Convenient and Flexible Learning

I have had the opportunity to be involved in some online Professional Development this month through the 'Hive Summit', organised and hosted by Michael Matera. 

The themes were:

Day 1: #YouMatter and Day 2: Engaging and Empowering

• “You cannot compete with someone who believes that their contribution is needed by the world” - Angela Maiers
• “We’re not talking about a trick or drop-in lesson. We’re talking about a refined engagement system; something that can be put in place time and time again” - Michael Matera

Day 3: Shaking up learning and Day 4: Relationships 

• “We can’t let our own limitations be limitations for our students” - Kasey Bell
• “Once you know someone’s story, everything changes” - CJ Reynolds

Day 5: Leadership and Day 6: Leadership and Engagement

• “Empathy leads to relationships, leads to advocacy, leads to success” - Ted Neitzke
• “If I’m not excited about teaching it, they can’t be excited about learning it” - Michelle Ferré

Day 7: Productivity and Day 8: Play

• "There is no 'One Size Fits All' for Productivity" - Lisa Johnson
• “[Students] don’t always get to flex their creative muscles” - Quinn Rollins

Day 9: Self-care

• “We are entitled to self-care” - Dan Tricarico

"The Hive Summit is a conference built for all educators and offers opportunities to learn, grow, and connect." - https://www.hivesummit.org/

Collaborative Practice & Team function

Members from our AP|DP Association listened to a presentation on 'Leaders and Learning' (Empowering Leaders, Empowering Learning).

Some 'takeaways'...

• What a leader believes in his/her core about every teacher's capacity to learn and improve impacts on his/her effectiveness in leading a team

• The 'Pygmalion Effect' v 'Golem Effect'

• From the #InnovatorsMindset who quoted Author and human behaviour researcher Tom Rath who notes in his book, 'Strengths Finder 2.)', that, "people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general. Clearly we need to make sure our educators and students have ample opportunity to explore and practice in areas which they thrive."

• Consider the way we function as a team/leadership. The way we function impacts the learning of teachers/students

          The ultimate place for a team's collaboration to fall is in Quadrant I: High functioning, 

          High impact

• Five fundamental values/beliefs which supports effective leadership:

1. Collaboration
2. Shared leadership
3. Goal setting & attainment (SMA - H(Heart) - RT)
4. Rigorous discourse
5. Continuous discourse

We listened to a short extract on 'Disciplined Collaboration'

• The most powerful professional learning occurs when professionals collaborate, enquire, reflect and co-construct together. In short, inter-dependent learning.

          BUT

• Simply working together does not guarantee any change or improvement in leadership, professional practice or pedagogy. For this to occur, the condition for collaborative learning and the evaluation of impact need to be firmly in place.

• Professional collaboration SHOULD have impact, have a purpose, have a hard edge, challenge

• Feedback are based on our observations and experiences (Appreciative... Coaching... Evaluation...). Key player in feedback is the receiver 

• Observation and reflective analysis- to empower practice:

1. Prior to an observation - time to meet and talk to establish clear observation purpose, process, goal - linked to teacher's inquiry goal
2. Co-construct the effective practice criteria, that the observer will observe
3. Reflective analysis and dialogue of the lesson - centered around the pre-established criteria and the impact on learner outcomes - how are learners responding and learning? (Responsive & Adaptive Expertise)
4. Co-construct new/improved practice based on analysis dialogue - set time for follow-up analysis

Question to ponder:

• How important is mindset in leadership? - What challenges do I see in MY leadership around mindset?

Connecting the learning... Where to next?

• Leadership styles - self-awareness, strengths, next steps
• Leading a team - tools and strategies - the HOW?
• Collaboration with purpose
• Collective efficacy and Culture building
• Professional Learning Communities - what/why/HOW?
• Effective feedback
• Leadership Inquiry / Learning Inquiry
• Distributed Leadership
• Practise observation and reflective analysis
• Adaptive and responsive expertise
• Building relational trust
• Effective communication / Difficult conversations
• Leading with Emotional Intelligence
• Innovative Leadership

~ "A leader who helps develop FOCUSED COLLABORATIVE CAPACITY will make the greatest contribution to student learning - Fullan & Quinn, 2016 ~

UBRS Workshops (Modules 1 - 4)

A blog summary of my notes...

