As the day of arrival for round 2 of our AoN students drew closer, I was excited, nervous and grateful to have the opportunity to be part of something I'd heard so much about from students, their whānau,Twitter posts and conversations amongst my colleagues. I wondered where I would fit in and what I could bring to this already highly successful team and evolving model? I'm still trying to figure the answer to this question out as we approach our fifth week of working with our new group of students.What I know is that we have a wonderful group of learners, who are connecting, risk taking, rising to the challenge of new learning and who have chosen and are now beginning to explore their passion projects.Wow! what a wide range of diverse interest these active learners have ! It is very interesting and exciting..
Last term a student from AoN connected with me via e-mail asking for help with her passion project. I was fortunate to spend the day with the students, leaders and whānau of AoN. I felt inspired and left reflecting on the students' high level of confidence and engagement in their learning, along with the passion and enthusiasm with which they had shared their knowledge with me. This struck home - as my own learning has been driven by passion, creativity and resilience. I believe these traits underpin my achievements and richest experiences in life. Reflecting on my teaching practice, I've realised that this thread of creativity, passion and resilience runs through my most effective teaching moments and is when student engagement has been high. My teaching background is varied. I've taught at all levels and worked alongside many wonderful teachers and leaders. Much of my teaching has been focused around The Arts and I have a particular interest in supporting all students to develop their creative potential. I also understand that there are many ways to be creative and 'creativity ' is not exclusive to, but rather inclusive of The Arts.
I have been reading with interest the changes in education and in particular the 'shift to student led learning and the need for teachers to "trust that students know what they need to learn", and for us to "let go" of the need to control all aspects of a student's learning. Personally, I like knowing exactly what is expected of me and what I need to 'do,' so when things change and appear unclear it does get 'a little scary, uncomfortable and I need to remind myself to trust. My perspective in teaching comes from 15 years plus of part-time teaching and working in and out of other teachers' classes. Change is part of everyday life. Working like this has taught me a lot about 'how to teach' rather that 'what you teach' and how to learn and work alongside students and other teachers. As I continue to develop my understanding of Active Learning traits and Future Focused Education with a shift from 'acquiring lots of knowledge' to 'developing a set of transferable skills' my thoughts are affirmed. I've been viewing Ted Talks by John Hattie about "Why So Many Of Our Schools Are So Successful?" and by Grant Lichtman "What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills" , and I've learnt a new word "Cognitosphere". I've been learning about "Growth mindset vs fixed" and I've just read an interesting article online by Barbara Challenger called "Building The Future Today: The Need For Creativity In Education". She talks about "...the future..." being "...shaped by the creative talents of inspired well educated children". She goes on to define creativity as "...a process of having original ideas that have value". Involving "...the imagination, vision, taking risks and being prepared to be wrong" .
And so as I join the team at AoN I wonder....
What will the creative process look like at AoN where students are leading, making their own decisions about their learning and are following a passion?
What is the link between raising student achievement and creativity?
How will students transfer skills learnt at AoN between communities ( school, home etc..)and will we see this reflected in raised student achievement?
Will the students get what they need from the active learning model vs a curriculum led one?
What will it be like to teach in a supportive co-teaching environment instead of alone?
This is very exciting... So many questions So much to read... So much to learn... And now to answer, " why would you? Simply another question... "Why would you not?"
This is a period of transition for us here at Akoranga o Naenae, as we finish our evaluations of Round 1 and begin anew with 48 eager students for Round 2.
As we said at the beginning, Akoranga o Naenae is based on a hunch, with the main principles well researched. Now we wanted to determine whether or not AoN has proven itself effective. Our chief supporters, our network leaders, are realistic and experienced people. They know that change takes time, and have not put unfair expectations on us. However, we always knew that we would have to prove ourselves pretty quickly to ensure that we could continue AoN. As such, the evaluations from Round 1 have been much anticipated (particularly from data geeks like me!) Keep in mind we had (only) 14 days with our learners.
As with most things at Akoranga o Naenae, when considering methods for collecting evaluations, we tried to think outside the box. As there was not one tool that was going to give us all the information we needed, we used a variety of tools, and we asked everyone who had been involved for their perspective. These included self-assessment, questionnaires, video recordings, and reflective discussions.
