BOI Summit 2023 - Day 2

 Another day in the gorgeous Bay of Islands for Day 2 of the Summit.  

Site website/links

Today's session will kick off hearing from the MIT 2023 cohort.

Opening Session: Pecha Kucha

So many amazing ideas and it is great to see the professionalism during the presentations - I look forward to exploring some of the sites that have been created particularly the Talk the Talk, Math Ventures and Literacy Land

Session 1:  Live Streaming with Drones

Technology has come such a long way - the drone is so easy to fly and seems really stable.  This opens up new learning for me and I'm excited to explore the possibilities. 

Session 2:  Automagic Autocrat

A great inspiring way to use Google Sheets and add-ons to create certificates or mail outs - definitely this is something I can see a use for in my kura particularly around end of year certificates & prizegivings - this will save many hours in manually completing the certificates.  A link to the slides is here.

Session 3:  Rapid Reporting

This session again opened my eyes to the possibilities of using Google Sheets to create many different things - while no longer needing to write reports, there are still many possibilities that my mind was working on while attending this session.  Slides are here. 

Session 4:  Mind Your Messages

Students are using online social media platforms more and more - often inappropriately - the students don't have the skills to do so effectively and responsibly.  Link to site here.

Rounding off the day was an inspiring panel discussion around Innovation and the impact it has had (and will have in the future) on Education.

Once again, a few days of inspiring Professional Development that I enjoyed being a part of.  A huge thanks to the organisers!

BOI Summit 2023 - Day 1

Excited to attend another summit, this time in the beautiful Bay of Islands.  The host school is Bay of Islands College, located at Kawakawa.

Keynote session - Edith Painting-Davis, Principal, Bay of Islands College

Navigating to the North East

For a lot of children the relationships need to be in place for them to learn; what works for Maori works for all (Bishop, Berryman).   Create a pedagogy of relations (Te Kotahitanga).  Any change starts with the staff - having them on board can make the biggest difference.  Close links with whānau - the village raises a student.  Having the relationship with the whānau can really help.  Create a culture of caring in the staff - vigilance, generosity, and acknowledgements  - happy staff, happy students.  This will encourage staff to go above & beyond rather than the 9 - 3 mentality.

Create a balance between relationships, pedagogy and culture - to create the best learning environment for the tamariki in the classroom.  

Simon Sinick's golden circle - why do you do what you do?  Always make sure it has purpose before you do it.  Ensure you allow for teachers to have opportunities to try things - be open to ideas.  Taking the 'risk' is important to ensure you are open to possibly opportunities.

As a leader you need to be responsive and 'up with the play'.  Fight for what the students need in the school - challenge the status quo.  Collaborative leadership is everyone working with a shared vision.  Be consistently present to effect change - lead by example; noticing, acknowledging, recognising & utilising strengths for the benefit of the students, school and community.  Focus on the glimmers and not the triggers!

Session 1: Creating animations in Photopea

Using the online Photopea software, creating images or animations.  Link to slideshow here

Session 2: DFI Reboot:  Workflow

Digital fluency intensive session focussing on technology that improves workflow.  

Google Calendar - set up bookable times (use appointment schedule); set up what information you need when they are making a booking with you

Calendar + Gmail - Use the calendar button at the bottom of the email to offer calendar time slots for the recipient to choose from.

Google Keep  - Create Google keep headers using Google Slides

Link to slides here

Session 3: DFI Reboot:  Media

Digital fluency intensive session focussing on technology that create media using generative AI tools (Canva).   Link to slides is here

Cultural Experience - Waitangi Treaty Grounds

A must visit location that I've yet to see in person, so particularly with the new histories curriculum it was a bucket list visit.  Our tour guide was really informative and interesting to listen to - it certainly makes all the university learning that I have done come alive!  