First Session:

Aim:

• Preventing behaviours that challenge and if necessary de-escalating the situation
• How to stop behaviours from happening 
• How to support child without putting more demand on them

Intro: 

• Understand what is happening in the brain when it’s under stress…
• When seeing difficult behaviours, think what might be happening in the brain

Summary:

• When the brain is under stress Adrenaline and Cortisol are produced
• These shut down the layers of brain activity starting with logic and self-control
• Calm the situation - don’t inflame by punitive approaches
• BUILD behaviours by ignoring, figuring out what the driver is, replacing with positive behaviours, praise and encouragement, frequent positive restatement, reminders and redirection

Module 1: Understanding behaviour - Why? How? What?

Remember the can of coke ‘analogy’ - shake it and it explode...

• Being mindful of the factors that occur in a child's life that is baggage when they come to school
• If you want to be supportive, shift your perspective by not judging and instead offer support to build that relationship

What can YOU influence?:

• The only thing we can control is what we do, think and believe…
• … and what we do, think and believe can influence the outcome to increase the likelihood of de-escalation

Understand, then manage your actions:

Stress Response: Psychological effects…

Module 2: Encouraging ready-to-learn behaviour

Establishing a learning focused culture by exploring strategies that prevent and de-escalate challenging situation through:

• Creating supportive learning environments
• Teaching for positive behaviour - revisiting the brain and stress
• Strengthening positive relationships
• Exploring strategies that support emotional regulation
• Exploring communication - what we say and how we say it
• Exploring strategies that prevent and de-escalate challenging situations

Exploring communications - what we say and how we say it:

• Create win-win scenarios with two winners
• Talk to students with compassion and respect
• Address private or sensitive issues in private
• Take the student seriously and address issues
• Give focused attention
• Avoid humour like sarcasm, inappropriate remarks or mocking - be polite

Summary:

• De-escalation refers to a set of verbal and non-verbal responses which, if used selectively and appropriately, reduces the level of a student’s anxiety or anger to prevent loss of control
• Research tells us that knowing the student, building trusting relationships and using effective de-escalation techniques can all minimise the likelihood of restraint

Module 3: Responding Safely

Intro:

• Often behaviour is done for an audience
• How do your actions escalate or de-escalate the situation?
• Whatever goes bad, it will pass and things will get better

Responding Safely - Differential Responding:

(Note: when students are below ‘red line’, you will have trouble with bringing them back. A student that often go below this line would normally have a ‘safety plan’ - through SENCo / RTLB) 

Strategies to maintain the 'Ready to Learn' state:

When the student is 'Out of Sorts' - Strategies to help the student return to Ready to Learn:

When behaviour is "Escalating' - Strategies to de-esclate and provide direction and maintain safety:

Strategies to maintain safety when a situation is 'Out of Control':

Strategies to help the student to 'Calm down', be safe and re-establish a trusting relationship:

Module 4: Reflection and Embedding

Conclusion...

• Maintain mana, walk away and determine next move
• Ensure students know what will be happening, as some struggle with change

~ "Relying on one-on-one chat alone is rarely effective. It may take many of these conversations - this is a process to teach young people how to think about their behaviour. At a neurological level, we now understand that we are creating new neural pathways in young brains and there is not quick fix that does this!" 

(Thorsborne & Blood - 2013 pg. 42) ~

Ideas to Supercharge a Literacy Programme

We began our year with the usual Teacher Only Days, with a focus on 'Writing' and 'Speaking'...

On 30 Jan 2019 our whole staff attended a professional learning workshop with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey in Hamilton called 'Developing an effective writing programme'.

