The pathway and The Learning Pit

Thinking Dispositions

During Teacher Only Day, taking every moment of downtime to trawl through the Live Twitter Feed, These caught my eye.

We spent the day hashing out Learning Dispositions in our school and their visibility in practice.

I can't help but continue to draw the parallels between what we endeavour to instil in our students and what we equally must endeavour to instil in ourselves. No one is perfect... if they were, what learning would need to take place? What a boring life that would be!

I'm drawn to my defects within this graphic:

Managing Impulsivity is something I've grappled with forever! The irony is that, with an ADHD son, I'm finding more and more of my own quirks that align with his behaviour... Managing Impulsivity being one! How many times has hindsight given me a reminder that I need to work on this?

Thinking and Communicating with clarity and precision: Now you'd think that in my profession this would be a given... With age I've found this harder to control when I'm communicating 'on my feet' so to speak. With time to process... even a few moments... I'm good. I can even articulate thoughts and ideas quite well. However, in the moment... 

My thinking tends to go on tangents. Often. There's no rhyme or reason for ti and sometimes it can go out of control, however there is often an epiphany in there that works in my own head, but may be extremely difficult to articulate to others. Sometimes the Thinking and communicating gets a little jumbled. 

I'm setting myself a goal, as of now, ('on my feet' - I haven't really thought this out!) of Keeping my mouth shut. I need to develop my own Communication by ensuring I treat my thoughts like weeds, by considering them before choosing to communicate them. In order to develop the clarity and precision of my communications, I need to ensure that they are a great deal more considered! (And yes, again I can draw a parallel to my sons tendencies!)

Leading Innovation: The 3 Carriage Train

I found this a while ago, saving it as a draft so I could come back to it and give it the attention it deserved. I didn't watch it properly, but was inspired by the blurb that went with it.

I went through a period, during term three and early term four, where I was becoming disillusioned with my ability to drive eLearning being hindered and held back by my ideas and input being squashed.

This has changed my way of thinking in that it puts my context into perspective. I am often frustrated at my ideas, thoughts and input being thwarted or overlooked, often due to my lack of years and experience in the classroom. 

I've changed my outlook on this, mainly due to the perspective this clip has brought about in my own understanding and thought process. The wall that has often come up is probably not even about me... but about the fears and need for change within the other party.

I am eternally grateful to be working collaboratively alongside someone who, despite self describing themselves as being in the twilight of their teaching career, is open to making the shift. He constantly wants to learn, change and develop his own abilities. He's embracing the mind shift and stepping out of his comfort zone. He would place himself in the second carriage, but is definitely eager to be with those in the first. 

I thrive on learning from others in the first carriage. Manaiakalani Outreach and our Cluster eLeader Meetings keep the thirst for more ideas and knowledge burning. I'm lucky to have a peer, within the school, who is eager to drive change too... however is held back by the lack of availability of devices.

Mindshift explained via a pencil

This popped up on the #ulearn15 Live Twitter Feed today. It resonated with me on many levels, particularly embracing the mindshift. I love the analogy and think it would be a great challenge in the context of a staff meeting, where individuals were prompted to honestly consider exactly which region of the pencil they aligned to.

The parallel can be drawn to our student dispositions and the amount of support they require to fulfil their learning potential.

The Wood need The Sharp Ones to be patient and on hand to step in on a frequent basis. Without The Leaders, The Sharp Ones (and The Wood) could not exist. 

I can't help but fell aligned to The Sharp Ones. While we are early at jumping on the digital train... and that jump often feels as though it was a leap, from the side of the tracks, as the train sped by... There are The Leaders who have paved the way before. I can't imagine where I'd be on my current journey, were it not for the amazing groundwork undertaken within the Manaiakalani Cluster. There willingness to share their tried and true methods... pot holes to avoid... and be on hand to answer any queries has been a Godsend.

Back to The Sharp Ones...

It can still be a tough place to be. The Sharp Ones are often interrupted, in their everyday teaching, to solve problems. While they may only take a few moments at a time, these can add up throughout the course of an ordinary day. It can be a tedious job. A thankless job. It can be exceedingly frustrating... Often the Sharp Ones don't get positive reinforcement for their efforts, but forge ahead in the knowledge that they are doing the best they can to prepare their learners for their own future in an unknown world. This is what gets The Sharp Ones through... Negativity will always exist where change is afoot... and sometimes it may be exceedingly difficult not to take offence or feel personally affronted... Change is afoot in education and it is exciting to be among The Sharp Ones.

The Golden Circle

A productive day of discussing and hashing out the "What" aspect of what learning will/should/could be visible in our classrooms. We focused primarily on the 'We value Learning' component today, after a lot of ground work around student dispositions. We are looking to support our learners in moving along a learning spectrum comprised of four prescribed levels. From Monitored Learners... Supported Learners... Self Managed Learners... to the end goal of developing Self Directed Learners.

During the day I managed to keep track of the Live Twitter feed for #ulearn15 and was inspired by many tweets and threads running along these lines. There appears to be a direct correlation between this student disposition model and the Learning Pit. 

Learned helplessness

What does this video tell you about learned helplessness?

TAI Maths target group

For my TAI, the following benchmarks were set, to form targets to work towards:

Benchmarks

Children will reach the following benchmarks on their journey.

Term 2

Operational Domain Focus- Add/Sub

Strategies with multi-digit numbers involve using tens and hundreds as abstract units that can be partitioned.

-Using part-whole strategies to solve problems e.g

*Making to ten

*Subtracting in tens

*Place value partitioning

*Addition in parts (with reversibility)

*Don’t Subtract Add

I have been using Level 3 unit plans when teaching my math groups. I have found that this has been a grest way for students to learn a variety of strategies at once, making critical decisions about which to use. One thing I have found, with my target group, is that they struggle to articulate what the strategies are.

I have been trying to optimise the digital devices available. One of the challenges with this has been the discrepancy in ability to use the devices when working with students that I am less familiar with from the other half of our syndicate. To overcome this, I have utilised the students from our 'Wing' to be 'teachers' or 'go to people' when akonga are struggling with something digital.