Back From My Disappearing Act or Welcome to 2017!

So, I've been a little absent from the online community for the past few months. There have been various reasons for this, but basically life was good and then it wasn't. Both the good and bad events made me think deeply about what was important in my life. Some things were missing (and to a degree still are) and it caused me to ignore a big part of my life - my career.

Without going into details (I want to avoid giving TMI), there were some issues about the people surrounding me in my personal life (though, I should also credit the amazing and supportive people who helped me through this - and continue to support me in many ways). Being a foreigner who moved here along about 5 years ago, I do not have a support network. It has been difficult to deal with the stresses of being a teacher and of being a person in that context.

I think the thing I learned, or rather the thing that was reinforced, is that every educator needs a good support network beside them. Every educator needs to have something beyond their school - a reason for working. Despite many of us viewing our career as a calling, at the end of the day it is a job and we need something beyond that.

That being said, today was my first official day back from the holidays and though I was not in a great headspace I feel in a much better headspace. I can't say I'm quite ready for the new school year, but I'm definitely feeling more ready for it than I was a week ago.

Today we did a lot of different sessions on a lot of different topics. My biggest takeaway from the day was a session we did on collaboration. We were put into groups and given the following task: Work collaboratively to lift one of your team members as high as you can. After some great ideation where we all shared some amazing ideas and built upon each others' ideas we decided to use the elevator to lift one person. When we went downstairs to actually do it, we came up with a variety of other ways in which we could not only lift our person (we lifted her into a chair and then lifted the chair up) but also how we could collaborate (we had a pretty long chain reaction of people that got her into the elevator and pushed the buttons).

Afterwards we discussed the skills involved in collaborating and realized that we need to be cognisant of teaching the specific skills that learners will need when we ask them to collaborate. As adults (who are used to working in teams) we often forget this fact as we have learned this skills over time. When our learners come next week, this will be a good place to start with, as we'll need to get to know each other and do team building activities. I'm looking forward to creating a collaborative habitat this coming year.

Later in the day we discussed one of the unique ways in which OrmPS shows learner achievements and progress: Narrative Assessments. For more information, I'm sure someone will be sharing these at an educamp or Google Summit or uLearn, but to make a long explanation short, they basically show what learning was done, often with pictures and other artefacts and include next steps. They are to make learning more visible and not just ticking boxes. To practice making these, we watched the video (below) and worked in teams to make a narrative assessment of the man in the video.

Going forward I'm going to look at ways in which I can do these narratives in an innovative way, so any ideas are appreciated in the comments (though we do have lots of ideas that we've discussed and tried at OrmPS already).

Passion Project Sharing!

Today, after two attempts at Passion Projects and much reflection, my class had our first real celebration of our learning. And it was amazing! We had invited parents and some other staff members to come in for about an hour to find out what my learners had been doing all term. Last time we shared, we had each group or individual go up and talk to the class. This time, after thinking about it, I decided to try doing a fair of sorts. We had one learner who wanted to go up and present (see the video) and the rest took turns at sharing their work at tables throughout the room.

We had about 10 parents join us today and they were all amazing. They went around to each of the tables, talked to all of the children and asked lots of questions. It was such a positive and inspiring day and though I know I did do things to support my learners, this came almost completely from them. They were super confident and I was so proud of every single one of them. See below for pictures of the day.

How might I do more and better HTML coding?

Why do diet coke and mentos react?

Why do scientists invent so many things that are a waste?

How might I encourage people to like school?

What can we learn about nocturnal animals?

How might we make home-made jewelry?

Binoculars

How can I learn to code a website?

There was a buzz in the air?

How can I make a model of a wolf?

How can we make a house?

Revisiting my Mixed-Ability Reading Journey

I had written a whole long post on this topic last week, and was just waiting for some data to finish it up, but then something tragic happened, and it all got deleted by accident (ctrl+z did not work!).  So I'll try my best to recreate what I had written (and perhaps it will be better).

