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.  

Swivl DAT

My deliberate act of teaching was a reading group who were focusing on Self Monitoring.  We had worked on this comprehension strategy for a couple of weeks and were doing the last, refresher session on it before the holidays.

What Went Well
The learners had their self monitoring bookmarks they'd been given and they were able to refer to them confidently.  There were a couple of learners who were very confident with answering the questions that I had put up for discussion and could talk about self monitoring skills easily.  Over the previous weeks the group had understood what self monitoring means, the importance of it and the different ways to do it

What I Would Change
Next time I would set the swivl up at the back of the group so that the learners are in the video.  It would have been helpful for me to see their interaction so that I can better plan for sessions and to allow me to write narrative assessments on specific learners.
In the future I need to ensure that I move around a wee bit instead of standing or sitting in one spot, I think this would make the session a lot more interesting for the learners and would allow me to connect with more of the group (I follow a special needs teacher on Facebook and he uses this strategy to keep things interesting and keep the attention of his learners).
I need to use strategies for getting the whole group participating in the learning.  More often than not it's a handful of learners who answer all of the questions and do all of the thinking, perhaps because the others are shy, or worried about being wrong or language is a problem.  I think if I had them discussing, writing, mind mapping or doing some other activity in pairs or threes it would be a non confronting way for all learners to participate and access the learning.  This is my main goal moving forward.
I think I also need to think about the structure of the session and really plan it out a bit more deliberately so that I can get the learning I want out of it but keep the session short and sharp.

End of T1 Reflection

T1 reflection - what’s not going well

iExplore 

• Most learners are not following the learning model document and do not understand that it is more than creating a presentation. 
• Those who have done bake sales have needed significant intervention by Lisa and I.  They haven’t understood the process they needed to go through to get from the idea to the end product (finding a recipe, making a list of ingredients, doing a budget etc).  
• There is more of a language issue than I originally thought there was and I think many learners need ESOL support when doing their iExplores.
• I forgot to give the Sharks group the web quest that we created for them.

iDevelop

• Some learners aren’t getting enough instructional sessions on strategies and are not remembering how to use them. 
• Learners don’t automatically go to the slideshows on our Google site and do the capability tasks.
• When maths workshops are quite large I have found it very challenging to reach all learners and use materials with them
• Most learners aren’t updating their reader’s notebook.
• There doesn’t seem to ever be enough time for each subject area (reading, writing, maths)
• I don’t think we have enough maths games and language games out for learners to use to practise their capabilities

iExperience

• I have found it difficult to have enough time for visual arts on Tuesdays
• It has been difficult to offer workshops with only two learning coaches
• Many learners need language support with independent activities

Home learning

• Half of our learners are not doing mathletics at home.
• We haven’t got a way of checking that the learners are doing home reading

Other

• Provocations that are not on YouTube don’t seem to grab our learners.
• Many activities in all areas are not getting done
• Many learners sit with their friends and are very distracted during independent learning time
• They are very slow at getting organised when transitioning into a different learning area

End of Term 1 Maths

Assessment
Every second Friday we have been doing a pre-test.  This includes ten questions from various maths stages, all of the questions come from the planning sheets on NZmaths.  After the pre-test Lisa and myself mark them and put the learners into workshop groups based on what their gaps are.  Over the two weeks we run workshops that focus on the strategies in the pre-test and each workshop has a slideshow that accompanies it.  The slideshows are uploaded to the class Google site for learners to access for capability practise and to support their further learning after the workshops.

Daily 3: maths with someone, maths on my own, maths writing
We have been encouraging daily 3 with our learners and have a display on the wall to support the language of daily 3.  We have found though, that many of the learners spend all of their maths time playing card games or on Mathletics.  The card games they are playing are often snap or last card so they are not gaining much or practising their capabilities.  Following

Mathletics & Digital Tools
Learners are required to earn 2000 points each week on Mathletics (this number was decided on by the learners).  Activities are set for them that align with the workshops they have been, or will be attending.  They have been given time in class to work on Mathletics however we are finding that many of them are only doing Mathletics and nothing else so at the moment we have limited it.  We are also finding that around half of our learners are not doing Mathletics at home.

We have not started using Studyladder yet however I think next term we should look into this.  Some of the stage 5 activities on Mathletics don't align with the strategies we are teaching them (lots of algorithms which they shouldn't really be doing at stage 5) so it would be good to use Studyladder to fill this gap.

Moving Forward
It'd be good to find a way to keep our workshops going but make them smaller, less learners in each one so that we can use materials more easily.  Also I'm keen to build in a bit more repetition for those learners who find maths difficult and need to repeat the same skills many times in different ways.

First iExplore

The last two weeks we have been doing an iExplore around deaf culture, the Treaty of Waitangi and Chinese New Year.  The learners have been in three groups and we've run a rotation through the three topics.  The first two groups were really engaged in my topic (Chinese New Year) and most of the learners shared some really great thoughts from what they had learnt.  Today's group were the most engaged of all the groups.  I was a little concerned about how I was going to reach the deaf learners but they seemed to be really interested in the topic and were excited about finding out about the dragons and the mythical monster who terrorised a village.

I realised after the first group that I needed to get the learners to record something about their learning of Chinese New Year customs and traditions so I got the second and third groups to create their own slides on my slideshow and write something that stuck with them.  I absolutely loved what some of them created, a couple linked videos that they'd found and pictures of different things and enjoyed getting up and sharing their slides with the group.

After the second group I went in and left feedback on each slide.  This time around I kept it brief and positive and thanked them for sharing, I felt that at this point of the year I want to create a positive feeling around feedback so didn't give any feed forward this time.

Going forward I need to remember to get evidence of learning every time we do something.  I also need to work on making my planning more thorough and link the correct things to it.  I need to think about what sort of feedback and feed forward I want to give on this sort of activity where it's a shared document, in terms of privacy do I want to be critical in public or keep it positive.

Attach the slideshow when it's finished.