Steve - 5/12/18 - God's Girls - Devotions - PLD

A report from the Leaders of God's Girls.

God’s Girls – Report to End of 2018

God’s Girls began after the Christian Schools Conference last July when God prompted me to begin a lunchtime group with our Senior Girls (Year 6,7 and 8) and talk about issues relevant to them. The focus is on being secure in who they are in Christ and being “Gritty Girls” – girls with purpose, diligence and passion. Sandra Clark and I began meeting with the girls weekly over their lunch break.

I have used some resources from Vanessa Gatman from Kingsway School in Orewa who runs an organisation called “You-are”.  Their aim is to equip teenage girls to be the best version of themselves through conferences held in Auckland and Hamilton.

To date we have discussed issues such as influences of social media, characteristics of Gritty Girls that we would like to develop, looked at Biblical and modern day women displaying these characteristics. Personal matters such as resilience, positive self-talk, anxiety, modesty, friendship, forgiveness, gratitude, power of our words have been discussed; along with physical health – sleep, exercise, healthy eating etc.

Once or twice a term I email the Mums to let them know what we are chatting about, and have had numerous positive messages back from them, and the occasional suggestion of things we could cover in our time. 

Most of the girls commented in their recent report reflections on how much they have enjoyed our group, and gave specific things they have learned. I was surprised by some of the comments as it showed that God is doing beyond what I think we are setting out to achieve – isn’t that so like our God?!

What a privilege it has been to meet with these girls and share life with them. Sandra and I look forward to next year with a new bunch of Year 6 girls joining us.

Thinking:  Professional Development Outcomes.

The drive and emphasis of our school is not restricted to what the Education Department requires,  nor is it what we (staff, proprietors, BOT) seek. This is an example of Professional Development of our Spiritual selves, including all staff, to go beyond what we see as an outcome.

Next Steps: Ensure we  (I) provide opportunities for each of us to grow in our Spiritual walk, noticeably PLD among other Christian Teachers.

This is the result of an enquiry led by support staff. Never undervalue the resources we have.

Margaret - Reflection on PLD with Rob

• Attending and contributing to PLD opportunities within and beyond my school.
• Reflection on how aspects of PLD have been enacted and the impact on ākonga learning.
• Professional learning and development that aligns with the goals or next steps identified in the appraisal process and renewal of my practising certificate.

PLD July 10 2018

What was useful/significant to me?

- Judy-Anne set up a site for putting together a playlist using you tube videos.  This now has all things required for assembly preparation that students can use and add to.

- Looked further at managing comments  on google docs and learnt how to lock certain docs for editing when providing instructions to class.  Suggesting/edit/viewing mode when sharing.  Steve has also set up a group to enable us to email shared docs to whole class.

- Using the whole school planning template now in teachers shared folder.  This will be helpful with me and Steve working together with our planning as we can add to it things such as what students need support or where we left off when we are in the class.

What I am finding challenging?

Still finding the process for sharing photos easily with the whole class rather complicated but are still covering this today.

See saw - still to come

Management of learning in class - need more practice with the systems in class to get this down pact.

  Where are my class/myself next steps?

Continue to practice using these systems

Put class rules/routines up on display in the class 

Continue to have students teach each other new skills as they learn them.

Work on managing comments (marking) even spending 5 minutes at break going through these to keep up to date.

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TBCS - Learner Agency - Judy-Anne

Karaiatiana and Laila read the book Make It. I suggested they could choose something to make and they chose the flower. We checked the supplies we had, found some large cardboard for them since they wanted to make giant flowers and away they went.

Laila's flower

Karaitiana's flower

String art
This was amazing! Found it on Facebook. Portia was really keen so we tried it together. She was much better at it than I was. She made heaps of them and was busy helping the others do it. Reuben, Karaitiana and Brianna tried a few but the others weren't interested so they kept on doing their maths and reading.