Two terms ago I changed the way I taught reading. I was souring on the effectiveness of achievement (ability) groupings in everything and this was the last frontier.  I wrote some initial thoughts after one term, but now I have some data to back things up. In those two terms, 19 of my learners participated in the mixed-achievement groups, reading two novels over the two terms. This change started in early May and the latest results have come during early September, so the time frame is approximately 4 months. Over those four months, the average improvement in reading age has been 9.9 months, more than double what would be expected The smallest improvement was 3 months and the largest was 21 months. Though this is not exactly a scientific study, it does show that a) I'm not crazy for doing this and b) even if the reasons for their improvement did not include the way I taught, it's clear that the mixed-achievement groups does not hinder learners from improving and the children are not subjected to who is in the lowest group. I wish I had taken some other data at the beginning of this (asking learners if they enjoy reading, if they think they are good at reading) as that may have been more valuable, but anecdotally, the class tells me they don't want to go back to the old way.

Furthermore, while looking at the reading results, I had a look at my writing results as well, a subject in which I have not had achievement groups all year. On average, compared to their term 1 Asttle results, my learners have improved an average of 3.1 points on the scoring rubric, which translates (roughly) to 1.5 sublevels, which is approximately the amount of progress expected in a whole year. So overall, my students have improved more than what would be expected over that time.

Given the improvements, I have spent some time thinking about why this might be, and I came up with several reasons:

Choice
Though the choice I gave my learners was not very big, I let them choose from books they would enjoy (Roald Dahl) and didn't force any particular books on them (in fact, there was a multiple step process to figure out which books to read, each step involving learner voice). Having children choose what they read puts a lot of the ownership back onto them, they want to read those books, and they are excited to talk about them.

Discussion
A lot of the work was based around discussions and questioning, directed by both myself and my learners. Since all learners came from different backgrounds and experiences, mixing up the groups provided for richer discussion and thought about the books. Children who have never worked together before had a chance to share their ideas with each other. This is always a good thing, getting ideas and ways of thinking shared between learners, and having them support each other in developing their comprehension strategies.

Enjoyment, not Shaming
Most children who are not in the top group do understand what this means. By focusing on enjoyment over achievement (on an arbitrary scale) learners are more engaged and enjoy reading more. When reading is enjoyable, they do it more often. When they do it more often, they get better at it.

SOLO Maps
Most of the work I do with the groups for their novels, revolves around SOLO maps and using them to understand the book a bit better. From the first to the second term, there was a marked increase in confidence of students using the maps, to the point where some didn't even need me to walk them through it. They were able to think about what happened in the book critically and delve deep into the meaning of what the author wrote.

Harder Books
Rather than give learners books that are "at their level," more difficult books (which are chosen by the children) push them to learn more. They are motivated to read the harder books and when they go back to their levelled tests, they seem much easier by comparison, which helps them succeed more easily.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how this reading (and the writing) program has gone this year. My learners are clearly more confident with their learning and sharing what they know (though this is not just because of the reading, but it has played a part in it) as well as working as a team. Incidentally, it has been harder to prove an improvement in math results this year as it is not as easily quantified (or at least I haven't yet tried to do so). Has anyone else tried mixed-achievement reading? Has it been successful? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

On Stepping Back and Watching

For a lot of my teaching career, I have been told that I must be doing something with the students. That maximizing time with me is what will make the difference for students. A buzzword that some principals and other leaders like to use is "direct acts of teaching." Our days are structured by how many groups we can see, as if this makes all the difference in the world.

But I'm here to ask if perhaps we've got it backwards. I'm not saying just let children be all by themselves the whole day - that has the potential for disaster (though I am somewhat interested as to what would happen if that were the case). I'm talking about pulling back and letting students have a go; letting them have a chance to make their own meaning and work through problems their own way.

A big focus of my teaching the last couple of years has been using the problem solving approach in mathematics. In it, I give my students some problems. We discuss what they might mean beforehand, then I let them have a go. Often I just step back and go help the other learners in the class and let them struggle. I've even gone so far as to ban children from asking me questions during their work time. I will drop in and out of each group, asking them to explain what they're doing (and sometimes even doing those - unplanned - direct acts of teaching, if necessary).

The struggle itself is what helps learners learn and grow. I could tell them what they need to know, but a) I doubt very much they're all listening, b) they all need to know different things, even learners who have achieved to a similar degree, and c) learners can and want to learn anything, so who am I to dictate what they should be learning by completing any given activity. There's even evidence that this gives bigger gains in the long run.