As I process the learnings of today, I've taken a moment to bookmark some future reading from sessions I didn't attend today (as well as plan my sessions for tomorrow!)  So my "if I could be in two places at once" sessions are:

Getting creative with Mathematics & Statistics

What's New with Google

A full day of learning and cultural immersion - bring on day 2!

Structured Literacy UnConference

The Structured Literacy UnConference today was really inspiring and backed up many of the things that I am currently doing in my classroom.  

Big Ideas

Structured literacy is most important for those learners in the orange and red zone in the Ladder of Reading.    

Lesson Ideas

• Struggling learners need to interact with the sounds and ideas ideally 2 - 3 times a day - how can this be incorporated into my timetable?
• A4 laminated sheet with the 5 vowels and picture visible during all lessons

Structure of the lesson is always:

• Review (the letters/sounds from previous levels)
• Explicit Teaching
• Student Practice
• Application

Explicit teacher always includes I Do, We Do, You Do and is specific, clear and direct.

Ideas for Review:

• Zip through the sounds from earlier packs quickly
• Heart words - say and spell and say again e.g. my  m_y  my
• Word cards from previous levels/teaching

Ideas for Specific Teaching:

• Use of Google Slides (even on the iPad to support lessons, particularly with higher levels)
• Use different colours for new spelling patterns and underline each sound with a dot and new sounds with a dash
• Use of your full arm for blending - going down the arm
• Use of a metal tray with the magnetic letters - red letters for vowels
• Introduce only one new sound each day
• For new letters, picture cards starting with that letter e.g. yak, yellow, yoghurt

Ideas for Student Practice:

• Student practices words (encoding)
• Ensure explicit teaching on how to write a sentence as part of dictation (from approx. level 3)
• Mix this up each day e.g. dictated sentences/read a book

Ideas for Application:

• Read and sort words - could do this via Seesaw
• Pictures to encode - again, could be done via Seesaw
• Speed words - these could be sent home

Ideas for Sending Home for Further Practice:

• Speed words e.g. from the back of the books sent home for further practice
• Heart words
• Word building sheets (to be shared)
• Games to play at home (with notes on specific teaching)
• Little Learners Love Literacy app - stage 1 is free but rest can be purchased
• Reading fans

Further Readings and Research

• Gough & Tumner - Simple View of Reading
• The Reading League website
• Milo's Birthday Surprise - a great book to introduce letters 
• The Science of Reading
• Heggarty Hand Actions
• How the Brain Learns to Read - Professor Stanislaus Dehaene
• Sunnyhills School - Presentation to Families
• Lifting Literacy Aotearoa - case studies

Terry Locke - Poetry PD

Tonight's Professional Development is hosted by poet Terry Locke via Zoom (due to the current Covid-19 lockdown in place!)

Writing Apprehension

Prior to the session we completed a writing apprehension questionnaire - this was interesting as it made me really think about my thoughts on writing.

• Teachers can be strong influencers of young writers - both positive and negative
• Can the opinions and apprehensions be changed?

What is Poetry

• "Best words in the best order" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• "A momentary stay against confusion" - Robert Frost - a sense in that we all need something to hang onto when lives are in disarray - a way of making sense of our lives
• It can resist definition in many ways

Concrete Language - enable a reader to respond sensuously to an experience

Abstract Language - language or ideas or concepts  - its main purpose is to reason through generalisation or argument

Messages from tonight to consider with future teaching

• Have you had a 'red pencil' experience from a teacher?
• Our primary role is to respond to the writing - respond to the ideas in the message

First Sample Piece of Writing

Our first writing task was about a place that had special meaning to us.  Once we had completed the writing we needed to highlight our concrete words/phrases in yellow and our abstract pieces in blue.  This was my piece:

And then feedback received on the above piece of writing from Terry Locke:

Further Research & Readings

Book:  Beyond the Grammar Wars

Book:  Close up for Poetry

Sharp Reading - Comprehension Strategy Instruction

Today's PD focused on a new way of teaching comprehension. This process is for those readers with a reading age of approximately 8 (PM levels 18 - 25).

