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Friday 14 November 2014

Coaching with Carol

please identify 3 ideas that you would like to consider further then compose one open ended question about one of your ideas.
Chapter 7 Let Silence do the heavy lifting.

1 Retreats: 

2 1:1 Fresh air: How does walking and talking make a difference to quality conversations.
brain research, away from the environment, pauses more acceptable, leave everything else behind. Not attending to the fluff… Focused. Relaxed, mind given permission to wander, creativity floats to the surface. Alongside, less threatening, coaching, equal. Opportunity to think of what could be not what is.  

3 How do we best find out the things we don’t really want to know?
People talk so they don’t have to listen…. 


4 How do we know if silence is consideration or boredom? 

Participant puts the idea out. Others talk about what this sparks in their mind
Final speaking rights for the original poser.

Julz, How can we incorporate the reflective silence in our group meetings…
use carols quotes. what drives their pedagogy what is their knowledge
Define the rules of engagement incorporate silence. THINK pair share, 
Adults to role model, have opportunities to practice.

Elly P227 What does she mean by tossing out the furniture and becoming a minimalist? 
Keep it concise, succinct. Get rid of the baggage. What is the important stuff what is needed. Clear things our, create the space in your mind to think clearly. Maybe linked to getting outside and moving. Will silence allow us to get to the heart of the matter.

Fi P223 For fear of being though clueless you have … 
How do you get your idea across and hope they buy into it? 
Share an experience, leave time, ask thought provoking but leading question
relationships. research. big ideas take time become our ideas. be open to their ideas and change yourself. Credibility. 

David Schools are unique with the multiplicity of relationships we have. What degree of our practice is influenced by the nature and intensity of our work as leaders. How do we allow techniques such as silence to develop in our practice. 
We have to. Relationships require these skills. Being held account. Being aware. A forum to discuss, highlight and improve. Busyness is the enemy of relationship development. Permission to take time to reflect. 

When you feel the need to prove something your feel the pressure and become frantic. 

Quote: "Nothing effects the learning culture of an organisation more than the skill with which its leadership team receives feedback."

provides
partnership
seeks 
pays attention notices acts on radar in tune

formal
awareness of relationships

There is a silent gallery watching your work all the time...

How has our school improved this year. 
Change and challenge have been accepted as a positive and exciting part of our culture.
Mindset: Evolve rather than refine - revolution early adopters. transformational shifts
Status quo is not good enough, slowly getting stale. Children and Staff. (what about parents)

Teacher inquiry, 

Improved rather than successful. improved makes us look back and compare. Success compartmentalise. 

What will I take forward from today?
Revisit be present fight busyness to build relationships. 

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Brad Gay ap dp connection

Advertising and marketing our schools. 
Don't try totals don your competition. 
For return on roll. What do we want to attract people to our school. 
Not everyone will be the best fit for us
 and they won't be the best fit you. 

Elevator pitch. 
What is your superhero elevator pitch. Is the whole staff a familiar with it. The essence that ca be shared between one floor. 

If your school was human who would it be? 

Social Media. 
Who is the message for. The parent. Child. Extended community. 
Facebook and Twitter feed. Mailchmp sends emails. Free. Sends to webpage Twitter etc. can send video. 

Acronym helper
H. Hub. High value content. 
E. Easy. Few steps. Simple. Educational value. 
L. Leadership ideas. Laughter. 
P. Promote. Balance. Don't over promote. Regular and consistent. Varied. 
E. Engage with the community.  Questions. Polls. 
R. Reach out to key influences. 

Full schools need to keep marketing our reputation. 
Russell street for digital classrooms. 








Wednesday 29 October 2014

MPA Derek Wenmouth

Ten Trens 2014

Infographic,  The things that effect the nature of schools. Technology, Structural, Process, Cultural, Economic,

Technology, can be an enabler
Structural, The space, location nature of the physical spaces.
Process, The employment of resources, people intellectual and physical.
Cultural,
Economic, the relationship with the local national and global economy and its impact on us.

