Management Meeting 15/6 Reading

Questions to think about:

• How do you "teach" grammar in your classroom?
  • How successful do you think you are? How do you know?
• Does this reading align with your opinion of grammar?
• If yes - how?
• If no - why not?

- Hotspot teaching based on PAT P&G. Identify a an area of need based on the class and teach to students. This method improves some students P&G Testing.

- The idea of experimentation/play/Approximation

- Accepting students errors to see their understanding- pseudo-concepts, students understanding may not necessarily reflect logic.

Teacher Call Back Day 19/7/19

Key Ideas from Reading: Responsive Curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn

• The curriculum is enabling and future-focused and is intended to promote self-efficacy. This requires a learner-centered approach, where teachers choose contexts and design learning opportunities in discussion with their students and support them to work collaboratively on challenges and problems set in real-world contexts
• Responsive curriculum incorporates connections to students’ lives, prior understandings, and out-of-school experiences
• It draws on and adds to parent, whānau, and community funds of knowledge. Student identities, languages and cultures are represented in materials used in the enacted curriculum

There are 7 core principals for designing learning environments

1. the learner is at the centre, active engagement is encouraged and learners develop understandings of themselves as learners
2. the social and often collaborative nature of learning is recognised and well-organized; cooperative learning is actively encouraged
3. learning professionals are highly attuned to learners’ motivations and the importance of emotions
4. opportunities to learn are acutely sensitive to individual differences including in prior knowledge
5. learning is demanding for each learner but without excessive overload
6. assessment for learning with a strong emphasis on formative feedback is used
7. horizontal connectedness across areas of knowledge and learning activities, as well as to the community and the wider world, is strongly promoted

• Quality of teaching is a major determinant of outcomes for diverse students, what teachers know and do is one of the most important influences on what students learn
• In New Zealand, education environments that reflect a Māori worldview and ways of working (for example, with respect to whanaungatanga and ako) offer significantly enhanced learning opportunities for all students.
• The Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme has identified 10 dimensions of quality teaching that make a bigger difference to valued outcomes for diverse (all) learners:27 
  • focus on valued student outcomes / kia arotahia ngā hua ākonga uara nui
  • use knowledge, evidence, and inquiry to improve teaching / ko te mātauranga, te taunakitanga me te uiui hei whakapai ake i te whakaako
  • select, develop, and use smart tools and worthwhile tasks / ngā taputapu ngaio me ngā mahi whaikiko – whiria, mahia
  • ensure sufficient and effective opportunities for all students to learn / rau te ako, rau te mahi tōtika, rau te hua
  • develop caring, collaborative learning communities that are inclusive of diverse (all) learners / he piringa tauawhi, he piringa mahitahi, he piringa tauakoako, he piringa ākonga rerekura (katoa)
  • activate educationally powerful connections to learners’ knowledge, experiences, identities, whānau, iwi, and communities / whakatere hono ākonga torokaha, ākonga tū kaha
  • scaffold learning and provide appropriate feed forward and feedback on learning / te ako poutama
  • be responsive to all students’ learning, identities, and wellbeing / me aro ki te hā o te ākonga
  • promote thoughtful learning strategies, thoughtful discourse, and student self-regulation / takina te wānanga
  • use assessment for learning / te aromatawai i roto i te ako.
  Teachers need to be data literate:

  Data literacy for teaching is the ability to transform information into actionable instructional knowledge and practices by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting all types of data (assessment, school climate, behavioural, snapshot, moment-to-moment, and so on) to help determine instructional steps. It combines an understanding of data with standards, disciplinary knowledge and practices, curricular knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and an understanding of how children learn

Questions to share:

1) What are 3 key ideas from this text that resonate with you as an educator?

• A responsive curriculum involves making connections with your students, whanau, and community
• What teachers do and know is one of the most important influences on what students learn
• Teachers need to be data literate

2) What are 3 ideas you see as a strength of yours?

• Making connections with my students beyond the classroom
• Making adaptions to programmes to cater to individual needs
• Having an understanding/knowledge of a curriculum

3) What are 2 ideas you see as a weakness of yours?