They shared practical ideas for planning and teaching writing at emergent, early and fluent levels, with reference to ‘The Writing Book’. Workshop aims were to:

- introduce the key principles of an effective writing programme

- break down the components of a balanced writing programme

- explore the features of both long and short writing lessons

Things mentioned and affirmation:

• Images are good to use for writing
•  Reiterate that punctuation helps a reader to understand what the writer is trying to tell
• Spelling is important (have routines around it e.g. use a word card, listen for sound)
• Make good word choices
• Retelling is a very good first step to writing
• You can keep going with criteria for some time, no need to change it all the time
• No queue waiting for teacher to check,  just get them to put their book at designated spot after finishing their story
• Picture plans are good to use in Y1

New ideas / What I've learned:

• Activate kids prior knowledge about writing at start of year. Ask what they remember about writing from previous year
• All kids need guiding during week not just lower kids, but don't overstretched yourself… you can't see everyone
• Roving can be extremely powerful. Students will hear your feedback to others and fix up work
• Don't waste time writing long, big comments in books
• Not everyone will finish, be comfortable with it
• Get kids to self-check / partner-check using stamps afterwards

Next Steps:

• To use picture plans further as follow: e.g. one picture = 1 sentence, 2 pictures = 2 sentences, progress but not more than 4 pic (as too time consuming)

• Use different images for kids to write a sentence of each picture

Goals:

Model and teach students to proofread their writing. Keep it manageable.

Take time to teach students to review and improve their writing with a partner

Resources mentioned:
- The Writing Book
- The Literacy Shed
- The Kid Should See This

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On 1 February 2019 we had a professional learning workshop with Lisbeth Swanson from 'StoryWays Literacy' (Storytelling) who visited us at school.

Purpose:
- Consider the language needs of learners (Our school, societal, global)
- Understand the pedagogy of learning and teaching with a storytelling approach
- Learn how to prepare and teach the telling of a story using ‘Hear - Map - Step - Speak’
- Know of the key elements in the Storytelling schools Teaching Model

New ideas / What I've learned:

• Use storytelling to motivate, energise and accelerate oral language and writing
• Learning to tell stories from memory is a great way to learn all sorts of essential skills
• Speaking, listening, confidence, empathy, ideas, facts, sequences, plots … you name it, storytelling can teach it.

Goals: 

• Tell a story (not just reading) with attention to voice, gesture, feature language 
• 'Loiter' with the story - oral language at the center
• Follow-up writing opportunities

~ "Knowledge isn't power until it is applied" - Dale Carnegie ~

CoL TOD - Taking our Community on a Journey

Ngāti Tahu - Ngāti Whaoa teachers and principals across 5 schools, learnt a new local waiata to set the scene for their professional learning together #ManaWhenua @AnnalysePearse @1MvdS @chelnz123 pic.twitter.com/9c8gbs5LKd

— Sue Winters (@suewintersNZ) September 29, 2018

Outline of my involvement during the Day...

Moral purpose

1. Recap Appreciative Inquiry & Sharing of Teaching as Inquiry

Adjusting the lens we look through - Making a conscious decision to look for strengths.

Coaching skills to be used - active listening - without interruption and reflective questioning at end. 

Genuine Inquiry - open minded, declarative statement or genuinely open and non judge-mental reflective question

Positive does not ignore deficits but instead focuses on the solution

2. Evaluating Effectiveness

Hard data vs rich data - formative, making sense of the work children are doing, the shifts they are making.
Appreciation - how do we talk about the hard stuff - challenge each other - to ask a probing reflective question does not show lack of appreciation - the way the question is communicated is possibly the key - today and the way we are working together is about digging deeper - in a non judge-mental way.  Holding up the mirror
Sometimes in our work as Principals, DPs, or HODs we work in a mentor role where there may well be an element of judgement and direction in a learning conversation, but this approach is not about mentoring - it is about listening to understand and asking probing questions to deepen understanding and to require the presenter to deepen their reflection.

3. Knowing they impact

Knowing they impact - if we are to be innovative as a profession and if we are to make a difference for kids we need to work through ways of knowing and justifying what works and why. - as a profession.
The way you think about your role as a leader or teacher defines the way you work and the impact you will have.

4. Oral language focus - What has been the effect of the work you have been doing with students?

Ask reflective questions - in line with coaching- levels of reflective questioning.

Have levels of questioning for students.

5. Disrupting the status quo
How can we create a learning system where all young people leave as successful learners.
Not about cruising through the system or dumbing down learning.

