PBL

I have now completed my first year of teaching PBL and thought I would share some of my thoughts. As mentioned earlier the latest PD session helped heaps with the planning of PBL projects. I have enjoyed teaching the projects this year as they are varied and interesting for the children. The children have been engaged more than I have experienced in previous type topic work.

The one thing I was worried about with this approach to learning was how the children would cope with more independence in the way they learn. I have found it not too bad as we kind of scaffold it a bit at the start of the year for the children. We did have to teach them some self managing skills at the start, however this improved  as the year went on. So overall I have been pleased with the children's improvement in self regulation and independence.  The children have done a lot of work in teams which has had its ups and downs. However the children have wised up to who they choose to work with and have learnt new skills on how to work collaboratively with children who they may not normally work with.  

I know at the start of next year we plan to get the children to do more work on working in teams at which should set them up good for the year.

PBL- Project Based Learning

I have recently had the pleasure of experiencing a PD session with Thom Markham from America on PBL. This is an approach that this year I have been attempting to do, which has been a challenge but I am liking this approach so far. 

I liked many of what this man had to say especially about the way education is changing and in my view needs to happen. He did bring up an interesting point and that is children can access many things on their phone so how important is content when we can look that up? I was listening to a podcast where Ted Dintersmith spoke about how  we are training children up for different jobs from 20 years ago and we need to consider this when teaching. This did make me think how content is important but I agree strongly that certain skills are essential in the 21st century and maybe we need to look at this more. The three C's are mentioned Creativity, Collaboration and Critical thinking  which are definitely skills the children need. The PBL approach helps to gain these important skills.

The driving questions is very important to gain the best out of the PBL experience. Although the process can be challenging to come up with a driving question it is worth it to get a good one. When I looked around it was great to see all of the teachers working at the PD session in what I would call a very collaborative approach to working out these driving question. The guidance from Thom during this process was invaluable as he guided us well to come up with driving questions easily due to his vast experience. 

I feel more confident after the PD sessions to come up with a driving question and what this looks like. 

Compelling Reason

What's your compelling reason?

The video in this blog was lovely and heart warming. As the author of this blog said it made him think about what is his compelling reason. I especially liked when he said "A reminder . . . when you have a compelling reason, you can learn anything."  This makes me think about my compelling reason for my learning. I am currently learning sign language and so often people ask me about why I do this as it is done in my own time every week. I have always enjoyed learning languages and am determined this time to learn for longer and carry on to master to a certain degree. I have found that teaching the children sign language gives me pleasure which helps in my journey to learn it. Another reason I do it is for the joy I have in communicating with deaf people and other people who use this way to communicate.

As to other areas of my learning I don't think I would be teaching if I didn't enjoy learning as that is the cool thing about teaching as you have to keep moving forward by learning. However I am not sure I have one inspiration as to why I learn and grow I just enjoy learning.  I am always keen to be a better teacher who can inspire children. I do know this, that I try to share that I am a learner and this I think helps them to realise that we are all learners.

"When you find your own inspiration to learn and grow, it is often that modeling that will help our students do the same" quote from article.

Maths- PD- Wendy Dent

After reading the Boaler book it was great to get the opportunity to attend the Wendy Dent Workshop.  I had been questioning how this looks in the classroom and how they manage the programme. She shared some results indicating that the children's national standard results improved by using this approach to maths, for at least the older children.
I agree that maths talk is important and it really does improve the depth of the children's understanding. While observing at the school it was clear that there had been some guidelines set with children in how to work with their math buddy. There were posters and reflective questions that were used to guide the math sessions.
The children were in pairs mainly on our observations which I thought did allow the children to confidently share their math thinking and not get lost in a group. I liked when children shared their work and they had set it so that one speaks and the other child writes. Hopefully by doing it this way will ensure that each child has the opportunty to both be heard.
From attending this workshop I plan to work on giving the children more opportunities to experience working with someone of a different ability on a word problem. I need to work hard on setting up systems with children sharing and asking questions some of the posters and reflective questions will help.
I found that this school on whole teach by this problem solving way. However some classes appeared to have worked on some aspects of maths and had teaching moments. You would need to do this I think as the children would be limited to the strategies they could use if they didn't know them.