More recently (probably in the last few months), I've started doing this more, in other areas. Passion projects are a great way to do this. I've also stepped back in writing and have allowed my students to complete a writing project of their choice - which can range from writing a book to making a stop motion video. Everything we do, I want my learners to grapple with the ideas themselves, experience failure, and then move forward. We are risking the creation a generation of students who merely want to please someone else by spoon feeding them what they need to know.

In writing, I have also begun getting students to evaluate their own work. It was very successful this week. I had taught a quick mini-lesson on improving our vocabulary in our writing and the students went off and wrote on their own. Afterwards, I had them work with each other to identify the interesting words they had used. I watched the whole thing, but the conversations and debates they had ("Is Palmerston North an interesting word?") were much more valuable than me telling them or giving them a worksheet. I even joked during this time to them: "I'm not doing anything". But one student said to me: "Yes you are." They get it. They know it helps them.

There are definitely some interesting perspectives on this. Oftentimes, as teachers we need to feel like we are doing something, as explained in this article. However, I think we need to realize that we can be extremely effective by putting learners into positions where they will struggle and be able to figure it out for themselves.

I also came across this story a while back about WALTS (learning outcomes, objectives, etc for those not down with the lingo) and how they limit learning. Letting students learn their own way means that we shouldn't be dictating the learning outcomes. We can give them a task, but what they learn can be different from one student to the next. Just some more food for thought.

Mixed-Ability Reading - More Thoughts and Developments

I'm a few weeks into my changed reading program and it feels like a good time to share how it's gone. In talking with some colleagues it has become apparent what the particular challenges of mixed-ability groupings will be in this case.

One of the challenges suggested to me is that my more keen readers (or the ones who have been lucky enough to have had positive experiences with reading and have read a lot more) will want to read ahead and the less keen readers (or the ones who have not fully been supported yet) will take more time to read the pages. I'm addressing this problem by 1) reading with the readers who require a bit more support, helping them with decoding the more difficult words and my asking more questions to help them make sense of what they've read, 2) having the quicker readers come up with more questions to discuss - and to extend their thinking by improving the questions they have given - particularly with creating more open questions vs yes/no questions.

Last week I asked my students to give some feedback via a google form anonymously. For whatever reason, not all of my students filled it in, but I did get some helpful responses:

• All of my students said they liked or really liked the book they were reading
• When asked whether they want to keep doing reading this way, 46% said they prefer the novels, while 39% said they were happy either way. None said they wanted to change back.
• Though most students found the books were either easy or just right, there were a couple that thought the book was difficult (particularly those who chose The Witches, which is twice as long as the other books).

As the whole idea pertains to me, I'm finding ways to make the books more enjoyable for the students and to help them understand. We are coming up with good routines when it comes to working as a group (one of the groups has 9 students, which is somewhat of a challenge). Sharing of the chromebooks during discussions and getting all students involved is a problem that we are well on our way to solving. Students are working well in their groups when I'm not around for the most part - all groups are coming up with lots of questions independently and this is allowing us to discuss them AND to work on our questioning skills.

For a while, the SOLO maps became a bit too much, so we missed them for a week or two. Now that we've settled down with our questions, we are able to spend some time in our group discussions on them and this week has shown that we are understanding them a bit better - ideas are flowing, which is the whole point.

The students are really engaged during the time I give them to respond creatively, though most of the ideas tend to be draw a character or a place. Over time, and as I give them more chances to create and more experiences to draw from, I expect that they will have a variety of ways to respond to their reading.  It just takes time.

For a while, I was a bit worried that perhaps what I was doing was not the right way (I was certainly told that, implicitly and explicitly, by a few), but I'm seeing the students and there are way less issues with reading now than there were.

I've found some articles online that discuss some of the issues that we're facing:

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/grouping-students-who-struggle-reading
This has given me some insight into different ways to effectively group my students. Though I don't want to have fixed ability groups, I think there is some value in grouping students according to needs. This is something I will be exploring (and certainly am exploring with my math and writing instruction). It gives some strategies (some of which I am very familiar with) to help involve and engage all students in whole class settings.

http://www.casenex.com/casenet/pages/readings/differentiation/diffisisnot.htm
This one seems a bit like a rant, but I promise there is good information in here. It discusses what differentiation is NOT (and many of these practices I see on a regular basis) but also gives suggestions for what it is. One of the key focuses of the differentiation I'm trying to provide has to do with learning pathways and choice. Students can access the same material (in my case, the same books), but they look at them in different ways and have different understandings of them. Certainly, I am trying to give my students as much choice as possible (even on those days they just frustrate me by making horrible choices) so that their learning can be organic. One thing I need to sort out a bit better is having different modes of learning. Though I do think I do this, I probably need to mix things up a bit more (or maybe I'm doing this without explicitly trying to do it - who knows?).

