Mark’s Learning Log

Why the fuss about flexible learning spaces: building the case for relational trust and personal learning skills.

This is the second post on working in flexible learning spaces [refer categories to access the first on challenges].

Common Context:

We have two flexible learning centres at the school currently occupied year 1’s and year 5/6’s.

• Both the year 1’s and 5/6 teachers work as a team to plan and evaluate a responsive curriculum and I think  this common planning is the foundation for consistency [as do all our other teams].
• Both teams are working on developing a more differentiated curriculum – early stages as we get better online tools to determine student needs [as do all our other teams].
• Both teams work on explicit teaching in the core tool subjects of English and Mathematics and an Inquiry focused curriculum [as do all our other teams].
• Both teams bring all the students in their care together  to develop during term 1 to develop from the student perspective [in keeping with our school values of course] a set of learning and social norms/expectations/rules/common commitments [different language same intent] for their centre.
• Both teams use a restorative justice approach [e.g. use of circle time] to build student learning relationships [as do all our teams].
• Both teams have a teacher office in the centre where conversations about the day, the curriculum, particular students needs, use of technology tools etc… are talking about continuously.

So lots in common.

But there are questions being raised by parents and teachers.

Is it harder for senior students to adapt to these spaces because they haven’t been “forced by circumstance”  to develop these broader relationships and relational trust or personal learning skills in single classrooms? Are schools and therefore students at a disadvantage if they chop and change from single classrooms to flexible learning units over their 7 years of primary school?  

Observation

Teachers across the school and in the senior primary unit have had a real focus on building broader sets of learning relationships and relational trust through the use of circle time at least twice a week. Why? Well when they initially started collaborative group work in larger learning areas they found the level of relational trust and mutual accountability between students and their peers and to a smaller extent between students and their teachers was weaker than anticipated. This didn’t appear the case in the younger year 1 group. The teachers thought the collaborative tasks were developmentally appropriate so that wasn’t the main variable.

Some 18 months later, whilst we await official attitudinal survey data results, anecdotally it appears the level of relational trust has improved. This therefore paves the way for some more flexible groupings to occur.

Now What

Teachers in the senior unit are moving with their home groups into different spaces each term within the building. This is different from the younger unit who have a constant home room and a shared middle area. Why?

We have learnt that the building design isn’t as flexible as we would desire and modifications are being considered including perhaps the use of glass walls and other more flexible walls. We have learnt that the timetable for senior students can be an obstacle to more flexible groupings. Also it takes time for the teachers in these units to learn to use tools to differentiate a curriculum that takes advantage of the flexible learning spaces. Plans around two of the issues are being developed for next semester.

To broaden our knowledge base one of the teacher’s project teams which is investigating use of flexible spaces is planning to visit other schools with similar spaces .  

More explicit personal learning skills [goal setting, actioning teacher feedback, managing work timelines and mutually accountability for independent use of resources like netbooks and reflection] are a focus this semester.

Future Learning

Our next initiative to make an impact across the school and in these units are the Ultranet [an online learning environment which will support individual student goal setting and greater development of independent and collaborative online learning tasks].

Transition for students into these spaces is important and the transition working party are looking at this for later in the year.

We know from experience that addressing parent anxiety about change is important as well and blog posts  and evenings that present information are part of our intended transition program. One wonders if the whole school was designed around these areas whether there would still be parent anxiety or whether parent anxiety is about about chopping and changing models of learning delivery [single classrooms and flexible learning area]. Anyway that’s another topic for a future post on flexible spaces.

The next post I anticipate will be around student personal learning skills or the use of the Ultranet in these flexible learning areas.   

PS: When I asked teachers for feedback on tis post one replied about the need for a glossary for the teacher speak terms – which I think is a great idea not only for this post [ I'm thinking almost about a separate definitions page for my blog on this - what do you think?]

Links

Restorative Justice

Overview of restorative justice approach in American Schools

Transforming Conflict

Circle time in a UK school to build self esteem

Circle time – a whole school approach to improving citizenship

Ultranet

Ministers announcement about the Ultranet

Ultranet delay

Blog post on the Ultranet

Relational Trust

Building relational trust in schools through consensus

Relational trust in schools

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Differentiated instruction the Holy Grail or something that can be done?

