Sharpening Strengths

I have been doing lots of wondering about how to best build confident, connected, life long learners. I believe there is a place to actively build a learners capacity to learn. This encompasses building self awareness and self efficacy in learners, it's about knowing when to persevere and when to stop. It's building mastery and competence in foundation areas to be able to access learning, problem solve and think critically across curriculum areas. Importantly I am coming to think that it is about seeking out and identifying learners strengths and talents and being quite deliberate at setting goals in these areas to self improve and achieve fulfillment, mastery, satisfaction and ultimately happiness. All too often we over emphasize setting goals in areas of need only. Mark Tredwell once said in a conversation some months back that the world is running out of experts. Are we schooling for generalists? Can it be too soon (primary years) to hone in on strengths. What do parents know about their child's strengths and character traits that we can learn from on enrolment in our schools. I am not sure that the parents voice and historic overview is valued as much as it might be. How might this be captured on enrolment?
I believe talents can be used to leverage success in areas that don't come to easily for learners.

Go Sir Ken Robinson

How refreshing to view Ken Robinsons latest Ted Talk. He shares how time takes a different course when individuals are involved in things that resonates with their spirit. Ken reinforces the importance of moving from a linear process of learning to a more organic process that allows individuals to flourish and realise dreams.

Poker Chips - Building Self Esteem

Learners should work harder than their Teachers!

I was privileged to sit in on a session that Anne Davies facilitated at the beginning of this year. Anne is an assessment guru residing in Canada. One of the comments she made has resonated with me ever since. She said that we need to get students to work harder than their teachers.
The more I have pondered this the more I have to agree. She shared the importance of learners being involved in assessing peers learning and building their own assessment literacy to make informed judgments about progress and high achievement.
Whilst sitting in classes recently I have been thinking about the traditional mental model we hold about teachers providing the right stretch and challenge for each learner to reach their potential. To get the learner working harder we need to flip that on it's head and teach learners how to give themselves the right kind of stretch. I am wondering how one might motivate and empower learners to build a habit of extending beyond what they can already do.

Artifact to stimulate a Learning Conversation

Just the sort of resource we continue to look for to stimulate learning conversations with students. Perseverence, Self Motivates, Sets goals and plans etc all come to mind.

The Power of Student Voice

We learnt from interviewing students about successful learners just how powerful it is to take stock and talk to students and really intently listen to what they have to say. Students are after all testimony to whether or not we have been successful. In continuing to deeply listen to student voice we discovered a developmental progression of students acquisition of the Life Long Learning competencies.
Firstly students could name the qualities – list
Then they could tell you what they meant - describe
It was quite a different level those students who could explain how they used the competencies in their learning – apply
The ultimate goal was for these competencies to be internalised or as a student so eloquently put it ‘when it’s part of me’.
Without listening to students I do not believe we would have arrived at this thinking.
Since unpacking Life Long Learning we have captured students voice before implementing any new initiative.

Learning is the Business

Schools like any business are organisations which are driven by a CORE business, what differs is the outcome. In business it is about making money, in education driving learning. It has continued to surprise me over the last decade that in spite of educations core business being that of learning we seem to spend little time talking about it.

What is learning? What conditions support learning? What are the barriers to learning deeply? How does the brain learn? what strategies help me continue to learn when I am stuck?

A few examples of questions that require time to unpack, dialogue about and reflect on for both teachers and their students.
The unrealistic pressure of covering content often only results in surface learning. To learn powerfully and deeply, decisions need to be made by the organisation about what students should be
1 – learning about what content will aid individuals in making sense of the world they live in and contribute creatively.
2 – develop the necessary ‘Learning Power’ as Guy Claxton terms or capacity to learn deeply and powerfully. Both need to be developed simultaneously.

Clarity about the end in mind profile of a student needs careful deliberation and dialogue. A futuristic vision of the knowledge, dispositions and values a student would need to be equipped with based on the principles embedded in the vision is essential in reframing 20th century mental models of coverage verses depth.

Tony Ryan - Inspirational

How refreshing to have sat in on a dinner meeting session on Monday evening run by Tony Ryan. Tony reminded us of the important job and role teachers play in influencing our future generation. Teachers can make or break a students schooling experience. Most teachers make it, however I continue to be confronted with stories of students who were less fortunate. Bad experiences can scar deeply. I was reminded of this when I met with a parent this week who was concerned about her daughters progress. The mother sat before me with tears in her eyes and said 'I didn't have a good school experience and I don't want my daughter to experience what I did' It was hard to believe coming from a warm, caring obviously able mother sitting before me. Why does our system do that? How can we ensure it doesn't happen?
As Tony reminded us we as teachers we are in a priviledged position, a significant position. We need to be energised and passionate to influence and engage all learners. Our ability to motivate and challenge is crucial in enabling individuals to reach their potential.
Lot's of food for thought .... something I will ponder some more on.

Assessment - Communicating a Balanced Picture

My previous blog entry talked about having a clear and easily articulated 'end in mind' for the students leaving our school.  The bit we are working on and haven't got quite right yet is what are we communicating to our parent body about how students are going according to the 4 major outcomes we would like students to leave our school equipped with.  For so long we have been so preoccupied with reporting on levels of achievement against curriculum areas.  What we have not been so good at is communicating a students ability to 'know what to do when they don't know what to do' or share a students level of competency in say their ability to investigate.  I think we need to take a hard look at current assessment practices.  A far more balanced picture needs to be presented to students and parents about what equates to success.  At the moment success in school and success in life look quite different.  Let's not let outdated assessment measures and methods hold back innovation.  A fresh approach is required to develop tools and e portfolio spaces that students own and manage.  As I was reminded of recently by a colleague, teachers come and go each year in a students education, parents hold the historic overview and students have the greatest potential to positively influence their learning.   When the necessary scaffolds are in place for example progressions that show students in 'kid speak' where am I and what are the next learning steps are.  Secondly when we grow students assessment literacy to know how to answer, how am I going?, Where am I going? and where to next?, students have huge learning power to achieve to their potential.  We need to strive towards communicating a balanced picture to encompass achievement as we know it and include a dispositional overview of an individuals learning capacity.  

One said 'Wisdom'

How refreshing today as I was striding around the neighbour on an afternoon walk I bumped into a past secondary school teacher.  It was lovely catching up after so many years.  As we are both in education the conversation soon led there!  We talked about how so much in education tends to over complicate matters.  We agreed that sound practice is common sense.  I then shared that simply there are 4 things we want students to be equipped with in our primary school environment.  He asked what are those 4 things?  I said we want students to; 

• Know what to do when they don't know what to do
  
• Know how to learn on their own (be literate)
  
• Be able to relate and connect with others and the world
  
• Have a process that helps them problem solve, answer questions and investigate.
  

My previous teacher said 'that's wisdom'.  Such a statement took me back - hence caused this blog entry.

These four holistic outcomes are very much based on the School's Vision.  They form a clear direction or what some might term an 'end in mind'.  It is far easier to plan strategically to ensure such outcomes are achieved when you are realistic, context specific (what's appropriate for a primary school environment) and that the outcome is manageable and achievable.  

Lovely bumping into you today Mr Mac - Teachers do make a difference!

Open Wings

I continue to be delighted every day as our vision concept of 'empowerment' begins to be realised.  The five year old who suggests that the corner school sign should say 'Have a happy weekend' suggests that it ok to put ideas forward.  I spoke to a parent this afternoon before the bell rang at 3.00pm,  she had great delight in telling me what her 7 year old daughter had to say about self talk.  'Mum today when my group was talking next to me I self talked to tell myself to keep focused on my learning and don't get distracted by them'.  How wonderful to think that students are being intentionally and explicitly taught strategies to encourage ownership in learning.  

As I walked on through to a year 6 class they proudly showed me the s-t-r-e-t-c-h poster they have been creating to help ensure the right kind of stretch is happening for the in their learning.  H = hard, S = simple and e in the middle = exactly right.  It continues to fascinate me just how 'on the button' kids are when we give them the opportunity.

Teaching learners explicitly about learning to learn strategies and constantly giving teacher permission to take time to have rich and deep learning conversations are key strategies in ensuring learning is our organizations CORE BUSINESS.

It is so refreshing to slow down and listen to the influential voices (students, teachers and parents).  Let the 'voice be heard from the floor'.  I was influences by a well respected colleague today he said 'change needs to happen from the floor'.  I tend to agree

Student Voice - Always worth listening to!

