Kia ora and welcome to my professional blog!
My name is Clarelle Carruthers. I am a 3/4 teacher at Pt England school in Tamaki, Auckland. Thank you for following my journey.
Yesterday I presented two sessions on making and using Google Sites. I really enjoyed these sessions and want to thank Jackie who stepped up to help me today with my lovely friend Dani Stone being sick.
During these session I had great attendance and met some lovely people who learnt along side me. The biggest challenge for me in these sessions way the variety of people who were all at different stages in their sites learning. It was also interesting presenting at this amazing Sydney summit as NSW has a different curriculum then us.
We need to remember there are two types of assessment:
Why:
Assessment FOR Learning- Here we can give feedback on the process and praise failure.
&
Assessment OF Learning
We want to shift the focus from feedback for a grade to feedback to add to our learning and improve.
Who:
The power of multiple people building on their ideas and providing feedback is amazing. The way kids give feedback is different from the way we do and can be very important for our learners.
What:
You can used revision history and get students to name their process.
When and where:
You could use growth language messages in our Google forms confirmation messages.
If we want to create a growth mindset in your classroom, we need to make it our culture.
When we are giving feedback we often use statements, can we flip these and use questions that make our students think.
What are we praising?
-Effort
-Strategy
-Result (Growth)
The problem is we have all of these fraises that actually cultivate a fixed mindset.
This year has all been about language for me. We as a school are focusing on what language we use and the way we teach language. The words that we use in our classroom make the culture of the classroom.
Maybe the language we start with is the word YET.
We need to be building the language of positivity and growth in our classrooms.
We are teachers are the chief of mindset in our classroom.
I am excited to be at another one of Lindsay Wesner wonderful sessions. I really enjoyed her session and Keynote at the Auckland Summit. I love her positive attitude and think it is just want I need to help get rid of my half way through the year vibe.
So what is growth mindset: As a group we created a share understanding of what growth mindset is.
Here is Lindsays redesigned graphic that shows these ideas beautifully:
We need to remember the power of "yet". I have not got this 'YET!'
As teachers we all design tasks. Is there something we can do to make sure the task itself is cultivating growth mindset. We talked about this and played Bingo. Here is how we went:
How do we provide multiple choices within our learning tasks. How do we provide scaffolding in a discreet why.
We can create a multiple pathway learning journey that supports students learning. This is done using move to section based on answer. We can use choice boards to allow students to demonstrate their understanding in non-traditional ways.
I am very excited to by at the GAFE conference in Sydney. The room is buzzing as we wait for the opening Keynote. All the MIT teachers are double checking resources and excite to share their experiences with a whole new Audience.
Our opening Keynote speaker is Jesse Lubinsky he comes to us today from New Zealand, America were he is an innovator and technology leader.
Jesse talked about how he spent his childhood growing up in Brooklyn, in an apartment and Wednesday is new comic book day. He talk about how Superheroes are relatable for children and adults. He believes that every kids is a superhero but they don't have capes. Often as we go into teaching we think about this saying:
But what if your role as teacher is not to be the hero but to bring out the hero in our learners.
So what is our role in the heroes story? We would like to say that we are the mentor but sometimes the system or us can but barriers in the way for our heroes (students) that make them feel incapable.
We should consider the habits of mind.
What can we do as educators to bring out the hero in our kids:
Encourage their passions
One students passions was encourage was Jordan, who is a foodie and she has her own food blog. Jordan's lunchbox. What gave her this change is the support she got from her teacher and many people in her school who encouraged her.
Provide Opportunities
Students can be very passionate but this does not get fostered at school and this creates a disconnect for learners and as a result they don't feel that school supports them.
One way Jesse suggested we do this could be through 20% time or Genius Hour.
What if?
-What if we are missing something? What if we are not listening enough to the people who this impacts most the kids. Jesse talked about how they change their school innovation fund so that kids could directly apply for funding for projects that will support their local community.
At lot of the projects were around supporting younger students in communities.
Celebrate their Scars
Daniel Kish is blind and yes he found that hard but he way lucky because he was supported people didn't over over protect him. He used this freed to learn to echolocate. Now he teaches over people how to see without seeing just like him.
There can be enjoy in failure. The things we hold the most dear are the things we struggle to get over and over until we finally get it. This is the same for our kids.
Honour Individuality
All of our students have challenges. Some of these challenges are physical but others are on the inside. Jordan Reeves age 10 has only one arm. Her is her story. Hilde is a reporter, she has her own news site. She covers things in her life. She has parents who are journalist. At 9 years of age there was a murder in her block. That wasn't received well by all. Here is her news site. To Honour their individuality we must know our learners.
So is it true what Syndrom said "When everyone is super, no one is" No I don't think so we can all be super because with great power comes great possibility.
One of the big language wins for me in my inquiry this year has been the establishment of a shared language of maths norms that we revisit regularly. This allows us to really unpack the language and have a shared understand that we continue to build on each day as we develop our shared maths community.
As a class we have an understand that being an active listener means, listening to what others share and being able to ask questions or repeat what they have said in our own words.
As I reflect back on my inquiry so far this year I am very aware of the way that it is may little bits and I am still struggling to find the trend that pulls them all together.
As a result I wanted to go back to the problem and think about it along side the the bits and pieces I have been doing in class.
This Image shows where I am at currently with my inquiry. I now believe I need to change my project to focus more on the language and making that rewindable for the learners as that will have more impact for the people who count the most the KIDS!
Today I was privileged to spend the day with the wonderful people at the Northland Digital fluency Intensive. We talked about the importance of CONNECT and how we can gain so much by connecting with others and build on and learning from each other.
If we are all paddling the Waka the same way we can achieve great things.
I really enjoyed sharing this will these wonderful teachers who I hope to stay connected with for a long time.
Throughout the day we worked on sites and I shared this presentation with them.
It was so wonderful seeing them take all we had talked about and achieve their goals on their class sites. I am starting to see some wonderful visible learning and great thinking about why they are using their sites and what they want to do next.
I feel so humbled having watched and helped these teachers tackle their site problems and find creative and clever solutions that make their site easier to use for their students.
