Scenario Planning

This week our team meet with Ben to do some scenario planning in terms of a missing mentor. Firstly, we brainstormed lots of possible scenarios - everything from a car breakdown to a medical emergency, from a couple of minutes to longer term. After the brainstorm we had a huge list and had to figure out a way of moving forward. Enter Miss Blue (Me!)... it was really clear to me that in our list we had 2 continums - time and the planing. And this was the result.

Quite pleased that my blueness was so useful!

Term 2 Reflection

It was a busy term, that's for sure! Lots going on with the arrival of Amy and temporary departure of Rachel, and lots of CL comments.

My trip to Auckland and the visits to the 3 amazing schools I went to has given me permission to try things a little differently (not that I needed permission but it has helped seeing how others teach in a similar space).

Maths, I now teach much shorter lessons with a really clear purpose. I have one group for 10 minutes then send them off to do a "practise it" whilst I see another group for "learn it" then when group 2 go off to their"practise it" I have group one back. Admittedly I only tried this for 2 weeks, but I was much more able to quickly see the misconceptions and put them right before a child would have to rigorously unlearn something to re-learn it. My next step is to find a way of recording these observations as my memory is not what it was and unless I have it written down I will have no idea!
My current idea is to have a little table stuck on the bottom of the modelling page that I can tick or comment in. Hopefully this will then morph into something on my plan but i'm finding it quicker to write notes than type them.

Literacy and Concept (Lit-Con!),whilst it was really full-on last term, being the factory worker, churning through the groups, I do feel that the children achieved a lot with the design for learning Amy and I had. Reading a book over 2 days gave the children confidence and so the progress from some last term was phenomenal. Some children who have been "of concern" for the last 2 years no longer have that label. While they may still need support to ensure this level of progress continues it has been great to have those positive conversations with the family.
To prevent the factory line feel of literacy, which Roanna and I had, and the massive amount of time spent by our teaching partners in setting up the rest of the programme, we have had a re-think as to how we structure our design for learning.
Following on from something I saw in Auckland, where they set up the whole day rather than just maths, or just literacy, we are going to set the day up with the learning priorities and other learning tasks (avoiding happy, busy, good!). This will mean that the learning should be seamless for the students, in terms of not having a specific maths or reading time - the whole day is all about learning across the curriculum. Alongside this we have split the day into 4 blocks and 3 of us will be running workshops with 1 (Kiwi) looking after the others, ensuring priorities are being completed. The end goal would be to have the Kiwi targeting specific children to support their learning needs. This is an example of how this may work!

		Monday		Tuesday		Wednesday		Thursday		Friday
		July 31		August 1		August 2		August 3		August 4
				Skiing		Joe meeting til 9:20				Leadership release
	Notes	PL Meeting - 3.30 - 5 pm
	8.55 - 9.10	Assembly				Magic Carpet - Rachel		Magic Carpet - Tetli		Magic Carpet - Roanna- Joe Kaizen meeting with Tetli
Block 1	9:10 - 9:30					DAT RT TC JB	Kiwi RD	DAT RD TC JB	Kiwi RT
	9:30 - 10:10	Mentor group / PE								DAT TC RD RT	Kiwi JB
	10.10 - 10.30	Morning Tea
	10.30 - 10.40	Read and Feed				Read and Feed
Block 2	10.40 - 11:35	DAT JB RD RT	Kiwi TC			DAT TC JB RD	Kiwi RT	DAT RT TC JB	Kiwi RD	Concept? Split so 45 minutes about myths and 45 minutes on performance?
Block 3	11:35 - 12:30	DAT TC JB RD	Kiwi RT			DAT RT TC RD	Kiwi JB	DAT JB RD RT	Kiwi TC
	12:20	Reflection				Reflection
	12.25 - 1:30	Lunch Duty
	1.30 - 1:45	Mentor groups, news, book etc				Mentor groups, news, book etc
Block 4	1:45 - 2:15	DAT RT TC JB	Kiwi RD			DAT JB RD RT	Kiwi TC	DAT RT TC RD	Kiwi JB	Empathy
	2:15 - 2:40									Assembly
	2:40-2:55	Tidy and Celebrations - Golden Fistpump				Tidy and Celebrations - Golden Fistpump

Kieren Reid on teaming

Quick post about teaming after watching the all blacks draw! Kieren Reid was talking about the team and three things he said stood out for me; no egos, hard working and selfless.

