Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Pedagogy and 'old school' design working together


Any school that is serious about providing a modern learning environment for their children, whether they are getting a new build or not, is looking at their teaching pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching and learning) and therefore its learning programme structure and how it connects with the physical space you have.
 
Pedagogy and design working together creates the environment of a 'third' teacher. While a new school gets a design built for this century that encourages this philosophy we have approached it from the inside out! By developing the purpose behind what we do and how we do it we have challenged our thinking around what our learning spaces were set up to do. The elements of the room layout, the type of furniture you have and the connection between the learning spaces are all pieces of the puzzle and impact directly on your teaching philosophy (and vice versa!) Whether you have a new school that challenges the status quo straight off or a 1950-1970's design that demands a bit more radical thinking you can still make it happen! Myross Bush School designed our teaching pedagogy to bring our design into the 21st century. Our school still looks the same from the outside but things have radically changed on the inside and its our challenge this year to help all our learning community understand a bit more about just how much school has changed since they were there.



Below are some answers that parents are asking about this teaching and learning shift.  
 
Why teach in teams?
Our staff are passionate about developing learning pathways that are personal and individualised for every child. This means that we strive to have every student learning the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. Team Teaching allows us to enhance these deliberate acts of teaching through a combination of ‘Workshops’ and ‘Action Stations’ by having two teachers giving the students focussed teacher attention during these times.

This team approach also gives us the opportunity to grasp the power of teacher collaboration, student to teacher feedback and also formative assessment methods; all highly ranked teaching approaches highlighted in John Hattie’s Research into effective teaching and learning strategies. (Visible Learning, 2009)






How does Team Teaching Work?
Team Teaching at MBS involves 2 teachers working together with 2 ‘homeroom’ classes. They are directly responsible for the pastoral needs of their homeclass and are the first ‘port of call’ for parents and students. During the day, however, both teachers are involved in running workshops and action stations for both classes.

A typical learning hour would involve one teacher teaching a focussed workshop with 8-15 students in one learning space, while the other teacher facilitates the rest of the students during the independent / co-operative learning time. Both students and teachers have reflected (and the research conducted in other schools has reinforced this) that team teaching has given them more focussed learning time and an overall increase in student / teacher time.






Could my child’s learning get lost in such large numbers?

We work very hard to ensure that our learners do not ‘get lost’ at MBS. Everything we do, from goal setting, to grouping students according to learning needs and the individual tracking systems we use, is done to guide and direct the next learning step at the right time.

We have found that the benefits of teaching in teams are 3 fold: 

The teacher in the action station rooms are able to fully focus on the learners working on independent and cooperative learning experiences.

The teacher in the workshops are able to fully focus on the learners and the learning that is happening in front of them.

The students are always supervised and able to have a teacher’s full attention in a way not available with a one teacher system.




How do you keep track of where they are if they move around the school so much?

All of our teaching teams work with 2 or more learning spaces next door to each other and the students and teachers move between the rooms regularly as the day plays out.

We have also developed some accountability systems for students of all ages and abilities. Every class, from the New Entrants to our year 6s, use a ‘Learner License System’, for example. This is a rights/responsibilities system that guides each learner to develop their next step as a learner through developing 4 key learning strategies (such as ‘Staying on Task and Focussed’). They are also allowed certain rights that come with each level that matches their progress as a learner. This develops high levels of independence and gives every student the support they need to succeed. 


We believe in giving each learner the right level of support they need, when they need it and in the way that they need it. Team Teaching gives us the time to be able to be able to do this effectively.


Saturday, February 8, 2014

VideoNot.es - another brilliant Google App!

Found a great link from my twitter network about the new VideoNot.es. This app adds a folder to your google drive and lets you take notes while you watch the video of interest. Your notes are timestamped to the specific period of the video that you are watching. This lets you click on a specific part of your note to jump back to that specific part of the video. You can also add/edit at the same time and share your video and notes with anyone you like - just like all your other google docs etc!

Go to your drive, click on 'Connect more apps'

type in 'videonot.es' in the search bar and click 'connect'

Go back to your Google Drive - click 'create' and VideoNotes is now one of your options


Paste in the video url you want to watch, give the file a new name and start watching and taking notes. Hit share to invite others to collaborate!



Sunday, February 2, 2014

2014 - a year on...

This is the first for 2014 and I will definitely be making a more concerted effort to post some reflections a little more frequently than once a year!

When I look back at some of the pieces of the puzzle that we wanted to see come together for our schools teaching and learning programme is it satisfying to say that all the facets I identified in my last post are all in play today.

Some big steps were taken in 2013 in what I'd call a journey of our 'desire line'. Instead of following the set path made by others we have forged our own direct route and in doing so made our our decisions our own. This is important for any school and some decisions and timelines will always be different depending on a schools context - where they are, where they want to be and how they think they might get there - which is important for all school communities.


Fibre connection & Ruckus Wireless - thanks to Focus Technology Group we were able to get our rural fibre connection, along with our Ruckus wireless infrastructure up and going within a managed solution!


Ultranet - Became the new home on the web for our parent connection. Inside the school we began this journey across the senior school classes (Y3 - 6) and it really came together when we took the step of classes closely collaborating in their teaching and learning programmes. Ultranet then helped provide the connection across the two classes of the shared learning programme. It meant that students could upload media, work on their set tasks and collaborate no matter what learning space they were in or what teacher they were with. As this shared philosophy grew across the school its also starting to develop across our junior school. 





Google Apps - It began with moving our school domain under the Google App umbrella for our school google site (our whole school framework), shared google docs (basically everything we do) and gmail (completely browser based) and then it morphed into a natural extension for our senior students learning. Shared google docs can be embedded straight into the ultranet page for collaborative student work. Something that an Ultranet page is not great for.


Solo Taxonomy - The SOLO framework as introduced to us from the work of Pam Hook became a natural progression of our thinking curriculum framework. We wanted to use our enriching curriculum to develop our student's thinking, and not make it all just about knowledge. We wanted to show our students and parents that being smart isn't about luck - it's about how hard you try and that no matter where your thinking is at there is a next step for you to take it further. This philosophy has underpinned our inquiry programme and we continue to resource teacher time in their teams to embed this practice together. 

We've also used it to underpin our development of each student's learning management. Our licence levels example how independent a student can be with their learning and is applied across our school. Each stage is aligned with the SOLO steps so it's a consistent framework for our students to work with.

Pam Hook is also coming to our school in early February for a whole day with our staff to challenge us on where we are and help us set the course for our next steps in this exciting curriculum development.


iPad mini's - with our thinking curriculum developing nicely, the fibre connected, wireless up and running and learning platforms put in place we needed the actual tools to connect it all together. For 2013 that saw the leasing of 80 iPad mini's across the school. We wanted to show how these tools were used in our learning programme and felt that if this was seen as authentic then, over time, the growth of personal ownership would grow naturally. This has been the case. 

Looking forward this choice of leased tool by school will became more of a combination of iPad mini's and Chromebooks as each is better at different tasks.