Expeditionary Learning

It's nearly the end of 2017 and I have retreated to the coolness of our temporary living room (currently in the midst of a major house renovation), to escape the insanely hot afternoon sun.  The current dry spell that we are experiencing provides me with the perfect opportunity to catch up on Jo Bolar's Mathematical Mindset online course.  The latter half of Term 4 was filled to the brim with assessment, report writing, reflections and meetings - leaving little time to squeeze in anything else.  So now I am on a mission to complete as many parts of this course as I can.  Hopefully, I may even manage to finish it before the start of the Term 1 next year!

Catching Up

I am currently watching an interesting interview that Jo Bolar had with Carol Dweck, and Jo asked Carol if she had examples of schools that implemented her work successfully.  Carol replied that many are - giving the work of Stephanie Fryberg and Ron Berger as two exceptional examples.  Fryberg's work was on a Native American reservation in the state of Washington and Berger was the founder of Expeditionary Learning that embed growth mindset around students' projects.  I felt an urge to explore this further and subsequently lost a few hours of study time, but gathered a few gems along the way.

Ron Berger is the same guy that travelled across the states to share 'Austin's butterfly' - the movie that illustrated the importance of constructive feedback.

Gems for my treasure box

The Expeditionary Learning education model refers to all students and educators as being part of a 'crew'.  Everyone is responsible for pitching in and supporting each other achieve their personal best.  Their moto is, "We are are crew, not passengers".  Expeditionary Learning (EL) schools embed growth mindset around students' projects - many of which are in the community.  At the completion of the project, the students give presentations to the community, highlighting their struggles and the obstacles that they've had to overcome.  While watching a video on the EL school site, I heard that the students in EL schools are "on a mission to contribute as scholars and citizens to a better world".  This got me thinking...

Giving Feedback

The learners use models and rubrics (see below) to 'enhance their ability' through critique and feedback which is guided by the norms, "Be kind, be specific, be helpful."

Here's a link to the approach that EL school's .  I know that I'll be returning to this site frequently over the next few months to gather ideas and identify best practice for supporting my learners to give (and receive) constructive feedback.

Standards

With the change in government, New Zealand schools have now been able to wash their hands of the National Standards.  This is wonderful news, but it also brings about a sense of uncertainty.  Since 2010, we have used the language of National Standards for reporting and assessment.  It has driven, (but also narrowed), our learning pathway.  Will it be difficult to shift away from this mindset?

EL education identified that the US core standards made it difficult for teachers to consider high standards because they were more concerned about covering the content.  As a result, Berger found that: 

One consequence of this is students feel more and more like there isn’t time for mistakes or revisions, or editing.  They are often in a rush to complete assignments and they are missing the value of the work. And when one doesn’t understand the value of the work, maintaining true pride in successes and a growth mindset in failures are difficult to own.    (Source)

So, my takeaway from this is to look at slowing down the pace so that the learners are able to have time to work through the challenges, identify their mistakes - and have the time to recraft, redesign, redo.  As Carol Dweck suggests, growth mindset is not about the final outcome, but it's about what happened in the learning journey.

This delightful distraction from my online learning has now completed it's circle.  Now, let's get back to Jo Bolar and her interview with Carol Dweck.

Resources to check out:

• Grades 3-8 English Language Arts Curriculum
• Beautiful Work - Project based learning
• EL - Our Approach

Maths Madness

Games, Games and More Games

The focus during a recent ELT session was about maths - maths games to be more precise.  Games that required the players to race each other to get to 100;  Now that I have been here at OrmPS for over a year now, I am developing a greater awareness of the importance of games in education.   Language can be a barrier to learning, but this can be overcome through games.

"PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for "educational" toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a "message." Often these "tools" are less interesting and stimulating than the child's natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning."

- Joanne E. Oppenheim (Kids and Play, ch. 1, 1984)

Ideas to Follow Up

These are some notes that I made during the session.   Now, looking back over my draft some months later, I am wrestling with why I jotted down this short list.  This is where a portal would be great :)

Multiplication - How Close to 100?

This game will encourage the learners to get an understanding of arrays - which is important.

DATs what has made a difference?

In 2017, our Spiral of Inquiry was around our maths programme and learning in the habitats.  Every week we were required to reflect and use this reflection to guide our design for the following week.  I feel that providing time to reflect more deeply on the learning that took place (by both the learners and LCs), and discuss the highs and lows with my team did make a difference.  We frequently had 'aha' moments when what we thought would happen, took a different path, which in turn lead to a completely different journey to that which we had anticipated.

Notice... Think... Wonder...

To borrow thinking from Science and apply it to Maths.  Such a great way to pause, reflect and move forward with our design for learning.  I'll have to remember this.   As always, so many good thoughts and reflections are recorded in personal blogs.  We need to make sure that we provide time to reread posts from the past as they often contain gems to use in the future.