Transitional Vocabulary – one process of effectively teaching grammar.

Posted on July 16, 2015 by mwalker

IMG_3174

I realise there are times when I might show a little bias however I had to show this photo of a teacher at my school teaching grammar in ways that both engage and support students transferring the understanding to their writing.

The teacher, Kalliopi, had just shown a short YouTube clip on using transitional vocabulary in sentences. I was there when she paused the clip to ask students to connect their earlier learning around dependent and independent clauses to the work – they continued on taking notes. At the end of the short clip she then proceeded to draft an anchor chart with students who used their notes to explain the meaning and context of the work.

At some point a student explained the context of a word which got lots of student nods – she then asked the student to repeat that explanation being filmed (on an i-pad) that would later be added to the Google Classroom. The class was actively building its own bank of teaching and learning resources.

The students later in the day were then set a task (on google classroom) where they had a write a short piece (this afternoon’s was on connections between Asia and Australia) at the same time demonstrating research skills and using transitional words learnt that morning (underlining them as they went). This was an immediate guided practice opportunity for students and set the expectation that they need to learn this work to effectively write a short explanatory text.

Posted in Instruction, Teaching | 1 Comment

When art inspires reflection!

Posted on July 15, 2015 by mwalker

IMG_3167

My son and his girlfriend have just returned from 5 weeks in Europe and one of their photos was of the Pietà in St Peter’s Bascillica in the Vatican City AND before anyone starts NO it wasn’t the old slide show or photo album night but rather a connection between their phones to our TV. What that technology did enable was us to see up close the magnificent detail in the sculpture.

However more than admiring the sculpture which was said to be one of Michelangelo’s finest works I’m struck by its story which got me to thinking about what one puts one names to – but more about that later.

The story goes that when Michelangelo was a young 22-year-old he travelled to Rome to create a funeral monument for Cardinal Jean de Biheres . He spent the best part of 2 years working on what he said was the finest block of marble he had seen. There was some controversy to the sculpture at the time as Mary was depicted as a very young mother of a 33-year-old son.  When finished he either overheard a conversation or asked some visitors who attributing the work to another artist. He then promptly went back and inscribed his name. He later regretted his pride and vowed to never again signed his name on any work.

So the question I’m posting is what work do you want your name to be inscribed on and if so what might be any regrets you may have?

I find this an interesting and somewhat challenging question as an educator and leader to answer myself. What does one define as one’s work is the first part of the question and then what am I proud to inscribe my name upon.

I was walking through the school yard today and had many students yell out hi Mr Walker or run up and want a high-five or a hug and I think that relationship – you see they believe I’m their principal – is special but is that my work or the byproduct of my work?

I had a conversation with two teachers the same afternoon and complimented them on the work in their classrooms which were calm, ordered, peaceful, industrious, supportive and challenging environments where students knew what was expected, could articulate their goal of lessons and were willing to try, persist and in some cases even fail. Sounds fantastic from two teachers who are themselves learners – is that my work or the byproduct of my work?

I’m busy trying to write a series of articles that I hope will lead to a book on our work about intentionally using certain processes to change a school culture towards an evidenced based, challenging and self-reflective community of learners. So in one sense I’m inscribing my name to that writing and I guess by default the work as well.

I’m still pondering the question really – but would be interested in your thoughts – but just posting the picture gives me the opportunity to gaze at a piece of beauty – which by itself is pretty good anyway.

Posted in Art, Leadership, Teaching | 1 Comment

tips on changing teacher practice

Posted on June 30, 2015 by mwalker

Looking for some simple advice on why you change your practice from Dylan Wiliam.

Focus on one or two things (max) till they are automated, take a risk, take the time (when offered by your school leaders) and do this for your kids.

Tips for changing practice from ACER on Vimeo.

 

 

Posted in Instruction, Teaching | 1 Comment

“Rounds being like a dipstick” part two of a book discussion – Ch 3-5

Posted on June 24, 2015 by mwalker

Well this is the second instalment of our discussion as some points to comment on. The first being I just love the image of “rounds being like a dipstick” (p.110)

oil

 

Comment: there are just so many ways you might spin this image – when is something over filled – that the level changes when things are measured when cold or hot – it just goes on.

