Developing Students as Leaders of their own Learning - Facilitator: Shaun Hawthorne

Success Criteria: 
By the end of today we will:
• Understand what learner agency is and why it is important
• Identify different ways that we could better develop learner agency in our school/students
• Explore how we might embed learner agency across our school
• Explore what we might look for as indicators of learner agency

Agency is:
“The capability of individual human beings to make choices and act on these choices in a way that makes a difference in their lives”
“Cognitively, self-regulated learners plan, set goals, organise, self-monitor, and self-evaluate at various points while building new knowledge or skills.”
(© Cognition Education 2015)

What is ‘agency’?
Students have a sense of ‘agency’ when they feel in control of things that happen around them; when they feel that they can influence events. This is an important sense for learners to develop. They need to be active participants in their learning.
“One way of thinking of learner agency is when learners have the ‘power to act'. When learners move from being passive recipients to being much more active in the learning process, and actively involved in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.”
Derek Wenmoth
NZC Online – TKI Learner Agency Webpage 

What should teaching and, most especially, learning look like in this rapidly changing world?
Preparing for their future
● Critical thinking
● Creativity
● Metacognition
● Problem solving
● Collaboration
● Motivation
● Self-efficacy
● Conscientiousness
● Grit or perseverance

Global Competencies 6Cs: Character, Citizenship, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Critical Thinking.

Research links learner agency with:
● Increased motivation and ownership of learning
● Increased emotion in learning and therefore engagement
● Increased neural development (through active learning)
● Greater differentiation
● Increased sense of belonging
● Increased likelihood to continue in schooling
● Increased achievement

Key questions learners need to be able to answer to own their own learning:
Where am I going?
How am I doing?
Where to next?
What do I need to know and do to get to where I want to be?
How will I know when I’ve succeeded?
What support and resources do I have access to to help me get to where I want to be?
“Teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important – if not essential – for promoting lifelong learning.”
Dunlosky, 2013

What are learner dispositions?
Dispositions are frequent and voluntary habits of thinking and doing. (Da Ros-Voseles & Fowler-Haughey, 2007).
A disposition is the way we would naturally respond to a situation or experience (Carr, 1997)

Developing learner dispositions
What?
• What will students learn?
• What do I need to teach?
• What are the skills needed to develop this disposition?
How?
•How will I make the dispositions part of classroom life?
• How will I teach the skills needed to develop each disposition?
• What strategies or approaches will I use?

How to sustain and embed these changes?
Develop routines that build your learner dispositions, processes and strategies.
These routines should be:
 Explicit – catchy names, easy to remember
 Simple – only a few steps
 Repeated – use over and over
 General – can be applied in many contexts.

Ritchhart, Perkins, Tishman 

The purpose of feedback is to close the gap.

A few key messages from research
Seven elements of effective feedback
1.Goal referenced
2.Tangible and transparent
3.Actionable
4.User friendly
5.Timely
6.Ongoing
7.Consistent
From article by Grant Wiggins -2012 

Future focuses for my class and school:

Make own visual for the Learning Pit and strategies for what to do when in the pit. Students will then have the power and the language to solve their problems.

Creating visuals and colour coding to help key the learners as to what they are doing within the learning process.

A graduate profile or learner profile that has the language that is shared. What do we want our students to know, think and do when they leave our school?

Do we teach children how to learn?
How do we teach students “how to learn”? 
Learner Self questioning to develop efficacy:
• What knowledge do I have to help me solve this?
• What tools can I use to help me solve this?

Growth Coaching Course - Facilitator: Deanna Johnston

This was a two day programme. 
During these two days I:

• was introduced to the GROWTH coaching system;
• explored the GROWTH model;
• applied some of the 8 key coaching skills;
• gained an understanding of the Coaching "Ways of Being" for coaching conversations;
• saw modelled and applied the GROWTH coaching model to a range of conversations;
• developed next steps for taking coaching forward in my kura

GROWTH model:

(Relationships)
G - Goals

R - Reality

O - Options

W - Will

T - Tactics

H - Habits

(Results)

Good coaching conversations lead to...

A - Actions

C - Clarity

E - Energy

8 Key Coaching Skills:

1. Developing trust

2. Being present

3. Listen actively

4. Clarifying

5. Empathising

6. Being succinct

7. Asking the best questions

8. Giving feedback

Let those "white spaces" (silence) rest - it allows the coachee to process their thoughts. 

A major component is your emotional intelligence and "way of being".

Coaching is achieving goals:

• Where are you today?
• How will you get there?
• Where are you going?

