Steve-TBCS-PLD Day Reflection-July 2018

Reflection:

A full on day with lots to think about and take on board.

Good to have some practical application time to sort out issues.

I feel a lot better about where we are going now.

Seesaw to still be sorted.

1. Steve - photos, linking in between the iPad and the photos (blue one doesn’t but green one does, how do you get them from Photos > SeeSaw, etc.), kids aren’t sure where things are stored and how to access them. This is something for everyone to learn about to make it easy. It was pleasing to spend time sorting out the little hiccups that have hampered our development and use of our PLD. I came away tired but happier that I can deliver a better programme.
2. What has been going well, I have really enjoyed having the children put there work up on the screen, discussing it with me (and the whole class by default) and working on changes.
   The editing part of writing has always been a bit of a dinosaur, how to make it relevant while getting buy in from the students. The commenting ability in google docs is very cool. Instant feedback, identifying areas to improve, and owning there documents.
3. Labeling has gotten better, still the odd nondescript items.
   Seesaw continues to be a good link to home, I must remember to use the audio options, keep forgetting.
   Staff wise, the blog is becoming more used, the change of meeting time seems to be helping. Action steps are to look at commenting on each other’s blogs, otherwise why write them?
4. 

Engage in professional learning: using the google docs, for editing and feedback, for students learning.

We entered into a 'sheet' for our planning, to look at co-ordinating between teachers and across the school.

Action Step; 

1. Sit down with Judy-Anne and cross over old plans into new format. This is an enquiry into our tracking and recording.
2. Set out plans for Margaret and myself to work from. Daily and weekly planner. (sheets)
3. Set out printed guidelines for using photos, docs etc for both staff and students.

1. Remember to use the comments also in sheets, may be very useful when we are planning from the same document.

1. Do we need an agenda for each Blog time, to allow for comment and discussion time.

Follow up - feedback on last visit from Rob

Hi guys,

It was good to see you all again last week. This visit highlighted to me the importance of tightening up our systems for ensuring that we all follow up on agreed actions after each visit.

We are accountable to the Ministry of Education and have a milestone report coming up so we need to ensure that we can all say we are engaged in the project, as shown through our continual improvements and the evidence of this.

Craig, your follow up actions from the last time were:

1. Ensure that the large screen TV is showing a child's screen as much as possible throughout every day. This will provide modeling to other learners, plus an easy ability for you to monitor what is happening.
2. Continue working on the expectations for class routines so that you and the class know how to use the different aspects of the technology.
3. Use Seesaw regularly throughout the week - moving from you controlling this to the students taking more ownership of the process.
4. Getting children to write on topics that interest and engage them, preferrably using short and easy to achieve genres; the ideas on the blog are a good starting point.

Judy-Anne, your follow up actions from the last time were:

1. Get students taking photos of their learning and posting to Seesaw regularly.
2. Use the large screen to show children working on the iPads as much as possible. See modeling/monitoring comment above for Craig.

Steve and Margaret, your follow up actions from this visit are:

1. Get students using Google Photos to upload and share what is happening in the learning. You can get students commenting on these photos which is a great personal writing exercise, even if it is just labelling photos... there are lots of ways you can ramp this up, eg. using different parts of speech/etc.
2. Get students using Google Drawings to create imagery for their learning - this might be to illustrate their writing or whatever they come up with.
3. Explore Google Presentations as a fun way to present learning - the cool thing about this is that it utilises movement, sound, text and imagery which can be quite powerful.

I will do the following to support this:

1. The area that I can improve on with regards to this is to ensure that actions are clearly agreed on and communicated during each visit. I will create a system which has a bit of a log of each session so everyone knows what we focused on, what they need to do next and any other items. I'll link this to the blog so it is accessible to everyone at all times.
2. I will also make sure all staff are invited to the calendar events for when I'm planned to be there, just in case Steve is away. 