Maths is the hidden secret to understanding the world

Maths


Intitally I thought this video is not going to help me in my teaching, but actually I was wrong. It fitted in with the book I recently read on Maths. It talks about showing things in different ways and he gives an example of 4/3 and how this can be represented in many different ways. I thought this was interesting as it made me think about the importance of the children showing problems and mathematical situations in different ways. With the help of working in different abiltiy groups this could help as the children will bring their different ideas. An important part that needs to be remembered is that by representing a math problem in different ways can really help to show the understanding they have.

This guy showed a huge passion for maths and he talks about using imagination and changing your perspective which leads to showing empathy.

Conclusion- Understanding something really deeply has to do with changing your perspective. When you are studying maths changing your perspective can help you be open to new ideas

Maths - A different approach

After doing another blog on maths I was given a book written by Jo Boaler which I had mention in my blog. I found the book easy to read and was able to relate to some of the situations and thoughts that was mentioned. Something that got me from the start of the book is what they said about powerful thinkers are those who make connections, think logically and use space, data and numbers creatively. Which is definitely what we want children to be able to do, but the thing is how do you do it? How do you use numbers creatively, this intrigued me as the making connections makes sense as we try where possible to make maths relate to situations that might come up in their life.

The book talks about how the problems that the children look at in groups with different leveled children allows the opportunity for the problem to be approached in different ways. By sharing the different methods it can show that problems can be worked out in different ways. The tasks that the children complete are open tasks allowing different approaches and strategies to be used. From this task the children  have to convince others of the answer and how they got their answer. It talked about how visually showing these strategies can be helpful too.

The idea of the different ability groups got me on to this book in the first place as I had a few questions on how that would work successfully. This book helped me to understand a little as to how you set up the environment and the tasks. According to this book they found that the low achieving students rise to the level of the highest achieving students. They feel that both the high and low achievers gain from this type of grouping. I still have my concerns a bit on this but would love to give it a go.

I do like aspects of this approach such as how the children are encouraged to pose questions reason and justify and be sceptical about the task.

If we give students a rich creative, growth mindset experience then we change them as people and the ways they interact with the world.

These key points come up
1. Everyone can learn maths to the highest levels.
2. Mistakes are valuable
3. Questions are really important
4. Math is about creativity and making sense
5. Math is about connections and communicating
6. Value depth over spread
7. Math class is about learning not performing.

These ideas help wrap up the main ideas of the book.  This book certainly gave me some good ideas and some inspiration to keep looking at  new ideas to teach in maths.

Cultural Reponsiveness

After reading Helen's blog it made me think about cultural responsiveness in my own teaching. As a class we have been looking at cultures and so it has made me think about making sure I am inclusive of different cultures. I enjoy learning about other cultures and learning languages as I am currently learning sign language. I have learnt from learning sign language there is more than just learning the correct signs when learning sign language. Deaf culture is also important and I learn from a teacher who is deaf and she is often sharing about the deaf culture and how this important and different from my culture.

 So just speaking Maori in the class is only the start of ensuring that I am being culturally responsive. I need to ensure that other aspects occur such as engaging the whanau, achnowledging whakapapa and Tikanga. Tikaga as mentioned in Helen's blog is to do with correct procedure and traditions. It covers different aspects  Rangatiratanga, Manaakitanga,Kaitiakitangi and Whanaugatanga. When I teach I need to ensure that I always respect the Maori culture.  I believe I am continually working on making sure that I learn more about Maori culture not just the teaching of the language as there is definitely more to it then that. By doing this it will help to empower and ensure that Maori students are valued in whatever they do and help them to succeed in education. It is my job to ensure the classroom is one in which Maori children are valued and by making connections with them and showing a general respect this will help towards this.

