learneragency – Honor Learners

Unlearning, relearning, and growing

Over my teaching career, there have been many things I have changed over time. I have moved from an environment of direct teaching to an environment where inquiry and learner agency is expected. Some practices have fallen away, some are revisited and others are evolved over time.

One such practice is the Must dO,Should do, Could dO,Want to, or MOSCOW method. A few years ago, a friend suggested I try Must, Should and Could do centers as a way to manage learning centers. I tried and failed. I felt that learners were not accountable for learning, I had not mastered the art of documentation ( a skill I am still working on…) and it was just not working for me. Moving from teaching in older grades in an environment that relied on direct teaching to a play based PYP inquiry model was quite a challenge for me. Upon reflection, I can say that I had been pushed way out of my comfort zone; I was not in control. As Sascha Heckmann (@sascha_heckmann) recently pointed out to me, I had not made the shift to understand that learning happens within the learner. I can provide an environment to promote learning and thinking, but I cannot control the learning.

Recently, I was inspired by Taryn BondClegg (@makingoodhumans) and another member of my PLN, David Gostelow (@davidgostelow1) to try again. In his post titled From Learners to Leaders, David shared how he was using this method in his early years class.

“Students learn best and work harder when they are excited by what they are working on. And when they design their own work, they understand why they are doing what they are doing and engage much more deeply with their learning.”
David Gostelow

I shared the idea with my colleagues and we had several decisions to make. We decided to keep our language teaching as stand alone. Though our program is quite structured, we have seen the amazing progress our learners are making. Furthermore, we know that our learners love writing because any day we have deviated from our structure, we have had complaints about not writing! So, we decided to start with changing our Explore time to Choose, Act, Reflect, or C.A.R. time.

We began by running 3 workshops in rotations to tune into learners’ understanding of the concept of form. These included exploring the form of a story, the form of circles and the form of a computer as they identified computer parts.

*Exploring the form of the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,’ by Michael Rosen.*

*Exploring the form of circles. What is it like? What is it not like?*

Then we asked our learners what they would like to learn, and to consider whether each experience would be a must do, should do, could do or want to do center. If we could not accommodate an idea in the following week, we added it to the parking lot, to revisit in the future. We also considered if some learning experiences were better as workshops.

Our CAR time choice board.

*Workshop about drawing a Wild Thing inspired by a learner’s question- ‘How do they put pictures in books?’*

*A workshop to develop and share our understanding of the early number sense relationship: part, part, whole.*

Using this information, I matched learning experiences to our learning outcomes. I decided to use a template that had been shared by Taryn in her post titled Getting Parents Onboard, to map both learning and our conceptual understanding. Following Taryn’s example, I shared this with families via Seesaw because I have learnt that by keeping parents informed, they stay involved in our learning community.

As we are trying to promote a free flow environment with lots of choices, we wanted to ensure learners took accountability for the centers they had decided to be must do centers. To support this, we have a printout with every learner’s name to highlight as they complete their learning.

Now that we had the choose and act elements of CAR time, the next step was to add the reflection. This again was inspired by a tweet sharing an idea from Sonia Wright (@MsSoniaWright31.)

The original idea post asked learners to share:

What did you do?
What did you learn?

Making this change to our day has given us the opportunity to be more present with our learners. We are learning more about our learners through observation and our interactions. As a result, we are now ready to take a risk that we were not ready for before. We are moving from a structured language program to giving learners more choice and ownership over their learning.

Our day will start and finish by coming together for our morning meeting and our closing circle, when we will interact with stories and songs. Math talks and phonics will be done in smaller groups at the same time allowing us to differentiate as needed. Guided reading will continue with small groups, but our timings will be more flexible. Writing will be promoted through our continuous provision, inquiry and as a tool to document learning. We can also engage in modeled, shared and interactive writing during our morning meeting, phonics, guided reading and through play. We will also continue to offer workshops when we feel they are appropriate. As we plan for the following week with learners, we will select games and learning experiences that develop literacy and numeracy skills. Another change we are planning is to have our reflection time in smaller groups utilizing all the staff in our learning hub. This will reduce group sizes, allow us to check in with learners to and support them with their accountability. It will also enable us to honor learners who would prefer to reflect in Portuguese.

I strongly feel that this model will give us more flexibility, and allow learners to make authentic connections as learning will not be broken down by subject area. It will also give us the time to observe and interact, without feeling like we have to stop to move onto the next thing in our timetable.

Teaching and learning in a collaborative hub continues to be a journey with many bumps along the way. Each of those bumps is a learning experience and an opportunity to #risk&reflect, and grow. I am grateful for both my #PLN and colleagues for their support, ideas and for continuing to challenge me as I unlearn, relearn and grow.

