Sparking Passions for PLD Leadership: Thinking ahead to 2020

PLD 2020

PLD 2020 will look different. We want to tie all threads together by Learner Agency. This will begin with Teacher Agency. We are inviting all staff to examine purpose, inspiration and the things you are passionate about teaching and learning.

All staff will have leadership opportunities, delivering professional learning around an area of passion. Underneath the work will be a robust research project/ TAI which is likely to last for most of the year and will inform all staff around best practice or improvement in a chosen area. We are envisioning doing this in pairs/ teams.

PLD sessions will be delivered in chunks. 4- 8 sessions in succession. We are aiming to do less in more depth. Areas to consider are Reading, Writing and Maths (a given) and Positive Education, Learner Agency and Cultural Responsiveness. This is to get us thinking! Voice, choice, PURPOSE, engagement…

Today we began to generate ideas for next year. We started the meeting with a walk to appreciate our place.

The best ideas come when we aren't trying to think of them... They often come when:

-Walking
-Running
-Traveling (airplanes, airports, trains, buses)
-Falling Asleep or Waking Up
-In Conversation with Friends
-Listening to Audiobooks or Podcasts
-Showering

Flourish Model and the Hero's Journey

Ximena also led a starter about how teaching activates each area of our Wellbeing...

Here are some of our initial thoughts about leading and learning linked to our 2020 business plan and strategic goals:

Audience, Purpose and Motivation for Writing

Prior to the session we read:
Alison Davis, Effective Writing
Chapter 8, Celebrating and responding to writing

The key ideas: 

• Having a clear purpose and audience for writing is highly motivating for students, and involving them in determining this is an effective way to build motivation. 
• Students can learn a lot about writing through investigating their own and other's writing.
• Maintenance of skills and strategies for writing is an important aspect of everyday class practice.
• Allowing students a choice in writing activities provides an incentive for involvement and an interest in writing. 
• There are a wide range of possibilities in the creation and celebration of writing. 

We used the ECG template to discuss the reading in groups. 

Senior Team 

Junior Team:

We asked why write? 




We used Coggle to make a list of our students and attach them to an audience that might work for them.

Writing- Session 1 - Overview

Writing Professional Development- Minutes taken by Gabrielle



Session 1 - Overview

What are we doing to enable all of our students to be writers?

UDL tool - how to make a seesaw activity. Can direct to certain kids, and in folders. See Video.

Had writing with Murray Gadd and Sally Muir, how do we make this our own?

We’ll be completing Internal Evaluation of writing this year.

What makes good writing - it’s tricky. We’ll try and work this out collectively. Can you share something generated in classroom that you’re happy with?

What are we looking for in a piece of writing from kids?

Personal voice, authentic

Picture in your mind

Fits purpose

Makes sense, shows thinking

Some structure, finished - clarity over purpose practice or product

Impact, audience awareness

Supports, passion

Legible

Risks eg spelling

Purpose

Free as possible

Passionate

Pumped

Their writing, personal


Pride

Getting started

Pride “happy with”

Voice

Scaffolding balance especially with emergent writers, structure, phonics, letters, word bank

Fluency

Talk

Choice of genre

Link with reading

Text models eg Gail Laing book, model texts to share

Details overdone

Recrafting

Challenging yourself

Verbs not adjectives, rich words

Variety of sentence structures

Does it sound good?

Honesty in expression

Audience

Purpose

Clarity - legibility, ideas, structure



Discussion around personal voice

How to tap into great ideas when process (maybe physical) stops them. Could record stories

Technology can help, eg purpose can be to entertain and be good storytellers

Write without thinking - fluency

Goals and aims for literacy practice 2018 - take ownership of our teaching and learning of writing… what do we do that affects change?

Literacy Action plan 2017 - keep front of mind

Formative assessment

How do we give feedback, consistency across staff etc?

Direction for students

Communicated on seesaw too

Scope may widen beyond reading, writing and maths

Developing writing programmes for our students…

Teaching as inquiry - lifting student achievement - more on Thursday

Share in pairs ides

Nicola shared her writing inquiry term 4 2017. There was a focus on goal setting and progress towards that. Great engagement with boys bringing friends to the writing group. Lots of choice.