STOP asking content questions 

START prompting for Strategy use

"Once the strategies have been introduced the teacher's role is limited to prompting students to be active in deciding how they might process the text" - Pressley

Follow a clear teaching and learning model:
Explicit Teaching of Strategies - explain; model; guided practice (20%); independent practice (80%)

Use cover cards to: slow down the reader, don't read on, keep their place and show you when they are finished.

Clearing the roadblocks ... three important parts ...

• Are there any roadblocks?
• Have a go at clearing it?
• Have you cleared it?

Convince Me!

This really encourages them to dig deeper into a sentence and teachers provide feedback using the triggers (prompt card).

Ideally, for top groups, three - four paragraphs per day - but start with an easier group and look at less paragraphs.

Further Reading:

Otauira - Session 1

Tonight was the first PD session by Horizon Consulting and the team at Owhata Marae which focus on understanding the issues in our local environment.

Our session starting with a brief introduction and receiving some light reading before we headed out to Waikauwau, or Hannah's Bay as it is known to the locals.

As we walked through the reserve we received information about how the land that the airport currently resides on was taken from the local hapu.  Prior to the 1960's much of this land contained housing and was a walkway for tamariki to hikoi between two marae's walking past the fruit trees that still grow on the site today.

Land that is visible on the top of this picture (at the lakefront) was to be returned to the hapu if the ownership of the Rotorua Airport ever changed hands (which it did in 2014) - this was part of an agreement signed back in the 1960's.  Unfortunately the local council have yet to return this to the hapu so they are looking at taking their case to the environmental court to get this enforced and returned to them.

As we walked back along the waterfront, it gave us a chance to reflect on the information that we have received this week and wonder how this reserve would look if it hadn't been repurposed for the airport - how could we use this information in the classroom?  What systems were involved and who has been let down by the systems that were in place last century?

Branching Out: Guiding from ECE to the Early Years of School

Today I attended the above Professional Development session at The Orchard Child Care Centre and Kaharoa School.  The great session gave me a number of ideas and things I'd like to take back immediately to my own Play Based Learning classroom.   These include:

• instead of 'tidy up time' using the terminology of 'refreshing the space' - a much more positive way to approaching it.  Both facilitators today mentioned this use of music during this time.
• encouraging students to join into mat time by asking "Are you Ready?" and giving them the opportunity to not quite be ready - this will work nicely with our new 1:1 reading program - rather than me asking a student "Would you like to read with me?" which gives the expectation that they don't have to, an "Are you Ready to read with me?" approach, gives the expectation, that if not now, it will be later.
• instead of using the name "Learning Stories", change it to "Play Memoirs", a much more authentic name for what is being created.
• increase my printing budget so all Play Memoirs can be printed and kept in a clear file in the classroom for students to browse at any time and revisit the exciting things they are doing
• a basket for the Numicon so students can use this in their play
• stones to indicate if students would like milk that day - similar to this sign in arrangement

Sign in stones - add one to the basket if you are at school

Hanging hooks for the mud kitchen

Dishracks under the mud kitchen to collect equipment

Microwave oven in the mud kitchen

Permanent space for writing nailed to the fence

Some great story ideas with loose parts - we need to challenge ourselves to create these in 2020

A great way of bringing fire into the playground - this is for making popcorn

A great use of the wooden reels - tables!

Native bird puppets - a great way to incorporate bi-culturalism

A free standing sign - explore Gary making these

The option of having tea each day - all sourced from an opshop and herbal tea made each day - great for wellbeing

An awesome way to store shoes and socks and hats

What a welcome on the fence when you come in

Watering cans hung in their place - we need more of these!

