Induction - Day 2: Narrative Assessments

Narrative Assessments - What are these?   

A story about each learner's learning.  These make the learning visible and transparent for student and parent.

The narrative assessment has been derived from ECE.   It is a way to record the learning (more important than the outcomes).  12 narratives per learner, per year (3 per learner, per term).

The purpose for today's learning:
WALT: describe the purpose of and write timely and meaningful learning stories.
TIB: @OrmPS we:

Guarantee every learner engages in innovative, personalised, world-class learning.

The narrative assessment is a story about the learning that was taking place and digital capture (photo or video) for support.   Some LHs use Comic Life to create a visual narrative story, others use the Google doc template.   All narrative assessments are loaded to the learner's blog and parents are notified via email.  A schedule is kept up to date to ensure that all learners have a range of narrative stories and we are up to date with posting to their blogs.

* would be a great idea to add a 'follow by email' gadget to each learner's blog, then enter the parents' email address(es) so that they are notified when a post has been made to their child's blog.

We moved around in a rotation to hear how each LH managed their narrative assessments.  It was interesting to see the differences, but will most likely follow what took place in LH2 during 2015 as this seemed to work well.

To put it all into practice, we were then required to write a learning story on heath's Learning Model presentation.   It was a little tricky to include vocab from the OrmPS principles, but I think I managed it quite well for my first effort.

Learner:  Heath  McNeil       Learning Coach:  Mrs Croll              Date:  26.1.2016

Learning Area:  How we learn

Learning Observed and Vision Principles

This morning Heath shared the OrmPS learning model with the new Learning Coaches.  He began with two videos about what it means to learn - today, and in the future; which created curiosity from the Learning Coaches.  This lead to small group discussions where Heath joined in with and made connections to the language in the videos.  He was able to clearly articulate the four areas of the model and how they can become part of our everyday language.

Evidence of learning

Heath used various visual tools to help encourage thinking and participation from the group of Learning Coaches.

Next Learning Steps

create A3 copies of the OrmPS learning model for all the Learning Coaches discover other amazing videos to share with others

Next Step:

To think and note who to assess when I'm planning and remember to keep my camera/iPad handy for capturing those learning moments, especially the impromptu ones.

Induction - Day 2

The OrmPS Learning Model

The purpose to have a learning model is to keep us unified, here at Ormiston Primary.  If it is that language that we all use, then we are consistent, no matter where the learning is taking place.

What does the logo mean?

The circular logo represents our view of school's journey -

• the four groups connect to the school - learners, educators, parents, community
• the koru represent the various cultures from the four corners of the earth
• the four areas of hauora recognise the whole person
• the four principles represent what we value in learning

This will be useful language to help explain the meaning of our logo design to the students and parent community.

How do we measure the 4Cs?  

Look at ways to include the language throughout the day, linking it via skills.
Idea:  create a visual tool so vocab (verb words) can be taken off and focused on, as the learning require it to be.

Activity:
If we were to be practising skip counting in 3s, then which parts of the learning model would we be using?  Can we justify why we would be using each part of the learning model?

Firstly, the LC would need to check their capabilities (where are they at?).  Then connecting with prior knowledge - how did they practise skip counting when learning 2s and 5s?  Is there a way to develop curiosity and question - Why do we need to learn to skip count in 3s?  Is there a way to make the learning exciting?  Practising together with another, collaboratively (supporting each other).

Values 

There have been discussions with the community about what values they wanted the learners to have by the time they left OrmPS.   'Confidence' was the most widely selected word.  Today, we had an opportunity to review the values that were identified by the community in 2015, then wrote what we felt were significant indicators for each value:

RESPECT: learning NZSL, cultural awareness, considerate of others' property and the environment, honesty, belief in self

INTEGRITY: telling the truth, making the most of opportunities, keeping it real!, being reliable/responsible.

RESILIENCE: never giving up, looking for new ways to do things, bouncing back

KINDNESS: helping others, understanding, being accepting/inclusive, considerate, helpful, thoughtful, courtesy, compassionate.

It will be interesting to see where our ideas go from here and how the school's values are developed and integrated within the daily learning.

What is Learning?

Heath kicked off this session with two videos.   These raised our awareness about the changes that are being made to education.   We were then asked to share what our thoughts were about the videos.   

"The problem with old schools is that they were teaching answers."

I felt that learning can be like a Rubik's cube.   We think we have the problem solved, but find out that it's not right, so we go back a few steps and try another way.    There may also be more than one way to learn (and solve a problem).

The next video provided an opportunity to hear from many people about the need for a change.  It will be a video to return to later and encourage me to question whether I am supporting the learners in our habitat to learn through change.

"Knowledge should not be about knowing facts."

"It's not about reform, it's about transformation."

How easy is it to access learning?   

We carried out two exercises in small groups:

1. Write a sentence to explain what learning is...   This required brainstorming words, then selecting what we thought were the best to be included in a sentence.
2. If you could draw learning, then what would it be?  The following image was shared and we had to select one that metaphorically explained learning for us. 

Which was more accessible?

The second option was definitely more accessible for me.   There was a picture to link my thinking to, rather than a set of words from which I had to then construct a sentence.    If I have to write, then bullet points are my preference.    Will my learners be thinking the same way?   I will need to think about how I am wanting the learners to connect with new learning - with visuals or prompting ideas through text.

Induction - Day 1

What

It's 4:14pm at the end of my first day of learning at #OrmPS.   My brain is feeling rather frayed at the edges, and more so as I push my way back through what I have learned today... right back to the beginning at 8:00am this morning.

Various acronyms - both already known and new, e.g. WALT, WWLF and TIB became part of our dialogue as we covered the vision, vision principles and learning model which is the backbone of who we are at Ormiston Primary.

Simon Sinek's 'Golden Circle'...

...will become a frequent 'go to' as idevelop, iexplore and iexperience so that 'i' can:

Guarantee every learner engages in 

innovative, personalised, world-class learning.

We will use the Spiral of Inquiry cycle to design the learning the teaching.

This new framework is the involvement of learners, their families and communities, underpinning and permeating each of the phases shown, from the beginning and throughout the whole process (Timperley et al, 2014).

A learning activity to help understand the Spiral of Inquiry cycle

Learning and reflective tools such as Google Sites, Hapara and Blogger will become part of our daily practice.  My Google site will be a place to embed videos, insert photos and link to the Practising Teacher Criteria.  This blog will be my place to reflect and capture all the wonderful learning opportunities and reflections.

References:
Timperley H, Kaser L and Halbert J, (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry.