9AK #4: Studio ONE: A day to reconnect with student projects

On the 11th of March, our 9AK class spent the day working on the first of their planning and presenting days for the term.  We called this day 'Studio #ONE'.  The purpose of the day was as follows:

• Reconnect as a whole to the purpose, direction and emergence of Akomanga Kaihanga 
• Provide space for and support for teams to help them work well together
• Review data and progress prototypes
• Receive feedback and take prototypes to next stage from guests and community
• Plan and set up the next sprint success
• Teams leaved excited, resourced, motivated, and clear 

The space provided a good opportunity for students to work on their projects and to prepare to present to an audience after lunch.  Karl started the day with a reminder on where they were at and what they needed to do get to.  For an hour students had to plan for their presentations, figure out who was doing what job and practice standing at the front sharing their projects.

After morning tea, the boys had the chance to bond with each other by waking to the top of Mt Wellington whilst the girls visited a number of places around Panmure.  Although I really wanted to run to the top of Mt Wellington with the boys, I reluctantly stayed with the girls and the first place we visited was the Peace Experiment Montessori Education School across the road from the library.  We met with the principal Steven Arnold who kindly showed us around the school.  The girls were amazed with the freedom the students had, who could choose what they wanted to learn and when they wanted to learn it.

The next place we visited was the Maungakiekie-Tamaki Local Board office.  Here were we treated to a tour by the lovely receptionists and the girls enjoyed being in the boardroom and having a chance to debate Covid-19 (please see the video below for part of the debate).  

The boys rejoined the girls to meet at the Panmure Community Hall, where we were greeted by the Hall Manager Boaz Moala, who gave us an opportunity to explore the Hall and imagine redesigning the space.  We were lucky to have the chance to see the hall in it's entirety, even the small rooms that had been locked away for years. 

This is the just-before-lunch-I'm-hungry look.

After being treated to a delicious lunch supplied by Josie and her team, students went straight into the presentation part of the day.  Students had to present to invited guests who ranged from Mr Dunn our DP and staff (their P.E and Health teachers) to community activists and business people.  The guests went from group to group to hear their pitch and to provide constructive feedback.  Students who were not presenting were also given the chance to ask questions to each presenter, which meant the presenters needed to be thinking on their feet and ready to provide answers.  Overall the day was really good in providing students an insight into what the end of the project presentations would look like.  The skills and capabilities that students learnt on this day will definitely allow them to grow and enhance those skills moving forward. 

9AK #3: Planning and Scrums video

To help students understand their project groups, they took part in agile project based learning.  This model was introduced by Karl during the 2 day marae noho at the beginning of the year and I was interested in how it would support the groups in  getting their actions completed in their project groups.

Each group has a 'scrum' and they needed to take part in a 'sprint' which was like an intense, high pressure , where they complete any tasks on their backlog list to do.

On the video it shows the following:

• Students listening to the instructions.  
• They led some of the discussions.  
• They modelled to each other what to do. 

Here is a video showing students at work.  In my observations, I am able to see which groups found the teacher instructions useful and followed the tasks set and whether the modelling the students did also supported their learning.

TAI2020: Thinking about PAT reading across the cluster

During one of our staff meetings, our DP Russell shared the highlights from our recent PAT tests. held in the junior school.

One of the highlights was that the juniors were extremely well behaved and took the tests seriously.  Getting them to that point took lots of organising and preparation because in the past, their poor results were a reflection of the students' negative attitudes towards the testing.

A key message that was shared from Woolf Fisher was that  support was needed in reading for year 8 students heading into year 9.   What would that support look like?  And how can we at the college better collaborate with teachers or educators at year 8 to enable this support.  (I also wondered if I could use this as a reason to justify the need for my inquiry)

A new term that I've learnt is 'High Level Practice'.  I want to look at how I can incorporate the 5 HLP's into my inquiry so I can explore whether they would work within my project based class.

After reading through the powerpoint, I also decided to have a look back at the 'Manaiakalani Data Sense making shared document' to see what strategies and suggestions were discussed when Woolf Fisher had shared their data findings earlier in the year. 

One of the suggestions was to 'Identify teachers who had high shift, find out what made the shift'. This will be on my 'to do' list.  I liked reading about what worked at our different primary schools and I wondered if there was one that they (or most of them) used that worked.  I'm also interested in how to have regular interrogations of the data.  I think my next steps would be to figure out what's on top with regards to managing my inquiry.

(I made the cut on Russell's ppt)

TAI2020 WFRC Inquiry Question #1: An Inquiry Stocktake

How well do you reflect on your inquiry? 

I feel I do well.  Last year, I felt I started really well and was fully engaged, I just got a bit lost at the end with evaluation because I freaked out at the academic way to present it. 

What worked well in 2019

One of the strengths of my 2019 inquiry was my ability to profile the students,  monitor and tweak the approaches that I was using.  I enjoyed videoing my meetings with Dr Jannie and the students and could see the benefits in sharing that learning with all involved.  I kept a really good record of the stages of my inquiry except for the last stage.

I later realised that I wasn’t challenging my higher ability learners well.

My Challenges in 2019

I wish I knew how I was going to measure success in my inquiry from the start of the year.  I left it too late.

The Support I need in 2020

As above plus more COL meeting time with our team.  

What part of the inquiry process do you need support with?

Definitely the measuring and evaluating of student learning.

Focus Inquiry #1: My Focus for 2020

Welcome back to another year of my inquiry.  It has been such a busy term already and as a teacher, I often wonder where the time has gone and have I done enough to support my learners!.