  • the difference between “Rounds” and supervisory evaluations is a bigger issue in school-based rounds settings as opposed to cross school ones (p.61)

Comment: I found this out in my original research on classroom observations – just what hat do you wear as a principal when you walk into classrooms to observe – is it feasible to differentiate between roles if you see something that not right? I think this tests our honesty – I think its beholden upon us to later on go back and say what I saw that made me feel uncomfortable – want to then make further observations (in a supervisory way) that this (whatever it is) isn’t a regular occurrence and take corrective action if it is.

  • “external rounds” is a way to practice “internal rounds” (p.68)

Comment: its like building capacity and I wonder if other network principals would be willing to have a go _ I’ll ask and answer this one later.

  • I am more likely to make a change (adjustment I would argue) if I had a chance to influence what you’re focusing on (p.74)

Comment: so true – it’s another reason for teachers to engage in discussion around a pop (problem of practice) as it creates ownership of the data.

  • “but we need someone from the outside come in to offer some calibration and help us push our practice” and I think they are talking about once a year (p.82).

Comment: if this work is not supported by others it make this external calibration and for that matter practice hard to do.

Comment: We discussed this 4th Chapter a little more and posed a question – do we have enough stoicism to keep revisiting the same problem of practice before we moved on?

  • by having (secondary) students involved in “rounds” it helped them think differently about their responsibility as students – taking responsibility for being engaged (p.91).

Comment: Interesting concept.

  • (external) rounds took 6 years before it got to school based (p.93) – that it takes time to move from the land of “nice” (p.106) and that rounds exist for differing purposes

Comment: hello this does take time BUT do we have that long? How long does it take to change a culture to a shared professional responsibility to improve our practice – if not then why are we here? AND here they were talking about rounds existing to evaluate some of our school based initiatives although I would argue that other protocols like walkthroughs could be used for some of these purposes (evaluative data collecting).

  • improvements happen quicker when you include professional learning as part of the problem solving around the pop.

Comment: professional learning I think here is defined in the broader sense.

Posted in Instructional Rounds, Leadership, school, Teaching | 3 Comments

Mark Twain’s quotes for todays age!

Posted on June 22, 2015 by mwalker

This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain however the site quote investigator casts some doubt on this. I found it while on twitter and another’s blog. The quote whoever penned it is still apt for today.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

One quote that Mark Twain did say is below:

quote-Mark-Twain-whenever-you-find-yourself-on-the-side-206

I find this at times reassuring as I struggle with ideas. I’m currently writing a paper about this idea knowing that a significant number oppose some of the recommendations in the paper. Yet I persist!

 

Posted in Leadership | 2 Comments

How do we scaffold what we teach in grammar to student writing?

Posted on June 21, 2015 by mwalker

I often hear teachers complaining or just plain confused about why students don’t transfer what they learn in one context or lesson to their performances in another. They have taught something in grammar (e.g. dependant clauses) or spelling (e.g. letter combinations that make the long a sound), students have practiced the skill and been tested on their words but see little or no transference to their own writing.

Well perhaps the question might be rephrased to – how might we scaffold the transfer specific skills taught in grammar or spelling into student writing?

Here was one such example a teacher “pulled” from the web that she used as a model in her class.

Slide1

 

What this example, which was used a model for their work around dependent and independent clauses, did was that it enabled our year 6 students to start to recognise the grammar (clauses) in their own work. This self-identification shows a such a transfer is possible.

grammar

 

Posted in Assessment, Instruction, Teaching | 2 Comments

An authentic purpose for learning – a makers market.

Posted on June 18, 2015 by mwalker

FullSizeRender[16]

Tonight our Year 1 and 2 students ran a “makers market” as their last performance for their technology based unit of learning “how do you make”. As you can see by the photo the market was well attended with hundreds of parents participating and buying the products students had made.

The market had a real Asian theme with the students making things like rice paper rolls, chinese lanterns and decorated bowls and cups. Asian intercultural understanding is one of the through-lines in our curriculum.

While I was announcing the winners of the raffle ( the prizes were brightly coloured heat bags made by a year 2 student and her grandmother) I was introduced by a student to her grandfather who had also attended Elsternwick PS as a student from 1942 to 1947 (the war years).

FullSizeRender[18]

He was telling me about the school during those years where there were 50 in a class with one class per level making a total of around 350 students in the whole school.

The makers market was a big deal with the teachers really extending the children’s learning with an authentic purpose and experience. A great community experience that will be remembered by our students for many years to come.

Posted in China, Instruction, Teaching | 3 Comments

DataWise – the community grows at the 2015 on-campus Institute.

