Day 30 - Our journey towards change

“If you always do what you’ve always done,

you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

At the end of last year our senior management team took a good hard look at what was going on in our classrooms and decided to embark on a journey of change. It’s not that anything drastically bad was occurring, but we noticed that our students were not being given enough chances to make independent choices about their learning.

We wanted to change that.

We enlisted the help of Bek Galloway, an education consultant based out of Blenheim, who helped us form four key outcomes that we wanted to see happening within our learning spaces.

• A class culture where our students are regularly thinking, questioning & collaborating
• Teachers encouraging deeper thinking
• Ensure students are using their own questions
• Enable student voice, reflection & independence

To achieve these outcomes we all had to take a step back and challenge our ideas about teaching and what it looks like. What is best practice? What is the purpose of school? What skills do we want our students to leave our school with?

We are very much still in the early stages of this new approach to teaching, introducing bits and pieces at a time to ensure that it is done successfully. Our next step is moving away from timetabled curriculum designated periods and into flexible blocks of learning with multiple tasks and projects on the go across all areas of the curriculum at any time.

The idea of students designing their own learning tasks and plans has been a big mindset change for some of our staff but we are very fortunate that everyone is onboard and committed to the journey.

Any change always comes with a risk, But without risk there very rarely is a reward.

We know that our students will greatly benefit from our new approach to teaching and learning as they become deeper thinkers and lifelong learners. We look forward to the journey ahead!

Cam Gordon

Day25 - Empowering Girls - A reflection...

There have been more and more conversations recently about the need for young people to be risk takers, problem solvers, critical thinkers, collaborators and creators in order to thrive in the workplace they will enter. In my experience, it is the idea of taking risks, the fear of not getting it right and the need to know all the answers before “leaning in” (Sheryl Sandberg - COO Facebook) that inhibits girls. It has become a bit of a mission of mine to empower girls, which luckily is the vision at St Margaret’s College!

I was incredibly fortunate to be in on the ground when The Centre for Innovation was created at St Margaret’s College. It is common knowledge there is a very real shortage of women in the tech industry. I can attest to this having entered the tech world myself - but that’s for another post. Initially this was a key driver behind establishing The Centre for Innovation. However, what I see as being the real strengths of providing girls with opportunities to tinker, create and innovate is the resilience and self confidence that is developed throughout the process.

I made it my mission this year to incorporate new ways of learning into my teaching and learning programmes and I was blown away by the capabilities of the young women I worked with. It was important when thinking about incorporating innovation into English and Social Science that the learning was authentic and it wasn’t simply a bit of “play time” at the end of a unit - not that I’m against play!  Earlier this year the world celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday (400 years) which put The Bard in the spotlight. We had the Pop Up Globe Theatre here in Auckland and a number of the students in my class were lucky enough to get along, so I decided to introduce my Year 8 class to Shakespeare - I’m a bit of a fan! Their initial responses were very interesting…

• “Isn’t Shakespeare only studied in the Senior School?”
• “Aren’t we too young…”
• “It’s really hard, we don’t have to read the play do we?”
• “Why are we learning about something so old?”

So I approached things from a different angle and took that last statement, adapted it slightly, and we embarked on an inquiry into - “Why is Shakespeare still relevant and why should we study his works?” I ditched the plan and started again looking at everything through a different lense.  

The unit culminated in the students using their understanding of Shakespeare’s language, plays (Twelfth Night) and his influence on popular culture to bring Shakespeare alive for their generation. The brief was for the girls to incorporate new technologies to create something relevant and original for their peers.

I am all for giving students choice and see a high level of engagement when they drive their own learning. However, I also see students try to take the easy way out. I had girls instantly ask if they could simply act out a key scene of “Twelfth Night” and create an iMovie. I asked if this would challenge them. The short answer was no. The brief then extended to choosing a project that would challenge and excite them.

The results were outstanding and included:

• A 3D printed range of Shakespeare merchandise - including the “quote hanger” and a 3D printed bobblehead of Shakespeare.

