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.

Sight Sound Motion

Last week I attended Ruma Toru's Mangamaunu Marae stay in Kaikoura. On Wednesday we walked the Ohau Waterfall Walk Track to where the seal pups learn to swim in a fresh water pool while their mothers are out in the ocean hunting for food - Link
This was a wonderful authentic learning experience for the children who had done some earlier work on whales. Children where capturing images of the seals playing and swimming on their iPads, cameras and phones. What struck me at the time was this was an wonderful example of Sight Sound Motion which is an important aspect of Learn Create Share. Children were able to record (photos and video) what was happening in front of them and then use this when they return to school the following week.

All children were engaged and motivated which is the foundation for all learning. I look forward to viewing the children's learning on the class blog soon - tepunaotereo3.blogspot.co.nz/

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!

ULearn 2015

Four staff members attended the conference in Auckland during the second week of the holidays. They returned to school invigorated and full of ideas they would like to implement in their teaching spaces and school-wide. However, what was very satisfying and reaffirming from my point of view was the fact that Hornby Primary is already embracing and implementing some of the ideas and trends that were shared at the conference.
A very brief summary of the trends and themes shared at last night's staff meeting

• collaboration
• innovation
• creativity
• open mindset
• risk taking - making mistakes is ok, it's what we do next that is important, we can learn from mistakes
• embracing failure - Karen Boyes said that 40% of today's 5 year olds will be self employed and will need to cope with great failures and great successes, therefore, the need for resilience
• feedback
• the importance of the learning process, more discussions with children about learning; what did you learn about? how do you learn best? what would you do differently next time?
• agency - the power to act and take control
• the critical role of digital technology

I believe our current school vision including our characteristics focus on communicators, participators, critical thinkers and resilience, and Learn Create Share model is preparing our children for an ever changing world and encapsulates much of what was discussed at the ULearn Conference. 

Thank you Alethea, Kate, Heather and Christine.

Learn Create Share In Action

The second Health Leaders' Forum was held 15 September at the Hornby High School Auditorium with 8 schools attending. We are very fortunate to be part of the Health Promotion in Schools Programme which is ably led by Richard Wisnesky. Richard meets with our group each Thursday afternoon and works on health related topics that our leaders then share with the rest of the school.

Our display included things that we do to promote well-being at Hornby, for example; Kiwican, winter sports tournament, Olympia Gym programme for juniors, class fitness programmes and our school values - LEARN.

The group then presented their information and knowledge in text and graphics form on a cardboard display, and they also created a slideshow in Google slides - CREATE.

The display was then shared in a cafe forum with all schools getting a set time to spend at each display. Our children worked in pairs sharing their presentation with each school. The slide presentation can be found at Ruma Toru- SHARE.

I then asked the children what they learned from this experience? 

"To speak clearly and confidently, now I can just get up and speak in front of people without even worrying about it.”

“I have learned to read the ingredients and nutritional information on the back of packets.”

"How to organise our presentation and plans by working together."

“If you listen to others you can get things out of it – for example, one of the schools is now using our electronic mihi idea that we shared at the last forum.”

Hornby Display

Jaleel and Chelsea performing karakia before morning tea

Key Competencies

Last week I attended the Ministerial Cross Sector Forum at the Hagley Pavillion. Professor Gary Hawke was one of the speakers and something he said struck a cord with me. The key competencies should be the starting point for teaching and learning, we should weave our teaching and learning through the key competencies. At Hornby, our characteristics (key competencies) of communicating, participating, critical thinking and resilience, underpin our school curriculum.
The key competencies are firmly embedded in our approach to Learn Create Share.
The New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies:

• thinking
• using language, symbols and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing

Dakota Shares Her Learning

In this video Dakota demonstrates and shares her understanding of the 2 times tables using the Explain Everything app. Dakota explains her learning clearly and precisely. Learn Create Share provides children with multiple ways of demonstrating and sharing their learning.

Dakota said producing the video clip was fun because she was able to work with a friend who posed the question (2 x 6 =) for Dakota to explain and solve.