Thursday 17 April 2014

Yr 7 & 8 Odd Shaped Room




Great beginning and end assessment.  10 minutes to do the task.  

Creating a rubric for it. Start with mission accomplished.







Great for goal setting and where to next. Could start the unit with it.  This would group the kids and could be used for the weeks teaching. 

Teaching the area




What is the area? Make the link with number and strategy.  How can this then be between 20-50 metres squared.  Broken down into steps.

Introduce the compound shape.  Count each cube.  Then we can look at faster than this.  






How else could we count them?

Modelling and Understanding the Equal Signs







A Model


Maths Review

What topics have you covered? Add and sub, mult and div, fractions

What has been different about your maths teaching?  Focusing on two to three solid strategies then transferring those through.  Focusing on subtraction and division.  Number links to strand.  Hot spot.  Rich problems with the statement first to focus what they are looking for.  When testing highlighting what they know.  Unpacking the PAT data for term 2 planning.  Snapshots of learning.  Integrating the iPad. Testing and filming the testing. Teaching maths for two hours in the morning block. 

What have the challenges been? 
Varying degrees within the class.  Learning the technology. Tests to understand levels for strand.  Students self efficacy in maths. Gap has become bigger between each students.


Friday 11 April 2014

6 Powerful Steps to Strengths Based Performance

After feeling so inspired coming out to the AP/DP network I thought it is time to get a handle on my professional readings and I also had reflections on where I am at as a leader and there are few things that need to change.  

So when at Ulearn last year I heard a speaker talk about growing from the grass roots up.  I had yet done this and held a lot of the work load myself.  It was time to start sharing.  Knowledge is power but I do not need power in order to allow people to be inspired to want to follow me as a leader.  What have I done so far to share from the grass roots. I have shown T how to set up Easstle testing. She now sets up our reading.  I have also made her an administrator on our google set up so that she can set up users and change passwords etc.  Where to next share the knowledge further.  I am going to show J how to do the same.  With a new staff member coming on board it gives purpose.  It has taken me 6 months to action this.  I have now started to begin my steps....


I was also made aware of a book called 6 steps to strength based leadership.  I finally started reading it after the meeting.  Boy did ideas start following and did a light bulb ignite in my head.  I clicked to why I had thought about not wanting to be in education anymore and why my love of teaching had disappeared.   It was because I was not working towards my strengths.  I love IT and the engagement it sets up kids for and the spark they get out of their 200 YouTube views.  It empowers me to lead staff and see them get excited over now developing a personal passion to write and then blogging so their students want to read it.  It excites me that I am going to be getting release to work in classrooms and support teachers on how to use new tools.   

This excitement had not been possible until this year. Until our ratios of computers were back.  You can't effectively integrate iPads into your teaching when you only have one! I knew this.  This is why it hadn't worked.  People don't know what they don't know until they are exposed. My strengths were not being shared most of my day was about not using my strengths. I love my job again.  I am up at 5am blogging I am so excited.  Why?  My strengths are being used.

 I started reading the book.  To tell you the truth I am only through the first chapter.  But boy have I learnt a lot.  I need to unlock all my strengths in order to be the best I can be.  There will be other staff on our team that strengths are my weaknesses.  I don't need to worry about my weakness.  This doesn't mean I am not going to work on them.  No it means that they are no longer going to be a focus of my day or inquiry,  I will plug away at them but reality is I am only going to make small steps.  If I play to my strengths I am going to make huge steps forward and be more excited about the process.

How do I know?  Cause it has worked.  Over the past 10weeks I have set up our iPad cloud server.  Bloody hard job.  Learnt a lot.  Did it feel like work? Hell no!  I loved it.  I worked weekends, early mornings, late nights, I couldn't get enough.  How did I feel once it was completed over the moon.  My whole inquiry worked towards my strengths.  Now I want to get in and support my staff, inspire them to give it a go! Blend e-learning into their benefits and have their kids loving it as much as I do and my students.


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AP/DP Network Meeting 1

What an exciting meeting.  It was great to re connect with others that I had in the past.  I feel like my passions have been reignited.  We were exposed to a tool that allows every voice to be heard in a room and allows for a joint buy in.


By using this tool I realised how sometimes my voice could over power others and it is important that everyone has a voice.  I feel that sometimes we don't have ownership and buy in from everyone and see this as a fantastic tool for allowing this to happen.

So here is the jest of the tool.
 

You start with a question or probe that you want to gain a joint understanding on.
Then you move around the circle in a clockwise direction.  Each person has the opportunity to contribute a succinct idea.  There is to be no discussion or questioning.  You are allowed to pass.  You continue this process until everyone passes in a round.  The facilitator must record the exact respond for each person.

Then you have an opportunity to ask for clarification on any point that you do not understand.  Once this process is done you then look through the list and if any two point are the same you can ask the people that contributed those points if they are the same.  They have to agree for the points to be the same other wise they can not be joined.

After this voting takes place.  Each personas 10 votes and there is 3 rounds.  People can only spend a maximum of 4 votes in each round.  How they choose to spend these is up to them.  From there you come up with your tops.  