Reflection - Rob

What's on top for me...
I thought you all did really well yesterday - it was a day of lots of new skills, quite 'heady thinking' around learner agency and looking at school systems. The biggest areas of progress from my perspective related to:

1. Learner Agency - you are doing some great work on deepening this.
2. Digital Skills - Google Forms, Sheets, Team Drives, Document formatting, Blogger (labelling, 
3. Introduction to the SAMR model - to help you decide the quality/depth of the learning outcomes students are producing.

I have a couple of questions in my head today:

1. How might you use the rubric for Learner Agency with your classes so they can delve into what it is, how to grow it, etc.?
2. How do you know the outcomes your students are producing are quality? 
3. How might you unpack what inquiry into practice is so that it is useful, relevant, manageable for your school?

Reflection - Learner Agency Room 1 - Judy-Anne

I set an activity for writing on seesaw, giving the children options of how they could tell me about their perfect day. Most chose to write about it, some chose to make a video and one drew and then put a caption on her drawing. They also chose to work in different places and no-one sat in a student chair at a desk, some were kneeling, some stood, some sat in comfortable chairs and swivelled.

One of the writers discovered the emoji button and they all discovered that spelling options came up underneath what they were writing so they didn't have to type every word. Most used lots of emojis, particularly when the appropriate picture came up with their word eg pizza, tv.


The writers spent about twice as much time as usual engaged in their writing and only stopped because it was break time.

Learner Agency was shown in the choices that they had available and also discovering learning for themselves. I had no idea that would happen with emojis so it was exciting learning for all of us.


Next steps: Use more activities on Seesaw rather than just posting to the journal each time.

SAMR Reflection

This learning fits in the Modification section of the SAMR model. The children were given what would normally be a 'writing' task and given the choice of how to tell about Their Perfect Day. This was then shared on Seesaw with their parents. Some parts would almost fit under Redefinition because we would not have had the ability to share videos with parents previously. (Could have shared the writing and drawing.)

Taking it further:
. Some of the children discovered the emojis and what they could do with those so it would be good for them to teach the others about them.
.  We could go further with learning about making quality videos
. One child already went further with putting captions on her drawing when a drawing was enough. We could also talk about the value of doing more than just the minimum required.
. Look into more of the Activities pre loaded on Seesaw
. Make more Activities for Room 1 on Seesaw
. Consider the success criteria for the learning- eg communicating clearly, using full sentences??

TBCS - Craig - Learner Agency Examples Room 3

These were my examples of learner agency in Room 3 

They showed students going beyond what was expected, students helping one another, Students teaching each other aspects about devotions using the whiteboard (at break time), setting a goals and choosing to do it while everyone enjoyed Sumdog.

Where to next...

Put it up on Seesaw to share with parents.

There are other things on the rubric which can be added.

Share it with the rest of the class.

Loop it on T.V as an example.

Add video and get students to articulate what they are doing and learning, and where they are going.

• 6  Using appropriate pedagogies to accelerate progress of ākonga who are achieving below national expectations.
• 6  Having high expectations for all ākonga and sharing these expectations with ākonga and whānau.
• 6  Undertaking a detailed evaluation of learning programmes and their impact on all ākonga, that takes into account ākonga feedback.
• 5  Structuring learning tasks so that all ākonga experience a degree of success, but also ensuring that they are required to stretch themselves to fully succeed.
• 4  Discussing my practice with colleagues and being open to new ideas.
• 3  Participating fully in school/syndicate/faculty/department meetings and be an active member of the team. Share ideas with others.
• 3  Participation in professional development (PLD), both in school and through outside agencies. Working with colleagues to enact the new learning. 

Here is a slideshow I found which you may find helpful:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19ENISja-n9WPlfjifVOojd4oBMTYokLUJNYkss2rdaY/edit#slide=id.p

Strategies for engaging reluctant writers

Here are some good references for helping engage the reluctant writer. Note the balance between surface and deeper features, but with the emphasis on making meaning.

1. 5 strategies for inspiring for reluctant writers
2. 13 ways to engage reluctant writers
3. 7 Ways to Guide and Inspire Reluctant Children to Write (note ideas for making handwriting a ‘comfortable experience’)
4. What to do for reluctant writers

This video about the author's purpose reinforces the idea that the purpose is critical.