We started with the most important players - the students. Way back at the
Start of Round 1
beginning of AoN, we had asked the students to do a self-assessment, indicating their knowledge of the active learner traits, and their understanding of when they show these traits themselves. We then asked them to complete the same self-assessment at the end of AoN. By turning their answers into numerical ratings, based on a pre-determined criteria, we could compare the beginning and end data. This showed that:
the students were more able to articulate what active learning was after working with us at AoN for 14 weeks (total score at the end of 81 points, compared with 49 points at the beginning)
= 65% improvement
the students showed an improvement in their ability to describe when they are active learners in real life situations (79 points at the end; 47 at the beginning)
End of Round 1
= 68% improvement
the students were able to explain why active learning is important and relevant to their lives (especially now, not just in the future). This was the area that we knew the students found the most difficult, and we had worked hard on, so we were pleased to see a total of 51 points at the end of AoN, compared with 33 points at the beginning
= 54% improvement
These three key points showed us that the learning had been effective for many of our 48 learners. Bearing in mind that many, if not most, of these kids are priority learners, whatever impact we had (positive or negative) was always going to be important. We were pretty excited by this results, and proud of what we all had achieved over 14 days. It gives us more confidence to hope (as we always have) that AoN might end up being one of the things that leads to improved academic success for some of these students. We have anecdotal evidence from several kids, families, and leaders to say that they have seen just that. Kids telling us about how they used not to be at the National Standard, and now they are; parents describing their child as 'sky rocketing' at school; and leaders collating data on their eight AoN students, showing significant improvements in reading, writing, and maths.
We used Infinity Learning Maps as an assessment tool throughout our time at AoN, and these provided us with very interesting data, too:
Learning maps #1, #2 and #3
as students became more active in their learning, the number of connections with people outside of their normal 'bubble' became much larger. This then decreased as the students became more purposeful/specific in their questioning
students came to better understand how technology can help them connect and learn
the students became more aware that learning happens everywhere, not just in a classroom
Students' survey
Our third method of collecting student evaluations was through a survey. The main themes were:
the students loved getting to know others from the network and working with them
they appreciated what the community space could offer
they really enjoyed the food we had on our Learning Maps days!!
We also asked our schools' leadersfor their evaluations of AoN, with a questionnaire targeting specific areas of interest to us, as well as giving them room to add other thoughts. This is a small sample size, with only six schools in our network, but their comments were thoughtful, considered, and helpful to us. These included:
a concern that the 'off-site' nature of AoN appears to imply that schools are not able to cater for their priority learners (which we know is not the case, but those making such an inference may not realise that)
the difficulties with transferring the active learning ideas from AoN into school classrooms, despite a variety of efforts
the workload on the teachers at AoN, particularly at the beginning and in the set-up phase
the effectiveness of connections with whanau
the increased "student agency" that was seen in some AoN students back at their schools (for example, at ine school some students starting a coding club. At a different school, students coaching younger sports teams)
the benefit of having another 'shared purpose' amongst the network schools
Some the Leaders Questions of
When asking whanaufor their evaluations, we mostly used video recordings to capture their thoughts about AoN, and its impact for their child. These resulted in some very heart-warming moments, and some honest truths. The highlights were:
hearing that students had developed their own 'drive' to learn
confirming the fact that the students were motivated by the power of choice
believing that AoN had contributed to an improvement in academic success at school
Some of the teacher questions
The next group we wanted to get evaluations from was the teachersof these students back in their own schools. We have been really interested in how the skills they had been developing at AoN could transfer back to other areas of the students' lives. We asked teachers to fill in a quick online survey. The teachers who did so gave us some useful feedback, including:
that some students clearly understood the link between their learning at AoN and school, while others did not
the enjoyment that most students got by learning about their passion
that we have not made clear enough to some teachers the basis for AoN
Lastly, Natasha, Kelly, and I did our own evaluation. We knew there were a lot of positives that would come from this, as we had been there each day, seeing the change in the students. These positives were tempered with some points for future improvement. We are active learners who reflect! The main themes were:
AoN teacher evaluation
the difficulty in striking the right balance between too much and not enough communication with teachers and leaders
the tensions caused by some people in the network being more engaged than others
the difficulty with wifi!