Learner agency (cultural).  Responsibility for self then understanding your responsibility to others. Student voice, empowerment,

Skills for 
play
performance
simulation
appropriation
Multitasking
Distributed cognition

Skills for participatory culture
Collective intelligence
Judgements
Trans Media Navigation
Networking
Negotiation

Gamification.
Clearly defined goals
Scorekeeping and rewards
Feedback
Personal Choice
Consistent coaching.

The link to old games moving to technology and what this adds. The accelerating and

Snap, board games, quiz, networked, online. Increases participation and motivation.

Learner Orentation: 
Universal Design for learning: What (present information and content in different ways) How (Differentiate the ways that students can express what they know), Why (Stimulate interest and motivation for learning)

Could this be the renaming of the MLE. Learner Oriented Classroom?  Flexible, Adaptive, Learner Responsive Community Environments,  Community

Challenges: Pedagogy, Assessment, community, Physical Environment, Technology

Learner orientation, autonomy and agency

School Structures.
open, distributed, scalable, sociable,



MPA Nathan Wallis

Brain Research and Learning: Theraputic Child Specialisation. MRI transformed the knowledge of the brain in the 90's. the decade of the brain. Brain scanning. Making the research simple but not simplistic.

Kindy sculpt and train the brain while primary teachers merely polish it. Most of our outcomes can be predicted by the age of 3.

The cultural perspective and status does not reflect the reality that the kindergarten early childhood teachers have the most skill and influence over our children and nations future. NZ is one of the lowest funders of children in the 0-3 age bracket. Most is spent on the 19-24. 50% genetic 50% environmental.

The data focus is on relationship with your attachment figure. Brain weight 350g - 3 years 1.2kg at 3. Adult weight 1.4kg. Most development has happened in this first 3 years. Brains are born in a ready to develop and learn state. Lower Brain growth shows failure to thrive. How nature interacts with nurture is what develops and dictates who you are.

The transcript (experiences, data) are needed to trigger the genes and enable those skills talents and behaviours. Eye colour is a fixed gene, height is a transcription gene. If you are underfed or sickly you may never become the tall person you could have been. Fully developed brain at 26. Research keeps pushing it out. Females 18-24 men 22-32. Birth order has an influence but is is early research. First born and not is all they have found. Statistically the first child is most likely to be more qualified and a higher earner. What do they get that the rest don't? 1:1 attention. 20,000 words with the 1st child 10,000 with the 2nd. etc.

 Face to face interactions light up the brain. When we name a person and engage with them the brains activity increases. How does whole class vs small group interactions vs independent. Learning is inherently social. Movement is also linked and intwined in learning. Any interaction educational or complete rubbish with babies develop the frontal part of the brain. Prison has very little first born females. GATE has mostly first born females.  Reading recovery is full of non first born boys.

Boys hippocampus does not come online to about 7. Being able to access memory is more challenging for boys. Lateralisation does not start till 6.5 - 7, left brain right brain. Fits with Piaget theories of development readiness for language at 7yrs. Truth telling is associated with a lower IQ.


1. Brainstem. Primal brain keeps heart beating. Live, Procreate, Protect.
2. Cerebellum is the movement brain. It controls movement, tongue etc. It has a role in our higher intelligence. It's added memory. 6mth - 18mth.
3. Mammalian Limbic system. Emotions.  Dogs have this. Limbic systems connect. The emotional brain. 18mnth+ Tantruming 2's. This brain can take over.
4. Frontal cortex. The flash stuff brain the brakes (optional for survival so development is individual). 3yrs -11 develops. Not till 24 do boys realise these are prone to failure.

Babies lock on to eyes to establish an attachment relationship. Eye contact releases oxytocin which triggers other hormone releases which develop other skills and talents. A consistent long term relationship is essential in anchoring a child and meeting the primary need (a diatic relationship). The relationship is more important than the content knowledge of the teacher. Children will strive to learn and excel with a good relationship even if the content knowledge is poor.

Children spend 95% of there time in brain 2 adults only 5%. Adults spend 95% in brain 4. Parents are the 4th brain for there children. @11-18 the frontal cortex shuts for renovations. Adolescence. Teen brains are twice as active. They are overwhelmed by the neurological growth which takes about 3 years. The cortex shuts down, limits access, during this growth to enable a quicker development. Analogy to a shop refit.

