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..."

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

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)

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.