the high workload
the incredible professional development that AoN was for each of us
the benefits of AoN being held in a community space
the significant observable changes in the learners from Day 1 to Day 14
So, overall, did AoN 'work'? Did the 14 days we spent together make a difference to these students? Did it help them to build skills and understanding about how they can enhance the way they learn in all areas of their lives? It sure did! In the words of one of our students: "Akoranga o Naenae changed my life".
As active learners ourselves, we're not stopping there!
We have been cogitating over all of this evaluation data, considering our next steps, and contemplating about how what we've learnt so far can help us in Round 2 and beyond. The main points we will be working on are:
the possibility of co-constructing success criteria for our Active Learning trait assessments with students,
the purpose of each planning, assessment, and evaluation tool, and how to best use these,
how we can streamline the whole time-frame (and we have to, as Round 2 is only 12 weeks!), and ...
continuing to try to find ways to make transference between AoN and schools understandable and practicable for leaders, teachers, and students
How do you feel about AoN finishing?
This is just a snippet of what we wanted to say. If you have any questions or want further information, please contact us. We'd be really excited to talk about these evaluations in more depth.
My
reflections on my experiences at AoN may take a slightly different angle than Kelly and Clare’s, as from next Term I will
no longer be going out of my classroom to The River of Life Centre. I will continue my learning back at school with what we have termed the 'AoN satellite class'. On a Friday, I will co-teach with another Year 4 teacher back at my home school, with students exploring a passion, whilst developing the skills of active learning. We see this as a wonderful opportunity to track the learning dispositions of students who have been to AoN (of whom I have 3 in my class) over a longer period of time. I will continue to post my reflections on this blog and will continue to learn alongside Kelly, Clare and now Kerry.
If I look
back to my wonderings at the start of AoN, it really is exciting to see how
much has happened in that space of time. Working in this environment allowed me to explore my thinking with the advantage of 2 other perspectives, provided by Kelly and Clare. I don't believe that without the collaborative planning, challenging of ideas and rigorous discussions I would have been at the place I am now at in terms of my thinking. Working in this collaborative way has proved to be a first class professional learning experience! Now that I am ready to continue to take my learning back into my classroom, it seems like the ideal time to take stock of where I'm at...
At the start of AoN I had this wondering:
What might teaching,
planning and assessment look like if the Key Competencies were used as a
starting point, rather than a by-product or an add on to other learning
intentions? What if the Key Competencies were the main road instead of a side
street? The Key Competencies go across all learning areas but what does this
look like in practice?
Exploring this wondering through the lens of active learning, rather than Key Competencies was not a
problem as there was lots of overlap. In terms of teaching and planning,
much of our explicit teaching in the initial stages was around the six active
learning traits. Kelly, Clare and I spent a lot of time prior to starting
with the students discussing and debating the active learner traits. After brainstorming, sorting, grouping and re-grouping we agreed on six traits. We agreed that active learners: question, choose, reflect, are resilient, know
learning has a purpose and connect. From there we unpacked what each of these traits
looked like in practice, which gave us our success criteria.
Once
we had a clear understanding we were ready to design
some explicit teaching around the traits with the students. Initially we spent some
time helping them to understand what each of the traits looked like in
practice. We then gave them some specific examples of what it would like if
they were using displaying these traits. Following this, students came up with
examples of where they were using or could be using the traits at home, at
school or anywhere in their lives.
In
the first few weeks of AoN we spent a lot of time discussing and modelling these
traits to, with and by the students. Many of the learning opportunities were
designed in a way that students could specifically focus on these traits. This
meant that when students embarked on their passion projects they had a thorough
understanding of the active learner traits and these were a pivotal part of all
of our learning. The passion projects provided the context for students to
continue to develop and apply their skills in active learning. This started me thinking
about how at the start of the year we spend time focusing on Key Competencies
with our class and then they take a back seat so that we can get on with
the‘real’ learning. At AoN, the active
learner traits were the starting point and the students' passions provided the
context. They were not an 'instead of', but an integral part of the learning.