Therapeutic Interventions. 
The brains operating like a set of scales. For the cortex to be open the cortex needs to be calm. Stress and anxiety will not allow the brain to access the cortex. Children who are anxious will struggle to learn. 75% of humans respond with freeze when confronted with trauma like an earthquake, gunshot etc. Fight, flight, freeze. Access the full potential of the brain is relationships, relationships, relationships. This is key to success for our learners, they need to feel calm and safe to access the cortex. You learn the most from the teachers you like the most.


Immersed in a pro social relationship for first 18month. Mum is hormonally drunk on you and treats you like gods gift even when you are socially terrible.  The earlier you start early childcare the higher your aggression levels. Childcare is one risk-factor for under 3's. Makes no academic difference.  The resiliency factors make the difference, two parents, educated parents, additional adults. Social skills like tying shoes develop further but this is at the expense of aggressive interactions from their peers and decreased adult interactions.

 Talked about old people in palliative care taught to knit. When their brains were analized upon death they all had new brain cells. CATS Caffine, Alcohol, Tobacco and Sugar.  (alcohol does a lot of damage prior to 18. Sugar worst for adults) Fitness and socialness combats negative effects on neural plasticity.

Investing in our 0-3 makes huge government social sense. How do we heal the brain. Start from the bottom. Unconditional love for 18 months to stimulate the cortex. 

Keywords. Safety. Touch, sensory pathways, predictability, autonomy, relationship food. Calm means safe not inactive. 

Boys act out girls dissociate. Men are more emotional but have less capacity to regulate the emotion. 

Movement. Rhythmic patterning. Rocking the baby. Ritual, routine, motivation, movement autonomy, corpus callosum. 

Children need to experience rhythm to develop this brain. Rocking chairs, tramps, hammocks, swings. Trauma induces rocking. Rhythmic patterns relax our body. 
Routine is second stage rhythm. 

Brain 3. Emotional brain. Self esteem mindfulness. Dispositions. Validation, enjoyment, Paralimbic system. 2-7 years. 
Te hearing has little political interference as early childhood has Little value in our society. Early childhood meets the need of the child not preparation for school. National standards is a political intervention overplayed on good evidence and research. Research shows success is about dispositions. See national radio speeches he did. Cognitive skills are best developed by those with feeling of competence. We need to celebrate the success of where the child is at not just the next step. Resilience is developed by developing the limbic social emotional brain. 

Frontal cortex. Executive function or neural pathway. You can take a thick person and make them intelligent. Improve the executive functions the cortex the frontal prefrontal 
Empowering children to participate by teaching the the executive functions. Barbera arrow smith young schools in Auckland. Curric on functions. 

Self control most important function. 
Working memory. Manipulate short term memory. Remember 3,5,7 then do something with them. Memory card game builds this. 

Metacgnition. Knowing yourself as a learner. 

Cognitive flexibility. Jumping from left to right side of the brain. Women have a 6 lane highway men have a swing bridge. 

Singing bye bye miss American pie to multiplication. 








Tuesday 21 October 2014

State testing proven worthless, not surprised.

http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/stewart-brekke/no-relationship-between-standardized-test-scores/ 

Interesting article once again stating what we know. Value added tests are not an accurate way to measure a student or indeed a teachers performance. These are only one piece of information to balance with the many measures and knowledge accumulated during a learning relationship. 

Thursday 16 October 2014




I really like my picture I think it's really nice. 


Wednesday 15 October 2014

Learner Agency Webinar


Julie Lindsay. Flat Learning. Talked about the road map. Enablers. Web 2.0 curriculum redesign. Sustaining relationship s beyond face to face.flat connections global project. Community of online learners. 

Do we need to reexamine online classes.  Collaborative chat. Adobe meeting. Over the back fence. No based project like this. Flat connection project starts up in feb each year. Subscription based. 

Check synchronous and asynchronous technologies. 

Linda ojaja 
Putting the student at the centre. Catering for diversity. 
Www.brainwave.com

I need to look more into what universal design of learning udl would look like here. New phrase for me. There is a group on the VLN. 


Monday 13 October 2014

Motivation...

