over the past few weeks we were visited by Daniel Birch who is the Principal of Discovery1 school in Christchurch NZ. His school has been practising student directed learning for a decade now and his reminder and challenge to us was to give our students greater control over their learning and encourage them to take what is presented to them, play with it, explore it, then reinvent it to make it meaningful to them.
How in the world can you do that? I hear you saying - the same thing I said to myself just a few years ago, take a risk and start with asking the children what they are interested in learning about.
At my school we hold learning conferences with students regularly. We have conferencing prior to our planning sessions and instead of the name teacher, we use the term Learning Advisor. The idea is that conferencing along with our observation of the students informs workshops and targeted teaching in the following weeks. Children are assigned to a home group, but may work with Learning Advisors who are assigned to a different home group. Staff strengths are utilised more effectively and children are exposed to a variety of experiences and approaches to learning.
When we hold these Learning Conferences sometimes they are with individual students and other times they are with a group of students who have a common interest in studying a particular topic. We call them Passion Project Groups. Sometimes Learning Conferences may occur with more than one Learning Advisor.
When children come to a conference we use a "Spark Sheet" to help them articulate their learning and determine where they would like to go to next. At the moment we are experimenting with ways to record what is agreed upon at each conference, goal setting and the reasoning behind it.
All you need is to ask "What would you like to learn about? Why?" and the students will take it on board, as long as they are confident that they will be listened to and their ideas taken into account. It's really important to follow through on what students say and not be tokenistic. I have realised that when students know that they will actually "get to do it" their ideas become more creative and they are more deeply involved with and aware of their learning.
I urge you teachers out there to try it out - yes it can be scary- but have faith, all kids love to learn when they are given a chance to take it and make it their own!
Think back to when you were a kid - was there any way you could possibly have predicted what today's world would be like? We live in an age where information is growing at such exponential rates that we can hardly keep up, yet todays kids, when given access to tools to process this information, such as hand held technologies, lap it up and adapt to new tools and processes quickly.
Now that we live in an "instant" world, how can we mere humans keep children interested in learning? Once again, by giving them a say in how and what they learn and allowing them to explore "new" technologies.
Over the past few weeks we were visited by Daniel Birch who is the Principal of Discovery1 school in Christchurch NZ. His school has been practising student directed learning for a decade now and his reminder and challenge to us was to give our students greater control over their learning and encourage them to take what is presented to them, play with it, explore it, then reinvent it to make it meaningful to them.
How in the world can you do that? I hear you saying - the same thing I said to myself just a few years ago, take a risk and start with asking the children what they are interested in learning about.
At my school we hold learning conferences with students regularly. We have conferencing prior to our planning sessions and instead of the name teacher, we use the term Learning Advisor. The idea is that conferencing along with our observation of the students informs workshops and targeted teaching in the following weeks. Children are assigned to a home group, but may work with Learning Advisors who are assigned to a different home group. Staff strengths are utilised more effectively and children are exposed to a variety of experiences and approaches to learning.
When we hold these Learning Conferences sometimes they are with individual students and other times they are with a group of students who have a common interest in studying a particular topic. We call them Passion Project Groups. Sometimes Learning Conferences may occur with more than one Learning Advisor.
When children come to a conference we use a "Spark Sheet" to help them articulate their learning and determine where they would like to go to next. At the moment we are experimenting with ways to record what is agreed upon at each conference, goal setting and the reasoning behind it.
All you need is to ask "What would you like to learn about? Why?" and the students will take it on board, as long as they are confident that they will be listened to and their ideas taken into account. It's really important to follow through on what students say and not be tokenistic. I have realised that when students know that they will actually "get to do it" their ideas become more creative and they are more deeply involved with and aware of their learning.
I urge you teachers out there to try it out - yes it can be scary- but have faith, all kids love to learn when they are given a chance to take it and make it their own!
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| My school's Learning Process (FYI only) |
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| My draft of a Learning Conference record sheet (FYI as well) |
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
DANCE!
It was with great anticipation that I opened the mystery envelope that arrived in my mailbox during the last week of Christmas holidays - each year the principal chooses a new theme that is kept top secret. What would it be? Last year was SPLASH! The year before that was BLOOM!
So what would it be this year??
A glittering (and a tad misshapen) disco ball answered my question - DANCE!
Ok Liz, I hear you thinking, how are you supposed to get a whole years worth of work and cover all the VELS/National Curriculum with only one theme - not to mention something like DANCE????
