My Vision for Teaching & Learning

In response to a FB discussion, my 2C worth: "Many of us are working hard to support our teachers and students with concepts and practices related to 21st century thinking.... MLEs, blended learning, student agency etc,etc. What comes next for schools? "

I think keep extending on learner agency and push past the classroom walls & school gates. Children will learn from many people and places and not just the teacher in their own classroom or school. Look for more community involvement supporting learning and sharing of expert teachers across schools. More opportunities for tuakana/teina and students leading learning. More global education, where our children learn from others and develop cultural understandings. Children will access personalised learning pathways - learning what they want, with who they want, when they want to. Our role will be to make sure they have sound foundation skills in place (literacy, numeracy, key competencies) to enable them to excel in their learning and to help them navigate and access a wider world of learning. This is my vision for a future of learning 

So what are you waiting for? Just do it!

Our Stories - Exhibition Coming Up

''My Story. Our Story. Your Story' 

The result of a year long project initiated and co-ordinated by the Ahuroa School Photography Club, and facilitated online via the VLN Primary School.

The Project
An exploration of photography as a means of telling and sharing a story, for primary school aged children.  “My Story” - individual journey’s of self discovery; “Our Story” - the combining of individual photographic stories to become a representation of a school community; “Your Story”- school communities stories are compared and combined to tell one story - our exhibition.

Our Story
We are a small, rural country school.  We have a story to tell. But are our stories different to those of kids who live in the city, or kids whose cultures are different from ours, or from kids who have had experienced natural disasters?  What about kids who live in isolated places?  What about kids who live in different countries to us?  Will their stories be different?  How?  Or, will their stories be similar?  Will their be a common connection?

Participating Schools:

New Zealand
Kaikohe West School (Kaikohe); Mulberry Grove (Great Barrier Island); Kaitoke School (Great Barrier Island); Ahuroa School (Warkworth); Hobsonville Point School (Hobsonville); Devonport Primary School (Auckland); Te Poi School (Matamata); Toko School (Taranaki); Moanataiari School (Coromandel); Pahiatua School (Palmerston North); Rewa Rewa School, (Wellington); Dipton School (Otago); Burnside Primary (Christchurch); Glenorchy Primary School (Glenorchy); Half Moon Bay School (Stewart Island)

International
Flowery Branch Elementary (Hall County, USA); Lakeview Elementary (Robbinsdale, Minnesota, USA); Nexus International School (Singapore);
AMMAC, Chihuahua (Mexico); Beaconhouse School (Islamic Republic of Pakistan)"

from http://www.estuaryarts.org/currently-showing.html

More than just Sharing a few Pics - My Story, Your Story, Our Story.

It has been great to follow and support the project My Story, Your Story, Our Story  Big kudos to Theressa for initiating and driving this schools collaboration. As the project progresses we can see it is more than just developing some expertise in photography skills & techniques, or sharing their best pictures. It is about making meaningful connections that provide different perspectives on our lives and this has been particularly evident, so far, with the global participation.

Here Stephanie shares her story of participating in this project - Bringing the classroom out into our World. And here they are again practicing a waiata for their school visitors, inspired by their interactions with the My Story Project. Click over there and give the students some positive feedback on their kapa haka efforts! Here is the direct link to their photos.

Global Connections #Participate!

From my inbox today - can't find the web version of this mail out so will reproduce here.
If 2014 was the year of the webinar for teachers perhaps 2015 will be the year of global classroom connections? (now teachers are getting more confident).
Get with it teachers so many wonderful learning opportunities for our students and a way to increase their global awareness and understandings. See 'Healing the World One Classroom at a Time' for some excellent reasons why we should reach out beyond our classroom walls & beyond our national borders.

