Day to Day Learning and Teaching

In the Senior Syndicate, we teach maths across seven cross-grouped classes from 9.00am - 10.00am each day.  We decided at the start of the year not to make any changes to our Maths programme in 2015 because we knew there would be lots of new learning involved in working in collaborative spaces for the first time.

From 10.00am to 3.00pm, the children are taking responsibility for managing their learning by selecting which literacy or integration learning task to complete, when, where and with who. They are responsible for prioritising their time on a daily basis so they can complete learning tasks before required deadlines. For some children this process is significantly guided by the teacher, for most children, they are now independently taking responsibility for managing their learning.

At times throughout the day children are involved in:

• Small group learning with a teacher e.g. Guided reading group sessions, guided writing group sessions, maths problem-solving group sessions, spelling group sessions.
• Optional workshops with a teacher e.g. Learning how to organise ideas into paragraphs, learning how to write an argument, multiplication strategy workshop.
• Individual conferences with a teacher e.g. Touching base in relation to a research task, providing feedback on a piece of writing, getting started with a maths problem-solving challenge.
• Learning co-operatively in peers or small groups e.g. Completing a group research task and communicating learning, attending book club meetings.
• Learning independently e.g. Crafting writing, silent reading, reading follow-up tasks, completing assessments, practising spelling words, practising basic facts. 
• Whole class learning e.g. Writing motivation and modelling, maths rich task introduction.
• Syndicate learning/activities e.g. Sports Rotations, Syndicate Singing, Go For Gold Programme (Term Two only.) 
• School events e.g. School assemblies, cross country.

Student Voice Survey

We wanted to gather some student voice about the changes that we were making so we asked the children to complete a survey using Google Forms. The questions were aligned to our vision for learning and teaching. Some of the questions we asked were:

• How do you feel about coming to school? Why? 
• How are decisions made in GRi11/Pot of Gold? 
• What decisions do you make about your learning? 
• What decisions would you like to be able to make? 
• What does striving for excellence mean to you? How do you strive for excellence at school? 
• In what ways do you learn with others? How does this impact on your learning? 
• What are your learning strengths? What areas do you need to improve in? How do you know? 
• What new digital skills have you learnt this year? 

It was exciting reading the children's comments. Below is a selection of comments:

• "I feel happy because I have learnt new things and we worked together to build this learning space. I really love coming to GRi11." 
• "I feel excited to come to school because I like learning/working in GRi11 because it is fun and you can do what work you want." 
• "We make our own decisions. We build on others ideas and usually find the right choice in the end." 
• "I think it's great because we always get a say in whatever we do and it's not just the teachers making all the decisions. We all get to vote and majority wins." 
• "I learn with others all the time because every time I'm stuck or need help I know that someone will be able to help me." 
• "In Pot of Gold I get to choose how I make my learning better." 
• "I think that working together makes my work better because there are more ideas coming in." 
• "In GRi11 we are always learning interdependently and it impacts on our learning because humans only have one brain and two brains can come up with more ideas." 
• "The matrix helps me with my learning because I know what stage I am on for my learning." 
• "I feel like it (the matrix) pushes me to go to the next step." 
• "I really like learning in GRi11 because we have freedom in what we do and when we do it and I like that." 
• "In Pot of Gold the kids and teachers make decisions together."
• "I like coming to school because we do fun and amazing things every day."

Writing Strengths and Next Steps

One of our goals is to develop self-aware learners who drive their own learning. To achieve this we need to support our children to develop an understanding of themselves as a learner. Katie and Clive have experimented with this in the area of writing this term. Katie created a 'child speak' version of our writing matrix. Katie and Clive then worked with small groups of children to explore an exemplar and assess it using the matrix she had created. This allowed the children to develop an understanding of the indicators. The children then assessed themselves on the matrix by using their writing as evidence for their assessment. Conferences with each individual child, revealed that in general the children were very accurate, and if anything too hard on themselves. The matrix was highlighted pink for the areas the children are achieving and then together with the teacher two next steps were identified and highlighted green. The children were able to use this matrix to share their strengths in writing and their next learning steps with their parents as part of their Three-Way Conference.

Google Apps for Education

This year we have moved to Google Apps for Education. All children have a Personal Learning Space on Google Drive and all classes have a blog. 

Katie and Clive are also trialling Google Classroom and the children in GRi11 have their own blog. As part of this learning, the children have also developed their understanding of Digital Citizenship. It has been very exciting to see how the children in GRi11 have significantly increased their ability to use Google Apps since the start of the year. The majority of the children now easily: 

• Log in to 'Drive'.
• Create new folders, docs, slides etc.
• Share docs.
• Upload shortened URLs to the class Fast Track.
• Post on their blog.
• Comment on others' learning.  

All of this has taken a considerable amount of time (and some very patient teachers) however the children are now well set up to use these tools and skills to support their learning for the rest of the year.  One of the biggest issues we face is the difference between using Goggle Apps on a computer compared to on an iPad.  The majority of our BYO devices are iPads so these issues need to be worked through on a daily basis.

Clive and Katie attended the Google Apps for Education Summit in Auckland at the end of the Term One holidays.  They returned inspired and full of lots of new ideas!

Agency Co-construction in GRi11

Clive and Katie also co-constructed their agency progression in Term Two. During our visit to Russell Street School they shared how they used the 'Stuck on an Escalator' clip to start this conversation with their children. Katie and Clive asked the children to watch this clip and complete a 'See-Think-Wonder' in small groups. The children actively discussed the messages from the clip and were then challenged to make links between this clip and their learning. For example: If you get stuck on the escalator sometimes, what might learning look like for you?

Their goal was to develop criteria for three stages:

• Agency 
• Self-managing 
• Guided 

Up until this point, they had had many conversations about 'managing self' so they knew the children should be able to co-construct the indicators for the first two stages.  To start developing some ideas for 'agency' they asked "Where to next for learning in GRi11?"

Some of the resources that we used to develop our understanding of agency can be found on the Core Education Website.

Tracking Learning and Learning Conversations

One of the biggest challenges Clive and Katie were having in the classroom was keeping track of learning and learning conversations. In a traditional classroom programme, all children do the same learning task at the same time.  In GRi11 the children are taking responsibility for managing their learning by selecting which learning task to complete, when, where and with who in the areas of literacy and our integrated unit.

Some of the issues:

• Who has completed what tasks?
• How can we easily access the children's learning without needing to search through their 'Drive' or books?
• Who has had a writing conference? When?
• Where can we record the children's next steps so that it is easy to view at a later date when we are planning what workshops to offer?
• Which groups have had a meeting about their inquiry? Where are they at?
• Where can we record anecdotal comments?

Answer: Fast Track!  

Katie and Clive used Google Sheets to create a spreadsheet that allowed them to address many of the issues above.  This idea was based on examples we had seen at Point England School and Russell Street School.

12 Weeks in Pot of Gold

In Week Four, John and Kristen shared their presentation '12 Weeks in Pot of Gold - An Unexpected Journey.' They explained how they were working towards developing "a community in which all learners thrive and take responsibility for their own learning."