Self Regulation

self regulated- in parts

I read this article as I am interested in helping children become more self regulated. I feel in the last few years more and  more children need help in this area. Initially I was thinking how children in this more modern learning environment need to be self regulated when learning, however this can also be children who need to work on self regulating their emotions.  It talks about in this article that you need to coach children through problems with self regulating and provide support so you get the behaviour you want. This would mean scaffolding in different situations and possibly breaking things down to help them work through a situation.

Although this mainly talked about emotional regulation in children it did say that the environment needs to be one that is reflective and analytical and this would be beneficial to have.

I think that self regulation can't be expected to just occur and needs to be modelled by children shown how to do this in practical situations. This support needs to be with emotional self regulation and the self regulation with their learning as well. As mentioned before I feel that I have to give more and more children strategies and support to help self regulate themselves both emotionally and in other areas, than I have had in the past. I personally think that the environments we are trying to set up in the classrooms are one in which they get practise at working on being self regulated and I don't think you can expect them to always get this right but it is our job to keep giving them the skills and strategies to help them. These  skills  will definitely be needed in the future. I am asking myself now am I giving all the support and strategies to help all children to become self regulated. I think sometimes it is easier to give them to help them be self regulated as learners but the emotional side is harder to give strategies for as there are many factors that need to be considered.

Paths to 21st Century Success

I liked this poster as it showed some of the things we are trying to teach in this collaborative environment. It clearly states some very important skills that the children need to succeed in life. I think the left side is what is happening or should be happening in the class and the right being what Universities or jobs are looking for. It would be good to share this with parents who sometimes question some of the activities that we do with the children. I do think though that many parents are beginning to understand some of the different approaches to teaching today.  I also read the blog that Rob Kriete wrote who came up with this. It would be interesting to fill in the activities I do in the hub to see how they fit in to the poster part where evidence can be used.

Self Regulated learners in writing

Article


This was an interesting study on self regulation and writing. It is quite an interesting piece as it talks about how they used writing to help some children become self regulated learners. They broke up the persuasive writing process to teach them to be more self regulated. There was a lot of modelling and setting up criteria and goals to help the children understand where they are going when writing a persuasive piece. They talked and were quite clear what they needed to do to write a good persuasive piece. This along with looking at how they can work collaboratively to improve a piece of writing helped the children to become more self regulated as they were taking responsibility for their learning. Another important aspect is that the children set goals that are achievable and precise so that they are clear with where they are going. I thought it was interesting that one of the students who the teacher thought would struggle with being self regulated actually wasn't as they set themselves realistic and achievable goals.
The fact that it mentions that a student carried this idea of setting achievable goals over to their own personal life is great as ultimately we want the children to transfer the skills they learn in the class into the real world. This will definitely help them to become, as one of my previous blogs mentions, 21st century learners.
The feedback the children got was also an important part of the process too, as it needed to be focused on the goals set. Which in my own personal life I prefer feedback based on what I am working on not on other aspects.
The teacher said that it is important for the children to be driving their own learning. Ultimately that is what I would like the children to do to help to become a self regulated learner. I feel sometimes this would be easier to do with older children. However over the last few years I have started to give the children I teach more control over their work. I will continue to work on this as my aim is to get the children to be self regulated especially in the collaborative environment.