Certainly the results have not been affected terribly. I'm in the middle of another round of running records and more than half of my students will need to be retested so far. That's certainly good news - at least I'm not negatively affecting their reading!

Student-led Classroom Discussions

In my quest to give students voice and control over their education and learning, I've started giving real-life problems for them to solve. For example, when we had repeated problems with picking who got to get the milk or the chrome books, I asked my students to come up with a solution so that no one would ask me (I have some issues with being crowded and this seemed like something that didn't need approval).

The first two discussions we had were somewhat productive. I was quite impressed that many students gave ideas and spoke out for what they thought was a good solution. They came up with ideas (not the ideas I'd have come up with) and they effectively owned those ideas. For these first two discussions I didn't intervene. I listened but didn't even have to join the circle.

Then we tried a third problem: Making sure the class was tidy. They quickly decided they wanted jobs, but a few other issues came up. One student was dominating the whole discussion and in essence was trying to bully (not really, but that's the closest word to what was going on) the other children to agree with him. The second was that the discussion very quickly descended into chaos as side discussions started happening

So I had to intervene. Even though there were some (most of my students, really) that were genuinely trying to have an open discussion there were some who weren't.

I had a think about it and decided that each of these discussions would have certain students playing roles in order to move things along.

Today we tried out five jobs:

Moderator - chooses who speaks, stops others from interrupting, makes sure everyone has a say

Challenger - puts forth an opposing viewpoint (if it hasn't been already)

Recorder - writes down/types anything that needs writing down

Questioner - asks people to explain their thinking more

Monitor - makes sure we are not taking too long, saying the same things over and over and that students are not disrupting the discussion or wasting everyone's time

I actually had to appoint two monitors today because a lot of students were being silly, BUT the two were pretty good at keeping the students focused.  I still needed to add some input, though. They kept on suggesting ideas and then asking: "Who disagrees?" That led to us pretty much going in a circle, saying the same ideas over and over. So I got my moderator to list the ideas and they took it from there - sort of. They have decided to make some pictures to print out for jobs and they want me to laminate it

Was all this hassle worth it? I could have solved the problem quickly myself and come up with pretty much the same thing. But I think that I've planted several seeds in these students now and they will be given more opportunities to have a say. The problem has not been solved, but we have a potential solution.

I do think I'll try these jobs with other aspects of group work and we can develop more roles that will be appropriate to different situations.

As always, suggestions are always appreciated!

Introduction

Welcome to my professional learning blog.

Introduction

My name is Michael Davidson. I'm a child of the (early) 80s who grew up in Canada. Besides being a teacher, I was and am still trying to be an above average runner. I've now lived in New Zealand for just over 4 years.

Education & Experience

After graduating from High School (Westdale Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) I spent 3 years at York University in Toronto. After spending that third year in the Faculty of Education, I transferred to the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia where I completed a B.Ed.

Over the next few years I taught in both Seoul, Korea and London, England, teaching students from Kindergarten to Year 6. After my visa ran out in England, I moved to New Zealand and found work here. While in New Zealand, I was part of the inaugural Mind Lab Postdegree Certificate program (Digital and Collaborative Learning). I have also recently completed online courses with Google and am a Google Certified Teacher (Level 2).

Past

This is not my first professional blog, but the last one was not very good and wasn't really for me - it was for my old school. For the purposes of sharing the whole journey, you can find that site here.

Purpose of Blog

The purpose of this blog will be threefold: 1) to share what I've done with interested parties, 2) to reflect on things that I've tried (when I've got time to actually do those reflections) and 3) to tick some boxes so that I can renew my registration when it comes up. Hopefully I can focus on the first two more than the 3rd, but let's be honest, that 3rd one makes sure I can keep on eating and sleeping under a roof :)

Watch this space for some entries in the next few days to get me going...