Teacher Only Day 1: TED Talks

Welcome back everyone! A new and exciting year for lots of growth and learning...

Today we all had a chance to share a TED-type talk with each other- anything goes under 'Educating for the Future'

Jude started the day with a session called Know thyself and be thyself where we were able to explore our passions in our personal and professional lives and how we can use these in our teams. 

Nicola and Ximena spoke about Number Talks and how this has a big impact on student outcomes. 

Gabrielle spoke to us all about resilience and how we can teach this to our students. 

Susie talked about Positive Purpose, what she has been researching and how she has been focusing on this when working with her students in Tautoru. 

Anna discussed the importance of getting students moving. You can read her notes here.

Cloe spoke about the changes that she has been making, moving away from a traditional way of teaching to a focus on Positive education. She compared this process to Metamorphosis.

Suz shared the learning that she has done with David Keane and how this has helped her to be present in her professional and personal life and the importance of working in Quadrant 2. 

Hayley spoke about ‘Heroic Recovery’ and the benefits of working together to try new things accept challenges and reflect together.

John talked us through the model of the Hero's Journey and how students can relate to the characters. 

Gillian talked about the importance of language. She said, "I spoke about the power of language, looking at both our internal and external language. I looked at the power of the words we think to create our realities and the words we speak to affect those around us. With little words like yet, we can change a statement from one of despair, "I can't do it," to one of hope "I can't do it yet!" The words we speak can change our mindsets and those around us. Let's use our words to make better worlds for ourselves and for our learners!"

Scott shared his thoughts about the Environment and why it is important that our learners take action!

Therese and James  (Masters of Teaching and Learning students) spoke about teachers and people who inspired them connecting this to what kind of teachers they would like to be in the classroom. 

Shona showed us some valuable resources for students for English Language Learners:

Steph shared ideas about communication and how we connect with our parents- not always easy!

Physical Restraint in Schools

We read the key points as a jigsaw activity then fed back to the rest of the group. 

https://www.education.govt.nz/news/new-rules-for-using-physical-restraint-in-schools/

PLD about PLD

Jude's Inquiry this year was around effective PLD. She investigated the different levels of PLD and how they are all connected. 

As a result of Jude's Inquiry, we have begun to track our learning on this blog. We have also identified that we need to connect beyond our place.

This is a draft copy of a visual. The intention is that staff will use this when planning their PLD. 

The 7 principles of effective PLD will also run through this.

Principles of Effective PLD:

●      Links to identified student needs and learning outcomes

●      Integrates knowledge and skills

●      Operates within a learning community and culture of trust

●      Offers sustained, multiple opportunities to learn (= TIME)

●      Is collaborative, shared, collegial

●      Active role taken by leaders

●      Is inquiry-based( some not all is at present)

(Readings: Professional Learning in Effective Schools, BES: Teacher Professional Learning and Development)

Maths PLD, Feedback 2017 (this will inform our next steps for Maths PLD)

All teachers have made changes to their programmes based on their goals and learnings. Many staff members will be signing up to take the Stanford Jo Boaler course- How to teach Maths (for teachers). This is significant as it will create a big shift in teaching practice across the school.

Teachers were asked what they have changed in their programmes. There is wider curriculum coverage, number talks, Visual Maths, EOTC in Maths, Broad open ended problem solving, collaboration (teachers and students), Rich inquiry focus and a better understanding of formative assessment.

Many teachers found that triples were useful and affirming. It was good to set goals around these. The mini inquiries allowed for everyone to be accountable.

Teaching as inquiry has a huge impact on learners (including us as learners).

Next steps in Maths:

Staff are clearer about the Internal Evaluation process but not everyone is confident in this area.

We need to develop Number Talks as formative assessment and share these with each other.

How to teach mixed ability groups (the what).

Some questions to consider:

How do we ensure that we are stretching the higher achieving students?

Are we teaching enough strategies?

From our data, we have identified that we will need to have a focus on Writing next year.

Where to next for Writing?

We asked staff:

1. What aspects of your writing programme are you feeling good about?

2. Where do you need development and growth?

We will look at this data and make a plan for our next steps, using the visual template.

2018 Planned Actions

These meetings were focused around planned actions for 2018. 

This was the "Smackdown" led by Gabrielle

This was the "Smackdown" led by John:

We started by planning from the why? 

Inclusion Meeting: Preparing for Inclusive Education Internal Evaluation 16th October 2017

We are preparing for our Inclusive Education Self Review.

What is Inclusive Education?
What different groups do we have in the school?
What perspectives do we need to consider?

We will look at what the survey showed.
Look at school vision and Year 6 leaver's profile.

What are we currently doing that contributes to Inclusive Education?

What UDL strategies and tools are you using in your classroom? Why?

Refresh from ULearn...

In her ULearn17 keynote, Ann Milne shared her story of the Warrior Scholars from Kia Aroha college. The video below demonstrates a wonderful model of cultural responsiveness in action:

 
Warrior Scholars - Decolonising education from Teach For All on Vimeo.


These slides have been adapted from the ULearn presentation by Margaret Lelieveld and Sunny West. The slides are about ASD in the ILE:

 

This is a link to a transition checklist for ASD students (but would be useful for other students too)

The senior team have been working with Evan Barker, who has been completing his Masters Thesis, "The implementation of (UDL) guidelines … and its influence on students’ learning." This has further helped us to reflect on our journey, our achievements and inform our next steps. These are the slides about his research from his ULearn presentation:

 

Sustainability Enviroschools

Strategic Planning Meeting: Digital Technologies Curriculum

Digital Technologies Curriculum: What it means for us. This was shared at the board Strategic Planning Meeting.