When I think about myself and teaming I'm definitely selfless and hard working, and like to think of myself as having no ego. When I dig a bit deeper though, I'm not always without an ego.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes having an ego can simply mean being proud of something you've done. The trick with teaming is to ensure that the pride doesn't come because you think you've done something better than someone else. And that this isn't what drives you. The later is true for me - what drives me is my desire to do the best I can for the children (and adults) in Pounamu not be the best.

This is something to bear in mind when getting ready for term 3 and the change back to having Rachel in the team again! To make sure what drives the team is the development of us as mentors and a team, and the progression of the children.

Auckland Adventure

Our Stonefields visit to Auckland was fantastic and it was good to see how other schools similarly built develop their culture, run their programme and the processes they have implemented to ensure student engagement, interest and their childrens' progression.

I was able to stay in Auckland and go to another 2 schools - also with flexible learning environments and spend a day in each, chatting to the mentors and children and picking their brains as to what they do / have tried that engages and motivates the children.

Needless to say my head was spinning. Add to that the Play Based Learning course on Saturday which was run by Longworth Education and i've come away with many wonderings.

My day spent synthesising what I learnt has been very valuable and below is a scan of my notes. As I am a bit of a muller-overer I'm sure that over the next set of holidays and in to the new term I will keep revisiting my notes and pulling out the information as and when I need it.

As Reid from HPS said;

Kaizen and the 3 weekly checkin

I’m really enjoying the Kaizen process and having a short term goal around my goal which Joe and I then look at every 3 weeks.

My focus this year is linked to my one sentence job description - Engage to Ignite, with my short term goals being around engagement and the part that choice plays in this.

Having time to observe in the habitat has also been useful and means that as a team we can make sure our learners are all supported. When you set up a learning activity you don’t always get a chance to review it so being able to observe each other means that we can give and get feedback to improve our efficacy.

Also having a really clear focus means that my one sentence job description is linked to my kaizen so the direction my learning needs to take is clear.

This is also linking to my Auckland trip - Stonefields, Hobsonville Point and the Learning through Play course. It’s great having things fit together, have a real purpose and get clarity.

Combining Reading and Writing

Combining reading and writing is hard work!! I also feel that there is not enough time to do everything that I think is needed - phonics, handwriting, guided reading, guided writing, feedback about writing, setting next steps, looking at pebbles, punctuation… the list goes on. What I am slowly discovering is the need to have a focus for each lesson rather than trying to do all of the above. And it  might be a focus for a week or two. Working with Amy is great as we both reflect and discuss our next steps and those of the children. We think we are in a position for Amy to be direct teaching too, and the children who aren’t with us will be able to manage themselves and their learning. In a way we have got rid of the Eagle, or rather replaced the Eagle with a Kiwi who is on the ground and directly teaching.

One thing that is working well are the folders the children have. What works for me and the children (I hope!) is the pebbles are right there with their writing and so they are easily referred too, all the terms writing is together, I can give them templates to support their writing and they don’t get lost, and we can see the progress being made.

Marvellous Maths
In fact, I’m going to introduce a similar thing for my marvellous mathematicians too.
The folders give me a little bit of control and are something we can work on together. For Maths it will also help me deal with my aversion to worksheets as there is a place for learning sheets, as long as they are looked at and feedback is given (see this blog post!). Having everything together will enable this to happen.

Wave 3

Some things that we have in place seem to be having a positive impact on PQ. Eating his lunch inside with a buddy is giving him confidence to chat and play with children who aren’t usually his friends. I’ve also been in the habitat with them and PQ is also much happier interacting and talking to me which is a massive improvement.

Having set up his literacy bucket I’m not sure how much of it is being used as Joe is his mentor at this time. Joe does say that PQ is much more focused during literacy which was the aim. Hopefully we’ll get some feedback from Wendy when she next does an observation.

All the things we have put into place for PQ can also be used for others on wave 2 or 3 to help keep them engaged and progressing.

Some of the things that Mark Treadwell said about children who find rote learning difficult apply to lots of these children and so going forwards i’m going to try to implement more sensory learning to support their needs.