Spark MIT Presentation

During the term 3 holidays the SPARK MIT grouped attended the ULearn Conference in Hamilton. All of the SPARK MIT Teachers presented their Inquiries in an ignite talk.
We had 6 minutes and 20 slides to present our inquiry.  After our presentation the audience had an opportunity to ask three questions beginning with WHAT? WHY? and HOW?

SPARK MIT 2017 @ ULearn 2017
Dot, Angela, Kelsey, Alicia, Troy, Hinerau, Sandy and Dorothy


Our Audience!!


Me presenting my Ignite about Collaboration, Visible Learning and Digital Tools

Everyone did an awesome job at their presentations. Thanks so much to SPARK and Manaiakalani for supporting us and providing us with this great opportunity to share our inquiries.

It was a very inspiring conference with lots of things to take away and think about.  I picked up some great ideas and great next steps for us moving forward in our collaborative space.

Here is a link to my notes I took from the Keynotes and Breakouts I attended.

Collaboration Framework

As part of the Innovation part of my Inquiry, I wanted to create a framework that teachers could use that related to Collaboration, Digital Tools and Visible Learning. I am about 96% happy with the framework BUT would love any feedback about what teachers/leaders/facilitators etc think.

Collaboration / Digital Tools / Visible Learning Framework

Below are a set of statements for you to think about your practice and where you sit within the context of working in a collaborative learning environment, being at home in the digital world and providing visible learning for your learners.

Term 3 - SPARK MIT

Another very thought provoking and successful day at Spark HQ for Term 3. It was great to re-connect with everyone again and listen to their journeys.

Our first task of the day was to think Fantasy - think about the Holy Grail. If everything in our inquiry was perfect what would it look like?

For my inquiry it would be:
Accelerated progress is happening for all learners. All teachers are working collaboratively - making use of digital tools to support the Learn Create Share Model, and visible teaching and learning evident (children using site for their learning - moving forward on their own). Blogging is a natural part of their learning.

We were then introduced to the SCAMPER Model. We had to use this model and apply a part or parts of it to our inquiry (Thinking Big Picture - we may choose to do it or not).

I chose to use:

Modify - Focus more on Digital Tools (Student Agency) now!

Put to another use - Cluster Sharing (Sharing our findings and what we are doing to make accelerated progress).

Next part of our day was discussing our Ignite Presentation that we will be giving at the ULearn Conference. 6 minutes - 20 Slides, 20 seconds per slide! using a great programme called keynote. Dorothy gave an example of this type of presentation. Such a great way to share the key parts of our inquiry. We also watched Karen Belt's keynote she gave last year through the eyes of a student. It was very clever!

Then it was our turn to start planning. Creating a table 20 rows x 2 columns to record our Image Ideas and Content thoughts. I was really pleased to get most of my thoughts and ideas down for my presentation and received great feedback and feed forward from Anne Sinclair.

Now I need to take time to rework / re-craft to make sure I am making the impact I want. And then it's writing my notes to match my thoughts and images.

Making Connections to other Inquiries

One of our tasks was to make connections to Inquiries of past Spark MIT Teachers. I have visited the Spark MIT site and read through many previous inquiries and well as watching their final presentations.

I found it quite difficult to make connections as my inquiry is focusing on the teachers and their practice rather than the students and their learning. But reading through the many inquiries what does resonate with my inquiry is the terms acceleration and achievement! I believe that my inquiry into collaboration, digital tools, and visible learning is a key success in accelerating progress for students, especially target students in literacy.

There are many ideas from some of these inquiries that the staff have used in their classrooms and have found them successful. Thanks to Lisa Tatum who was a Spark MIT teacher last year sharing with us.

Karen Belt
Matt Goodwin
Also
Kent Somerville

Making connections with this year's inquiries I can connect with Hinerau - where her focus is about making teaching and learning visible to raise student achievement. This was one part of my inquiry.

Data!!

Looking and discussing our data!

Recently we have held our Mid Year data discussions - with all the testing completed for Reporting.

We discussed our target learners and the progress they are making. It was great to listen to the progress that some of them are making and what the teachers have been doing that has contributed to this success. Teachers are making good use of the collaborative learning space to maximize the learning time. Reading progress continues to be a real success. 67% of our target readers have now met their target.  Feed in lessons are a real success for the priority learners. They are excited when they come to the lesson confident and ready to contribute to the group. Target student programmes are also very focused on their learning gaps.

Our school mid year data is very positive and is better than it was at the same time point last year. We had lots of discussion about why we think this. We think that collaboration has been a major factor in the success of our learners. The students are used to the learning environments and there is continuity. Teachers have identified what worked well last year and are building on this. All students in Year 3 - 6 are using the team sites to access their learning and less time for instruction is needed. Less whole class teaching and more group (both ability and mixed ability) teaching is happening.

Innovation!!

As the innovation part of my inquiry, I planned to construct a rubric that teachers could use to assess where they were at with collaboration, visible learning and digital tools.
I was fortunate enough to spend a morning with Tania Coutts who helped me begin the construction of my rubric. I split the rubric into three parts for each of the three focus areas.  Eg: Collaboration - is I, Sometimes We and Always We!

After lots of thought and discussion I then decided to change from a rubric to: A framework with questions to encourage teachers to think about where they sit within the context of working in a collaborative learning environment, being at home in the digital world and providing visible learning for their learners.

I used the following resources to support me in the development of my framework.

New Pedagogies for Deep Learning

eLearning Planning Framework

CORE Education Collaboration Framework

Creating collaborative effectiveness - Sarah Martin and Chris Bradbeer - Stonefields School

Evaluating and Improving the Quality of Teacher Collaboration - Rebecca Gajda, Christopher J. Koliba

I then had a skype session with Dorothy and she gave me some suggestions about how I could develop my framework further. One of her suggestions was to get some opposing voice. I shared the framework with my colleague I work with and one of our facilitators to fill out - thinking about me as the teacher. I also marked myself where I thought I was for each area. My facilitator gave me good feedback and got exactly the same results as I did, which was really interesting as he has not spent a lot of time in my space this year. I am still waiting to hear my colleagues results.

I have just spent the last couple of days tweaking the framework. I am wanting to discuss the changes I have made with Tania and Lee (My Principal) before I post it up and use it on my staff. 

SO... Watch this space.

PLG -Sharing Collaboration

Our recent PLG for the Kaikohekohe Cluster was focused on each school sharing a 10 minute presentation on how collaboration is leading to better outcomes for teachers and students. This was a great opportunity to listen to what is happening in other schools that fit in with my inquiry focus. A lot of what was discussed was the use of digital tools by students that allows the opportunity for collaboration to take place.

One college shared about how two teachers from different subject areas are working collaboratively together and the impact this is having on their students. I think this is very exciting and look forward to booking a visit to see this in action.

Below is the presentation our school shared on how collaboration is leading to better outcomes for learners, especially our target students. The video demonstrates a targeted lesson that is taken by one teacher while the other teacher is taking the whole class for admin tasks in the morning. This presentation was presented by our junior team but this concept is happening across our school.