What are the rich skills we want to assess? (that would enable this goal)
What do young people need to know/do? 

6. Bus stop activities

7. Evaluate well-being 

Discussion:  Looking at ways the current system might impede well-being and success.

Evaluate personal identity, language and culture (Do I know the language of mine) 

We become our stories – so... What are the stories we want to tell about Reporoa? What does it mean (look like, sound like, feel like) to be an actively involved, confident, connected member of our community?

What is already working well in our community? Who are our success stories? What worked well for them?

What part do you play in this? What is your responsibility in this story?

What do we expect from each other and from ourselves?

~ "The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it." - Warren Bennis

Further assessing children identified as 'at risk'

As part of my online SENCo training, I had an opportunity to work with and learn from Jenny from Raising Achievement on assessing students identified as 'at risk' to further identify their specific learning difficulties using a Screening Assessment kit. This will be very helpful in my role as SENCo and will enable me to create a specific plan to help cater for the needs of these students.

The purpose of the Screening Assessment is to find underpinning cognitive weaknesses. These are the underlying reasons why students are being held back and not able to achieve in academic subjects. Underpinning Cognitive Weaknesses are Auditory and Visual Processing problems. Other Underpinning Cognitive Weaknesses are things like processing speed, short term and working memory and gross and fine motor skills.

I learned about the different Screening tools and what to use for students under the age of 7. Yes, it can be done under 7... and [in my opinion] early identification is vital.

Reflection:

I am absolutely loving my role (on top of everything else) as SENCo. It is rewarding to see how students progress when given extra support and to see their confidence grow!

I am looking forward to implement my new learning into my role to support students, teachers and teachers' aides.

~ "A child with 'special needs' will inspire you to be a special kind of person. - Anonymous ~

Oral Language across the curriculum

This workshop presented by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey aimed "to support teachers to include more quality 'learning talk' in the classroom and to embed purposeful oral language opportunities across the curriculum." This was timely PD for my Teaching as Inquiry with my focus on developing Oral Language.

We started the session with the Talking strip - Introductions' by turning to a partner and by follow the steps on the strip.

We can use oral language strips to get children talking and using full sentences. Explicit teaching can include using pictures - lips closed, eyes open, ears listening etc.

The types of talk:
1. Exploratory talk (to help us understand and develop ideas)
2. Presentational talk (to share ideas and information and to entertain others)
3. Conversational talk (to build relationships)

Types of listening:
1. Informational listening (to obtain information and understand ideas)
2. Critical listening (to evaluate ideas and form opinions)
3. Appreciative listening (listen for enjoyment)
4. Responsive listening (listen to build relationships)

Establishing a 'think, pair, share' culture. Move away from the 'hands-up' approach as it is controlled by the teacher and severely limits student talk. This often results in a small group dominating the talk in a competitive manner.

Listening activity ideas:
1. Partner activity: call a friend - pretend to talk on the phone to a friend about something. Sit back to back and share.
2. Barrier games - making shapes, use a barrier to hide. Two students have the same bag of sticks. One student makes a shape, the other has to make the same shape through listening to the other's description. Another one is the Pizza barrier game where one has to explain to the other how to add pieces on the pizza.

Asking more open questions using:
1. Question strip
2. I wonder...?

Students should be talking in full sentences and elaborating on ideas...

Some elaboration questions / Prompts:
- Tell us more about...
- Why do you think that?
- Can you give us an example?
- What is your evidence?
- Can you justify your opinion?
- I have another example...
- I have a different idea...

Some alternatives to questions:
1. Students sit in a circle. Introduce a talk topic. Students use a microphone for taking turns to talk and to generate questions.
2. Shared Reading - predictions from cover. Do think-pair-share. Move away from hands up.
3. Make a suggestion - "My idea is ..." can help with getting students into a discussion

Talking groups:
Use different groupings to increase opportunities for student talk
1. Think, pair, share (partners)
Pausing in a lesson engage students in 'think,pair, share' and benefit both students and teacher as students shift from passive to active learning.
- Think:  allow students five seconds to think of what they will say
- Pair: students talk for a short time with a partner. Teacher can end talking time with simple countdown from five
- Share: a range of students can share back responses when appropriate and not necessary every time students talked to a partner.