TBCS - Craig - Reflection on Learner Agency

Although I do not understand the word, agency as it is used in Learner agency, I expect from discussions that it refers to you being in control of what and how you learn.

What might the teacher do to develop it?

• Foster a desire to learn and grow, develop excitement about all things new.
• Show where each subject is relevant for now or the future.
• Goal setting.
• choice of themes or activities.
• Wait time.
• Questions that encourage self reflection, How did you go? What went well? what didn't work so well? How can you improve?... etc.
• Success criteria.
• Develop high expectations.
• Foster an environment that encourages risk taking and allows for failure.
• Model different ways to learn.

What might the teacher not do in order to develop it?

• Allow the students to have no imput into what they get to learn.
• Do things the same every time without reflection and and feedback to shape where to go next or next time.
• Teach without giving the 'why' so students don't get the big picture and can't see the value of learning what ever it is.
• Teach to get it taught and over with, with no passion or enthusiasm.
• Get upset when students get it wrong.
• Give no time to think or process.
• Don't allow the students to reflect on what they have learned.
• etc...

• 2  Undertaking PLD and further professional reading.
• 2  Engaging with school-wide inquiry approaches as expected.
• 2  Ongoing active involvement in a school/community of schools or other professional learning communities (PLC).
• 2  Reflection on how aspects of PLD have been enacted and the impact on ākonga learning.
• 2  Attending and contributing to PLD opportunities within and beyond my school.
• 3  Participating fully in school/syndicate/faculty/department meetings and be an active member of the team. Share ideas with others.
• 3  Participation in professional development (PLD), both in school and through outside agencies. Working with colleagues to enact the new learning. 
• 4  Involvement in appropriate PLD.

Reflection on Learner Agency - Steve

What do I think it is?
It is the ability to identify and choose how to learn a skill not mastered previously.
It has a goal and next steps involved in the process.

What might I do or not do to get it?
Model it with examples.
Structure the environment to allow risk taking to help learn how to identify gaps in the skill base for a particular goal?
Encourage questioning to enable students to discover the next steps, try them and report on the outcome.
Guide them to develop another strategy form the results.

What might the teacher do to develop it?

• Model what it looks like
• Attitude
• Environment 
• Encourage risk taking to identify areas in need
• Improvement is the goal
• Goal setting for targets
• Encourage self reflection
• Success Criteria
• Co-construct goals
• Feedback - Feedforward

What might the teacher not do in order to develop it?

• Constantly set goals for them
• Have unwarranted goals
• Predetermined expectations without consultation. 
• Closed questions
• Give answers only.

What might be standing out?

1. The whole range of possibilities to meet our needs even the ones we didn't know about.
2. The Blog for developing our notes, has a good potential especially for appraisals.
3. Shared Notes for our staff meetings.
4. Amazed at the Google Forms, can't wait to try for our Sexuality Consultation.

What are my priorities to learn next?

1. Stop think focus on one area to work through.
2. Discuss our Blog especially if we are to use it for our appraisals, then see how we share it with all staff for theirs.
3. Change bookmarks, no words for ones I know.

Reflection on Learner Agency - Judy-Anne

We discussed learner agency during lunch and felt that it is about the learner having some control over what they are learning, why and how they are learning it. It could involve being able to access help to improve and sometimes  may even mean choosing not to improve on what they currently know.

The teacher can help in a number of ways for different learners and purposes. It may be necessary to tell why something is being learnt, and to show learners that there are different ways of learning and to help them discover the best way for them. They may need to discover for themselves that they learn different things in different ways. The teacher can model that they are a learner too. Also there needs to be an environment where risk taking and making mistakes is valued.

• Foster a desire to learn and grow, develop excitement about all things new.
• Show how each subject necessary in life.
• Goal setting.
• choice of themes or activities.
• Wait time.
• Questions that encourage self reflection, How did you go? What went well? What do you need to do next time? How can you improve?... etc.
•  Learning Intentions and Success criteria.
• Model different ways to learn
• Model making mistakes
• "Talk alouds" for your thinking and processing
• Foster an environment that encourages mistakes and risk taking