• Gamifying the plot of “Twelfth Night”.

• The use of Scratch to create a trailer for the film “She’s The Man”.

• The use of Minecraft to collaboratively create the setting of “Twelfth Night”. This was brought together and analysed using iMovie.

• A group wrote the lyrics to a rap based on the plot and themes of “Twelfth Night”. They created a music video using iMovie and Garageband.

• The use of papertronics to create a gift card range incorporating Shakespeare’s language and themes.

• 3D printed fridge magnets of Shakespeare’s famous quotes.

There were times that girls found their task “too hard” and wanted to give up or change direction. But they didn’t give up, they dug deep, persevered and experienced success. There was one group that reminded me of the young boy in the film “Most Likely To Succeed” who worked tirelessly to complete his section of the class project. This group worked around the clock, overcoming challenges and they were extremely proud of their finished project. There was such a strong sense of achievement that the class organised a celebration of learning afternoon. They invited the senior leadership team and other classes to see their learning. Sadly they ran out of time to get their parents along, however, the learning was shared with parents via the students’ LINC-ED learning portfolios.

This unit of work with this Year 8 class was one of the highlights of my professional career.  Why?

Being flexible

At times it can be harder work to deviate from the plan but taking the teachable moments, shaping them and enabling students to share in the direction of the learning is powerful.

Collaboration

We can never know it all and I had the good fortune of working with a team of exceptional teachers at St Margaret’s. I would like to acknowledge Linda Chong (Head of The Centre for Innovation) and Sarah Coursey (Library and e-Learning Centre Manager) for supporting this learning.

Facilitator rather than fountain

It can feel uncomfortable when we, as teachers, don’t hold the knowledge. There was a great deal of problem solving and learning alongside the students for me throughout this unit.

Embrace new learning and become a learner

I find it is becoming too easy for teachers to opt out of the digital world because they feel the students can pick it up and often know more than them. Whilst it’s great to be an enabler of tech, it’s important to continue to keep learning.

I was extremely proud of the creativity, perseverance and self management skills exhibited by these exceptional young women. I am looking forward to seeing the pathways that they choose and hope they take squiggly ones (Claudia Batten - The Squiggly Line). I would love to see some of them become passionate entrepreneurs, innovators and tech leaders!

Aimie Sibson - Former English Teacher and Digital Learning Facilitator St Margaret’s College,  Co-founder LINC-ED

Day17- Leaping into the future through a portal of collaboration!

The Bays Cluster Schools came together for a two-day festival of technology last week.  120 Year 5 to 8 children from Sumner, Redcliffs, Mount Pleasant, Heathcote Valley and Our Lady Star of the Sea School, participated in one of 12 workshops facilitated by teachers and 2 specialist organisations, The Mindlab and Fablab, who have a passion for technology and a desire to share their knowledge to the greater community.  

The children were exposed to a range of technological concepts, including coding, robotics, e-textiles, stop motion movie making and much more.  The aim of the event is to not only encourage inquiring minds to explore the future of learning, but also to facilitate collaboration amongst a cluster of schools.

Two workshops were also held by Year 9 students from St Andrew’s College and St Margaret’s College, who volunteered their time as a way ‘Giving Back’.  They created lessons using computer coding with Scratch and Makey Makey kits plus Bee Bots and taught 2 sessions per day to Year 3 and 4 children.

The event was launched with an introductory speech focusing on the importance of approaching this opportunity with a sense of curiosity, creativity and persistence.  These just a few of the 24 Character Strengths which are essential to being creators of the future.  The Bays Cluster Schools have been part of a Ministry of Education trial over the last year which has embraced the importance of Character Strengths to enhance the Wellbeing of our youth and thus ensure their education is holistic. 

Schira Withers 

Day 9 - Is Term 4 the right time to try something new? Why not?

Three ideas - check out interesting ideas from the #CENZ16
starter kete - see day 10 below plus two cool graphics with suggestions.

