Learning about 'G.I Cheechee' at our COL's meeting

We had a really interesting session at our CoL meeting.  Here are some of my key takeouts from the session:

• Resilient students are those who come from the bottom socio-economic quartile but who's ability to perform at or above level 3 goes up over 2 years... (PISA report).

Building Evaluate Capacity.

We need to evaluate through the success of the learner the effectiveness of my teaching and learning from what I did.  BUT it's not just enough for us to be the better teaching/learner, the kids need to say this. (figurative kids not cleaning their beds - we do it all for our kids).

We are the lighthouse inquirers in our schools for whom it rubs off on other people.  An influencer and my evaluation of my inquiry on the delivery of the children.  Its about kids being metacognitive.

In the past, teachers didn't evaluate themselves by the success of the children.  If it's not for the child, whose it's for?  It's about value-added.

Teaching IS an intervention - it's what we do everyday.  Alan Peachy said 'Great teachers make children learn'.  At the least we need to challenge them.

What do we need to do in term 3? 

We need to deliver the curriculum really well.  Make sure it's visible.  We won't be getting the crank up that we need.  If it's not visible it won't crank up as much as it should be.  We need high expectations.

We can make language exciting - don't need multiple themes, JUST a really good one.  It could last a week or more.  Language programs can be fun.

Our kids speak 'GI cheechee'- combo of broken English and broken P.I language.

Need to see my kids at least twice a week frequency.  Work out cycle rate because it matters (you won't get the acceleration).  In the instructional moments, we need to put in the language moments.

We need to think about speaking the language of success eg. "I go toilet"

We need to be aware of when they are speaking to us and each other to subtly address it.

Plan how we are going to grow/revisit/maintain the language & concepts.  Eg.  I need to remind kids of the language and need to say it back to the teacher.  We need to build it into our planning.

THOUGHT:  My next action is to encourage kids standing up and being confident presenters

• Link the language and concepts to the known environment as the place to extend knowledge and understanding - the richness that we have (Home fires).
• The Stop sign story - what's your legacy?
• We need to provide the formula or the template - gifting them the shape of what you know of.  The origins of lots of formal language is formulaic.  Following the formula.

Teaching the kids when they greet a guest.  Ask people about themselves & you need 3 questions.

Spoken language is like a song - lyrical.

Goal:  Record a lesson of mine, listen to the conversations the kids have and listen to myself.

Publishing is one of the things that lifted performance.

Kids need to post twice a week to accelerate.

Presenting my ISTE experience to our B.O.T

Recently, I had the privilege to travel to Chicago ISTE 2018 and at our recent
Board meeting, I had the privilege to present my key takeouts to them.  Here is my presentation:

One of the biggest things I had learnt in Chicago was that being with the right people who are as passionate about the teaching and learning as you are, has made me feel valued as an educator.  Thank you BOT for this amazing opportunity and I know the benefits will filter through to supporting our kids in their educational journeys. 

My Iste 2018 Experience - Part FOUR: The Playground and Poster sessions

What happens in the classroom and what learning looks like is what sparks the teaching and learning passion for me.  At the playground areas at ISTE, I was able to have a 'play' with aspects outside my comfort zone, like coding without the fear of thinking I could break something.  I put myself in the shoes of my students and found out what real teachers in real classrooms were doing with their kids.  I found it interesting that some of the resources were ones that we were already using but teachers were using these on a global scale, which will help guide my planning a bit.  I can't wait to try some of the things I'd learnt!

Having a play in the 'Playground' 

Looking at Global Storytelling.

Supporting Literacy with Chrome extensions

Google Geo Tools author Kelly Kermode

A text book I will be ordering!

My Iste 2018 Experience - Part THREE: Workshops and interactive sessions

There were plenty of exciting sessions and workshops on offer at ISTE but I wanted to focus on a number of key areas.

• How schools integrated across curriculum areas with a focus on project based learning.
• Raising achievement in boys writing
• Creating interesting, collaborative units for our juniors (or middle school)

The first session I attended was called 'Leveraging Student choice in the Middle school classroom'.  Our presenters shared resources they'd created gathered from the brainstorms and choices provided by their students.  They went on to create relevant resources and units from these students choices. 

What I found interesting was during our sharing sessions with people next to us, I found there were so many different platforms that people used in their teaching and learning, that I wondered how a child who may move schools or a teacher who changes school could even keep.  I had one lady on my left using google classroom, another using microsoft 365 and other people using totally different platforms - it was like the united nations of digital teaching and learning, no one spoke the same language!

There were so many more interactive sessions that were interesting that I need to create a post for each one!