Learners Taking the Lead on Design

What?
Yesterday in LH3 we decided to trial having the learners design their own day.  We gave them a sheet of paper that was broken up into three sections, one for each block, then we went over the day's workshops.  The learners then had to schedule in the workshops they needed to attend and then work the weekly must do's around them.  I had tried this last week on Thursday when half of the habitat were out at NYLD and it had worked really well.  The learners who were here did a really good job of planning their time and sticking to it.  I found that they were really on task and motivated.

So What?
The day went with varying success.  Some learners really enjoyed it and followed their plans down to the minute (they had to write their timing on it and make it really specific) while others used the time to talk with their friends and did not achieve anything.
I would really like to persist with this way of planning because I think it will prepare our learners for OJC and OSC well and because I really do believe that if they've had a hand in designing the work that they do they're more likely to do it and enjoy it.  I wonder if the types of activities on the must do's would change things also, are the tasks too specific and could they be broader to allow more space for diversity and creativity?

Now What?
I think for next week it would be a good idea to give more support to those learners who need it.  I think our inner circle (in our circle of independence) will need their day designed for them or with them, we could spend time doing that first thing on Monday morning.  The inbetweeners might need a small amount of guidance, for example the subject that they are doing but they can choose what they do for that subject (e.g. Literacy = read to self).  The outer circle are more than capable of planning their day on their own so they could do that before the day starts on Monday to allow them a greater amount of learning time.

My Thoughts
I'm still excited by this approach and I do think that it went well for the first time we've done it as a whole habitat. I wonder if it worked better on Thursday purely because there were smaller numbers of learners.  I would really love to be able to add Fridays into the mix and by term 4 have most of our learners in the outer circle planning their own day all of the time.  It's a lofty goal but I think it's totally possible!

Swimming - Experimenting with choice

I'm really enjoying the opportunities that swimming has brought us this term.  Some of the learners are really coming out of their shells in the pool and it's fantastic seeing them in an informal learning environment where they have such a high chance of success and they're getting so much enjoyment out of it.  I've been taking photos and videos with the intention of writing narratives for the learners in my group, I'm seeing such development from some learners so I'm excited to compare their skills at the start and at the end!

It's also a really useful way to experiment with allowing learners to pick and choose what they work on for part of the day (when learners come back form the pools they are allowed to work on whatever they'd like to work on).  It would be my ultimate goal to have learners making these sorts of choices all of the time and Lisa and I running mixed workshops throughout the day so it's a great way to experiment and see how the learners cope with such a high level of choice.  Some of them are really loving it, grabbing the opportunity with both hands and enjoying it while others are more off task.  I would say at the moment that the majority of learners are off task with a handful making positive learning choices, I'm interested to see if this changes over the next four weeks!

* I wonder how I can support the learners to decide what they need to work on and stay focused, perhaps they need to spend shorter periods of time on each thing they do, to stop their attention falling off so often.
* If we ended up running this type of model how would we keep track of learners and their finished work/work in progress?
* The circle of independence would really help us with this, how would we use it better to support those learners who need to stick close to a learning coach?
* Would it be okay to allow learners to make their own choices all day??

Safe to Fail Probes

Safe to Fail Probes

Provocations: We will keep our provocations the same as we had last term however we will have them out both before school and after lunch to see if there is a greater level of participation and discussion in one over the other. Wk 4 design  

Initially when we designed our safe to fail probe we changed quite a few things.  We shifted the timing from the morning to the afternoon, we provocations part of the learning experience so they went from voluntary to compulsory, we made them link more strongly to our iExperience topic (previously they were more random, designed to inspire and provoke curiosity for iExplore and iExperience).  In week one we found that there was a much higher level of participation, energy and discussion from the learners (wk 1 design).  Some learners who previously did not join in with activities were joining in and getting something out of the learning.  We asked a lot of questions as the learners participated to provoke their thinking, this worked differently to last term where our questions were less frequent and broad.  This questioning strategy meant that many of the learners had lightbulb moments (particularly during the screwed up paper activity).  

After our discussion with Chris and Leanne we discovered that we'd changed too much at once, meaning that we were unable to pinpoint what actually made the difference, if there was a difference. We have decided to stick with changing the timing only, we will go back to doing the types of provocations that we did last term only we will offer them in the morning and in the afternoon.  We'll be watching to see if there is any difference in participation (new Safe to fail probe).

At this point I can't really predict what is going to happen.  Either the learners will be just as unlikely to engage in provocations in the afternoon because the types of provocations just don't interest them or they don't see the point in them OR they will be more inclined to participate because the afternoon time slot isn't their time, it's learning time therefore they'll engage because they have nothing else to do.  It will be interesting to see who notices/participates and what sort of discussion comes out of it. I'm wondering if it will give us any useful information or not due to the afternoon time slot being learning time and the morning being the learners' own time.