Day 10 - Digital story telling

One of the goals of #31daysofblogging challenge is to curate, tools, examples of innovative practice, opinion, future-focused direction, ideas from education leaders - in fact a wide range of "stuff" we hope will be useful.  

What about looking at these ideas?

Sourced from Vicki Davis - Cool Cat Teacher



And another list of suggestions

Sourced from Vicki Davis - Cool Cat Teacher

Oct 5th - Follow that Hashtag!

Day 5 - Twitter Hashtags #  click on the link to get more info about Hashtags.

When you first start out on Twitter the hash tag is a mystery. But when you work out just how hash tags work , being on Twitter becomes a very different journey. 

Even if you are a "lurker" on Twitter, you can still follow a hash tag. A good example are the two hashtags associated with uLearn this year. There is the official #uLearn16 and  #CENZ but also the unofficial, but equally as important # notatulearn. This way teachers can follow the conference as well as contribute to an unconference they have created. Over the last few days I was at the NPDL conference in Christchurch. The #npdl was tweeted out from the conference, followed and retweeted by educators around NZ. 

A good example of the power of the hashtag is in the following article by Alan November. A 

high schoolteacher posted  photo and posed a question to her class on her Twitter stream. See how her students responded.

How Twitter can be used as a powerful learning tool.

So how can you use hashtags. I must admit I do suffer a little from FOMO - I have followed conferences from afar via the hashtags, I join in Twitter chats synchronously, but also can go back and read the tweets from a chat or conference the next day. 

Tte power of the hashtag is that all tweets with that hashtag are gathered together in your Twitter stream. Putting the # into the search bar allows you find and follow those tweets. #edchatnz is a fortnightly Twitter chat for NZ and other educators. #digitaledchat  moderated by Stuart Kelly is on Mondays with a specific focus on digital learning. 

So don't be #shy! Find a #tofollow and see where it leads.

Footnote:

I went to a fabulous workshop today presented by @stuartkellynz on Student Agency and Voice. He showed how he used Twitter in his class to gather student voice. #studentvoicenz to also gather our voices - Brilliant!

      

Schools within Schools - An Innovative Approach

Schools within Schools

Over the last five years that I have been teaching at Hagley College I have been lucky to have been heavily involved in setting up and running two "Schools within Schools". These were both designed to improve student retention, engagement, learning and achievement.

My first project was the School of Music. Hagley was already running full time schools of Fashion, Dance, Cuisine, Early Childhood and the Theatre Company so it wasn't a totally new idea, but these were mainly aimed at students who had finished school and were looking for the next step, whereas the School of Music was to be based at Year 12, then hopefully following on to Year 13 the next year if it was successful. The School of Music was intended to be a separate, self-contained community with a unique ethos, organisation and distinct curriculum with qualifications based around a student’s passion or interest, and grounded in their world.

The course was designed to cover numeracy at NCEA Level 1 if students did not have it already, and literacy in the form of English and History at Level 2. However, it was with a difference. All of these were to be taught with music as the basis. Mathematics using tasks such as your budget for your CD or tour, or dimensions of drums relative to pitch - all things that were relevant to music students. English and History covered songwriting, protest songs, large musical events and biographies of musicians as well as music research topics. We were lucky enough to have staff at school in those departments who were also keen musicians and were motivated to give this idea a go. A lot of work went into designing these tasks and assessments and the staff have done an amazing job.

The students have 12-16 hours of music each week, as well as 4-8 of Literacy and Numeracy. The music time is split between 4 music staff who all have their own area of expertise. The students get the benefit of a range of teachers and knowledge and feel they are part of a family, even to the extent of me having been called Mum a few times. Students are given instruction on the work required then work as individuals at their own pace. They can be working on a range of standards at any one time and have the flexibility to work in depth on one then return to another at a later date. A general pattern is followed but most students are flexible in the order in which they finish work.