Last term our district instructional rounds team visited a school where the leadership team identified differentiation in instruction as the problem of practice. Nina and Jenni posted this clip on the Ning and I have copied it to my blog as I think its a great 20 minute clip and that sets up a discussion with teachers on what differentiated instruction is and isn’t.

Two things are clear – there is no one way to differentiate instruction and that simply giving more work to the “brighter students” isn’t differentiation either. His two articles are worth reading.

Rick Wormeli has some great links on differentiation. He breaks 10 common myths about differentiation that are well worth reading.

Thanks  Nina for the link.

For parents from Elsternwick reading this clip – think differentiation as part of the personalisation of education we are seeking in our school – it’s a goal in our strategic plan.

Now its up to you – is this clip worth it – does it set the record straight?

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Data Teams: the ongoing quest to improve teaching and learning and not just the latest fad!

As our second semester begins we at Elsternwick have planned a series of 8 professional learning team meetings [PLT's] on Monday nights to focus on the use of data to improve student learning. This carries on from the 6 PLT’s in semester 1.

On a slightly separate topic one of the focuses in semester one was how to establish PLT’s and how they are different from other teacher meetings. While we are moving away from this in semester 2 to an almost exclusive focus on data it will need to be re-established in 2011.

The effective use of data to improve student learning is one of our key improvement strategies outlined in the school’s strategic plan.  

These meetings, which are planned by our leading teacher, use a number of data sets including: Words their Way spelling tests and assessment online adaptive maths tests from the years 3 -6 teams. In term 4 we will look at the Naplan [National Assessment Plan for Literacy and Numeracy] results.

Team leaders, who are being trained to use data effectively in their own classrooms, support these meetings to help classroom teachers focus their efforts.

I found these 3 short videos that may help focus and perhaps challenge teachers to continue the great improvement work they have started.

Video 1   focuses on the need for the select use of data to be done in collaborative teams [hopefully a function of our PLT's]

Video 2 talks about the need for data to be useful for parents, teachers and students and that context is all important. So teachers need to consider data within the context of their students and of their classroom environment e.g. are student present or arriving on time whenI begin my instruction on this topic? This clip also looks at peer observation in classrooms.

Douglas Reeves in his article published in ASCD’s 2009 on the use of data gave 4 tips on its effective use:

1. more frequent than yearly use of data is more effective for closing the achievement gap [again our PLT's meet this tip]

2. Start with a focused question:  ”Just what are the starting points for teaching spelling in my classroom?” or “It appears from the school test data that spelling is weaker than other areas of literacy and I think that’s true in my classrooms but what can I do?” [this is a work in progress and one of the better examples of this in 2010 was when the year 3/4 team posed these questions above].

3. Test a hypothesis: Will students improve if I group students according to their spelling needs identified through a test [say 4 groups focused] and teach specific spelling strategies each week. [this again in my opinion is a work in progress for us].

4. Go beyond the numbers to look at causes of student success and failure. 

His finishing point is really important to me for it starts to turn the lense from purely looking at content in the curriculum – and don’t get me wrong getting students zone of proximal development within the curriculum is critical-   

Only when we can articulate the “why” behind the data and turn the lens on our own teaching and leadership behaviors can we understand how to move from drowning in data to improving professional practice.

At some stage we must turn the lense on our instruction as well. In semester 2 we as a staff are relooking at the E5 instructional model this time with an initial focus of where this fits in now with our current improvement work – with the lense of peer observation in classrooms to name one thing.

Clip 3: is about a teacher gathering feedback or data from the students on the effectiveness of her instruction. 

I’m hoping teachers might look at some of these clips prior to our first PLT for this semester as a way to set the context for our work together.

Parents might look at some of the clips so they are informed about our teacher improvement work for as I have written about before  according to the work of Hattie and others outside the student themselves teachers are the next most powerful influence on student learning.

Finally colleagues in the wider community might want to contribute to our work by posting comments on what works for them on the effective use of data in classrooms to improve student learning.

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Using IWB’s in Classrooms not the silver bullet

Just replied to Chris Betchers post on using IWB’s in classrooms. Worth a look

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Carl Sagan’s message not lost

Sometimes its useful to get a reality check on what’s important. Have a look at this clip – I think its useful to start conversations with teachers and senior students.