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Penny Jayne

The final challenge from the first day of the Data Wise Summer Institute (DWSI) here at Harvard was to encapsulate my learning experiences thus far, in only five words.

Mine was; Similar challenges towards systemic improvement.

I wanted to share my short sentence with you because it highlighted what I had heard people discuss and reflect upon all day; which is that as an international community of passionate educators, school and system leaders, our aspirations, challenges, celebrations and imperatives are the same. We all aspire each day to do the very best by every student in our class/school, so that they may each realise their full potential. We all struggle with the most precious and finite resource; that of time, (or rather the lack thereof). We wrestle with the dissonance of how we can eek every second to benefit our students and teachers, and thus build a strong community with learners of every age. We all celebrate the notable progresses in the achievement of each student, (in relation to their personal learning trajectory). We embrace and are spurred on by a common imperative; to ensure that a child’s demography does not determine their destiny.

My key takeaway was the overwhelming message from participants, that all teachers, school and system leaders want deeply to be understood by their colleagues; to have their unique contributions to the overall success of our learning organisations recognised, acknowledged and valued.

A great place to start on how you can understand people’s work preferences is to refer to the Compass Protocol at http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=datawise&pageid=icb.page556408 for more information).

Finally Data Wise have embraced social media, making it even easier to check in with what is happening this week:

Twitter: @DataWiseHarvard or https://twitter.com/DataWiseHarvard/with_replies

Facebook: DataWise Harvard

Posted in Assessment, Data Wise Program, Harvard, Teaching | 3 Comments

Diving Deep to Build Assessment Literacy – Step 2 of the Data Wise Improvement Process – Day 2

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Penny Jayne

data_wise_261

The focus of Day 2 of the Summer Institute is the work around both Organising for Collaborative Work and Building Assessment Literacy, (which comprise the Prepare Phase). At Elsternwick PS with new teachers joining the team and the existing staff digging deeper we found its a stage that is never exhausted. In fact a diagram I created for the presentation Mark and I delivered at the 2012 Data Wise Impact Workshop, represents the Prepare Phase as the underground root system which provides the solid foundation and nourishment for the remainder of the Improvement cycle; the Inquire and Act Phases.

Those who are part of the Elsternwick Primary School (PS) community are likely to know that Building Assessment Literacy with teachers and school leader was the topic of my Masters thesis. It came from numerous conversations with frustrated school principals who each reported that whilst teachers were adept at collecting data, they were unable to genuinely interpret and use it to inform evidence-based, individualised student learning. Furthermore, these school principals expressed uncertainty about how to develop these skills within their own teaching staff, with some admitting that the development and implementation of a school-wide assessment schedule had not achieved this as they had thought it would have. Interestingly, this sentiment was echoed by one of the two principals leading the elementary schools I am coaching this week. And it’s not only Principals who were experiencing frustration! The overarching sentiment of the teachers involved in my Masters Action Research assignment, was that they were good at collecting data, (in fact many felt they were drowning in it), but were frustrated with their inability to ‘action it’ insofar as their lack of skills with which to genuinely interpret and use data to inform evidence-based student learning plans. (Jayne, P. 2010, unpublished thesis: Monash University, Australia)

In fact, the deliberate building of assessment literacy is one of the key characteristics that drew me to the Data Wise process in 2010-2011. This capacity building of teachers and school leaders continued today at the Institute,  and I must say that today’s session on Step 2 was vastly different to the one I participated in during June 2011, and had also been enhanced upon last years as well; which exemplifies the commitment to continual improvement and growth within the Data Wise Process, which was developed to help schools, (and more recently systems) engage in a continual improvement and inquiry process.

I also learned a lot about the rigours of standardised assessments here in the USA. It makes me grateful for my own Australian context where large-scale NAPLAN assessments are conducted within only 4 of a child’s 13 years of schooling. It makes me wonder what we might learn from one another… but that’s another post.

Finally the place of student voice within the assessment process was raised in my Green group today, again a perspective quite different from my own, and from what I know the outstanding teachers at Elsternwick PS are successfully engaging students in. However, that too is a post for another time.

If however, some of the sentiments or experiences of the educators and school leaders referred to here, resonate with you, may I suggest that you check out the new Introduction to Data Wise MOOC. This a free, self-paced online course that provides you with an overview of the Data Wise Improvement Process. If you are unsure about being what Data Wise is, or want to know more to make an evidence-based decision about integrating into your own school’s improvement strategy, then this is the place to go!

Introduction to Data Wise MOOC: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-data-wise-collaborative-harvardx-gse3x

Posted in Assessment, Data Wise Program, Harvard, Teaching, Travel | 5 Comments

Victoria the “ice” capital of South East Asia !

Posted on June 18, 2015 by mwalker

FullSizeRender[17]

Today at our local State principal network we heard from Les Twentyman a long serving youth outreach worker who has supported the marginalised and at risk young people who are generally homeless and on the streets.

A few years ago he set up a charity called the 20th man, a term that was once used for the bench player in our Aussie rules football teams. The organisation does outstanding work in supporting our at risk youth in so many different ways (check out the link).

However today he was talking about the “ice epidemic” affecting our youth. My attention was caught by his statement that Victoria is the ice capital of South East Asia. Now that’s one “award” that we don’t want to win and it certainly is nothing to be proud of.

Les talked about there simply are not enough police to arrest people (or prisons to hold them) for taking and distributing “ice” if that’s our main solution to the epidemic.

Yes in our drug education curriculum (secondary schools) we do “learning” about this but he was really today talking about our linkages to youth workers as these marginalised youth are often drug affected and with that comes the irrationality, the violence and the homelessness making schools difficult places to attend or difficulty for us (teachers) in dealing with and coping ourselves with the issues.

Really an issue we need for parents in our community to understand. Part of this understanding comes from sharing information hence the clip, which we viewed a little of today, to finish my post.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Meaningful Reading Comprehension – students doing the work!

Posted on June 4, 2015 by mwalker

inferring

This is a year 2 boy’s attempt to infer the meaning of words in a non fiction book of his choosing. Both the teacher and I thought this a really good artefact to show his reading comprehension development.

The first column displays his attempts to pick up the vocabulary of the text ,which for the most part, are tier 3 or technical words. He has also identified if he can read the word (or not) with the comment (can’t say).

The second column shows his attempt to infer the meaning the word from the text. The guidelines for the activity don’t allow the use of a dictionary.

The third column is where he then confirms his guess usually by rereading the text. The teacher also makes a comment or provides clarification or even a challenge (notice the comment on ecology).

He also makes reference to the ZOC which is what the kids call the zone of confusion (where we really don’t know something or are puzzled as we don’t even understand the answer). It’s a really interesting space to metacognitively notice.

He was proud of his achievement and he will get one of my certificate of excellence awards at an upcoming whole school assembly. We reward both effort and achievement.

My point is showing this piece is how far have we come as teachers in extending student thought in our reading workshops. This wasn’t achieved using the former early years literacy model of rotations of different reading activities – this was a sustained effort over 45 minutes after a brief 10 minute minilesson on inferring by a, just turning 7-year-old, boy. He was challenging himself, one of his workshop goals was self management, he was metacognitive, able to articulate what strategy he was using, referencing his conclusions with page numbers and learning technical vocabulary.

Now that’s “students doing the work” as Elmore would say.

Posted in Instruction, Reading, Teaching | 1 Comment

School Based Instructional Rounds: a progressive book club discussion (Ch 1 & 2)

Posted on June 4, 2015 by mwalker

In an earlier post I wrote about personal teacher professional learning. One of our teachers is doing a leadership course at Bastow Institute this year and her research project is using instructional rounds at the school level with teachers.

One of the professional learning strategies we are using is a book club between 3 of us.
To date we have read chapters 1 and 2 and really enjoyed the conversation. I thought a few posts as we go ahead through the book might be useful for others who are either reading or thinking about reading the book.

schoolbasedinstruc_223In Chapter One (p.20) they talked about rounds being able to “test the causal connections between an instructional initiative and the impact it has in classrooms on learning and teaching.” 

This is something we also thought about, having focused on one round on the initiative (Words their Way) for “spelling” in 2014-2015. It took 3 days with a school based team to visit about 80% of classrooms teaching spelling to make observations. We collected data and then were able to graph some results and present this to the staff for some discussion. Through discussion a number of variations in practice emerged which we then clarified through some professional learning.

We intend to complete a second set of the round now 12 months later again on spelling to see how the approach is now being implemented, what clarifications might be needed and what potential problems of practice are emerging.

Our thinking was challenged when on p.23 they talked about developmental nature of organisational improvement and the need for protocols like the 5 whys to do a root cause analysis on problems of practice – to go deeper. It’s certainly one we will use in 2015 when we present the data again and we go into discussion mode.

