Sharing Whanau Kauri questions with Petrina

Learner Agency Questionaire

Learner agency:

A teacher oriented exploration into the affordances and limitations to developing learner agency in years 4-8 Aotearoa/New Zealand classrooms.

Semi-structured questions for interviewee participants

1.    What is your understanding of learner agency? (definition)

2.    Why do you think it is important for teachers to develop the skills of learner agency in learners? (purpose)

3.    What are some effective ways you have developed learner agency? (actions, examples/scenarios, artefacts)

Student goal setting

Real life contexts - storybook, outdoor learning space, planting manuka/kawakawa, bees, ducks - breakfast club, chair making, pest trapping, school welcome film.

Passing on this knowledge to younger students (and older - Whangarei Girls)

Cooperative learning, problem based learning, high expectations, habits of mind, g/mindset, 

Whanau Kauri after school groups

4.    What has been the impact of developing learner agency? (outcomes for the teacher and/or the learners?)

5.    What are some factors that have supported you developing learner agency? (enablers)

6.    What are some factors that have limited/been barriers to you developing learner agency? (barriers)

7.    Do you differentiate opportunities for the development of learner agency? (cultural, special learning needs) How?

8.    What has made the greatest/least impact? Why do you think that is?

9.    What other comments do you have regarding this area?

Relationship Enhancing Practices

Yesterday we had a full collaboration between teachers (Mrs Bates, Mr Pickard and Mr A) and students (Cory, Luke, Tyler, Tazman, Lyrik and Peter). We all worked together to create our first breakfast club duck scrambled eggs on toast.

Cory, Luke and Tyler collected the eggs and fed the ducks, while Mrs Bates, Mr Pickard and Mr A made the toast and guided, and Tazman, Lyrik and Peter cracked the eggs and mixed the cheese, milk and pepper, and helped with cooking.

There was a really great feeling of shared success and excitement after waiting so long. For a couple of students it was an opportunity to shine outside of the classroom.

Learning Conversations

Yesterday I had a meeting with parents to discuss next steps with their son. I decided to run the meeting as a coaching session. Instead of setting goals based on my experiences I just listened to their concerns and took notes. At regular intervals I clarified what had been said. In a relatively short time we had established a workable goal.

A couple of important things were missed; specific goal, time frame and measurement of success. However I think that they can be quickly covered off next week with a quick phone call or email.
 

DFI 8 (Whanau Expectation Survey)

This week on the penultimate DFI course we learnt to create a google form. I took the opportunity to create a whanau expectations survey to get some fairly specific feedback from students' whanau. I asked my Whanau Kauri Partnership group to fill out the form and started to get some really meaningful data back with next steps for me.  Below is a photo of three generations of whanau filling out the form .

Student self assessed reports

So, my teaching as inquiry focus seems to be making an impact with my students, and particularly my target students. In the last week of last term I gave the students their levels, showed them how to use the exemplars on the walls and got them to start creating a 4 stars and a wish style report. The four stars were what they could do well and the wish was in effect their next step.

The language we used for the 4 stars was:

I can...
I am able to...
With help I can...
I am working hard to...

The wish was:

I am working towards...

This is one example from my target students' self assessed reports

Whanau Kauri Partnerships

Last week's Whanau/Kauri partnership was possibly the best yet. It seems each week at our DFI training sessions I take away a great new idea to trial with my WKP group. Last week was no exception. I learnt how to create a bookmarked table that all students are allocated to. They have their own space so are less likely to be sabotaged by off task students. The benefit though is that they can support each other without even saying anything! Reluctant or stuck students are supported by seeing everyone else's work on their screen, as well as my comments as they are working; both roving in person and on screen.

Whanau loved it and were impressed by their tamariki's stick-ability, time spent writing and the quality of their work. Diane even came in with fruit and cookies, and to support a student who's whanau are unable to attend.

See the students' awesome work here

Outdoor Learning Space

Please find the outdoor learning space proposal here

Whanau Kauri Partnerships

Last week's Whanau Kauri Partnership meeting was a great success. We had a visit from our Cognition Education Relationship Based Learning facilitator. I started using screencastify for last week’s whanau partnership session. Whanau loved it and were able to lead the learning session while I stood back and had time to chat and share kai with everyone. The shared doc was visible and totally collaborative which everybody loved.


last week's lesson

Whanau Kauri Partnership

We had and awesome turn out this week, despite the weather. We discussed sharing learning success on the class site and student blogs and how I will be updating the class site with work each day that can be re visited at home. We also talked about the power of self assessment and student goal setting.