If any aspect of this isn't clear, please either call me or comment back here. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the next teacher only days, which are penciled for 9/10 July.


Kind regards,
Rob

ICT Skills - Blogging tips

Aren't they a good looking bunch!

Here are some pointers for blogging that will help you:

1. Always make one idea = 1 post. Then use labels effectively, this will ensure your blog is searchable and filterable in different ways.
2. You can create a link using a label category - click a label you want to link to, then notice the URL says /search/label/name of label in it
3. You can take this a step further by combining labels into a search, below...

<blog-URL>/search/?q=label:LABEL1+label:LABEL2

Inquiry into Practice - Going Deeper

How might we go deeper in order to investigate how our students can be better learners?

Process

1. Spend some time on the focussing stage - use whatever tools you wish - to go deeper into understanding the needs/problems/challenges of your students in writing. Make sure you identify if you have any limiting beliefs or preconceptions, the language you use either out loud, or in your head are key aspects to notice.
2. Decide on what is most important to work on and how. Brainstorm some strategies for how you might go about this.
3. Trial and test, play and explore. Reflect and record

Refer to p.34-35 of NZC as you do this. Record these as individual reflections at each stage, for each person.

References:
Blog post 1 - Craig/Rob
Blog post 2 - Judy-Anne
Blog post 3 - Steve

Great Resource - Research Northwest Tree Dwelling Octopus

This website is a spoof site which teaches the importance of checking the veracity of information online - it's brilliant. Suitable for older than about year 4

https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

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?

Ideas to motivate boys or reluctant writers

Here are some ideas from another one of my clients about motivating reluctant writers that might resonate with you ;-)

If you want to take these ideas and edit them as text, you can import this image into Keep and then convert the text.

 

Keeping Your Children Safe Online - John Parsons

Check out this great book by my friend and colleague John Parsons - would be great for your parent library.

Reflection on the term - Rob

I've had a great term. I've really enjoyed working with you all and am excited to see your progress and where we can go to next.

I've also had some exciting learning that I've been doing during the term, with the highlight being going to Sydney to train to become a Gallup certified Strengths Coach. This is a coaching framework which takes the philosophy of 'what if we only focussed on what people are naturally good at, rather than what they aren't good at?'.

This is something I'm super excited about and I am applying this to the work I do with school leaders, leadership teams as well as collaborative teams. I've done the youth version with Isabella, my 11-year-old and it has also given me a new 'language' to use with her as her Dad.

My team has grown in my business, with Tabitha Leonard who is based out of Auckland and has specialist skills at inquiry into practice and design thinking/SOLO taxonomy, as well as two new people to help in the background of the business.

In terms of the progress for Tasman Bay Christian School, it's great to see how attempting new things is challenging each of you and the mixture of skills, confidence, and pedagogy coming together as you learn to more naturally integrate technology into the learning process.

Teacher Only Day Planning

As far as next week goes here are my thoughts thus far:

• please be prepared to share 5 examples of student learning each (Steve you can do a minimum of 3) that shows: digital learning with writing or English in some shape or form. If you've not done a lot of digital learning in writing, then just digital learning is fine. We need a number of examples as part of what we will do will be analysing these together...
• goals of the two days include: continue lifting confidence/skill at using digital tools, looking at student learning data with a view to designing teacher inquiries (these will feed into your appraisal process), unpacking and expanding on your definition of learner agency and how this can influence planning programmes for T2.
• Would you each please take a series of photos during this week that depict different things about learner agency in your class or in the school? If you can have 3-5 each that would be ideal.
• I reckon we will work from 9-4pm each day

Remember when posting to the blog to put your name as the label also - you'll see links at the top to your posts now, plus a section we'll populate for Inquiry into Practice.

Please help relabel labels for ease of access on blog. Steve
Check e-mail shortcuts i.e. year groups etc. Steve
Google for room 4, docs etc.

