Thank you Mark and MOP

What a fantastic year we have had. If I think back to where we were at the beginning of the year, and where our teaching and learning practice is now - wow! And this has all been made possible thanks to the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme (MOP), the generosity of the Manaiakalani Education Trust (MET) and the wonderful work of Mark Maddren, our facilitator.
All classes now have their own blog and some teachers have their own personal blog that they are using to record their Learn Create Share journey.
Our Yr4-6 teachers are preparing class sites for next year ready for our focus on visible learning. All teachers have embraced Learn Create Share and are now ready for the next step - visible teaching and learning.
Learn Create Share and digital technology is transforming our practice in the Hornby Cluster. Some of our staff will be attending SOLO workshops in January at Templeton School and we look forward to seeing how this approach could enhance our curriculum delivery.
The other piece of good news is that one of our staff members, Heather Matthews, is a recipient of the 2016 Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme. This will provide wonderful professional learning not only for Heather, but Hornby Primary and the Hornby Cluster. Well done Heather!
And finally, we bid farewell to our Cluster Leader, Dick Edmundson, who is off Linwood College to continue the moral imperative he has firmly established here in Hornby. Thank you Dick for your leadership and clear vision - reducing the digital divide and ensuring that all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Visible Teaching

Today Mark Maddren our Manaiakalani Outreach Facilitator took the staff through a Visible Teaching session. Mark started the session dictating instructions to us where we each had a piece of paper and pencil. Following his instructions, we should have ended up drawing a simple cassette tape. The end products varied greatly, with some people giving up - sorry Mark! The point being, Mark knew what he wanted us to achieve, but all the knowledge was in his head, we could not see it, we could only hear his verbal instructions.

"Teaching should be a very simple, no surprises process - it's the teacher's responsibility to share the process, not students responsibility to 'get inside the teacher's head'.
Should students be trying to understand the teacher or understand the learning? We need a roadmap ... " (Mark Maddren)

"Why can't we just lay the learning pathway out for them and make it easy?" (Dorothy Burt)

Visible teaching empowers learners by providing them with a visible pathway. They are able to see what the learning looks like and sounds like. They are able to revisit it if they are uncertain, or need to clarify the learning intentions. Learners are able to take control of their learning which leads to greater motivation and engagement.

Visible teaching empowers all learners; parents, teachers, colleagues and the wider community.

Google Sites provide the vehicle for visible teaching. "Using the Learn Create Share framework to manage learning in a digital learning environment that is truly visible, through Google Sites leading learning, blogging, sharing outcomes and highly effective teaching practice, has enabled this accelerated rate of progress" (Professor Stuart McNaughton, Auckland University, Woolf Fisher Research). Mc Naughton is referring to the progress of students in the Manaiakalani Project.

Learn Create Share, Google Sites and digital technology has the capacity to transform teaching and learning by removing confusion and uncertainty from a learner's perspective. All learners are entitled to know what they are learning, and our role as teachers is to make this process as clear and visible as possible. We now have the tools to do this!

Thanks for a great session Mark!