Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

Reading chapter 4 of Clarity in the Classroom has made me reflect on how I craft LIs and SC and the realisation that I have often made the mistake Michael Absolum talks about. When coming up with the success criteria, I frequently repeat the LI but change a verb or add “will be able to….” Absolum says that we are often too focused on the specific skills rather than thinking about why we want students to learn whatever it is.

We need to be aiming for clarification - looking at not only what, but why and how and then checking in to find out how we are doing.

For example I am currently working with a group of students who need to add full stops to their writing. I would usually have my LI as “putting full stops in the correct place” with the SC  of “has full stops in the correct place”. This doesn’t actually help students. What I need to have as a LI is a "why" - a “bigger picture” concept. So for full stops my LI might be “to break up writing into ideas so it is easy to read” with the SC being “we will have full stops in the right place”. This lets the students know why they need to learn what I am trying to teach them, which in turn will hopefully motivate and engage them.

My lightbulb moment for this group was taking the LI back to the “bigger picture” concept which then opens up lots of different avenues for teaching - the "how". Rather than persevering with the actual skill and highlighting each piece of work where there should be full stops, I need to look more globally at full stops, by linking reading and writing, I think it will make the use of full stops really explicit as they have seen, used and heard many examples and we model the use of full stops everyday, multiple times a day.

Once full stops have been conquered we can move onto commas and have fun with phrases like - eats shoots and leaves, time to eat Grandma!

SOLO, Pebbles and Clarity in the Classroom

I think this is going to be a post I keep coming back to as it feels like the cloud is lifting - all be it slowly, and that my thoughts are becoming clearer.

A few different streams of thought and PD are slowly coming together - Clarity in the Classroom, Pebbles and SOLO.

My takeouts from the Clarity in the Classroom readings so far, are around making it clear what a child is suppose to be learning, and the benefits this will have in building a learning focused relationship. This links to our pebbles (especially in maths) as the children know which pebbles they have and so know their next steps and so what they are learning - although we need to be more explicit with this. On another level we could start to link in SOLO which is all about making the learning intentions clear for all and the progress - how to get deeper learning by building on existing learning.

One element that is not always clear in all my lessons are my expectation of what they will learn, so if I don’t know this (or it’s not clear) then how are they suppose to know what they are learning? This might also explain why some children don’t push themselves - while they know their next steps there is no expectation that they will be working on them.

Lots of work to do here and I've made a start;

Big Step 3 - Relationships

Writing with my mentor group

I have seen amazing growth and progress in a number of writers and it is heart-warming to see. Several writers I had thought of as quite reluctant are now asking to write everyday. Pinpointing why is hard as i’m not one to sell myself and i’m sure there is lots of things at play, however I do believe that the relationships I have built with my mentor group, and the trust that there is, is paying off. These children know I want the best for and from them and as we celebrate success (in a fairly whoop whoop low key way) they want to do their best. They are moving from writing and reading for me to doing it for themselves - finding their voices and giving them an audience - knowing that we (all mentors) want to read their stories. The level of enthusiasm is quite exhausting but well worth it to see the joy on their faces. Must share this joy with their families, just incase they haven’t!

Use of Maori in the Habitat

A very proud moment for me - Eve gave me a chocolate fish (real, not virtual) as a thank you for using Maori everyday, whenever I can, in the habitat. Ka pai me!!

Pipeline Leadership

Ben talked to us this week about Pipeline leadership which I found fascinating. Ben quoted someone as saying “if an organisation is well led, it will be effective”. We are a very well led team (just like the ABs) and so our school should be a highly effective one.

Traditionally teachers are in Pipeline 1 – they just have to be concerned about themselves and their role.

Traditionally team leaders are in Pipeline 1 and 2 – where pipeline 2 is all about the team and growing others with a bigger picture lense.

Pipeline 3 is where the APs sit and they are focused on building capacity with the team of adults and Pipeline 4 is the Principal who has to be thinking and planning strategically.

In our environment Pipeline 1 and 2 overlap. As a team member I have to be in Pipeline 2 sometimes, as we all have to hold each other accountable for our actions, we have to grow each other, we work collaboratively so have to have an eye on the bigger picture, and we have to ensure that our teaming BPP is being valued. This isn’t just Muireann’s job, we all need to step up and do this.

I have to say that this is one of the reasons SPS is such a great place to work – the expectations are high and so when we meet those expectations, so is our performance.

Ben also introduced 2 new terms - FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error) and  Naive Realism.