The purpose of this post is to share my learnings about my inquiry so far.  This year, I knew that I wanted to continue to focus on a group or class in Year 9.  Although I enjoy teaching my senior classes, my heart has always been in helping the junior school.  To me, that's when we can set them up for life! This year, we have finally got a year 9 project based learning class off the ground and when Russell our Deputy Principal asked staff who would be interested in teaching them, I jumped at the chance.  

Background:  The class is called Akomanga Kaihanga, a name gifted by Whaea Georgie from Ruapotaka Marae.  It means 'a class of builders and inventors'.   Below is a blurb from the classes perspective.

At the end of 2019, the decision was made to invite students to join who came from a range of backgrounds and abilities.  They submitted an application form and 30 students were invited to join.  Earlier this year we held a powhiri for families in our school marae which gave us the opportunity to share the initiative with parents and for them to ask any questions.  It was a huge success!  This connection with our families provided a good base to kick off the Akomanga Kaihanga initiative.  That same week, the students had a 2 day Noho Marae where they worked closely with Karl Bailey, the project leader and community activator to get to know each other and become familiar with the kaupapa of the course.   This was done three days before the rest of the school started!

Akomanga Kaihanga 9KMe

Our planning group are a team of educators who are made up of myself, Russell our D.P of Curriculum, Jay our HOD Science, Whaea Kata our TIC Health and Christine our year 9 Maths teacher.  The project manager is Karl Bailey who also works with for ADHB. We met a number of times at the end of 2019 and to decide how the timetable would look.  The goal was to ensure that students had enough time to work on projects but at the same not miss on essential learning needed as a year 9 student.  It was decided that they would have 6x 50 minute periods a week (essentially their Social Studies time plus 2 extra periods) to work on their projects.  There was also allocated half day, whole day and workshop type programmes spread throughout the year.

The first week was spent with the students getting to know each other as well as us as their teachers.  For second week the students jumped straight into their projects.

The Challenges:  My observations of how students and staff connected, has led me to understand that there are challenges around collaboration.  These challenges are what will drive my inquiry.

• The Staff Planning Group:  As a planning group, we worked through issues around timetable and allocating time for project based learning although we are still at the early stage of 'real' collaboration.  In the past I have supported and led integrated projects at our school namely the Junior olympic study in 2016 and the year Sustainability unit in 2018).  What I have learnt from these integrated projects was that teachers didn't really understand what real collaboration was.  I actually didn't really understand it either - I still don't.  So my wonderings are around whether we can come to a shared understanding of what collaboration or integration is and how can we support each other better.

• The Student Project teams:  As students are working in their groups, I have noticed that the dynamics within the groups sometime are not reflective of real collaboration.  The assumption is that we think that they just know how to collaborate.  The reality is it's a learning process, one that I think needs to be explicitly taught.  I notice that in some groups, there are dominant members and in others a lack of engagement and Talanoa.  

So for now, my inquiry will ask:  Does project based collaborative ways of learning in a Talanoa environment make the difference in the learning journey of our kids? 

As an aside, I want see if we as educators can have a shared understanding of what collaboration and integration is and whether this understanding will impact on the achievement successes of our learners.

9AK #2: Learning conversation and interviewing skills

As part of their projects, groups were given the challenge to find 3 people who they could share their aims and intentions of their projects with.  When they were first given this challenge a week ago, about two thirds of the class took it which was positive to see.  Sadly, the ones who did not engage with the task were the quiet and shy ones of the groups.  I wondered if they knew how to approach people and ask them questions.  I assumed when we put the challenge out, that students could just 'do it'.  I decided to put together a short presentation giving students clues as to how to introduce themselves to a new person and how to continue a conversation going.

Lesson:

I reminded the class of the challenge from the previous week.  I talked to the class about the importance of knowing the skills as it may not come natural to some students.

I modelled an example of good conversation skills with Karl and another student in the front of the class.  I got them to practice in pairs then some groups had the opportunity to practice with real people.

I then wanted students to write down how would draft an email as it was another way to communicate with people.  These instructions were written on the board.

Outcome:

Quite positive overall.  I observed 2 to 3 students in some groups still not fully participating and approached them quietly to see how they were.  I could tell that they found it difficult not because they didn't know what to do, but were afraid of not knowing what to say back to other people.  I need to think about strategies that will not be too overwhelming for the shy students but would hopefully support them better in approaching others when they need to.  On reflection, I feel I need to be more clear and definitive in what skills I want the kids to learn when it comes to interviewing.  I think I need to look specifically at the Talanoa as a tool that be more scaffolding and supportive of the kids and their learning.

The photo shows a few students in team DonkCorn presenting their project brainstorm.

9AK #1: A class trip on day ONE!

Today the year 9AK class got the chance to visit a few different places where actions and projects were taking place that directly impacted their community.  This was essentially their first ‘real’ day at Tamaki and they went straight into a class trip!

Students were divided into 3 groups and went to the following places: 

• Auckland City Council in downtown Auckland.
• Tamaki Regeneration Company in Panmure
• Ministry of Education in Mt Eden.

The purpose was to give the kids a chance to see projects being done in a wider scale and how these organisations went about planning and implementing a process.  I was blessed with taking a group to Panmure to visit the TRC’s head office.

Reflection:  The feedback from the students was positive and they enjoyed listening to the speakers.  They were shown around the office and introduced to most of the people in the office.  They were invited to ask questions and it was a good opportunity for them to practice speaking to adults in a professional organisation.  As I did not know all of the kids well, it was a good chance for me also to observe who the confident students were and those who were quieter in the group.