Stole this from Karen Boyes Blog, Keeping it real. Had some great advice about striving for success and getting over the tall poppy feelings.


Another gem from a post on transformational learning. A lot of big picture without the detail.  Good messages and a good pep talk.

Monday 22 September 2014

Hmm where did the time for weekly reflection go? Timely to revisit this...

How to Make Kids Listen to Their Minds


Self-reflection to help enlighten children is being introduced into classrooms worldwide

There are two jobs that have become a lot more difficult in recent years. One is being a teacher, which was never easy at the best of times. But in an age of virtually unlimited opportunities for distraction and shrinking attention spans, getting kids to focus on their schoolwork can be (with apologies to dentists) like pulling teeth.
I know: as a former school aide working with young children in inner-city schools, it was often all that I could manage just to break up fights and keep the decibel level below that of an international airport. Any learning that took place in such an environment was a small miracle.
The other job that has become harder nowadays, of course, is being a student. Believe me, I sympathise with their plight, too! Today’s kids are weaned on electronic devices to move between one website, text message, or video game and the next at lightning speed. Where does a child learn how to direct their attention to just one maths problem or reading assignment when there are so many distractions a click away?
Yet recently I watched a movie that gave me hope. Room to Breathe by director Russell Long was filmed in a public school in San Francisco. The Marina Middle School with 900 students is one of the largest in the bay area, and it has the dubious distinction of having the highest suspension rate in the city.
We see why in the opening shots – pencil-throwing kids, schoolyard squabbles and frenetic hallways. Children fail, we are told by guidance counsellor Ling Busche, not because they are stupid, but because they are unable to focus: ”There is this sense of nonstop entertainment and whatever is happening in the lesson often becomes secondary.”
So it is surprising, given this chaotic atmosphere, that Mr Ehnle’s home room has been chosen for an innovative new program in self-reflection called ”mindfulness”.
Actually mindfulness is not ”new” at all. It originated more than 2000 years ago in the monasteries of south Asia. This form of bare-bones meditation, in which attention is focused on bodily sensations, is now being introduced to classrooms from San Francisco to Sydney and scores of other cities worldwide, less as a path towards enlightenment than a practical method to help kids settle down and learn.
The idea, according to Megan Cowan, the instructor from the group Mindful Schools who worked with Ehnle’s class, is to give students ”tools and skills” to tame the disorder within their own minds.
A tall order, as Cowan herself discovers when her efforts to get the kids to sit still and focus on their breath are greeted with wisecracks and expressions of boredom. She wants to move these disruptive ones out of the classroom for the duration of the mindfulness exercises, but the assistant principal reminds her that in public education nobody is excluded.
So Cowan soldiers on with the full class and, surprisingly, by the end of the film some of her ”toughest cases” have come to value what these simple techniques offer them.
Where does a child learn how to direct their attention to just one maths problem or reading assignment when there are so many distractions a click away?
For example, Omar, whose older brother has been killed in gang violence, testifies that mindfulness has taught him to step back from potential fight situations without reacting. Jacqueline’s mother says on camera that her daughter has become more respectful of others and now gets better grades. And Gerardo, an aspiring artist, says that mindfulness helps him to concentrate better when he paints and draws.
These modest ”success stories” are backed up by a growing body of research.
In one of the largest studies to date, 2nd and 3rd graders attending an inner-city school experienced significant improvements in concentration, academic performance and social skills, which were sustained more than three months after the end of their mindfulness program.
Research has also shown that exercises such as listening to ambient sounds and focusing attention on breathing have a profound effect on human physiology, slowing respiration lowering blood pressure levels and reducing harmful levels of stress. The practice is not a panacea. Clearly lots of kids need more than a few quiet moments in their day to calm them down.
But for many who took part in the training at Marina Middle School it was a revelation. It showed the teens for the first time that they need not be puppets dangling on the strings of their own overactive minds. On the contrary, they can make choices about how to direct their thoughts and respond to their own emotions.
This is something that adults also need to learn. Mindfulness programs are increasingly being introduced into hospitals, drug treatment programs and even corporate boardrooms across the nation.
”Mindfulness does not make problems go away,” says Megan Cowan. ”But the way that you are meeting your experiences changes to allow more lightness and happiness.”
And kids who are calm and happy are disproportionately the ones who succeed at school.
Let’s hope that mindfulness training spreads to more of our nation’s embattled schools, where teachers and students alike can use all the help they can get.
This article appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald on October 12 2012 and was written by Richard Schiffman.
About Richard Schiffman

Wednesday 17 September 2014

My Stump Speech...