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Graduate teachers must read: U…

Graduate teachers must read: URL=http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/summer10/vol67/num09/The-Relationship-Balance.aspx

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Personalising Learning and Assessment in the 21 Century

This little clip talks about using technology to personalise learning and record individualised assessments online. Its a timely reminded as we move forward with the Ultranet here in Victoria and the power of technology to personalise learning for students.

Stop Press

 - talking about 21st century assessment what about teachers getting feedback using these tools?

I have just read about a teacher using survey monkey to get feedback from her students in 3rd grade: follow the link:

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What are the challenges of working in flexible spaces?

New flexible learning environments are being built in schools as rate never seen before [and given the country’s debt probably never again] in this country. The ‘Building the Education Revolution’ Commonwealth Government initiative was part of Australia’s economic recession proofing strategy.  

In talking with the builders and the various sub contractors over the past 2 years I can assure you they are quite happy about the initiative.

New facilities are always welcomed with a sense of excitement by their communities and my school is no exception. There is some research around improved student learning in new environments and I think some people may just expect this to occur just by doing the same things except in new buildings.

However I would suggest that the new learning environments will not impact on student learning unless there is a significant cultural change in schools for both teachers, parents and students. The cultural changes required need multi actions to occur at the same time which is a challenge in itself. The multi actions I would suggest include: the organisation of learning into flexible students groupings of different sizes, the use of data to inform differentiated instruction, the design of complex and challenging tasks to meet student needs, the de-privatisation of instruction between teachers and the use of digital tools to guide student learning and inform parents about their child’s journey[the new online learning environment is called the Ultranet in Victoria].

Imagine if you didn’t learn in the same standard size grouping of 25 but had a timetable that had you in groups on 50 for some collaborative work and 5 for some direct instruction in say “sentence construction”. Imagine that you as a student might have some elective workshops that you sign up for when deciding to learn to write in a particular genre and that the curriculum is more customized to your interests. Now you as a student have to develop many more learning relationships [possible up to 70 in year], learn to manage time and resources, be reflective, be prepared to be challenged and be able to substantiate, to take and respond to challenging feedback from different teachers to name a few challenges.

Complex cultural change can unsettling for all involved indeed may theorists like James Nottingham suggest that people need to be challenged and experienced time in the learning pit for real change to occur

There are often may obstacles that will challenge prople involved in working and learning in flexible spaces that include

• Lack of clear goals, theory of action or perceived need to learn new skills or capacities
• Resistance to change for fear of failure
• Lack of tools, resources or systems to meet teacher or student needs
• Perceived public criticism of the new work
• Inappropriate time lines for change

The purpose of this post is to set the scene for a number of articles on the changes so far and the perceived work ahead in using these spaces to improve student learning. We are over the initial honey moon period involved in shifting into new facilities [we found it last somewhere between 6 – 18 months depending upon who you talked to] have had a change of staff in these spaces and are now in that innovative learning pit where some things are tough going.

The following links are snapshots of other community’s journeys into these spaces as well as department resources that some might find useful.

Stephen Heppell

Bentleigh West’s vision for learning spaces

Point Lonsdale’s vision for learning spaces

Pedagogy and Space DEECD Manual

Student Needs, teacher practice and learning spaces brochure

As I conclude this article about the cultural challenge we face I want to build the focus of the next post which will be about the general principles behind learning in these flexible 21^stcentury spaces and some of our early discoveries.

I have great faith in teachers capacity to learn to use these spaces well over time.

I’m interested in hearing about some other general principles teachers engage with when working in these spaces. Please share.

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Is there an execution gap between our goals and actions?

I’ve been reflecting lately on our strategic plan which lists a number of worthwhile actions and improvement goals.

I know the goals as the principal as I interact with the plan on a regular basis but I wonder if  they are remembered by everyone at school? The goals are not displayed in our work and I’m beginning to wonder if there is as Covey calls it as execution gap.

We have been asking teams to develop their own vision statements based on overall school vision and set goals and norms for their work. Its been 6 months into a 4 year plan and timely for a quick review this week with year level and project team leaders.

I’m going to show the clip which is quite apt with the world cup in progress as an intro to the session and get some feedback. I’ll add some reflections on this work soon.

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Social Media – need a reason to change – here it is!

Thanks to Durff’s Blog in the States I found this clip that is essential viewing for teachers struggling to reason why we need to adapt our practices to embed the use of technology – in Victoria called the Ultranet.

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