Colleen's Mind lab Journey

Without evidence, you are just another person with an opinion. (Andreas Schleicher, OECD) The main purpose of a teaching and learning inquiry, as described in the NZ curriculum, is to bring about improved outcomes for students through a cyclical process that is guided by 3 key questions. What should students achieve? Where are our students in relation to these goals and priorities? What do students need to learn next? (focusing inquiry) Which strategies, interventions or programmes will support students to achieve these outcomes? (teaching inquiry) What learning happened for students as a result of these strategies, interventions or programmes, and what will teachers do next to ensure that students continue to progress? (learning inquiry) ERO found that inquiry typically took two forms - teaching and learning inquiry, [ 4 ]  and professional learning inquiry.  The following model is found on the MOE site and also the ERO site The following link has a se...

On our last face to face session, we were told about our literature review. The word then went around how difficult this would be, and how much time it would take. Our school is right into Personalised learning and we were all going to set up a learning hub within the senior cluster of the school. So this was an easy subject to do my review around, or so I thought. I started with Personalised Learning and then changed to modern learning environments, innovative classrooms, 21st-century learning, and so the list goes on all have got the same underlining principles but the variety of terms used and acronyms MLE, PL, ILI would make your head spin. So after reading all the fellow Mindlab students posting on Google communities that they had their question sorted I felt envious so I thought I should go to the Ministry of Education because surely they should have the term sorted. But no ”. “the term personalized learning has been used perhaps too broadly to cover a whole host of strat...

The contribution of teacher Inquiry topics to my community of Practice. How do the two chosen topics relate to issues in your professional practice? We have has a few new teaching focuses this year and next year we have decided as a staff that we need to consolidate our knowledge. We as a school are continuing our knowledge in Personalised Learning. Our end of year data shows that we need to again focus on writing even though we are above the national standard this is our weakest area that we want to further develop. Google docs were introduced last year also with Prime maths and Maths buddy. Focus one: Is to use Google Docs to further develop collaboration with a focus on writing and also to include the wider school community. Then to take this wider by including the other features in the Doc suite for planning and at staff level. At the moment we are using docs for planning, staff meeting, collaboration, feedback, must do’s may do’s and share through docs. Focus two: How t...

Change in my practice towards Future-oriented learning and teaching. Does education need to change?  Yes! We all need to be more Dog ! Personalised learning. I have chosen to reflect on views around Personalised learning. WHY DID I MAKE THIS CHANGE? My school has been on a journey around personalised learning for nearly 3 years now. We looked at this concept as a whole school inquiry topic where we all read a mentor text “Making Learning Personal. The what, who, WOW, where and why By Barbara Bray and Kathleen Mc Claskey. As a school, we would meet after reading each section and discuss that section with a focus on our school and practice. We also had tasks to trial after each section as well. The second year we applied the practice completely into our classrooms. This year my inquiry was based around including personalised learning with lifting writing achievement. I then paired up with the teacher of literacy, who was completing here degree and joined forc...

16 weeks of learning Look at how far we have come… I always tend to go back before I go forward. So I looked into the definition of what REFLECTING on reflective practice means: Reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experiences towards gaining new insights of self and or practice. (Boud et al 1985; Boyd and Fales, 1983; Mezirow, 1981, Jarvis, 1992). This involves examining assumptions of everyday practice and being self- aware and critically evaluating own responses to practice situations. To think about these practices we have to take into account our own ethical, professional, pedagogic and conceptual concerns or beliefs. We have to be really honest for change to occur, we can all put our rose-tinted glasses about a lesson and look at outside factors. I am a trained reading recovery teacher and one of my tutors use to always say. If a lesson goes wrong how could you change it? Teaching behind the one-way mirror I was constantl...