Craig wants to know how to set up a room drive, because his teacher didn't use a pencil and Steve asked him how to do it...

Craig wants to know how to set the mistake levels for writing on Room 3 because at the moment it doesn't help at all.

Examples:
Seesaw- Journal
Seesaw- Activities
Lexia
Sunshine Online
Pobble 365
Learning for fun
Sunshine Classics
Photos with ipads
Reading Plus
Epic
Typing
Maths Buddy
Sumdog- Reading and maths
Room 3 drive- writing
ANZAC discovery kit

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.

Another way to learn as/when you need it

Hi guys,

In talking to Steve this afternoon I reminded myself that I'd made a note for Judy-Anne to have access to our Online Learning Community when she needs it.

This would be a yearly subscription which would enable you to learn new skills as/when you need them. Plus you can get unlimited support inside this community, along with a wealth of other things such as templates (perhaps we could make a learning support register?).

One of the areas we discussed when we met was the need to develop a learning support register and a means for tracking/monitoring progress of students in this. Google Sheets is a great tool for this as everyone can interact on the same sheet, plus you have the ability to control what people can edit within a tab on a sheet - VERY handy!

When you are ready to, sign up for a free trial here: learningarchitects.com.join and I will upgrade you to a full member. There is an online course 'Google Sheets & Forms 1' which is perfect for setting you up.

Here is a screenshot of the homepage:



Rob

ICT Skills - accelerating literacy with iPads

I am one of the leaders of the GEG NZ (Google Educator Group) which is an online community for educators in NZ. It runs on Google Plus.

This blog post has a video from a meeting we held and is a great example of iPad usage in a junior environment.

It is quite long but well worth a watch when you get a chance ;-)

ICT Skills - teacher planning template

I have a wide range of templates for teachers and school leaders to use.

This planning template is the most popular with teachers.

Sign up for a tutorial and get your own copy...

Education Council Standards for the Teaching Profession

The Education Council has released the new Standards for the Teaching Profession, which is named 'Our Code, Our Standards'.

This is in my view a useful document because they have simplified the ways in which various indicators of quality practice are grouped so that they have gone from 12 criteria and now have 6 areas of standard, each with up to 7 indicators that elaborate what each standard comprises of.

These are:

1. Te Tiriti o Waitangi
2. Professional learning
3. Professional relationships
4. Learning-focussed culture
5. Design for learning
6. Teaching

PLD Touch Base - 7 Feb

Items discussed:

1. Using Google Slideshow (Craig) - how to capture student reflections
2. Setting up iPads to manage photos (Judy-Anne) - discussed the need to set up a class Google account so that photos
3. Health Consultation - Rob to get Steve example form to adapt and use
4. What makes a quality reflection - for conferencing a student
1. Is it better than last time?
2. How do you think you did?
3. What did you do well?
4. What are some areas you think you might need to improve in?
5. What is your goal for next time? What is the one thing you are going to improve on?
6. How can I help you?
5. What makes a quality professional reflection?
1. How well did it go?
2. How well did the kids learn? why?
3. How does it fit into what I already know/believe/do?
4. What would I do differently next time?
5. What might my/our next steps be...?
6. Dealing with 'to dos' - looked at tasks/reminders in Google Calendar, plus Google Keep as a great note taking/list making tool
7. Ways to manage learning support register - suggest Google Sheet.
8. Where to next: 20th Feb meeting is focussed on teacher inquiry, then Rob will be at the school 13-16 March.

Next steps:

1. Craig - 
2. Judy-Anne - 
3. Steve - 

How to use Google Calendars

ICT Skills - learning to use search properly

I think that search is a fundamental skills for using the cloud effectively. This blog post shows you how to search for anything inside your Google Drive.

No more wasted time looking for files!

ICT Skills - ways to collaborate inside G Suite

This blog post deals with a number of the ways in which we can interact inside G Suite.

As you learn more about how this environment works, you'll find there are a variety of ways we can interact.