Who's driving? Agency Progression Co-Construction

John and Kristen wanted to co-construct their agency progression (based on learning from Russell Street School) early in Term Two. To achieve this they referred the children to the PMI that they had completed at the end of last term and explained that they would be working on making some changes because of the comments and ideas from their reflections. John and Kristen had several conversations about this idea with the children in Term One. Now they wanted to use this progression with the children on a daily basis. Together they developed descriptions for each of the stages below:

• Agency
• Self Directed
• Self Managing
• Guided
• Directed

As part of this process, John and Kristen highlighted the need to 'Strive for Excellence' at all stages. The children made links to conversations they had had about 'The Learning Pit' (based on learning from Russell Street School). As part of the co-construction process, the children made connections to learning to drive a car and getting your full licence because they identified that the progression moved from 'teacher driven' to 'student driven'. As a result their wall display is based on this theme.

Term Two Expression Unit Co-Construction

At a planning meeting in the holidays, Katie and Clive got excited about the idea of involving children in the planning process of our integrated unit. This was an exciting idea to trial because we believed that the children would have more ownership over their learning, be able to lead their learning and develop a deeper understanding of our integrated unit big idea if they were involved in this process.

On the first morning of Term Two, Katie and Clive explained to the children that they were going to have a go at writing our integrated unit for Term Two. They introduced our big idea - 'Expression'. To gather the children's prior knowledge about this big idea the children worked in small groups to complete a survey on Google Forms. Throughout the morning, the children completed a range of 'Expression' challenges and were engaged in expressing themselves in different ways. By the end of the day, the children had co-constructed the knowledge deep understanding and matrix indicators. By the end of Week One, they had identified the Habit of Mind focus, co-constructed the Habit of Mind deep understanding and co-constructed the matrix indicators. The children had also generated significant questions they could explore throughout the unit.

'Our People, Our Place, Our Story' Integrated Unit

Throughout our integrated unit, the children were engaged in learning experiences in relation to:

• What is my story?
• What is our story? (Class Focus)
• What is our story? (School Focus)
• What is our story? (Community Focus)
• What is our story? (Science Focus)

Classes explored these questions in many different ways.  For example: 

• What is my story? - In one class the children brought in a collection of 'Fragments of Evidence'.  As the items in the bag were being shared, the children shared their story. In another class, the children created an artwork using koru to represent their family story. In several classes, the children learnt their mihi. Some classes presented these digitally.
  
• What is our story?  The class focus was developed through the Block Classroom. As well as 'building' their learning environment, classes developed their learning culture. They developed a class treaty and set up their class blogs. As part of the school focus, each class explored our school vision statement and the six attributes of the College Street Kid.  As part of the community focus, one class completed an inquiry into the community organisation 'Just Zilch'.  For our science focus, classes explored and shared the stories of different landforms.  Some classes started by reading Maori myths and then explored the science behind the creation of the landform.

A school-wide focus for our integrated units is to explicitly teach children how to be successful researchers. Classes co-constructed their understanding of this process when they completed a whole class inquiry. For Phase Two of the 'Inquire' stage of our unit, the children asked their own research questions and followed through the research cycle. Some children worked individually, most children worked in small groups.

Time for New Learning and Rich Conversations

A significant part of our planning day in Week Seven was dedicated to time for new learning and rich conversations. To start with we discussed parts of the presentation that Mark Osborne had shared at the Learning @ Schools Roadshow in Palmerston North in 2013. Following this, we returned to the ‘Future-Oriented Learning and Teaching' Curriculum Update. As a group, we looked at the personalising learning section and discussed ways we are currently personalising learning.

Following this, we were asked to complete a research challenge. We had time to complete a mini-inquiry in relation to the big idea of 'Future Focused Education'. This was an opportunity to revisit the vision for learning and teaching that we had developed at the end of 2014 and time to explore some of these ideas further.  We developed an inquiry question and shared them with the group. We then had to plan, find, analyse and communicate our new learning. As part of the presentations, we were asked to include examples from our classrooms this year so that this could also be an opportunity for celebrating success.

The inquiry questions that we researched were:

• What is the role of a teacher in a future focussed learning environment?
• How do you develop agentic learners?
• How has our understanding of developing ‘knowledge’ changed?
• How can we use technology effectively in a future focussed learning environment?

Managing Self Literacy Focus

Our children are starting to have more choice in relation to their learning. In Pot of Gold this is currently achieved through Reading Choices and Priorities and in GRi11 this is currently achieved through a Managing Self Literacy Block. The children are taking responsibility for managing their learning by selecting which learning task to complete and when. They are responsible for prioritising their time on a daily basis so they can complete learning tasks before required deadlines.

"At the start of the week Mr Smith and Mrs Liddell tell us what the choices and the priorities are. These are displayed on the board. We start on our priorities first. We can do them in any order, just as long as we get them done. We have to write our priority or our choice and the date in our log. Then we show a buddy, who checks to see if we have done a good job, if we have they sign our log. I like being able to choose what I want to do."

(Year 5 child from Pot of Gold)

Touching Base

At our Syndicate meeting in Week Three, after nine days of school, teachers were asked to reflect on the vision we developed at our planning days in Term Four. Teachers identified the following strengths at this early stage:

• The teachers and children are developing positive relationships.
• The children have been making decisions about their learning spaces - Linked to 'The Block Classroom'.
• In some classes the children are beginning to make decisions about their own learning.
• Some classes are beginning to utilise Google docs for learning.

To develop our vision and support our changes in pedagogy we will need to engage in significant professional learning about future focussed learning and teaching. There are schools we can visit, websites and blogs we can follow and articles that we can read. Teachers were asked to read the ‘Future-Oriented Learning and Teaching' Curriculum Update. This update discusses key themes that will underpin future-oriented learning for young New Zealanders. (Ministry of Education, 2012)

Thinking Matrix Co-construction

At College Street Normal School, children and teachers co-construct an integration matrix each term. This process allows our children to understand the learning journey, identify where they are at and identify their next learning steps. Our integration matrix breaks down the deep understanding on a continuum from novice to expert. The matrix is designed to help teachers differentiate learning by using the indicators to inform learning and teaching.

After each class visited the Curioseum, they co-constructed their thinking matrix indicators. While the children were at The Curioseum they were asked to 'think about their thinking’. Prior to co-constructing the indicators, the children discussed, reflected on and evaluated their thinking during their visit. As part of this discussion, the children identified that our focus Habit of Mind for Term One is Questioning and Problem Posing. The children then worked in small groups to write indicators for novice, apprentice, practitioner and expert. These ideas were used to develop the final matrix.  Each class developed a wall display and the children placed their icons on the display to show where they were at.