Poor Maths Results

This article on Poor Maths Results was interesting as I heard of this way of teaching maths and came across this article. I found it interesting in that they have done studies to say that ability grouping does not work. During my last few years I have had another look at reading groups as I don't always think that reading abilities groups work, so adjusted my reading programme with good success. However for maths I had not really considered it. I think when they stated that if children are only exposed to lower curriculum than the expectation is low. I question this a bit as  I expect they have to have a certain amount of numeracy knowledge in the first place. With  ability groups they do move on to other levels and I don't think the expectation is low.
 The article also talks about how teachers have to be trained in the way they teach this way without ability groups and I get that. After having a bit of a think about this I think that having the right type of open questions could work. I have many questions though like do you pair them up when attempting these open questions so you get different view points from different levels. How do you ensure that the lower leveled children share their ideas and don't get overwhelmed with the higher ability child's work and just follow their thinking completely or is that okay.
Problem solving in maths is important and can be challenging and a lot of fun for the children and really puts the children's maths skills to test. I need to find more information on this type of teaching to fully understand the practical approach to it.

TED Talk-How to make a library that makes kids want to read

Literacy-Libraries

I watched this Ted Talk about some people that were interested in changing libraries in public schools in New York. To get rid of the idea that libraries are musty old boring places. So this guy was bought in to re image so came up with three options 1- a shh free zone Option 2-OWL- rename it Open Wonder Learn or other thing that fits- Option 3-based on read (red) Red Zone-Are you Red?- But needed to rethink these as not many kids didn't even really know much about a library.  He came with this logo L!brary.
However this was not the end of it as then the architect came back and said there is a problem and said there is a gap between the shelves and the ceiling can you fix it? So they came up with the idea to put in pictures of the children above the shelves as mural reading and enjoying themselves. Then other schools wanted more and so they added other art and ideas from the children. They got artists in to come up with ideas and put up materials in this area etc.
This talk made me think about how can we make Libraries more engaging. I have visited schools in Melbourne where they made the library the hub of their learning as it was in the middle of the school usually in behind the office. I liked this as it was often a hive of activity, however you have to consider more than the location of it. Libraries have to look different than they have in the past and the libraries have to offer more than they have in the past. I recently enjoyed the experience of having some people from the Christchurch Library sharing their knowledge on Matariki. This was great and the children were very engaged in the experience and they also were interested in going to the library to learn more about Matariki because of their visit. A library today has to have the resources that help a child to learn and have a variety of different resources. I think this talk has make me think libraries also need to be attractive in order to get them to walk in the door and enjoy. I like the display of some art work in the spaces, as couldn't a library be also a place to appreciate the Arts as these days they often have to be multi purpose buildings.

Personalities

I am currently working collaboratively in a modern learning environment and have been able to observe what it is like to work so closely. It made me think what makes a successful collaborative environment. At first I think you need to look at the people involved in this as no matter what training you have had for this kind of environment, it is the people that play a big role in this.  So what personalities do you need to have in this type of environment to work well.

I found this article which I liked when they talked about how it is not the introvert v's the extrovert situation that we need to be thinking about.  Personal and emotional intelligence is very important in ensuring a group of people can work collaboratively. Being able to read the situations and emotions of the people you work with can help with working together.
One thing Mayer's research has shown is that people who are able to better understand and react to people's personalities tend to be happier in the workplace. "We find that on the job people with higher personal intelligence are happier and more likely to appear agreeable and helpful to more people," says Mayer.
You can't really change people's personalities and hopefully Principals and Board of Trustees  consider this when employing and think about who might work best with this person. It is not always the case for many reasons. This article made sense to me as how you interact with your colleagues is very important and if you except their personalities the easier it is to get along. I think respect is also a big thing that needs to be considered when working with others in this collaborative modern learning environment.

We need to work well together otherwise the affects of this will be on the children's learning and the general hum of the environment.  It doesn't matter how nice your environment is the teaching will not be great unless the teachers work well together as a collaborative team.

Inspiring Reading And Writing- Murray Gadd

Attended this session with Murray Gadd on Reading and Writing- What is critical for all ( especially under-achieving and reluctant) readers and writers?
This man has clearly done some research in this area and many of it made sense. The eight dimensions that he came up with made perfect sense. It was interesting to see what he found to be the one that helps to generate learner gains and decreases the achieving gap. I have over the last few years realised the importance of direct instruction in teaching and this is important for the children to gain more from the lesson.