Where are we going...?Developing students capacity to act as their own educational advocates, agents of learning. Children who actively participate in a community of learning seeking support to understand where they are at, where to next and how they will get there. 

Why are we going there?
Children who have a strong sense if agency are more likely to take up opportunities, push their boundaries and grow as a person and learner.
 
Who's going with me/ us..
Get on board staff student and parents. Where taking on the educational world. 


How will we get there?Conversations, planning, resourcing strategic pd and seeking a network of support. 

Another great session with Carol. Talking about leadership, emotional wakes and fierce conversations. 


Sunday 14 September 2014

Reading

http://www.tstnz.com/schoolnewsineducationnz/news3.html An interesting article at the forefront of our thinking and planning.

Monday 8 September 2014

How to Integrate Tech When It Keeps Changing



Sensible Technology Integration
By 2015, 80 percent of people accessing the Internet will do so with mobile devices. What other fundamental advances and cultural shifts will come our way? Nobody knows. But here are some guidelines for negotiating those changes:

1. Take Off Your Expert Hat

You’ll never keep abreast of every technology innovation, so allow yourself to be a curious learner that doesn’t know it all. Give yourself 30 minutes every couple of weeks to learn a new tech tool from Tammy’s Technology Tips,Edudemic, Monica Burns’ ClassTechTips, Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything, Cybraryman’s Teacher Tools, or Richard Byrne’s Favorite Resources. Happy clicking!

2. Get to Know the Standards

Refer to the teaching standards crafted by professional organizations in your discipline, and then make the technology serve those standards and literacies. Let’s take interactive white boards (IWBs) in math class as an example. “If children’s only interaction with an IWB is to come up one at a time to answer a question,” says researcher Sandra Linder, “then it is not being used in the most effective manner.” Math lessons that integrate the IWB, she argues, benefit when a lesson follows the processing standards recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics:
  • Building communities and communication
  • Making connections
  • Representing understanding
  • Exploring with materials
  • Child-centered tasks.

3. Reach Out to Thought Leaders

To find the best tools for an authentic task, peruse the top education technology bloggers and ask their advice on social media.

4. Interact with Students via Tech

More specifically, use tech to interact with students during their learning. Two years ago, Catlin Tucker, an English teacher at Windsor High School in Sonoma County, California, created short mini-lesson videos — flipping her writing instruction so that more class time could be used for students to write. In the computer lab, she comments on students’ Google Doc drafts in real time as they’re being composed. She says, “The time I spend helping my students to edit and refine their writing as they write is exponentially more valuable for them than the final comments I leave on their essays.”

5. Read Henry Jenkins

North Carolina educator Jennifer Smyth introduced me to Henry Jenkins’Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. The text identifies a set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire in order to read and impact our emerging participatory culture:
  • Play: the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem solving.
  • Performance: the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.
  • Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes.
  • Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
  • Multitasking: the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
  • Distributed Cognition: the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
  • Collective Intelligence: the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
  • Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
  • Transmedia Navigation: the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
  • Networking: the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
  • Negotiation: the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
If your students are developing disciplinary skills and knowledge through these practices, you’re on the right track.
For even more information on this topic, visit Edutopia’s Resources for Technology Integration. Finally, don’t worry about how the flurry of tech revolutions on the horizon will impact your classroom. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker believes, “Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.”
Tell us your technology integration success storie

Monday 11 August 2014

Agency in Action


Ten Trends 2014: Agency from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Just watched again the CORE clip that captured Agency well. Also saw a video from america with a very knowledgeable teacher delivering a session on 10 and ... that showed how the sage on the stage engages only a few students at a time and none for long.


Monday 21 July 2014

Chris Braid Staff Meeting

Meeting the needs of our struggling writers.