Reflection, goal setting and TIM

We have been working towards helping our Kindergarten learners develop an understanding of who they are as learners. A key element in supporting our learners to take ownership of their learning are the skills of reflection and goal setting.

As part of our writing workshop, we conference with our learners during and after writing. We encourage them to identify their sunshine, things they did well, and their areas for growth, what they still need to learn. Initially, this required lots of modelling, and now most learners confidently engage in these reflections.

We decided to use the same model of sunshine and growth for our three way conferences. As teachers, we created a Seesaw activity (link) and decided the criteria. However, after being challenged to consider what choices we as teachers were making for our learners that they could make for themselves, our plans changed. I asked my collaborative team if I could lead a lesson that would result in the learners making the decision about the criteria.

With their support, I planned a three part lesson using the Torrance Incubation Method (TIM) and I incorporated some elements of Creative Problem Solving (CPS.) The TIM model is based around incorporating a creativity skill, or approach to creativity as I prefer to call them, into each part of your lesson: heightening anticipation, deepening expectations, and extending the learning. I found the following this resource useful when trying to understand the model myself.

The approach to creativity I chose to integrate into this lesson was ‘putting it into context.’ As we heightened anticipation, we explained the why behind the conference and asked learners for help to decide what learning they wanted to share. As we deepened expectations, we used the creativity tool ‘stick ’em up brainstorming’ to generate ideas of what learning we could share. Finally, in the extending learning, we converged our ideas because we had to take into consideration the length of each conference. We supported learners, by grouping ideas or creating clusters. Then we voted on some or rephrased a few more. We found that the criteria developed and selected by learners was very similar to that of the teachers. The difference was, that they seemed to expect more from themselves!

As a reflection of the conferences, I found that they were the most productive conferences I had been a part of. Most learners were honest with themselves and everyone had goals to work towards. As a teacher, we just need to ensure that we revisit these goals and use them to guide our learning.

To take this further, I decided to plan a series of TIM lessons to focus around goal setting in writing. I decided to work with a group of emergent + writers, who are demonstrating readiness by applying initial sounds and more to their writing. using a variation of the the gradual increase of independence. The tool was introduced to us by Taryn BondClegg (@makingoodhumans) and designed by Suzzane Kitto (@OrenjiButa) who has shared her resources here.

My variation to the gradual increase of independence was to make it more visual for younger learners and link it to our sunshine and growth model.

KG gradual increase of independence

I chose to turn the success criteria for writing that our learners have been generating into visual, movable cards. I was also able to personalize the process by the number and content of the cards.

You can get a copy here.

KG gradual increase of independence (1)

The learning outcome for the lesson was for learners to self assess themselves as writers. The creativity goal was to ’embrace the challenge.’ We heightened anticipation with a word hunt that we then had to puzzle together as a sentence. In the deepening expectation phase, I we explored the metaphor of seeds needing lots of help and sunshine being something that helps seeds grow. I then challenged learners to self assess their learning. The final part of the lesson, extending the learning, was the challenge to find evidence of the criteria in their writing books. This led to interesting discussions about what we were really doing well and things we needed to work on to improve our writing.

For the subsequent lesson, I decided to help learners narrow their focus, by choosing one goal to work on at a time. The creativity goal I chose to integrate was ‘making it swing, make it ring.’ First, I integrated a lot of kinesthetic whole body movement into our phonics lesson prior to writing. We also played a hand mirroring game to heighten anticipation. To deepen expectations, we referred back to our gradual increase of independence and took our discussions from the previous lesson further. Learners began to realize that they could keep doing the things they did well, and spend more attention on what they thought were shared or guided goals. I suggested working on one of those goals at a time might be more productive. Finally, to extend the learning, we came up with actions for each of the criteria we had chosen. The great thing was that each learner had ownership over the goal they chose.

I have begun to see that some learners are really supported by focusing on one goal at a time and are keen to prove it to me during our conferencing. As I conference with learners, I ask if they want to share their goals with their family. As learners share their goals, they are adding an element of accountability to their learning. Some have felt ready to do this, and I have embedded the creativity skill of ‘highlighting the essence,’ as I support learners to share both the process and their goals with their families. With permission, here is a link, to one learners’ goal sharing.

Through this series of lessons, I have been embedding approaches to creativity using TIM and I have been applying my own learning to promote learner agency. I found that identifying and embedding the creativity skills or approaches to learning, made lessons more engaging. My next step is to make these approaches to creativity more explicit in our teaching and learning.