I had an interesting chat today with a year 3 boy. He was identified 3 years ago as a child we would track over their primary school years to gage any movement in his development and understanding of the identified Life Long Learning competencies. When I asked this young man if he believed he was a life long learner his response was 'not really because I don't use it all the time' I probed a little deeper to discover he could indeed recall (quite surface) all the Life Long Learner qualities that we reinforce at Red Beach School and he could describe in full which each of the Life Long Learning qualities was. As the developmental framework we have developed over time highlights the goal is for students to apply these qualities in their everyday school and outside school life. I then asked 'What will it take for you to apply these qualities more?' He said I could pick a quality a day and really work on applying that during the day, positive self talk and making myself do it helps'. It appeared he had all the Life Long Learning literacy necessary. I have been reflecting on what he said all day - what enablers help to shift students, shunt them into really applying the qualities? What can we do better to demonstrate the gain/value add? Do students experience enough challenges each day in their learning to truly have opportunities to apply such qualities? All good food for thought! I continue to rate highly the power of student voice in directing our where to next steps. This kid has huge potential are we really building his learning capacity as best we can?

Life Long Learning Displays

The words around each quality proved to be useful success criteria

Life Long Learning - Possibilities

There are many ways of exemplifying Life Long Learning.  This is one model we worked on during 2003.  We wanted to develop a shared language for talking about learning.  A key goal was to move our focus away from reinforcing behavior.  Over a term we ran learning assemblies under the theme of 'The sky's the limit' Each week we would pick a quality.  We had lots of fun, loud music and learning experiences to reinforce each quality.  The term ended with each class creating a display on a particular quality.  A local newspaper was invited along with our community to celebrate Life Long Learning. 

On reflection the Life Long Learning qualities that seemed to have the most significant impact on students learning were the (I) related qualities e.g self improves, self motivates. 

Power of a Shared Language

I walked into a year 1 class today and asked them what they do to be successful learners.  One stated "I persevere, when I don't know a word I keep trying and try and trying".  Another said "I take risks, I am not afraid to give it ago".  These responses are a vast contrast with what 100 sampled students said when interviewed three and a half years ago.  I attribute such growth and development in students ability to describe and apply life long learning dispositions to collaboratively developing a shared language.  The seven qualities decided upon were

Created by Red Beach School Staff

Learning conversations - I'm Stuck!

An example of a learning conversation with some 10 year olds.  They have lots of great thought.  The challenge is for students to be challenged enough to experience being stuck to apply this thinking.

Spilt Screen Approach to Teaching and Learning

Maybe the balance has been wrong for too long. Knowing a whole lot of information in curriculum areas seem to have dominated and out weighed what is powerful to learn in most schools for some time. Teachers have been pressured and constrained to get through content and meet standards to the detriment of equipping students with the necessary 21st century skills, dispositions and knowledge required for a dynamically different future. As many have stated there won't be simple answers to future problems.

Of much interest and focus globally over the last decade has been the development of learning competencies and thinking skills the necessary dispositions to equip learners with knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.

As an Educator working in a learning institute how much time do we spend doing this?, actually intentionally talking about processing what is is to be a successful learner. There traditionally never seems to be much time left for that. Teaching content seems to come first.

I encourage educators to approach content and the building of learning capacity as equally important. Guy Claxton suggests a split screen approach - in equilibrium - balance. Am interested in others thoughts around this.

I guess it then presents the question is doing Less well, indeed More? and What really is powerful for students to learn?

Life Long Learning

Life long learning. An often banded about turn of phrase since the turn of the century. What does it really involve? What do we need to do in our schools to ensure students are leaving with the necessary skills, attitudes and dispositions to continue to learn throughout life? What needs to take place in our classrooms so that students build confidence around knowing 'what to do when they don't know what to do'? Honestly how many times a day would a students truly be challenged and put in a situation where they are 'stuck'? Isn't it experiencing these 'I'm stuck' situations that true learning occurs?

Students responses are always enlightening - I quizzed some students recently about what teachers could improve on. The responses 'stop teaching us stuff we already know' certainly caused some deep reflection. What percentage of kids feel challenged on a daily basis? How many learn in-spite of what we do?

One needs to direct some more conversations with students and teachers about getting to that ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) Vygotsky. After all isn't that the best way to develop Life Long Learning attitudes and dispositions?

Goal Achieved!

I was sitting at Ulearn 08 and kicking myself that I hadn't got bogging again long before now.  I started blogging in 2004.  A friend challenged me to get blogging and I quickly found it was an invaluable way of capturing ones thinking and showing how it continues to evolve and grow as time goes on.

I paid my yearly subscription (haven't things changed) and when the provider went bust I lost all my entries.  A good lesson to learn.  I guess I will be better at backing up everything now.

Looking forward to getting going again.  Goal started I said I would come back from Ulearn and start blogging.  Next entry of more educational value

As Eric Butterworth quotes "Don't go through life, grow through life"