Presenting at ULearn 2015

Presenting at ULearn was one of the scariest things I have ever done! I was so happy to be doing it with my Team (Vicki and Karla). At the same time I felt really proud of the things we are doing in the Marama Syndicate and it was quite exciting to show what we are doing and things we are trialling and working on. Some people had some really good questions at the end and were intrigued with what we are doing. Go NPS!

uLearn 2015

I was very lucky that our school staff was encouraged to go to ULearn 2015 in Auckland.

On the first morning a guest speaker that stood out to me was Grant-Lichtman. He had great ideas and shared his personal journey around school. He wanted to find out what the 'best teachers' were doing. He went to schools and said-"show me innovation, show me a teacher that you want every teacher to be like".  Along his journey he found many creative ideas.

Simple ideas such as Make it Monday and Tear it up Tuesday these were some of the ways teacher were encouraging students to be creative and curious.

Some other interesting thoughts he shared:

• At the end of the road- Dewey
• "Great learning is based on experience, which leads to passion which leads to learning"
• Cognitosphere- the evolving neuro network, what flows through this network is knowledge-transfer, sharing.....want to be part of this system.
• What holds us back from this change- fear, always looking at the downside, am I going to take risks?
• Risk doesn't mean danger/harm....you have to take risks to be innovative!
• We think we have to make a decision between experience, passion, risk and achievement
• Change is hard??!?!?! Changing schools is uncomfortable not hard.
• Educator-leader, we do not look to a leader to tell us what to do, we lead from where we are, teacher co-learner, co-teacher,
• Education is freedom- what are the skills we want students to have in the next century?
• words that are timeless-college students made this list in 9minutes: persistence, resilient,  confidence, patience, openness etc. Some school spend all their time finding words!
• Stop worrying about what the list looks like and just do it!!
• What if---questions 70% into same areas: 1.stop teaching the way the world doesn't work 2. student ownership 3.student assessment 4. daily schedule 5. differentiated  6. professional development 7. annual calendar 8.role of teacher.

Something that I found really interesting was his ideas around change and taking risks. I think that with all the changes in education we are waiting for some new book for how we teach maths, or project based learning or inquiry etc instead of taken the risk to be that person who creates the "new way" of teaching. As teachers I believe we are natural problem solvers. If there is a problem at school we aim to fix it, if something doesn't work change it improve it. I think its also important to remember that all children are different and that just because something worked really well last year doesn't mean it can't be changed/adapted/innovated?? I believe there is learning in everything-try something, fail, reflect, learn. 

Reading Roles-Author's Purpose

Another workshop I have ran this week was on a new reading role we decided to make. After having learning conversation about reading we found that one of the main goals students were identifying from there reading matrix was identifying the author's purpose. So we decided (the students and I) that by making it into a role would be a more effective way of practising and learning more about it.

I ran a workshop based around Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. We focused our discussions around three questions and recorded our ideas on A3 paper.

3 Main questions:
What does the author want you to believe about the story?
Do you agree with the author on the main point?
What has not been said?

Reading

This term I have starting running some reading workshops. I have based these on the things they identified during our learning conversations. I have made a list of all the headings/goals they identified and then wrote the students names under the goals they choose. These will be some of the workshops I run. I have also run some workshops on Book Club roles they need more support with and also some new roles. One goal identified with all students is they need to work on is extending their reading mileage into a range of texts. So I held a workshop on peoms and fairytales. First we read some of the books then we talked about what makes a poem a poem and what makes a fairytale a fairytale. When then listed any similarities. I think its important students can identify the different parts of different texts aswell as the purpose of the text. Here are some of our ideas:

Student feedback

This term my goal is to improve on my personal reflections. I started ding reflections at the start of the year but slowing stopped completing them. At the end of Term 1 I got the students to fill in a survey about how I had started the year. I have linked the survey below. This was a really neat way to get feedback. I told the students to be completely honest. I also told the students that I wanted to be a fantastic year 7 & 8 students and that their feedback would help me towards this. Some of the questions are quite general and are on a range of topics.

How am I doing survey Students responses to survey

Teacher Inquiry-reflections!

Where has the year gone??? This year I have found that I have not made enough time to reflect on my teaching and own personal learning. So much has happened, changed, improved, failed, succeeded etc and I have not reflected on it how I normally would. So my goal for this term is to post on my blog at least once a week to regain my reflective skills. I find that working in a team we do a lot of verbal reflection but I don't make time to write this down or record this. Bring on the challenge!

Marama Team set up

This year in Marama we have tried to use our new/old furniture to create different space in our team. We have a collaborative space/creative space, meeting/collaborative space, quiet zone, outside learning space and also a cloak bay area we have transformed into a learning space. This term (term 2) we have changed the furniture again and have now made more of an 'Exploring area' where children can play games, create things using the clay, sewing machines etc. We are also working towards defining our learning spaces and naming them. So far it has been interesting to see what they've come up with.

Cricket World Cup 2015

What a great day it has been! The events team has had a successful day running a Cricket World Cup day for our school. Each syndicate got the chance to go out and get involved in the games run by the Events Team. NPS also had the chance to compete in their house teams within their syndicates. Each house team represented a country in the world cup. For example Patiki represented Australia. The Teachers were lucky enough to represent the Black caps. It was awesome to see kids who don't normally play cricket get involved today and show great sportsmanship. It was also great to see them working well as a team and cheering and supporting the other players. Good luck Black Caps!

Marama Camp

Surviving Camp!

Prawn fishing, High ropes, sailing, Kayaking, Paddle boarding, Confidence corse, Cricket, Soccer, Mountain biking, Hydro slides, Pools and more! What a week at camp. This has been an amazing experience. My highlights for camp were seeing teams come together to overcome challenges and also children facing their fears and pushing themselves. It was great to see lots of smiles and laughter and also children mixing and mingling with other children they wouldn't normally. There were some very tired children when we arrived back at school at 3pm on Friday and some great memories made. I can't wait to do it all over again!

Marama Team work/House challenges

Team building

So far in Marama, we have been doing lots of activity around building positive relationships between the students and teachers, student and students, teachers and parents and parents and students. We have done a lot of activities around team building. This year they have worked in lots of different teams: house team, learning teams, buddies, small groups, home rooms, and whole syndicate. It has worked great so far! We have also been prompting the children not to sit by their "weekend friends" and "lunch time friends" to maximise learning time. This has really helped with behaviour and also it has been interesting to see who does and doesn't do this. Coming up very soon we have school camp. This will be a great test for our students!

My Year 7 & 8 journey!

Wow what a completely different start to the year! My goal this year it to become an effective year 7 & 8 teacher by having a sound knowledge of the curriculum and a better understanding of teaching students at this age. Background information: Marama is my new team this year and what a fantastic start we have had. We have a modern learning environment made up of 3 classes (80 students). All the year 7 & 8s have their own devices which they complete tasks from. Each student makes their own MI Plan with their weekly timetable on it to have the freedom to arrange their own time. We also have the Marama way where students wear lanyards to get specific things ticked off to earn their Marama gold card. Once they have this they have special privileges. This was a way to make being year 7 & 8 special from the rest of the school. I am looking forward to the next challenges ahead.