This way everyone has had a chance to have a say and be heard. I saw the power of this tool to be used in so many different ways with staff, in the classroom, BOT, community consultation and many more.

So I tried it with my class.  I posed the question what contributes to effectively learning.  We came up with a list of 120. Then our top 5 were

1. iPads to support our learning
2. Enjoying what we learn
3. Manawa Card Goals
4. Kapa Haka
5. Fitness / having Aimee in the room two teachers

It was a powerful process and really allowed for the collection of student voice.

I can see myself using this tool often!

Thursday 10 April 2014

Target Students Reflection Week 10

Thinking about my three target students.
What have I tried so far? 
I have introduced my students to blogging their writing for a purpose.
I have introduced a planning frame work for responses
I am conferencing these three students writing daily
I have introduced commenting on blogs 
What has worked?
The planning framework provided sturcture to get ideas down.
Blogs have created motivation and purpose   
P - Has had dramatic drive for writing and seeks feedback
What hasn’t worked?
My modeling of using the framework and students unpacking the what would need to be in the planning framework first.
Where to from here?
Use models to help students develop ownership over what would need to be in the planning frame work


ICT - Leadership

Over the past two years I do not feel I have developed much as a leader and probably turned into the person that just does the stuff that others don't, as I get paid for it. This was never my intenetion when I took on the Assitant Principal role but has what has come out of it. Over the past two years I had lost my passion for teaching and leading learning altogether. I bacame a person that came to school did my job and left. Regretting the decision I made to leave by 1:1 digital room. I came to Coley under the impression that they were a mile a head with IT and digital learning everything was humming, staff, community and BOT were all on board and this was learning for the new work place.

However, after 2 years of getting the foundations set we are ready to take off and I am excited. We are at a 2:1 ratio with nearly 1:1 in the senior school. We have a mixed model of iPads and computers in the Junior and Middle school with the vision to moving to all iPads. I have hit obstacles and challenges both positive and negative along the way. I did not consider that when I gave staff 6 months to play on iPads that some may not even want? That what was the point? That some would come to me and ask for help? That possibly some people see me as unapproachable? These are the hard facts. I needed to go back to the drawing board and decide what to do. 1st step find my love of IT and learning agian I love IT and know the impact it can create in the learning environment used as a tool. I know we need to be connected! We are inspired by the unknown and the ability to access what ever I need to know at my fingertips. Prior to this year I have not been able to blend it into learning effectively at Coley as I simply did not have enough tools. It was just a rotation rather than a tool for learning. So what to do....

 I had a chat to our service provider about a management system for our iPads. They gave me a brief tour around Meraki. After 1 hour I left and thought great. I have just purchased 23 iPads and have a new lease of 53 coming, plus the the 15 odd we already had. I was excited. My fire had reignited. I wanted to get started, and in my true nature I wanted it done now! I couldn't wait for the tech to come in two weeks to show me another little bit. I started on an iquiry to teach myself. It was hard! There were sleepless nights, all weekend working, morning and nights dedicated to IT. Lots I did not know. Some times I had to stop and just have a break to come back too. I wanted to learn. I googled, facebooked and youtubed. I read the apple website a million times. I went on the VLN and saw I wasn't the only person having problems. I learnt from their feedback. Guess what??? I completed a successful inquiry! The iPads are now set up! I know the system inside out! Gee was I proud. Now it was time to hit them in the classroom.

 I learnt a lot from my first round of being a 1:1 digital teacher so this time my instructions were clear. My intentions on the links to learning were clear! I was about to educate. But it wasn't all about me and my class, I needed for this to filter down. So first point my team. T was already ICT savy and last conference they talked about growing from the grass roots up rather than being the gate keeper. I had been the gate keeper. It was now time to start sharing! I gave T the admin rights to set her students up with email. We discussed how we would be using them in class. I shared the blogs my class were doing. She liked it and tried! Wow this was going to be easy to filter through the staff. However, it is not! T is similar to myself we are loud and have lots of ideas, we will run with new things and embrace them. Not everyone on staff is like us and not everyone in my class is like that either. How can I get my staff as excited as us? I then came across this clip:


I wasn't buying in my staff.  They didn't know why we were moving to digital learning to help achievement.   I need to show them how they can it can be used in the classroom.  I need to show them what apps they can use.  

Hey and guess what?  This needs to apply in my classroom.  Am I actually taking notice.  So writing will always state why are we writing?  How are we going to do the writng?  What do we need to make sure that we are successful?  I need to provide this transfer.


So where to from here in ICT leadership.  1 st step is to run a staff meeting with the inquiry probe.  Why do we need ICT in classrooms?

The Two Inquiries

This year my passion for Teaching has returned. I am focusing on two teacher inquiries. The first is a student focused one around raising achievement in writing. However when I set this goal we were pigeon holed into the direct acts of teaching. I am extending this now to developing my pedagogical knowledge of the teaching of writing and how applying what I learn about teaching of writing, while monitoring my target kids. The next inquiry is a leadership one. My focus of this inquiry is around developing staff voice and buy in while working towards their strengths. Wish me luck!!!!! Back starting work at 6.30am and never finishing early as my fire has been reignited.