It was nice to be reminded on the fact that writing topics comes from
-the students' own experiences, understanding and interests
-the texts that students access: or
-the cross-curriculum findings and challenges that emerge from classroom inquiry

He appeared that he didn't like the Monday recount pieces of writing, although I do believe there is a time and a place for that. I think for some children that is definitely a stage they go through and does fit under their own experiences aspect. I know in my class I started with writing about their weekend and t was good for awhile as it gave them confidence in writing what they knew. However I have now moved on to imaginary writing for most.  I liked some of his ideas of using text in stories to motivate children for writing. I plan to do this as another way to inspire writing as have not really done it in awhile. I liked when he got his children to write about only an aspect of the story. It is great to let the children to have a choice in writing when they can. Also his questioning was good to get more out of the children to write.

This speaker has made me think about checking out some more books to inspire the children to write.

Gafe Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Gafe Summit in Christchurch over the holidays. This was a great opportunity for me to extend my IT skills and learn some new things that I could incorporate into my classroom programme.
Some of the speakers were inspiring and I liked how some of them were still teaching and that they ju had a passion for extending the children's computer skills and other things. I think when you go to events like this you can get overwhelmed by all the ideas however it is important to walk away with a couple good ideas that you can use in the class straight away. It definitely happened at this Summit as I wish to get the children to do more on the Chrome books by accessing their google accounts. I know how tricky it is to teach them everything so Screencastying seems like a good idea so that I don't have to be everywhere at once so I plan to use this. I have been taught about google forms before but to see it a bit more in action in an example in maths was great and I have already used it in maths for my top group. The bonus to this was I was able to read the results of the test very quickly and easily.

Some of the things which may not seem big but make my life easier were important. Things like learning about finding the rights to use pictures, taking screen shots and adding to this and mercury reader were just a few of the ways to help my classroom programme.

It was a great experience but it does me think about how quickly technology is moving. In just my time I have gone from hand writing my lessons to now writing them collaboratively on the computer. The google suite sure makes it easier to work in the environment I am now working in I couldn't imagine doing it with written plans.

Self-regulated Haven

After reading a blog on self-regulated haven it made me think how things are going at my new school. I have this year being enjoying the challenge of starting a new school and all that that entitles. The feel of a school is very important and sometimes it is not till you leave or go to other schools that you really notice it in your own school. It can be the little things that can make a place seem like a self-regulated haven such as a calm environment which is not the same as a quiet environment as it is one in which the children are interacting but in a respectful way. The children I work with have the skills to work alongside others in an environment which in my current situation is a very open one with many children moving and working together.
I think sometimes we just have to look at where we have come with this way of teaching and environment as I find the children do really well in this situation. I enjoy just taking a moment to look at the focused children who know where they need to be and what is expected and who are making good choices in their learning.  I think that if we put a whole of lot adults in a shared space and said okay work together in this area there would be many issues. So to see children do this is great.
I believe that the children do feel safe in our environment and I think one of the reasons is because it is a calm environment. With having different teachers in the environment the children have different teachers they can go to which is great as this means that they can make a connection with at least one teacher.  However the flip side of that is that teachers need to work hard to form relationships with more children. For me this is a good challenge to get to know different children in the hub.

The other aspect is that the interactions the adults have within in these environment is important and needs to be one of professionalism and one where good interactions between the adults happens. We are role models and the children see us interacting and if done well then this will hopefully rub off on them which will help to create a calm and self-regulated haven.