Therein lies the challenge. Dance isn't about the art and culture side of things, it's about taking risks, feeling safe and confident and trying new things. It's about dancing on the inside as well as the outside and having faith in yourself.
"Dance like nobody is watching"
So, what's happened so far?
The scene has been set - there are disco balls hanging from the ceilings and we started the year with nothing on the walls to prompt the children to be inspired to fill them.
There was so much excitement on the first day...
"The light is reflecting from the disco ball!"
"Why is it sparkly?"
"Can I teach you a dance I know?"
"I know! Let's find out about different dances and where they come from!"
"Could we do a production?"
"Can my mum come and teach us a dance?"
"Can my sister come and do Zumba with us?"
"Can we label a map and put up flags from all the countries we find dances from?"
Already the children have begun looking at traditional dances from their backgrounds and their history. They are finding flags and using atlases. They are figuring out how old dances are and where they came from. They are eager to go home and find experts in their family to question about history and culture.
Some Year Four students have found a suitable wall space and are creating a display to share everyone's research. After a few days I already have samples of factual texts they have all written and an idea of their ability to locate and interpret information. Sharing discoveries with each other has given me opportunities to observe their note taking, speaking and listening skills. I can already see who works well in a group, who can take themselves further and who is organised.
As a Village we have looked at the story "Giraffes Can't Dance" and the hymn "Lord of the Dance". Some children have already made links between totems, teepees and this years theme. The children have organised and chosen names related to Dance for each home group and some have designed logos - there are even some children in another home group who are writing theme songs to go with their home group name.
Can you believe how much we have managed to achieve in 4 days of school? Where will we dance to next?
I couldn't resist finishing up this post with a clip from one of my favourite movies - "Napoleon Dynamite". It encapsulates what it means to dance at my school - Napoleon was not a popular kid at high school, yet he took a risk and danced like nobody was watching to support his friend Pedro in his campaign for school president. He risked being ridiculed but danced his heart out anyway, not letting himself be stymied by what others thought of him. Go Napoleon and Vote for Pedro!
So what would it be this year??
A glittering (and a tad misshapen) disco ball answered my question - DANCE!
Ok Liz, I hear you thinking, how are you supposed to get a whole years worth of work and cover all the VELS/National Curriculum with only one theme - not to mention something like DANCE????
Therein lies the challenge. Dance isn't about the art and culture side of things, it's about taking risks, feeling safe and confident and trying new things. It's about dancing on the inside as well as the outside and having faith in yourself.
"Dance like nobody is watching"
So, what's happened so far?
The scene has been set - there are disco balls hanging from the ceilings and we started the year with nothing on the walls to prompt the children to be inspired to fill them.
There was so much excitement on the first day...
"The light is reflecting from the disco ball!"
"Why is it sparkly?"
"Can I teach you a dance I know?"
"I know! Let's find out about different dances and where they come from!"
"Could we do a production?"
"Can my mum come and teach us a dance?"
"Can my sister come and do Zumba with us?"
"Can we label a map and put up flags from all the countries we find dances from?"
Already the children have begun looking at traditional dances from their backgrounds and their history. They are finding flags and using atlases. They are figuring out how old dances are and where they came from. They are eager to go home and find experts in their family to question about history and culture.
Some Year Four students have found a suitable wall space and are creating a display to share everyone's research. After a few days I already have samples of factual texts they have all written and an idea of their ability to locate and interpret information. Sharing discoveries with each other has given me opportunities to observe their note taking, speaking and listening skills. I can already see who works well in a group, who can take themselves further and who is organised.
As a Village we have looked at the story "Giraffes Can't Dance" and the hymn "Lord of the Dance". Some children have already made links between totems, teepees and this years theme. The children have organised and chosen names related to Dance for each home group and some have designed logos - there are even some children in another home group who are writing theme songs to go with their home group name.
Can you believe how much we have managed to achieve in 4 days of school? Where will we dance to next?
I couldn't resist finishing up this post with a clip from one of my favourite movies - "Napoleon Dynamite". It encapsulates what it means to dance at my school - Napoleon was not a popular kid at high school, yet he took a risk and danced like nobody was watching to support his friend Pedro in his campaign for school president. He risked being ridiculed but danced his heart out anyway, not letting himself be stymied by what others thought of him. Go Napoleon and Vote for Pedro!
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