Category Archives: Uncategorized

Developing Student Questioning

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I have a strong belief that developing student’s questioning abilities empowers them to take ownership of their learning. Strong questioning can open up learning paths and is also an important skill for being an active citizen.

Last week, our SLL team offered 3 different workshops for the Friday Staff PD session. This post is sharing the Questioning strategies I covered in my session.

QuestionStorming

QuestionStorming is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of a brainstorm where people put down as many ideas as they can, questionstorming is writing down as many questions as you can. It is a great strategy for developing students abilities to generate questions. Continue reading →

Provoking Thoughts Every Week

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My role at Hobsonville Point Secondary School is called Specialised Learning Leader. Acknowledging that to most others outside our school, this title means nothing: the crux of the role is around curriculum and learning design. One of the tasks I have had in this role this year is to provoke staff thoughts around learning design each week. I have done this through sharing a weekly provocation: a reading, article, video that could prompt thoughts around designing better learning experiences for our students at HPSS.

Image courtesy of Brian Talbot

Image courtesy of Brian Talbot

Any of you that regularly read this blog or follow me on twitter will know that I read voraciously. This is a big part of my growth as an educator and this weekly provocation is aimed at encouraging all staff to grow by regularly reading and considering the implications on our practices.

The readings are shared via email each week and paper copies are placed on tables in the staff room. This means that we are providing for those happy to read on their laptops and for those who prefer hard copy to read or who may pick it up to read while having lunch or a coffee.

Initially starting with any article that linked towards our school’s vision for teaching and learning, we soon adjusted it to fit with our current SLL team focus: Continue reading →

A Catch Up

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I have just had my largest break from blogging since I started 2 and a half years ago. Blogging is a big part of how I reflect and progress but priorities have shifted a bit lately with family circumstances. I have still reflected, tweeted, discussed with coteachers, critical friends and colleagues; but the blog has sat here much quieter than normal. That said, here is what has been happening in my classes lately:

Learning Hub

The early part of this term was focused on students’ IEMs. This is a 3-way conversation between students, their parents and me as their advisory coach. The highlight of this day is being part of genuine learning conversations. Celebrations and challenges are shared, discussed and implications considered.
Continue reading →

Leading With Design Thinking

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I spent a great deal of time at the end of Term 2 focusing my thoughts on how Design Thinking applies to educational leadership. This is something that we have been doing at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, but a couple of presentations I did in Term 2 meant that I had to clarify my thoughts about what it really meant to lead with Design Thinking.

For me, part of why I find Design Thinking an effective approach to school leadership is captured in this quote:

Design Thinking is a Human-centred process (or mindset) for dealing with open, complex problems. Now, to me, ‘open, complex problems’ sums up education in a nutshell. And the focus on empathy that a Design Thinking approach brings is ideal for focusing on the right question – the cause of issues arising rather than the symptoms. Continue reading →

NZ Education’s Biggest PD Need

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MLE, 1:1 BYOD programmes, Dispositional Curriculums, new Timetables, new SMS & LMS, GAFE or Office365. All ‘new’ ideas coming into schools across New Zealand and all ideas being slammed by people because of the poor implementation.

Speak to teachers at conferences or scroll through any social media and read teachers comments. You will find teachers questioning or slamming ideas because of how they have been implemented at their school or a friend’s/local school. Teachers absolutely have the right to challenge the ideas being implemented but so many of these challenges are not of the ideas themselves, it is actually about the way they are being implemented.

Not enough PD or time spent helping staff upskill and see how they can best use *insert new idea here* is not a fault of the idea, it is a fault of the change management. Continue reading →

Pursuing our Community Passions

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Last week Lea Vellenoweth inspired our students by talking about pursuing their passions (see her blog post for what this talk covered). We followed this up in Hubs by creating bucket lists of what each student wanted to do or achieve in their lifetimes. To extend this further, we spent Friday’s extended Hub session working on a community bucket list – what is it that we as a community could achieve in the 4-5 years we are at school together?

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Continue reading →

Is Teacher Training Broken?

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If the evaluative lecturer that came into our school today is a sign of teacher training at the moment, then Teacher Training is broken in our country.

Old School Teacher inked for me by Tom Morgan-Jones

Old School Teacher inked for me by Tom Morgan-Jones

 

Clearly confused by Google Docs he was asking questions like:

How will you know what they have completed? Who prepares the software resources and saves them to Google Docs? How can they refer to previous work? Are all the devices relying on batteries?

Good to know that he liked the carpeted floors and nice open/light teaching space though… Continue reading →

#nextpractice Webinar

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Last night I was part of a Google for Education webinar on the use of technology to aid learning. The aim was:

How do we identify #nextpractice in the use of technology in learning? Can we take the SAMR model to look at both best practice and #nextpractice using Google Apps for Education? Well, we think so! This webinar will provide some wonderful examples of educators who are working on a daily basis in best practice and innovating next practice. By the end of the webinar you will have seen numerous examples of using GAFE to augment, modify and redefine learning in schools.

Facilitated by the amazing Chris Harte, there were short presentations by Chris Mann (John Monash Science School), Kimberley Hall (EdTech Team) and myself. Chris spoke on how they use Google Docs, Slides etc. to augment learning in class, Kimberley shared some great add-ons that modify the learning occurring and I spoke on how technology underpins our attempt to redefine secondary schooling at HPSS. We then answered questions from those who were watching live. There is a follow up webinar to this on the 17th of June and in the next week a form will be available for people to vote on what they want to hear more about.

Enjoy:

And the slides are here.

#edsketch15 Going Strong

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As May began I posted an idea to share a sketch every day this month. 10 days in I am stoked to say that a great group of teachers have joined me in #edsketch15. The large majority from New Zealand and Ireland (thanks Bianca for spreading the word in Ireland!) but also being joined by teachers and students in India, Australia and the US.

Here are my first 10 sketches from this month: Continue reading →

Developing Coteaching HPSS Style

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We are continuing to develop the effectiveness of our coteaching at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. Over the past 2 weeks we have continued reading into effective coteaching practices from overseas and comparing these to our practices here at HPSS. Much of this overseas literature is based in Primary and/or for including special educational needs into mainstream classrooms.

With this gap in literature, we have identified that some of our practices are already exceeding that shared online. There is, however, plenty left for us to learn and improve. Since our last session on coteaching models we have focused on the role a teacher can play in supporting their coteacher.

Last week, our reading was this table from a research article by Wendy Murawski:

 

This table was helpful for us, but many staff felt that we already did these activities and in some cases could provide examples of partner roles that exceeded those in the table. Continue reading →