FAE is something that everyone does - we attribute a consequence of an action to that person's personality - we blame them, rather than look at the context of the error and find out why. We need to do more questioning and less "jumping the gun".

Naive Realism is the belief that your view is right and that if only everyone else was as rational as you are then they would understand it too. This struck a chord for me! Thinking about the Herrmann HBDI model where I am predominately blue, this logical and analytical side of me can cloud my judgement when I reach conclusions faster than others or my logic leads me down a path where no-one else is willing to follow.
The great thing about this is that I am aware of this side of me and one goal I have is to slow down . If i'm trying to convince someone of something the burden is on me to explain it better rather than them to "get it".
Naive Realism will stop teams growing, so it is essential that I keep this awareness and question the why.

Linking with the "Slow down" theme here are some quotes Muireann found;

The Environment

As part of the II team’s work we had to read about the environment and the part it plays in learning. This was to help build our belief statement.

One thing that struck me is just how lucky we are at Shotover; we don’t have to be concerned about acoustics, peeling old paint, or any of the dilemmas facing schools who are moving towards teaching an learning in an Innovative Learning Environment without the physical structure to support them. One discussion we had was that the actual building is the “hard” stuff and what goes on inside is the “soft” stuff.

Most of what I took out of the readings is to do with the soft stuff – the environment is far more about people than it is about structure (especially when learning is occurring in buildings like ours).

Core Education White Paper (2016) states that;

So when we think about our space we need to ensure that we consider the social context and the pedagogical one – we need to look closely at our practise and think about the how and where learning occurs – “soft” stuff.

What the paper made me think most about is how we use our spaces, why we do it this way and what can we change to improve our practise and therefore outcomes for our learners. We started the year defining spaces in terms of the kinds of learning that could occur based on noise level – a noisy space we could block off, a creating space that is actually very close to our quiet space (the gallery). The quiet space where direct acts of teaching could occur, a meeting space for the whole habitat, a space for collaboration and another space for quiet reading (or reflection).

The white paper talks about 3 essential zones; reflective/creative, creative/interactive and interactive and I think this could be a good place for us to start looking at our environment and how we can better use the space we have.  However, I do believe that we adapt to needs and are flexible and willing to try using spaces in different ways, so re-thinking this as a team might bring about some great changes that our learners will love.

Whilst the “soft” stuff is paramount I think that elements of our “hard” stuff could be improved with the number one thing being shelving – in order to increase out student’s agency and help their learning, an easily accessible way for them to access the resources they need would be advantageous, and as Ben says “from structure comes freedom” (Ben Witherford 2015).

In another paper by the OECD motivation and the part that the environment plays was highlighted;

• again, giving students agency,
• creating a space that is emotionally positive,
• having space to allow for learning through exploration,
• having learning occur in a social context,
• connecting “formal” learning with learning happening elsewhere
• knowing the why of the learning in the space
• enabling learners to become self-directed

As is mentioned in the media, as we try and re-define education we need to make sure that the learning experiences and the environment in which they occur support the development of the life-long, soft skills that our learners will need.

Literacy Workshop

As a team of mentors we had to reflect on our literacy practise and as part of our professional learning we each developed a goal. I linked my literacy goal to one of my big steps – my writing inquiry.

I will begin to build a strength in: making explicit links between phonics, reading and writing.

The actions I will take: make a sign that all mentors put their weekly phonics focus on and then use this whenever I can.

Big Step 3 - Relationships, update

One of my big steps is all about building, growing and maintaining relationships. Last year Claire advised me to make one positive phone call a week. Well I finally did it! I’ve had plenty of positive conversations with parents at pick up and drop off but I made that phone call. And what is even better is this particular parent usually gets behavioural bad news so it was fabulous to be able to share something really positive about her child. The child was also very proud of his actions and so our relationship grew!

Timetable Re-jig

Having tried our timetable for 5 weeks we decided there were certain tweaks we wanted to make. We all  had to think about what was not happening for us and this discussion led to a new plan for reading.

We now have 2 owls and 2 eagles at reading time. This means that the 2 eagles plan town time and only have to think about that whilst the owls just need to plan (and stock) for reading. After day 2 this seems to work well. The children love town time and a lot of learning happens in this social, exploration time. Eventually the eagles will be able to make this focused on specific things and guide the learning. 

Meanwhile the owls are just heads down, teaching guided reading. This will hopefully mean for me that I develop more instinctual actions which will develop my readers.

After 2 weeks in each role, we then swap! Eve and I have also thought that if you are the owl for reading, you are the eagle for maths and vice-versa, so hopefully reducing the cognitive load, which means you’ll do what you need to better!