What was it about the set up that enabled active learner traits to take centre stage?
Firstly,
all of us valued the active learner traits. We all believed that if students
could be active in their learning this would make a difference to their
engagement and in time, to achievement.
Secondly,
in our Active Learner success criteria, we had developed a clear framework
which we constantly referred to in our planning, discussions and evaluations.
Thirdly,
our planning framework wasn’t structured by curriculum areas but by student
need in terms of how they would learn about active learning and how to BE an
active learner. The day was divided into a 4 parts; a session that was more
teacher directed with explicit teaching around the traits; a session where
students would use the traits to explore their passion; a session where
students reflected on their learning using a given framework; and a session
where students had chance to think about how they would use and continue their
learning throughout the week. This of course doesn’t mean that structuring a
day using curriculum areas is exclusive to teaching students about active
learning. Guy Claxton’s split screen approach whereby learning intentions are
twofold and students learn both ‘about’ (knowledge) and learn to (skill based)
could be one framework for ensuring active learning traits are central even
within a day structured around curriculum areas.
In
terms of assessment we used a range of tools to gather information on how students were developing their skills around being an active learner: Learning maps - a visual tool whereby students drew what their learning environment looked like.
Active learner self assessment
Information gathered from students and Whānau gave us a rich insight into how students were transferring their active learner skills in various contexts and what they had taken from the experience.
Another wondering I had was: If the skills involved in being an active
learner are explicitly taught and valued will this transfer in all contexts,
i.e. from AoN to home and school. Are there instances where this is or is not
the case and what are the key factors at play in these instances?
There
were many instances where skill transference was evident. This was shown in
different evaluative tools including learning maps, self assessments and
perhaps most powerfully in video clips of students and Whānau.
There were some factors that we believe enhanced the transference of the active
learner traits:
Attendance: In some cases, where students were
absent for some of the sessions, they found it difficult to catch
up. Given that AoN happened once a week, missing sessions meant that it could feel
like they were away for a long period of time.
Consistency of approach in all places; at
home, at their home school, at AoN: Where teachers were invested in AoN and
the thinking behind teaching active learner skills; and alongside this parents
were also using the language of active learning, we found a higher degree of
transference.
In stepping into the unknown I had this wondering too: What are the benefits and challenges of
working in a collaborative environment?
For me this was my first experience of teaching in the same
space as two other teachers. In speaking to others who have
co-taught, I know that it isn’t always as harmonious as what I am fortunate
enough to have experienced and this got me thinking about why this was:
Kelly, Clare and I all have differences in terms
of our personalities however our philosophies around teaching and learning are
closely aligned.
Where there were disagreements: it was usually
around how we were going to go about something rather than why. We always
challenged the point and at no point the person.
We were open and honest about how we were
feeling: in the set up stages of AoN we spoke about the importance of being
open and honest and I feel that at all times we managed to do so.
Finally and possibly most importantly we really
valued and respected each other's practice, thoughts and feelings. Also, we were
all totally open to learning from each other.
Given the above reflections, do I believe
co-teaching could work effectively where there are differences in teaching
philosophies? I see it as a continuum. If there are points of difference I
don’t believe that this would be counteractive and in fact may make for some
great discussions which could ensure clarity of thinking. For me the bigger
things would have to be aligned; those are around the importance of
student agency, research driven and researchinfluencing practice, and in terms of the
co-teacher - a real openness to learning would be pivotal. The last term and a half has been an incredible learning experience. It has broadened my horizons in terms of who I can connect with and learn with. The opportunity to collaborate in designing learning opportunities with students where the skills of learning are explicitly taught, valued and assessed has been inspiring. I cannot wait to continue the learning and to see how we progress with our 'AoN satellite class' and
wonderful teachers and leaders. Much of my teaching has been focused around The Arts and I have a particular interest in supporting all students to develop their creative potential. I also understand that there are many ways to be creative and 'creativity ' is not exclusive to, but rather inclusive of The Arts.
This is very exciting...
