Teaching as inquiry

Each year of teaching I am excited with the new possibilities. A new group of students, a new level, a new room, new ideas for teaching and learning. Each year I develop as a teacher and am amazed at how much new knowledge around teaching I gain (and how much more I miss - because I have to STOP and do something else). When I look through all the notes I've transferred to my private RTC blog, around all the topics I have read about, researched, watched videos on or discussed with others, I see such a wealth of things through which I must make choices and decisions, adapting ideas to suit the needs and wants of the particular group I have this year. It is mind boggling how the brain never loses space for new things.

The Teaching as inquiry process has become a part of teaching. The difficulty in this process is narrowing down the multitude of ideas and topics of inquiry that one looks into each year, and choosing just one to spend more indepth time collecting and collating data and research around. Each year this hard decision does get made, and the focus taken. As these inquiries do involved specific data of individual students they are not published here, but can be seen with permission on my private blog. (see Other RTC)
Here you will also find the multitude of topics and ideas I've researched over the last few years that have been worthwhile enough to note down.

Confidence and Purpose

Today I met Andrew Patterson in an online video and enjoyed his inspiration.

His main discussion was around building confidence first and creating experiences for children which make their desires in life seem like real possibilities.

He is inspiring as he loves disruption and having a go, trying big ideas, things that arent easy but are possible.

How can I create confidence in my students, and how can I bring more experiences based in the real world - not just the world they are born into - but the possibilities that their are in the real world, in the future world, into my students lives?

Teachers are awesome!

Today I was lucky to be able to spend some time in school, but not my own school. Today I travelled and had the opportunity to visit with Tauriko and Tahatai coast schools in the lovely Bay of Plenty. What fantastic welcomes we had. The purpose of our trip today was to look into next steps for our own schools e-learning journey, and these schools didn't fail in providing us with inspiration and ideas to ponder moving forward.

We saw versions of BYOD working at various class levels from year 3 to year 8, we saw paid in digital 1-1 classes, and open BYOD classes, we heard children explain why BYOD helped their learning, and we experienced a variety of e-learning in action. Fabulous.

My takeaways...

- the problem of the haves and have nots is always lessened by more devises in the school, regardless of paid in, or BYOD systems, more devises just means more access for all.

- children take much more pride in their own devices

- children didn't seemed phased over whether they were writing in their books or doing a computer task, and interchanged between these two things easily.

- having a bank of similar creation tools meant children gained higher output rates due to familiarity with the tool.

- digital/ e-learning/ computer classes, they all still use books. Children often choose whether to write digitally or on paper, or this can be balanced by the teacher alternating.

- the focus is always on what we are learning, and will the tool support or extend this learning or not.

- the focus is on students choosing when to use digital tools, blended with some tasks created to increase particular skill sets needed.

- google apps for education has great potential.

- google sites an option for e-portfolios.

My wonderings...

- Am I becoming more convinced of the 1-1 model and its potential?

- Could charging our children be an option at our school? Would it increase the importance of e-learning in the school?

- How is our school insuring staff are all moving own their journeys? See Taurikos teacher e-competences.

- Am I now more convinced that BYOD could be an option for me next year?

Where is your school in its e-learning journey?

 Are you on a BYOD path?

How does you school do it?

Supporting the profession

Having a student teacher in the classroom teaches you so much about yourself. Being a role model, everyday, for 8 weeks at a time can sometimes be harder then we think. The pressure to be at the top of your game every day so that you can help them to be the best they can be is tough.

I have the privilege of helping to nurture a student teacher this term, yet at the same time I am still constantly challenging myself to become a better teacher. Trying to balance the two things can be difficult. 

I am wanting to make some changes to class routines, but my student needs to learn the routines so he can take on full control. I am learning to integrate ICT's in an e learning class, but as I'm the learner this is in bits and pieces at the moments, so the structures for my student teacher to follow are not in place yet. I am redefining daily 5 for my classroom, and switching to online planning, so the systems around these two things are not perfect ....yet.