Existing goals → Motivation/Strengths/Environment→Desired State "Future Perfect"

Coaching is about:

• seeing talent (strengths, potential) in everyone; solution-focused vs focusing on problems;
• expanding people's frames of reference vs allowing them to remain fixed (deficit theorising);
• seeing new possibilities vs setting tasks;
• asking (developing) vs telling;
• working WITH difference vs trying to change people;
• giving honest, constructive feedback vs feeling frustrated by avoiding the 'real' conversations.

Effective Listening

Active Listening Attitudes

• being "present" mindset
• avoid 'me too';
• remember that you think faster than peole can speak;
• listening for content and feelings.

Active Listening Behaviours:

• eye contact (appropriate);
• open posture;
• minimal encouragers;
• probing/clarifying questions or responses.

Have a go - Problem Talk

• Tell me about one of your small work challenges at the moment;
• Why is this such a problem?
• What are the worst emotions you have around this?
• what are the road bumps to progress here?

Have a go - Solution Talk

• tell me about what you'd like to achieve in relation to this?
• if this was working well, what would be happening?
• can you think of a time when you handled this situation successfully?
• what would others notice you doing if you were managing this challenge?
• if you could take just one single action to move this forward, what would it be?

Concerned-based feedback reminders:

• talk with people not at them;
• the more emotionally loaded the subject, the more silence is required;
• use silence to slow down a conversation so that you can discover what the conversation really wants to be about.

I would thoroughly recommend this course to anyone wanting to help and support colleagues.

My future perfect would be our entire teaching staff to attend this PD so we have a shared understanding and knowledge in order to be on the same waka.

DFI Get Together #2

This was the second get together from DFI intake #1, 2019. Cheryl Torrie (Manaiakalani facilitator), kindly came along again to help us continue to develop our class sites. Once again, it was such a worthwhile couple of hours spent tweaking, learning, creating and sharing. I was able to reorganise a few pages and add a Teachers Notes button so that I can record my anecdotal notes, curriculum links and teacher reflections. We had an interesting conversation around the curriculum links; they are already evident in my Learning Intention so why am I having to also show where it's in the NZC again? This Teachers Notes button is only visible to me.
My class site is still in its baby stages but I feel a lot happier about the direction I'm heading. I also loved the opportunity to listen to what other schools are doing. Thanks to Sherryl Gomm and Cheryl Torrie for your ideas, creativity, knowledge and professionalism.

Predator Trapping workshop - Trap Lines and Trap Types

I applied for a grant to Tairāwhiti Enviroschools and Eastland Port so our school could purchase Goodnature's A24 and A12 traps. As part of receiving the money, I agreed to attend a trapping workshop.

As my class have done quite a lot of study around different types of traps, a lot of the information around the traps was not new but it's still quite fascinating. It was also interesting hearing about the traps that are set in our reserves.

The Norway rat has a short, thick tail which is shorter than its body and it has small ears. The ship rat has bigger ears and a tail that’s longer than its body. The ship rat is the biggest threat to wildlife because it’s a good climber and can reach nests in trees. The Norway rat is big enough to attack seabirds, but it’s not a tree-climber and can only attack wildlife that lives or nests close to the ground. Kiore, our native rat, are not thought to be around Gisborne and are more commonly found on the outer islands. We think we are catching Norway rats at school. Tonight, I learnt that one variety of rat likes bacon so it's a great lure but I can't remember whether it was the Norway or ship rat! We have always used peanut butter.

Stoats were introduced to New Zealand in 1884 to control rabbits and hares. Scientists and bird-lovers warned that they would be a danger to our native birds, but their warnings were ignored. Of course, the stoats worked out very quickly that it was much easier to catch a kiwi or other native ground nesting birds than chase after a rabbit or hare. A big problem with stoats is the size of their families. A mother stoat can have up to 12 babies at a time, but usually has 4-6 babies. A female stoat can get pregnant when she is still a blind, deaf, toothless baby – at only 2-3 weeks old. Even though she is pregnant, her babies won’t grow inside her until she is an adult. They will be born the following spring. If there is not enough food around, the pregnant female can delay the birth of her babies until more food is available.

The Trapinator is a simple and effective way of trapping possums. It is an all-in-one spring-set kill mechanism in a plastic box and is mounted by screws onto trees, 1 m above the ground. You could also use the leg hold trap or Goodnature's A12.

Some people at the workshop were interested in live trapping. The purpose of this is to ensure you are not killing antibody's pet. The Dog Control Officer will come and get any wild cat you catch in your live trap We were unsure if they would take away a possum.

You can hire a variety of traps at the Tairāwhiti Environment Centre.