Transform literacy and learning in your classroom Beginning on February 16th 2015, Skype in the Classroom is launching “Skype Celebrates Literacy”. This six week program will feature guest speakers from the publishing industry, lessons and resources to support and inspire literacy learning in classrooms around the world. Literacy remains a high priority on the global education agenda and a core subject for classrooms everywhere. Lessons that involve reading, writing, speaking and listening – from poetry jams and reading aloud to author visits – have always been popular amongst teachers using Skype in the Classroom. In 2014, you and your students travelled millions of virtual miles taking part in lessons around the world via Skype. Whether you collaborated with another classroom, played Mystery Skype, invited a guest speaker in for a Q&A, or went on a virtual field trip, chances are these experiences engaged your students’ literacy skills, perhaps without them even realizing it! Here's how you can get involved: 1) Invite a guest speaker: authors, illustrators and storytellers will be available to join your classrooms via Skype. To make it easy to find and schedule a speaker to inspire your students, we’ve created a way to quickly schedule these calls. These conversations can be scheduled via Skype in the Classroom beginning February 9th. 2) Participate in World Read Aloud Day events: schedule a call on World Read Aloud Day or World Book Day (both the week of 2nd March) to celebrate the art of reading and writing. There will be a wide range of partner-provided content, tools, and resources to help with traditional reading and writing, including digital literacy and internet safety content too. 3) Literacy projects: we will have some very exciting literacy-related partner organizations including School in the Cloud, Microsoft, Safer Internet Day/ChildNet, and some very special guest speakers through those partnerships all coming soon. 4) Create your own Skype lesson: get creative and post your own literacy lesson for other classrooms to get involved in. Let us know about it @SkypeClassroom and we can promote it for you. Using an online Reading Level site, Mike Soskil, a teacher at Wallenpaupack South Elementary School in Pennsylvania discovered that “Our 4th grade students, who have been using a curriculum of Skype experiences and blogging as part of their Social Studies curriculum this year, increased their writing scores on average by half a grade level from October to December. The students using this curriculum are either in special education or low achieving.” With a stronger focus on learning experiences that directly support literacy we hope to help teachers everywhere create even greater impact through the use of free accessible technology like Skype. We hope to see you and your students join in all of the new literacy lessons. If you are new to Skype in the Classroom, we invite you to hop on a tour hosted by our Skype Guides, teachers just like you who are excited to show you the innovative and educational adventures that await your students. Don’t forget to help inspire others with your experience via our Stories Page, Facebook andTwitter. We look forward to a fantastic celebration of literacy. Your friends at Skype in the Classroom education@skype.net @mysteryskype @SkypeClassroom #skype2learn

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A Vision Without Action is just a Dream - Learning Languages - A Global Future

Yesterday i had the privilege of collaborating with a room full of passionate language learning advocates from community groups, schools and supporting organisations. Our main focus was to discuss the challenges and opportunities for schools in developing and sustaining language programmes in schools and how we can provide support and guidance for schools in the ALLiS initiative.

There were many details discussed of how we can collaborate to support successful and sustainable programmes but what has been clear in this meeting and previous ones is that a national language policy & strategic plan for learning languages is critical to co-ordinate, drive and sustain this work. 

It was really interesting to meet Susan Warren and hear about the work of COMET educational trust and in particular the development of a Languages Strategy for Auckland. It makes a strong case for developing Auckland (and that should read - New Zealand) as a multi-lingual community and also a strong case for a National Languages policy. Here are some of the points that resonated with me - you can read the whole document here and there is still an opportunity to submit a response here within the week.

"Multilingualism is central to a diverse city: it allows us to value ourselves, build community, build tolerance, and live peacefully and prosperously.Currently, many Aucklanders miss out on the cognitive advantages of multilingualism. As a community we miss out on the potential of younger language learners because we fail to take advantage of the best windows for language learning and the most effective years for language maintenance. Auckland’s migrants, especially our older migrants, could receive much better support for their aspirations to learn communicative English. As a community we fail to grasp the cultural and aesthetic benefits of multilingualism, and many Aucklanders cannot garner the educational attainment that crosses language boundaries and unifies knowledge in varied domains. One of the more obvious impacts of the absence of a languages policy in New Zealand is seen in education.  Evidence shows that quality bilingual or immersion instruction in children’s first or heritage language brings measurable gains in literacy achievement in the target language and also in English^[1].  However requests to the Ministry of Education for tailored materials or professional development for bilingual classes are met with an explanation that there is no policy to enable provision for learning through languages other than English, te reo Māori and NZ Sign Language.Most New Zealanders (93 per cent) agree it is valuable to learn another language[2]. Language skills and cultural sensitivity are now required for successful participation and engagement locally, nationally and globally in all spheres of activity. Auckland is well placed to harness its language potential.In the past, it has been possible to “get by” in English only. For our young people to thrive in the future, they will need more options and more experience as language learners. Because most of the world is multilingual this need will be felt even more acutely as today’s young Aucklanders spread their wings globally. Most English-dominant countries today require their young people to have another language; all of New Zealand’s associates in ASEAN require kids to learn another language from a young age. New Zealand identifies strongly with the ethics of team membership: being a team player in the 21st century will mean being multilingual."

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[1] Asia New Zealand, http://asianz.org.nz/newsroom/media-releases/2014/perceptions-asia-2013 

[2] Ministry of Education (2008).  Teaching and learning for bilingual Pasifika students in New Zealand.