Shared the ish book. Great for persisting and being part of a community of learners. Lined up with the YET! thinking.

Talked about the dot book. There is an international dot day where you create a piece of art based on the book.

Thursday 17 July 2014

Rita Call Back Day

Texts to investigate:
Ralph Fletcher Boy's writing.
John Miklos: Boys can write
Peter H Johnston: Choice words, Opening minds (Linking student agency to learning frames)

What do we notice about reluctant writers 
Attitudes: Reluctance, Avoidance, Failure, Defeatist, Disengaged
Behaviour: Avoidance, I don't know what to write, I can't find my pencil, Overly detailed and elaborate drawings,

Peter Johnston statements to consider: "How we give feedback is probably the most difficult for us to change, but it is probably the point of most leverage".
Teachers must believe that feedback is valuable, It depends on who holds the knowledge, is it in the teachers head or shared and constructed with the children. What sort of feedback is important, is it summative or formative? What is the teaching style (sage on stage/ guide on side).

Agency: The capacity to act, to know what to do when you don't know what to do, to know that you don't know.

Choice Words, Sticks n Stones poem. Pg 40-41 Looking at Agency. The children


Looking at Peter Johnston movie clips,
Reading recovery interview
Children have a sense that the following are fixed, intelligence, ability, personality, knowledge.  If this is fixed then there is no point in agency. The can't make a change. Children in this frame don't want to show their incompetence and avoid taking on challenges. We need to avoid judging statements, good boy (personality oriented) Affects capable children as well as low achieving.
Move children to a dynamic frame by showing they can change, shift the focus to the process. The way they go about doing things. If we ask... "How did you do that?" They spin an agentic narrative and make available the strategy to others.

Factual knowledge is dead knowledge. There is no reason to go back. Inquiry encourages children to construct knowledge and attend to the uncertainty. How they must resolve this? Makes for interesting conversation rather than a right or wrong mind frame.

Opening Minds The development of the fixed and dynamic mindsets.

 Inline images 1

Looked at the power of YET! The language we use to develop a Dynamic mindset.

What is the teacher input in developing "The idea that the goal is to look as smart as you can".
Interesting observation that our high achievers can also be trapped by the fixed mindset. That if I have to try hard at something I must not be good at this.

Picture Books and Persuasive Writing. Listened to The Pigeon Needs a Bath. An interesting format of direct speech in all the writing. Nice little story about mindsets.
Chapter Book. Bad Kitty Gets a Bath. Nick Bruel.

Look up Carol Dweek: Agency and Mindsets. Product over process mindset. Wikipedia

Adaptive Practitioners. Helen Timperly talks about Routine Experts and we need to become Adaptive Practitioners.

So What? 
What are the implications for our children, parents, systems.

Teaching with poverty in mind. Eric Jensen. Could be an interesting read. Second book is even better. Strategies for schools for teaching with poverty in mind.

The tension between Structure and Agency... what does this look like???

Supporting Future Oriented Learning

Ralf Fletcher Boys Writing


Boys Can Write




Monday 14 July 2014

Do Teacher Need iPad training?

DO TEACHERS NEED IPAD TRAINING?
ipad_touchWe have come to a point in the education technology journey where it seems rather dull to still be asking if the iPad is the right device for the classroom. The answer, in case you’ve missed the last few years of debate is that it is a great option, but this is not universally accepted and never will [Read More]



















A good little article showing the importance of developing the connection between good pedagogy and how technology can support and enhance this. I agree about death by apps. If the app is driving the learning then we run the risk of falling back into a blackline master mentality of drill and practice.

The flipside of this is that our students may be digital natives, but they still need to learn about how to harness this knowledge, and that is why they need our teachers to be trained up with this new and powerful technology.

Agency and Self Direction

STUDY: TOO MANY STRUCTURED ACTIVITIES MAY HINDER CHILDREN’S EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
teacher_globeWhen children spend more time in structured activities, they get worse at working toward goals, making decisions, and regulating their behavior, according to a new study. Instead, kids might learn more when they have the responsibility to decide for themselves what they’re going to do with their time. Psychologists at the University of Colorado and (read more)

Changing Landscape of Education Infographic


Sunday 29 June 2014

Minds on Fire

An interesting reading and very supportive of what we know makes great learning. Could go further into student agency as this article put a heavy emphasis on teachers being in control of the design of learning. Co-construction or even student led learning with teachers support and guidance would make it even more powerful

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Coaching with Carol

'Closed questions are a mechanism for control'- please consider this quote & come along prepared to discuss.

