After reading 'The nature of learning' which we were encouraged by leadership to read, straight away I could make connections between things we are doing in our team.
https://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/50300814.pdf
One of the first points I found interesting was the understanding of what a learning environment should be.
-Constructive, self regulated learning is fostered
-The learning is sensitive to context
-It will often be collaborative
This links well to the beliefs and understandings of our team. We encourage our students that learning is not only something that happens at school it is all around us. And you don't 'stop' learning it is something that I am very obviously still doing now. We want our students to be be independent learners that can work collaboratively on a range of tasks/learning areas.
After reading the 'adaptive expertise' I made connections with something we had not long ago been talking about in our teams. 'Learner agency'-these different approaches made me think about the different stage we have been thinking about for students to be Agentic Learners.
Guided learning-the teachers take the main relevant learners
Action learning-learners play a much more active role
Experimental learning-not controlled by teachers, learning is determined by context, learners motivations etc.
The 8 basics of motivation-these were very helpful when I was thinking about my Teaching inquiry and how I was trying to encourage more motivated readers for my target students.
By working along side target students when it comes to setting goals I feel this is making clear the link between what students are learning and why. Makes the learning more purposeful- goal, learning, evidence, achieve. Positive reinforcement, growth mindset and a different look at reading is how I have approached reading this year. Stopping children who say 'I suck at reading' and getting them to think 'I just need to find the right thing to read', making reading more real for them and getting them to think about all the amazing things reading will help you with in your life and finding a context that makes reading more purposeful such as inquiry learning etc. These are just a few examples of ways I have used these 'basics' of motivation.
Something else I thought more about was the 7 principles of learning.
1-learner at the centre
2-the social nature of learning
3-emotions are integral to learning
4-recognising individual differences
5-stretching all students
6-assessment for learning
7-building horizontal connections
After thinking more about the explanation of these I was thinking about how we are doing/not doing these things in our team and some examples. I have looked closely into the first 2 principles so far.
1-Students in our team have choices in their learning, work to set their own goals, are encouraged to work with a mixture of experts (teachers, people in the community, other students etc), they are encouraged to be curious and use this to drive their learning and they also set their own goals that they are aiming to achieve.
2-Create opportunities to work collaboratively in a range of way-reading, writing, mathematic tasks, problem solving, learning teams, workshops, house team challenges, leadership teams, technology groups, sports, music, Group Endeavours, IMPACT, Inquiry etc. We try to encourage as much collaboration as we can so our students can learn to work with different students in different ways, so they learn from one another and to push each other. There is also some learning that is done independently.