Chapter Two was about a small school in a rural district which opened with a teacher comment about being “walked on” (p.31) to describe teacher anxiety around observation. It was interesting to note that they expected teachers to “steal ideas”  as they observe. I think this was more about reducing anxiety and promoting collaboration – perhaps?

Marilyn Oats the principal gave a Roland Barth type quote (Learning by Heart) where he said the principal is the lead learner) when she said “My job as principal is to ask the questions, and to keep the inquiry going. I am the chief questioner – that is how I help teachers learn.”

More on the other chapters soon.

Posted in Instructional Rounds, Leadership, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

young people’s anger – here’s one thought.

Posted on June 1, 2015 by mwalker

I’m fortunate as a school leader that my teachers share their ideas and thoughts with me. This is one teachers share last week that resonates so strongly with me – how does one promote young people’s conversations about dealing with emotions (in this case anger).

If your running a classroom circle this month with your students – show this clip to promote a conversation. Please share your thoughts and their comments with us.

Posted in curriculum, school, Teaching, Uncategorized, Video Clips | 1 Comment

identifying teacher itches to scratch

Posted on June 1, 2015 by mwalker

Schools in Victoria have many standardised data sets about student learning, student attitudes to school, parent opinion surveys and finally staff opinion surveys. This post focuses on this last data set, staff opinion.

There was industrial action for the 3 earlier years stopping this new survey from being conducted in 2014. The survey results include: teachers, education support people and principal class officers. Using our evidence based practices we shared the data with staff asking for both feedback and if possible the story behind the data.

There were two data sets that we did not sit comfortably with us both about professional learning: Coherence and Applicability.

We had been “talking” about staff development for several years using older data sets like the two below:

Slide03

and

Slide06

We spent 18 months or more developing staff understandings about observation (e.g. non judgemental feedback, staying low on the ladder of inference, agreed protocols including pre and post conversations) and developed three protocols: walkthroughs, learning walks and instructional rounds.

I admit there was a certain reluctance about just going for it (teacher observation of each other: “learning walks”) for fear of wounding (not that we believed they would be intentional).

So when we got the applicability data which showed we were well below the State mean score it was a shock for the one recommended strategy for improving applicability was teacher observation. Lesson learned we had moved too cautiously. A lesson now corrected for we have facilitated teacher observation (just going over prior pd on observation to be inclusive of new staff).

Slide35

The other data set that struck discomfort was the coherence data set. When we unpacked this with staff it wasn’t so much an alignment of professional learning with our strategic improvement work but rather opportunities for personal teacher pd on their perceived needs.

Slide38

 

So once again a lesson learnt. Allowing time for teacher individual pd is now within our overall pd plan. The question we initially posed was how does one “perceive” that need and measure its effect?

Lots of the literature on personal teacher pd suggests that they look at their student data set and decide what gaps or instructional adjustments might be needed (learned) to improve individual teacher effect – the point being pd should have some effect on student learning and or engagement.

Well from the teacher feedback that point is still misunderstood by some however being a “hopeful” leader perhaps going through the personal pd experience might by learned. Most, but not all teachers, have formed into “supportive groups”  (a term that might be called professional learning communities) and are investigating practices that “interest” them: e.g student writing, use of i-pads in the early years and differentiated instruction book club to name a few.

We are all hopeful the actions taken scratch the itch teachers identified and the data sets show an improvement in 2015.

Posted in Data Wise Program, Harvard, Observation, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Anzac Day Service at School: Lest we forget.

Posted on May 5, 2015 by mwalker

anzac

Recently our year 3 and 4 students led the school in the annual Anzac Day commemoration service. The service which dates back 100 years is to acknowledge those men and women who served in our armed services in conflicts and peace keeping missions.

The students investigate what the commemorative service means by visiting our local Return Service League to hear from returned soldiers and look up the history of some of our former students who died in WW1. Every student made a commemorative day clay poppy thanks to our Art Teacher Ms Taylor, which was displayed in our school garden and then taken home to “plant” in their home.

The photo shows a parent, who is veteran from the recent peace keeping missions abroad, with students holding a poppy for every former student who died in WW1.

The service was attended by over 1000 people and was very moving particularly as the last post was played. I felt proud that our students led the service which is keeping the memories of the sacrifices of those who gave their lives so that we can enjoy our current freedoms.

Lest we forget,

Posted in Community, curriculum, school | 1 Comment