Does it depend on the Intent, is it a planned closed question. What is the relationship with the person and the topic being discussed. Is it a coaching, social or fierce conversation. What if the closed question was put out there to intentionally antagonise the other participants? Learning intentions are time consuming and only created to appease management, aren't they?

At a class level. This is more often sage on the stage. In developing student agency where does this come into play. How can we make teachers aware of the and review. How often are classes  engaging in think pair share type activities. 

DAT'S. THAT DEVELOP AGENCY.  COVERSATION, about curriculum development and agency as a focus for teaching as inquiry. 
Can we develop in math knowledge and focus on agency. 




Sunday 22 June 2014

Coaching with Carol

Confirming our 1 to1 coaching sessions on Thursday 8.30-1.30.
'Closed questions are a mechanism for control'- please consider this quote & come along prepared to discuss.
I would also like you each to bring the summary material that you worked on with a partner at the last group session. We will look at this in more depth. Is it possible for a copy from each pair to be passed on to David please?
Chapter 4 of our text includes much that is of value to us as leaders. I look forward to discussing it with you. 
Regards
Carol

Thursday 19 June 2014

eTap Training





Hub Details can list assessments

Latest Assessments

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Mathex Practice

Retired Fielding High teacher, Noel Johnston, took us through some of the basics expected for year 9,10 students.

prime triangula square numbers as basic facts
concept of factors and multiples
greek names for polygones.

Multiples How many dates in a year are a multiple eg 6th june, 12, june 18 June?

what if the day was a factor of the month?  eg 2nd june 2:6

1 Jan 1:1
2 feb 1:2 2:2 2
2 march 1:3 3:3 2
3 ap 1:4 2:4 4:4
2  may 1:5 5:5
 4 June 1:6 2:6 3:6 6:6

natural number 1, 2, 3...   (5)
the fifth prime  1,3,5,7,(11)
the fifth odd 1,3,5,7,(9)
the fifth square 1,4,9,16, (25)
the fifth triangular 1, 3, 6, 10, (15)
the fifth fibonachi

numerical order for 5squared, 2to the power of 5, 2x5, 5+2

Kiwi code and Mosaic from woman's weekly. These can be modified to make a great task.
New Scientist has a column called enigma. This has math problems for us.

knowledge of 2+3+4+5+6+7 = 27 this is 3 cubed. A series of boards in this series would therfore make a cube.

Cunning Combination codes. Ivan Moscovich. Wonders of Numbers Clifford Pickover. Martin Gardener The Last Recreations Good books with mathematical problems. Ian Stuart. Hoard of Mathematical Treasures.

See pic for square with 1,2,3,4 in corners or Bulgarian Solitare  tricky but look for patterns.
Rectangling a square. Form 5 rectangles 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 with each Then assemble without overlaps to form an 11 x 11 square. (121)

When designing questions they must be moderated to check accuracy and if there is a variety of answers.

Australian Math Challenge booklets give you good examples of materials to text you children's knowledge.
Otago problem solving.

Quick fire Guess the answer and go and see f you are right.

Practicals 4:5 questions in 15-20 mins. Questions will be a redesign of familiar questions. The aim is to make a question that children have not seen before.

Make sure I keep checking the MMTA wiki



Thursday 12 June 2014

Networks... Michael Fullen



Great video about collaboration and networks. What are the qualities that make these successful.
I can see how the IES has potential and the risks around how this will become an imposed model and lack the flexibility to align with those that have the most similar needs and vision. It appears to be being driven by a top down accountability model which has been proven to be a focus that won't get results.

Being proactive, focused and purposeful about our needs and the opportunities that a learning network could present should be our focus. I suppose the difficulty lies in getting the stakeholders and fundholders to come to an agreement in what the model should look like and it purpose.