2. Think, pair, square
Instead of sharing back as a class, partners can turn and face another pair and then share as four. Students can listen to ideas from one pair and summarise/add and new idea/ask a question.

3. Doughnut circle
Students sit or stand in two circles, outside one faces inward and inside one outward, so that all is facing a partner. Each student have a turn to speak. When it is time to change partners the teacher could call 'switch'. The inside circle then moves one partner to the left.

4. Jigsaw
Effective when planning an in-depth collaborative task. Each student in the group is given a number e.g. 1, 2, 3 or 4. Students with same number move to form a group. students then work together to learn about a topic and afterwards return to their home group and each team member shares his or her information.

5. Listening triads
Students work in groups of three taking on roles e.g. speaker, questioner, recorder [and/or] speaker, listener, questioner. The speaker talks about something specific and afterwards the other two students follow their roles by either asking questions (Questioner) and taking notes (Recorder) in order to feed back to the speaker, another group or whole class. Roles can be rotated.

6. Circle
This is a common grouping in the classroom. The idea is that everyone in the circle have a turn to say something. Students talk and listen to other's ideas and points of view. It is also good practice for speaking in full sentences.

7. Line up
Similar to the doughnut circle except students face their partner in two lines.

8. Horse shoe
Similar to the circle, but students are able to view the teaching area as well as each other.

~ "Children need writing to help them learn about reading, they need reading to help them learn about writing; and they need oral language to help them learn about both." - Anonymous ~

Anxiety, Learning and Behaviour

This was an interesting workshop that challenged thinking and perceptions.

Notes:
Each person comes to school with their own Thoughts, Emotions, Perspective from home. This is the case for both teachers and students...

Anxiety can start when having to deal with above

Anxiety – look at yourself first and how you cope with this, keep energy up. What can I do to fill my bucket at the end of the day. Know about mindfulness. If a teacher’s anxiety is going up, it will escalate the anxiety of the student. Look at the development of the brain – look at impact of trauma, neglect… they influenced development.

Brain development starts with:
Brainstem    -     Safety
Midbrain     -      Movement
Limbic         -     Emotions
Cortex          -     Learning

When students do not feel safe, they might make noise and be disruptive so they can be send out. They then they might feel safe as they are not subjected to the learning (which they might be scared of).

If a student is constantly anxious – it can be something specific...

Your anxiety can cause the student’s anxiety. Stay calm and talk in a calm voice.  When a student does not react, it might be their brain telling them "I am in danger" and that is why they might not react / respond. Unfortunately, a teacher / adult might perceive it as being defiant.

Acknowledge the feeling, but know how to cope with it. What strategy can be used to cope with feelings?

- Anti-anxiety activities: breathing exercises

- Get students to know to just breathe, will make them feel better

- Also, think how well you know this specific student.

Try and capture the right moment to help the student cope with strategies about what we do when not feeling well. Use the right vocabulary – don’t confuse angry with not happy.

Maybe do whole class teaching for coping strategies, step-by-step. Mentally visualizing working through the anxiety. Talk about what it might look like / feel like.

Know what emotions look like. Get students to act out – look up on internet.

Often an anxious student just needs time… but let them know you will be coming back to them. Difficult for anxious child to be put on the spot, speak up in class in front of everyone or even give an answer.

Often when a child is anxious, a parent will have it to. A dad might be aggressive because they are anxious. Women can cry. Get the parent to practice handling feeling and emotions with their child at home. Exercise help for unsureness- suggest they take a walk together each day. There will be more success when including the parent.

Diagnoses just gives us a bit more knowledge about the child, it is not the end of all.

Teach the ‘Worry Tree’ Problem solving technique...

The Helicopter view – teach kids to look at something with a 'bird’s eye view' and not ‘close up’. Look at something differently. What am I reacting to? What does this situation mean to, or say about, me? What's the worst thing about thinking that, or about the situation?

Resource:
Lots of ideas and metaphors on www.getselfhelp.co.uk

~ "Affirmations for Anxiety: This is only temporary; I am in control; I can take things one step at a time; Anxiety does not define me" - Anonymous ~