There are so many changes that I am going through I sometimes think my student would be better off in someone else's classroom. Or is there some redemption in the fact that the student teacher can see how change happens in a classroom, and how as the teacher you are the driver of that change which is needed to suit your learners and the world they will be living in?

Great Idea #1

Great ideas often come at unexpected times - and often in teaching it is these last minute ideas that show real success with students.

Image thanks to  epSos.de  

In my class this year is an interesting lad (lets refer to as Bob). Bob is 9, and has been at our school just under a year. I am noticing that he seems to have a lot of A
spergers type tendencies - he avoids groups, only likes working alone, doesn't really affiliate with "friends", avoids touch, avoids eye contact, and stresses over small things that don't bother the rest of us. He also has a great sense of humour, is smarter than his academics show and has intense interests. At the moment those intense interests involve drawing and dragons!
He is a neat kid although challenging to get 'school work' done. So the last few weeks of term I had the brainwave (I'm exaggerating a little, it was obvious really, but sometimes we are too tired to think clearly). Anyway I downloaded a few dragon apps onto the class ipad thinking I could use these as a motivator for him to get work done, and casually talked to him about them on a field trip. Over a 20minute walk to a nearby school, he and I had negotiated his written language programme for the next week. He was going to use one of the apps to make an image, and then create a story to go with it (simple stuff really). And he was going to do this even when I was on release....

Yeah right! I thought. I was sure he would be sidetracked by playing with the dragons and never decide on a picture, and never come up with a story unaided...

Boy did he prove me wrong. He reminded me everyday, asking when he could start. He chose a friend to help him take the picture (to promote him working with others), he went outside and was back within 10mins with 4 pictures. He asked me my advice on which suited his story idea the best, we cropped it together. Done! The next day I was on release. The day after he came to me with his finished story about a dragon attacking the school. he went on to publishing this - via computer as he decided that was tidier.

He showed me that with a good idea, some trust, some negotiation and time, children can achieve. Where do I take this next? Now I know he can work like this, now I need to negotiate in the learning focus for his writing, and give him skills to check himself against this.

The spin off - Bob became a role model for another low achieving boy in the class who has high absenteeism. The next day this boy wrote a 3 page dragon story inspired by Bob. He usually only wrote a sentence. I let Bob know this, and now Bob's status in the room has been increased - and he talked about being an inspiration for days.

A great idea - a great outcome!

Setting SMART goals

A new year and goal setting go hand in hand. As teachers we tend to set ourselves a few goals as we move into a new school year. Often this is in the form of promising ourselves that we will do something that we didn't have time for last year, wanting to try a new ICT tool, wanting to up skill in some learning area, wanting to be more organised (that one is permanently on my list).

This year my goals range from SMART to more generalised.
- to keep a personal reflective blog weekly
- to start photo a day site for families
- run with my own version of a daily 5 reading program
- to develop an e-learning class philosophy and system

Already as I looked these goals up in my diary I realise that I already have neglected some, as they have fallen off the radar in the busyness that is term 1.

This gets me to thinking about goal setting with children in class. How valuable is it really? In the past I have tried goal setting, when it was part of our portfolios, and children wrote reading, writing and math goals. Inevitably children would write "I want to get better at..." And we would then work hard to create a SMARTer goal. As the weeks went on into term you would ask children to reflect on what their goal was for maths, and how they are going towards it, only to be greeted with blank stares or "My goal was to join my writing".

So, it is that time of the year again, to set goals or not. I'm all for kids knowing their next steps. Is that not the same as a goal? Or do we have to choose one of those next steps to work on at a time? Teachers then bring WALTs into the equation, they become mini goals for the lessons. Or do we as teachers try to teach to the children's goals? You can see why the unclear use of goals is confusing for children ( and quite honestly me to at times).

This year I want children to be reflecting in their e-portfolio against things they are working on, or trying to achieve. So I suppose that is goals. But I'm not sure if I want them to declare them from the start. To lock them in, since like me, 2 weeks later they may have a totally different focus that they have come across since.

Maybe I need to put it to the children, since it is them that are involved. I will set myself a goal to do this during the week and see what they have to say. Watch this space.