Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Today was our first meet of 2020. We discussed where we were heading as a staff toward our Teaching as Inquiry this year. I explained that based on my reflections of leading staff in Inquiry in 2019, I felt that it is imperative that I support staff to feel self motivated in the direction of their Inquiry. I feel confident in my role as Kahui Ako WSL that I can facilitate staff inquiries to ensure that they are meeting direction of the Kahui Ako and the school targets.
This week, Su Arrowsmith facilitated a staff meeting where we discussed possible areas we may like to inquire into. Next week, we will meet 1:1 to develop and focus these further.
With Elise we looked at the school strategic plan and could easily see how the staff's ideas (as they are now) can fit well into the school's strategic goals. This was exciting, as we could see, how as teachers, we could be taking an active part in achieving the strategic goals. It also allowed us to clarify that the Inquiries we were showing interest in, were indeed based on data coming from the strategic goals and could also come to a natural collaborative goal.
Elise and I started an action plan to move forward in for this term. I will facilitate a staff meeting in the next few weeks with the objectives being:
- Staff can identify where their area of Inquiry would support the strategic goals of the school.
-Staff can identify where the data is that they have to support their area of Inquiry

• Summative
• Student Voice
• Whānau communication
• Observation
• Conversation
• Anecdotal Evidence (books, docs etc)

-Staff will identify areas where they may need to collate more data and set a goal to gather more data in this area.

Kahui Ako Within School Teacher Inquiry

This year as KA WSL we will be undertaking a professional inquiry around developing our leadership in this role. I think this will be beneficial as we become more comfortable in the Inquiry process we are then able to lead others with more confidence. This definitely something I am interested in as I have felt confusion over my role in the past year.

If I refer to the Inquiry Cycle and try to transfer this into my leadership role;

SCANNING: What is going on for my learners?
What is going on for teachers in my school (in regard to their Inquiries last year)?
Based on observations and casual discussions I am going to assume that there was frustration and confusion. Some teachers may have felt frustrated that their Inquiry was not focused on the area of interest for them (and more dictated by me feeling like we needed to fit into the umbrella of Kahui Ako). Some teachers may have felt that the Inquiry process just added to their work load. Some teachers may have found the 1:1 meetings beneficial. How do staff feel about recording their ideas on blogs?
Is this where I now start to gather data? I would be interested to hear ideas on this as I get my head around how this professional inquiry will develop.

Coaching Session with Su 22/8

Today's coaching session with Su was helpful for me to come up with an action plan for all of the things I would like to achieve this term.
Here are the notes for my reference: Coaching Notes 2019

Ultimately here are my next steps:
- Create Visual aid for  quality blog posts to be put on classroom wall and on class blog
(end of week 6)
- Timetable in weekly blogging session to ensure students are publishing a quality blog post once a week. Week 6= Maths
- Share self assessment report format with students, they will reflect on what they have been learning, how confident they felt about it, if they enjoyed etc etc. This will be shared on Monday, Week 6.
- Alim group will continue to articulate goals, I need to ensure they can post about goal also, this will need to take place during an Alim session.
-Target writing students will make writing goal in Week 7 after they have been exposed to Explanation exemplars and been given the chance to write one draft sample.

Kahui Ako/Manaiakalani Lead Teachers Mtg 16/8

Main points from today's meetings:

Manaiakalani
- Cybersmart Wall: area in class rooms to promote quality blog posts/comments, cybersmart. I will need to follow this up. Get students to compete these posters. Share with staff.
- Visible Professional blogs- Te Hiku. It was decided that it will be an expectation for lead teachers to have their blog links on the Te Hiku site.
- Tui Mai tui atu: Pilot teachers from the previous year will be encouraged to share blogs with another classroom within our cluster.
- T Shaped learning- this was brought up again today, it may be something that we want to look into as we reflect on our reading practice (as this came through in our data). I wonder if this may be something that we look at with Rhona?
T Shaped Literacy Slides


Kahui Ako
- I need to reintroduce blogging time at staff meetings again to encourage more reflection on professional blogs.
- Story Hui- some schools are using this as a part of their Inquiry. I think the way we use coaching conversations is similar to this and I am feeling appreciative that we have acquired these skills from Susan.

We discussed how our Inquiries are working in our school. I reported back on how our Inquiry sat well under the the student agency results. I think the 1:1 meeting with staff members went well and I will set another day for Term 4. The focus will be on checking, set goals with teachers on how they can gather evidence as to weather they have made a difference.

Writing was discussed again as this is a constant issue. How can Inquiries focus on writing in a new and innovative way as this is something that we are constantly faced with?