• making connections with iwi and communities
• collaborating with students to help design learning opportunities

HOTS Reading

Higher Order Thinking Skills in Education Reading

Key points from reading

• differences critical thinking skills from low-order learning outcomes e.g. rote learning type activities
• includes synthesizing, analyzing, reasoning, comprehending, application and evaluation
• "Bloom's aim is to promote higher forms of thinking such as above rather than just teaching remembering facts
• The lower-order thinking skills involve memorization, while higher-order thinking requires understanding and applying that knowledge
• Analysis- students use their own judgment to begin analyzing the knowledge they have learned e.g. analyse each statement to decide whether it is fact or opinion
• Synthesis- students infer relationships of sources of information, putting new information together to create new meaning e.g. what alternative would you suggest? what changes would you make? what could you invent?
• Evaluation- students making judgments about the value of ideas, items, and materials e.g. evaluate the school rules and decide which are the most necessary and least necessary

Part One: The importance of questioning’ (from Open-ended Maths Activities by Peter Sullivan and Pat Lilburn)

Key notes from reading

• 3 Main features of a good question

1) require more than remembering a fact or reproducing a skill

2) students learn by answering questions and teachers learn about students from their attemps

3) more than 1 answer.

• 1) More than remembering- knowledge/skills vs having a context to apply the knowledge/skills
• 2) Students learning by doing- physically doing a problem, students are able learn as they are involved in a problem. Can give teachers a clear indication of how much students have mastered the skill and whether they need further development.
• 3) Having more than 1 answer fosters higher level thinking because they encourage students to develop their problem solving expertise.

Kids Matter- Leadership Reading

Key Reading- Scaffolding children's learning

• Often as teachers, we end up telling students or 'doing' for the students. This is very similar to adults in that we will tell them how or 'do' it for them. The big question is why? There are a number of factors, time constraints, as a teacher/leader you know what the outcome is, guidance/scaffolding is not suitable, not enough planning done to ensure success

• Helping to build children's learning- understanding when to use less scaffolding for children as they become more independent. When we work with adults the same idea applies, when provide support when needed and as their skills/abilities improve we reduce the amount of scaffolding needed. So then what is our role as a leader at this stage? 

• Parents and carers scaffold children's learning by leading and coaching them towards coming up with their own answers.

How to scaffold thinking and learning?

1. prompt children to extend their thinking- alternative ways, answers. Students being able to think laterally
2. ask them to explain the steps- planning, being specific about what they have done 
3. demonstrate- show an example
4. break it into steps- identifying challenges and breaking them up into small parts. Being practical, guiding through the steps.

Leadership Meeting 8/8/18

What are the elements of an effective PLD session?

Key points from reading

"The role of a change leader isn't about buying or selling an idea, its about generating commitment." to me this means providing staff an opportunity for them to trial flipped learning with the support and guidance needed. In order to do this there needs to be an element of trust from the change leader and also a level of responsibility/accountability from staff.  The idea of changing teacher routines or changing teacher beliefs

Responding to reluctant teachers follows a set of patterns

1. Using Logic: The problem with this approach is that the leader is talking from his or her head and therefore personal opinions affect a change
2. Killing them with kindness: doing things for the teacher which- why????
3. Negotiating- this leads to compliance rather than commitment
4. Coercing- telling! This will affect the relationship

• John's approach, using positive intent. John also focused on helping everyone with whom he worked feel valued and appreciated, recognizing and acknowledging their strengths. Once he did that, teachers were more likely to listen to his new ideas—especially when he connected those ideas with things they cared about, chiefly, making a difference in the lives of their students.
• Terry's approach, reframing resistance. If leaders listen deeply to complaints, they'll understand what people care about and can then speak to that underlying issue.
• Ameilia's approach, don't be the expert be curious. Working along side teachers.

In the end, trust your staff and treat them as if you truly believe in their capacity.

Listen, listen, listen—not only to the content, but also to the feelings beneath what

they say. By understanding what people care about and speaking to them from

that point of view, you can usually bring even the most reluctant teachers on


Notes based on my focus- leading by example doing it first, when planning for meetings setting the expectation e.g. I shared my inquiry last weekend and planned for teachers when they would share their inquiries.

Leadership Team Meeting

3 Videos about change .  how these concepts relate to change and to your school specifically.

Notes about video 1

• managing your unconscious patterns. Things we do without really thinking about doing it.
• Rather than focusing on new behaviour being aware of the trigger that sets of the old behaviour
• change happens in small parts

Notes about video 2

• Deep Practice - 1) break things down 2) repetition 3) feel it
• take on too much, start and think big rather than focusing on 1 thing (relates to video on)

Notes about video 3

• give too much advice
• triggers that goes back to old behaviour
• new behaviour

I think sometimes when we as a management team initiate new behaviour or implement something new into our school we have gone too big too early and this can be overwhelming to staff members.

When we have introduced something new we normally put it on top of what already exists. -hence one of the reasons why it is important to do our PTC Folders as a group rather than individually.

I do think how we have introduced the flipped learning certificate has been good in that we as a management team undertook PD and that we are doing the certificate in small increments and as a team, and that we are discussing our actions in team/staff meetings. (Relate to Why/How/What and how to implement change) Why is the reason behind change, How is the how are we going to do this and What is the what are we going to do implement the change?)