While watching masterchef over the past couple of weeks, I start to see some similarities with what they are going through.From going from their normal cooking through to developing creative and innovative dishes. Trying new things and seeing success and failure.
The challenges that they face, develop, build upon. How the judges help with feedback as they are going through.
The same can be said with the school that I am at.
We have the Innovate. Engage. Inspire.
Challenging is one word that is used a lot at school. Developing the collaboration with the teaching, the contexts, and the learning areas. One thing that comes to mind when I started was that there are no textbooks, not even class sets of english books, instead students can choose the book with help from the Innovate information librarians at the school. The blended learning opens students to do both offline and online work. Having the device available in the learning space allows students to not be stuck on a meaning, a word, or having to wait for the next part of their learning. Instead a student being able to see the learning objective and how it works with a rubric or learning design phase helps then to see what is next.
Feedback, one on one checkins with students, I see more and more importance with these, it is a student and teacher working together to develop the needs of the student in class. having the 80 minute lesson and the co-teacher in the room allows these to happen in a more natural way. Progress reports are not a surprise, we have a no surprises rule. The progress report at the end of term is around how the student has meet the learning objective of the term, rather than an achievement objective. The comment is to the student about how they went, and what their next steps are.
But feedback is not just teacher to student, it is also teacher to teacher. Working in an environment that is co-teacher, feedback is constant, what is working well, what didn't work. Even challenging each other to try new ideas are constant. I believe that we have developed better as teachers and the challenge is now where to from here, can we go back to the single space and teacher? But it doesn't stop there. It is also Senior Leadership coming and looking at the teaching and sharing feedback about what they saw, the good and the bad. But thats not all, the Principal also looks at what is going on in the spaces and contributes to the feedback.
The mystery box, Should learning be a mystery? Students use the booklets four times a year to develop the learning that engages them. Use what they they know and build on it.
The booklet allow students to see what contexts the modules and SPINs that have been created around the theme for the term. The role of the learning coach is to make sure that the students have curriculum coverage throughout each term, while also looking at the specific needs of the students in their hub..
Outside the classroom. Having the opportunity to use spaces outside a classroom, this allows students to be out in the community, be responsible citizens. I love using the spaces that we have in our community, the 80 minute lessons allow students to go out and capture the information that hey require for their work. This allows for individualism within contexts, allows students to be creative in what they develop and have ownership of their work.
Looking at the passion of the students
The development of the dispositions, rather than the focus being on a solely academic is a passion that I see more of the students working towards, it has a large importance in our school that the end of the year awards are around the Hobsonville habits rather than being solely on academic success. Having a student who is passionate on the learning that they are doing, many of our students do get their first selections in what context they want to learn.
How to deal with failure?
Sometimes things don't work.
Sometimes the groups that students put themselves in don't work well.
Sometimes students have to be told were to sit.
Sometimes students don't work well on devices.
It is having the confidence to deal with these situations, having open dialogue with the students and having mini chats to get the thinking going about what is going on.
Default State
How do we move from the default state, this has been something that has come up in early on me starting at the school, how do we move from the default state, away from what we have done previously or done again and again. The linking in with the co-teacher, and the themes of the terms and semester help make sure you don't. Making sure that the learning objective is being carried out. But it is also helped by the other parts of the planning.
HMW INNOVATE through personalised learning?
HMW ENGAGE through powerful partnerships?
HMW INSPIRE through deep challenge & inquiry?
Innovation
Each week they look at an innovate way to display or develop the food. How do we show innovation within our classroom, developing the next innovate and creative?
The staples and pantry
The staples of learning, the equipment that they need in every lesson, these have not changed much, Pen, Paper, Pencil, and Device. Though there is some normality of people being upset about students needing a device for lessons, at one point were people upset that they moved away from the pencil?
The fact is the staples in the kitchen continue to change, develop, so must ones learning.
The pantry allows students to access other material, resources, equipment that they may need. The same for our students through online environments.