Maths Mindfulness

I was looking into finding some more open ended maths questions for mainly my top maths group, when I came across this lady Jo Boaler. She talks about maths mindsets and what this means in the class for the children. She talks about the studies she has done and others where taking a different approach to  maths and getting the children to do more inquiry type maths can make changes to their mindset and results.
 She also talks about maths being more creative and visual. It made me think I often don't think of Maths as being a creative activity. When I am doing maths problems I do like being visual and after listening to her it makes me think I should encourage it more. I would like to encourage more creativity in maths.
I like how she talks about changing children's mindset to maths as I know there are children in my hub who think they can't do maths. Another thing I have an issue with at times are the parents who say that I was not good at maths so my daughter or son is not.  I sometimes feel that this attitude to maths rubs off from the parents on to the children. So my question is how can I change this? I guess I can only change the child's mindfulness not the parents.
 So listening to her makes me think I still need to think carefully about the mindsets the children have in maths and would like to change this for some children.  She talks about how speed is not important and that how they get the answer and also how they interact with others to get the answer is important.
Watching her videos has made me think a bit about what I can do to improve my maths programme and so I look forward to checking out her website and to try some of the ideas.

Math mindfulness

Leadership

Leadership

Okay so leadership is not something that I would of ever thought I would be interested in. In fact I guess for many years I wouldn't consider myself to be a leader even though I am a teacher I was not one who ever had a desire to be in any management position. These people were the leaders as they held the authority. 

Over the years though,  after reading this article it really made me think more about leadership and if I am a leader and what kind.  I have taken on what I consider to be small leadership roles e.g, sport co-ordinator and Jump Jam coach etc. I did not necessarily put my hand up for these positions I usually got asked and being the person I am I did not say no.  But maybe I needed that as I had throughout my childhood always been the quiet one who did as I was told. I always thought the loud  confident and bossy people were the leaders. During my childhood I had a group of friends and I never got to be the girl smurf when we were playing this was again me showing how I preferred just to follow and do what I was told. I have learnt a lot more about leadership since then.

After reading this article Reflecting on Yourself as a Leader I saw myself as more of a leader. Of course I am a leader when in front of the class, however I see that as different to what I originally thought a leader was. It says in the reading does it excite you to be a leader?. The answer to that is probably not really it scares me a bit because of all the responsibility, however maybe that is okay to be a little scared. I mean this can make you really think about what you are doing and how you lead. Of course in my teaching team we are all leaders in that we are all teachers however we must all work together. We have a leader of the team which is a different level. I think a leader has to be one who truly listens to what others wants and takes this into consideration when making decisions. I think how you deal with people is extremenly important and I hope that although not a leader of a team I do this when in more of leadership role. The other things that the article mentions like a persons background and the system in which a leader works in can make a difference. 

Collaboration v's Co-operation

Co-operation v's Collaboration

As my first post I wanted to talk a bit about collaboration versus co-operation. I found the following  article interesting as it helped to clarify the difference between the two. I think that many people are not clear on this and the benefits of collaboration. I was lucky enough to visit some schools over in Melbourne and most of these were new schools built in the modern learning environment type style. This however did not change how some of the teachers taught they tended to still teach the same way and just shared the space especially because most of them had a common area in the middle. This was not working collaborating but was working by co-operating with each other and sharing the space. Co-operating is easy to do and I have done this for many years with planning and sharing space etc. I thought this was okay until I read more on collaboration and the schools started being built in the new way with large open spaces. In education collaborating is important and will help us to gain more knowledge in many areas, broaden our horizons and I think be thinking more on a higher level. By working in a collaboration way it helps get the best out of everyone that is working in this environment, which is a good thing.  Cartoon video I like this video as it sets it out clearly how collaboration can work. I believe we are on this earth to learn from others and to build on what we know and share ideas. This helps us to come up with new ideas which is definitely what we want to achieve. We know that in the 21st century we need to move forward with our thinking so doing it by collaboration has surely got to mean that we can move forward in education.  I will continue to develop my thinking in this area with the help of gaining more knowledge and experiences both in the class and from outside of the classroom. As I have where to now questions I will answer hopefully in the future.
Questions I have that plan to discuss more on here. 

What is the best environment for collaboration to happen?
What kind of personality works best in this environment? 
How do we past on this collaboration to the children?