A great way of capturing parent voice - could be done each year from PEPs

• Explore the book Mauri Ora - Alsop & Kupenga - include these short whakataukis on Learning Memoirs alongside some Te Reo

Couch PD - New Seesaw feature - Multiple Page Feature

A wet and cold Sunday morning in Rotorua provided the perfect opportunity to catch up on some Professional Development that I missed earlier this week about a great new Seesaw feature.

I use Seesaw with my learners frequently, particularly to showcase the great learning that occurs daily by Learning Through Play.  Often I use the activity feature to show the learners understanding of different strategy's or concepts that we have been learning.  One of the things with using this feature was that you could only include one page - that all changes from now and I'm excited to start creating (and have my learners create) using multiple pages!

The PD session showcased how to launch the multiple pages and what would happen from a student and teachers perspective when it was launched (from either the drawing, upload or photo option)!  I think this will be great to capture the learning in the playground also as I often upload directly to Seesaw while I'm observing the learning through play.

I've updated my own iPad to the new version as well as the class iPads and am off to create my first activity, for learners to show what we have been learning in geometry last week around using directional language to give directions!

Couch PD - More Hive Summits

This weekend I had the opportunity to catch up on some Professional Development which I had "snoozed"* in my email over the past fortnight.

The presenter I watched today was Lisa Johnson - someone I already followed on Twitter and had heard speak previously.   This session was on productivity, something we all struggle with from time to time.  The key messages from the session were:

• There is no “One Size Fits All” for Productivity 
• Being mindful of balance is key 
• To get started, you need to identify goals It’s important to notice that macro goals are composed of micro goals 
•  Ask yourself: 
•  What do you want to do more of? 
•  What do you want to do less of? 
•  What do you want to finish? 
•  What do you want to do better?
• Visually tracking habits helps to stay on track
• Failure is small mistakes repeated daily 
• Determine your “Value Buckets” 
• Choose the three values that are the most important and relevant to you  
• We live in an era of a lot of distractions - try to minimise these by setting time aside to get through your to-do list
• A “Brain Dump” can help to be efficient 
• Being mindful and realistic with your time will help you to be successful 
• Know what you value -  It is easy to goal-set and to work toward a goal if you have identified what you’re working towards 
• Recognize that time with your family is your most important time 
• Email is an inefficient tool - find a system to address sending/receiving emails

* the snooze feature of Gmail is a feature I used frequently to ensure that emails or work that I can't deal with till a later date is removed from my inbox and pops back up on the selected day for me to action!

Couch PD: Hive Summit Day 1 - 3

This weekend I've chosen to partake in some professional development from the comfort of my couch.   Over the next 14 days the Hive Summit continues and if the first two days are any indication I'm going to enjoy listening to the speakers.

The first presenter on Day 1 was Angela Maiers - a visionary who is passionate about #youmatter!  While the sketch notes for the session are extremely powerful, the messages that related with me are:

Every human has a ​need​ to feel like they matter and are extremely important

We are the face of influence for our students; it’s crucial we notice them - you can do this by simply greeting them at the door each day.

Everyone has a voice that MUST be heard! There is no ego in feeling like YOU MATTER!

The first and last 20 seconds you spend with a human are the most impactful

Kids don’t see problems and think, “Who’s going to solve that? - A child’s default is action “We can change the world...”

The second Hive Day presenter was Michael Matera - the innovator behind the Hive Summit who talked about gamification in learning (not something that I found as useful). 

As I was about to close this blog post I received the email with the Day 3 speaker.  Casey Bell was inspiring.  Her main points include:

• Dynamic learning requires teachers to deliver instruction in a non-static way - be different and unafraid to change things up
• Student-centered learning provides teachers with opportunities to be effective
• Beyond the Bell: learning does not end when the bell rings
• Beyond the Grade Level/Subject Area: our content is not the only content-- technology provides access for anyone to be an expert on anything
• Beyond the Walls: global connectedness can provide our students with authentic audiences
• Beyond the Tools: access to NEW tools allows our students to do NEW things

I'm excited about the learning to come over the coming days!