The teacher sometimes acts as an advisor, sometimes a facilitator and sometimes we have transmission based learning. Not often are staff in front of the class as a whole and when we are it is only for a short time to impart information on how to start the next unit of work, or on a specific piece of knowledge we need to get across.

One of the strengths of the course has been the pastoral care and the communication with home. All students are interviewed with their parents before they start the course and parents are kept informed of all events and notices via email. We have been very clear to parents, who are a big part of our community, that taking the School of Music narrows students tremendously. The feedback we have had is that students and their parents feel that if it had not been for the School of Music, the students would have left school, or been very unhappy.

These are students who live only for their music and struggle with anything else. It is amazing how they manage to achieve Literacy and Numeracy, when in some cases, they have been told they are not capable of doing so.

This went on to Level 3 in its second year and we are, 4 years on, in a good place to enable our students to gain UE, NCEA Level 2 and 3 and a National Certificate in Music over the 2 years they study with us. The majority go on to tertiary study and those that don't are helped into the workforce, generally with a music focus.

My next project was the School of Apps. This started up just this year so is still in the early stage of development. The idea for this was thought up by Brent Ingram and Andy Gorton when they were at a conference in 2014. There were many seminars and discussions there about needing more creative skills, especially around digital technology. When they came back to school a small group of us then took the idea and worked out how we could combine it with the School within School idea. Andy and I then worked on the content and I am now teaching this course for 14 hours a week (and teaching my other 6 hours in the School of Music).

The School of Apps is aimed at Year 13 students who are keen on developing apps and have creative ideas. The idea is to study, design and create mobile apps within a business environment. It 

is based on 5 guiding principles:

• Creativity
• Critical Thinking
• Self-Management
• Collaboration
• Communication

The students work on projects both as an individual and in groups using these 5 principles. We use Scrum which is an Agile Project Management framework which enables us to have good teamwork and a structure for projects. The students also do English, through their report writing, and Business Studies, working on marketing their apps.

The outcome for the students is to have a portfolio of skills and designed apps, as well as the opportunity to gain Level 3 NCEA and UE if they wish to. This year, the students have ranged from age 17 to 70ish and not all have wanted NCEA credits.

We have the most amazing work environment in which students feel very comfortable and are keen to be in all day.

As this is the first year, I am still in the learning process and I know I will be changing things for next year to make it even more responsive to student needs. I have been continually reviewing how things have worked and am looking forward to 2016 when it is also available part-time, and as an After Three course.

I am a strong believer in the Schools within Schools idea. It fits in well with the Learning Futures Engaging Schools programme (you must read this) and its outcomes. I have seen the change they have made to people's lives. So many students have been re-engaged with learning and are now fully focused and enjoying school. What more could you ask for?

Sue McLachan - Hagley High School

@suemcl1

Innovation and Technology in Art and Maori

One of our goals for the new St Margaret's College Centre for Innovation is to integrate technology and innovation across the curriculum.  The uptake from staff has been really exciting and the space is being utilised across a range of subject areas, taking a project based learning approach.  

During Term Three I had the pleasure of working with both the Art and Maori teachers in combining a unit of work with the Year 6 students.  The brief was to use their knowledge from Maori and Art to produce a pendant or magnet.  Through Maori the girls learnt about the patterns depicted in the wharenui.  They discussed the meaning behind the traditional colours of red, white, black and green and chose their object accordingly.  As students drew their images, they were mindful that these pictures held a story and the design of their fridge magnet of pendant had to represent something of personal meaning to each individual.  

Through their Art classes, they looked at shapes. They were challenged to identify open and closed, positive and negative spaces on their design and use the same image replicated differently with these concepts.  Finally the design was printed using our 3D printers.  We used an app on the iPad called PrintShop which captured a photo of the girls design. From here we were able to resize and manipulate it before printing it.  I am grateful to our Art and Maori teachers, Maria and Sue for their collaboration and combined effort to make this unit of work such a success.

Linda Chong
Head of the St Margaret's College Centre for Innovation
Cross posted from the St Margaret's College Centre for Innovation Blog