The students shared with their whanau where they are at in reading and maths and their next steps.

Wall Displays

The chalk pens arrived and I have finished laminating...for now. The exemplars are all taken from the gloss tests (I decided not to use student work as I want it to remain neutral). The stage didn't come out well in the photo but stands out nicely in the classroom. I have started to discuss the displays with the students and they are getting excited about finding their levels from their reports so that they can place themselves and start to chart their growth.

Student Survey

I wanted to survey my class to find out how they like to learn.  Students were asked to order their top three learning preferences. It was interesting that the top two were slightly contradictory and that the top three were the top three on the list however, it was a useful exercise in promoting student agency and allowing students to reflect on how they learn effectively

Whanau Kauri Partnership

So, yesterday was our first meeting since inviting more parents and whanau. It was great! We went through introductions and the student's talked briefly about their learning before I ran through two short sessions in reading and maths.

In total we had six families there and I have invited a couple more. I think the parents have gone home happy that they can be more active participants in their childrens' success.

We looked at times tables practise and spelling. I wanted to dispel myths about rote learning and the evidence behind it.

Everyone has gone away to practise, new ways of teaching and learning, particularly the parents, which I believe is the key to the success of this programme.

DFI Cohort 2 Session 1

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Learn: I learnt heaps today. Probably the most exciting for me was how to effectively use
read-writer for students. I also learnt a few tricks to assist with my mini ALIM inquiry
towards increased students learning outcomes trough improved home/school partnerships and
increasing parent efficacy and understanding of reading, writing and maths levels and what they
mean.
Create: I created an awesome group with my parents, for them to communicate with me, and
me with them
Share: So, I created a google group to share info with whanau and also a snappy poster to make
it feel less confrontational for harder to reach parents. The poster is advertising my after school
student/parent refresher sessions which are really working at accelerating below and well below
student outcomes.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Loads of useful things, especially how to use Google groups. This will be useful to build transparency and whakawhanaungatanga with my students' whanau.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

I learnt about using voice type properly and to use it as a tool for greater efficiency for

all students, and not just reluctant writers.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Not sure, about this one yet. I think it is still early days and I still feel far from confident in terms of digital fluency.

Relationship based learning - research

So, I have stripped the back wall of the classroom, with the help of my students. I have started to explain to them what we are doing, and why, and they seem fairly interested.

I started researching best practice around feed-back and feed-forward and found this (below). It seems perfect for what I want to achieve with my inquiry.

Kai Ora Hui

Oruaiti School was recently awarded $1000 towards or chicken run project. Today I went to a networking session in Kaikohe to share our panui and listen to others'. It proved really useful, as I now have a number of contacts from Whangaroa who want to get involved with our school. There were a couple of people who wanted to help us source good laying chickens, another who recommended ducks for our dam, and most exciting, a cooperative farm in Kaeo who want us to take cuttings from our manuka, to supply them with manuka saplings at $1 ea and potentially buy our next year's crop of honey from us.

The opportunities to support our local communities are exciting and I felt among the community groups present, a real sense that our school has built mana within the community in recent years.

Bloom's Taxonomy

I think this could be the answer to students articulating their learning and next steps. I have shared it with everyone and we are going to discuss it at our group coaching PD session later today.

Bloom’s Level	Key Verbs (keywords)	Example Learning Objective
Create	design, formulate, build, invent, create, compose, generate, derive, modify, develop.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to design an original homework problem dealing with the principle of conservation of energy.
Evaluate	choose, support, relate, determine, defend, judge, grade, compare, contrast, argue, justify, support, convince, select, evaluate.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to determine whether using conservation of energy or conservation of momentum would be more appropriate for solving a dynamics problem.
Analyze	classify, break down, categorize, analyze, diagram, illustrate, criticize, simplify, associate.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to differentiate between potential and kinetic energy.
Apply	calculate, predict, apply, solve, illustrate, use, demonstrate, determine, model, perform, present.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to calculate the kinetic energy of a projectile.
Understand	describe, explain, paraphrase, restate, give original examples of, summarize, contrast, interpret, discuss.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to describe Newton’s three laws of motion to in her/his own words
Remember	list, recite, outline, define, name, match, quote, recall, identify, label, recognize.	By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to recite Newton’s three laws of motion.

First week of Alim

This week kauri class has begun ALIM front loading. I have six target students in the group, however I have no room for other students to make it less "levelled."

So far I have seen some promising results. I am still unsure if one particular student needs a different intervention as he still struggles with engagement and focussing in a small group (is this deficit?)