Monday, August 29, 2011

Student Voice

Quite recently our team spent some time capturing another round of student voice around strategic goals areas. We asked questions like What makes a good learner a good learner?, what do you do when you get stuck in your learning?, what is your reading learning goal?, what is your next learning step?,
We were reminded what a powerful thing it is to spend time doing. It clearly highlighted progress made since capturing baseline student voice, it quickly highlighted next steps and illuminated assumptions made.
In summary It is fair to say we would believe it to be one of the most powerful things you can spend time doing. It causes and enables change.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Learner Led Conferences

It's been some weeks since our Learner Led Conferences and a promise to communicate how they went. Now that our community feedback has been received, via survey monkey, we can be evidenced in feeding back how they really went. The survey confirmed that 85% of conferences lasted for at least an hour. Children were in the driving sheet to share their learning and achievements. Each hub had created agendas of 'must dos' and 'can dos' to help structure the conference. It was wonderful to walk through the learning hubs and see a variety of learning experiences in action, these included experiences such as learners teaching their parents a maths games, using Success Criteria to do an observational drawing or self assess a writing sample using criteria together. Regardless of the power-cut and internet dropping for a period of time the learning continued to be shared.!



We value our parent feedback and voice - a glimpse of some feedback ...

'It was nice to have our childs input & ownership on the evening. We found we left knowing & understanding were our child was at, instead of attending a 15 min interview still unsure of what we needed to do to help improve his learning.'

'The interaction with our child, seeing him explain to us where he is at and what his goals are to get to where he needs to be'

'The time to spend in the Hub, moving around, led confidently by my child, having some one on one time with the guardians, it was interactive, interesting and insightful. We were really impressed, thank you.'

As a staff we have reflected on the process and thought about how we might continue to further improve the process to ensure that our learners truly led their conferences and parents leave feeling totally satisfied about 'how their child is going, and what their next learning steps are.