Inquiry Update Week 7 Term 2

This week Petrina and I discussed where we are at in terms of our Inquiry and make a SMART goal for the rest of the term.
I talked about how I had been reflecting with students on what they were learning and the purpose of it but I had been doing this very sporadically and not in a planned/intentional way. We decided as I was setting up my student blogs at the moment that I would utilise them for learning reflections as well. Therefore my SMART goal for the remainder of this term is:
- To ensure that each students makes at least one blog post per week
- Each post will include the following reflection:
                        What were you learning to do?
                        How successful were you? How did you know?
                        Next time I will...



Further discussion among staff stemmed from Robs goal to ensure he had visual aids in his classroom with the learning progressions for reading, writing and maths.
We discussed how did kids feel seeing their own work up as exemplars at each stage. It was mentioned that maybe it was easier in younger classes where the gaps between learners was not so wide? We also discussed how classroom culture, habits of mind and growth mindset impact this. We wondered if this may lead to more of a school wide collaboration around having the same visuals, progressions school wide might benefit our learners as they moved through the school. Something that has come up before but not progressed. This is something that we may come back to...

Demonstrate vs Articulate

Inquiry Update 14/5

After our TOD we set a goal to scan with our learners, to gather information on whether they could articulate their leaning.
I asked my students:
What are we learning to do?
What was the most challenging part for you today?
What do you need to learn to more successful (find this easier)?  I asked my students this in a variety of ways: to discuss with a partner/group, report back on a post it and electronically.
I discovered a few things:
-when the LI was written on the board, they students could generally rattle it off
-when it wasn't their answers were generally task driven
-when I was confident of the intention for learning and the PURPOSE for it my learners found it easier to articulate their learning.

This left me with a few questions:
- How useful is it for students to read the LI off the board? Does that demonstrate that they understand what they are learning? Are there other ways that students can DEMONSTRATE their learning rather than just ARTICULATE it?
- How can ensure that more learning in our class room has real purpose so that learners can understand what they are learning and why it is necessary?

My coaching session with Susan  (14/5/19) looked at this.
We discussed how gaining a better understanding of the Manaiakilani Kaupapa of Learn, Create, Share will help me to focus on thinking carefully about my learning intentions if I am thinking about how it will lead to Creating and Sharing and that being the purpose for learning and vice versa.

How can I incorporate Learn, Create, Share into my classroom practice?

The following staff meeting allowed us to discuss further. What is more important? Articulating or Demonstrating?
Moving forward with the spiral of Inquiry we looked at:

Focusing : Where do I think concentrating my energy will make the most difference?
- I will be focusing on finding purpose to learning. Why is what they are learning is important? Can I give learning a real life context?
- I will continue to co constructing S/C with students but begin to record this digitally on the class site.
- I will be looking for evidence of how learners demonstrate their understanding of learning. How can I record this? Blog?

Teaching as Inquiry TOD 26/4

This morning we broke down and summarised the Spiral of Inquiry with Susan. 
As a staff we had rich discussion on what each stage of Inquiry means and how we can incorporate this into our
practice. We then established a direction for our collaborative inquiry that worked underneath the
Ka Hui Ako overarching question:
How can I use rich tasks and flexible groupings to promote critical thinking?

Oruaiti School focus:
How can learners use a range of ways to demonstrate their learning?

Why? 
We have noticed a school wide gap in students not being confident to articulate the direction of their learning.

Seven principles of learning.
We identified Learners at the centre as our areas of focus.
These reflective questions are what we are focusing on:


We understand that there can be a range of ways that learners can demonstrate their learning.
We are interested in discovering which ways learners can currently articulate their learning goals,
needs and next steps and how we can support them to do this better.

Week 1 Scanning:
We will collect student voice
We plan to teach lessons and ask students to demonstrate what they have learnt
(we will try 5 different methods e.g: discuss verbally, write, draw, song/poem/rap, blog reflection, drama, p.e)
We will record data and be prepared to share our findings at our staff meeting in Week 3, this will also be recorded
on our blogs.
What was the most successful method? 
Where do I think focusing my attention would be most useful?

Buddy Coaching, T1

Today I had a coaching session with my critical friend, Petrina.
We established a goal for me for the next weeks: 
My Literacy Programme will be delivered through my class site by the end of the term.
See the photo for notes, steps, barriers and enablers.
I love having coaching conversations to nut out what is on top for me and my learners and figure out steps needed to achieve my goals.
I feel pretty confident about this goals as I am really enjoying what I am learning at DFI and I am trying new things with my class site all the time.

Coaching Notes