'It takes a Village'

My presentation to staff to bring clarity around the 'Pt England Way'.

So what's changed...and where am I heading?

This term as part of my rethink around my inquiry I know I  need to shift from thinking about thinking for a classroom of learners to thinking about a wider school impact.
So what  am I trying to impact and what do I need to?

How do we have a cohesive schoolwide approach to sharing our values and The Pt England Way - with the aim to ensure that all members of our schooling community have a clear sense of  'Our Ways'...

So what???

KC's the key...

Once again during this work I was reminded about the huge importance of the Key Competencies!  For us to have classrooms that have high cognitive engagement we must ensure we have high behavioural engagement. Being switched on to learning, requires switched on learners who are able to manage themselves.
I developed this self assessment  Rubric  for our learners to help them monitor themselves and clearly show what being a successful learner and digital citizen at PES meant. This included aspects of the KC's and was a progression of 3 levels which allowed the kids greater choice about where they worked, who they worked with and how frequently they might need to check in with the teacher outside of their micro-teaching times.
 I  then attempted to put it under the SOLO lens which has meant adding a couple of levels on the continuum ...a work in progress.

So how did they go?

This proved to be a fairly challenging task for the group and really pushed them to think about the link between their prior knowledge and inference. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to go back and do the follow up session with them which it really needed and I must !!

Now it's time to actually start trying to apply it. This is a follow up task that was created for a reading group to try and extend their thinking and understand inference.
It seems that in using SOLO it is essential to give kids the language structures to assist them to share their understanding.



I am also wondering about how best to capture student voice ... that might  have to wait until next term.

Gaining a greater understanding of SOLO...

Aha ...Now it's starting to make more sense ... over the past couple of weeks through research discussion and in our Inquiry group we have started to gain a shared understanding and appreciation of SOLO as a thinking Taxonomy.

SOLO has the ability to make learning outcomes visible for students. The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) Biggs and Collis (1982) is a model of learning  that can be used to observe and describe levels of thinking as they become increasingly complex.

How can we shift our kids from having one idea to eventually being able to see relationships and explain and make connections between the ideas (relational) and ultimately get to a point where ideas are extended beyond the subject?

This is the presentation I created to share my understanding...