I have moved from co-constructed success criteria with learners to learners have interactions with their success criteria and developing a much deeper understanding of how the success criteria supports learning. Learners have made choices and have begun to take action. For those who have not taken action yet, they are beginning to see the need to take ownership for their learning as we reflect and conference, and I am confident they will when they are ready. In addition to engaging in goal setting, learners have been learning about goal setting. With lots of opportunities to choose act and reflect upon goals, it is my hope that our young kindergarten learners will have the skills they need to make informed choices, take risks and continue to grow and learn.

As a final reflection about learner agency, I do not want to say that I am releasing control of the learning, as that is not something I ever had. I would say that am making a conscious effort to support learners to have ownership and accountability of their learning.

Who we are…as learners

We started our year with our IB PYP unit of inquiry, Who we are. The big idea behind the unit was to support our Kindergarteners to begin to understand who they are as learners to provide a strong foundation for them to take ownership of their learning.

Our provocation was based on the Pixar short film, Piper. You can read more about this in my previous post here. Next, we read Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andrae. As learners made connections between Gerald and Piper, they began to discover what good learners do and as a result, our learners began to understand how having a growth mindset supports learning.

As I observe and interact in the playground, I hear our kindergarten learners talk about how they are challenging themselves to climb to the highest point, or get across the monkey bars. I see them failing and trying again. I see them encouraging each other. I see them learning.

The next part of our unit was less successful. The plan was to learn about our learners’ passions and use this knowledge to inform guided inquiries. I think this fell apart for many reasons. First, we were (and still are) trying to figure out how we function together in our learning hub. We were trying to establish routines and we should have taken more time to do this with learner input, rather than making decisions for them.

Secondly, I think we were either too structured and should have had a more organic approach, or that we were not structured enough and we were trying to run before we could walk. To add to that, I think we were trying to cover too many concepts and skills, thus highlighting the need to develop our understanding of concept based inquiry.

Going forward, my role is not to control every aspect of learning. My role is to support learners as they lead their own learning. I can do this by helping them to develop an understanding of the process of learning as we learn, and I feel like documentation and making learning visible is going to be a key part of this process.

We have had many successes in our Kindergarten learning space, and while it is great to celebrate the great moments, I feel it is also important to share the challenges and fail forward, because this is where our own learning happens. I shall continue to ‘risk and reflect’ to honor our learners.

Learner agency through Teacher Agency

Student agency has been a buzzword with educators for the last few years. As I look through definitions of the term I have found some commonalities:

giving students voice
giving students choice
making learning relevant
students having an active role in learning
student have ownership

When I look at that last term of ownership, my focus shifts to learning. Therefore, I make a conscious effort to use the terms learner, not student and learning not student work.

Over the past two days I have had the amazing opportunity to learn about learner agency with Taryn BondClegg (@makingoodhumans), and have had many opportunities to reflect on my practice as an educator. She structured our workshop learn about agency, by giving us agency. She has also ensured that she gives us the opportunity to unpick the why? how? and what? Taryn began by giving us time to connect and then self assess our understanding. We also generated our own success criteria for the session, because as long as we understood the why, the choice of how and what we learnt was ours. As we were generating our success criteria for the two day, we were asked to share them as we were reminded that:

Learners should have accountability to themselves and their learning community.

After we developed our success criteria, we unpicked the why, how and what of documentation. Again, as long as we were clear on the purpose of documentation, the how and what we documented was our choice.

Before we chose our learning for the day we were asked to consider the following questions:

What do you need to learn about?

How best do you learn?

How much time do you need?

When do you need to take breaks?

How can you learn from one another?

This process supported us to reflect upon ourselves as learners, so that we could control and direct our own learning using the CAR model – choose, act, and reflect. Taryn has blogged about this process and you can find this post here.

Over the two days, I was reminded what it was like to be a learner. This was not a PD session where the vibe was ‘do as I say, not as I model.’ I felt engaged and energized throughout the learning. There were some issues I grappled with, and the conclusions I came to were my own, not answers given to me. I had to push myself outside of my comfort zone and my new learning was earned. I will say that as energized as I was, it was also intense and was very grateful that we did not have homework at the end of the day!

So, what were my big takeaways from learning about learner agency through agency?

The first idea isn’t new, it was just a great reminder. We can support our learners by building positive relationships with our families within our learning community by keeping them informed!

Agency will look different in each circumstance. We need to do what works for us in our situation. Learner agency builds up over time, so be wary of transplanting what works at another school. By all means, learn from others, share ideas and adapt them to make them workable for you.

The foundation for learner agency is learners developing self awareness of who they are as learners. Therefore, taking time to connect each morning and reflect at the end of each day is vital to supporting learners to move from one place to the next on their continuum of learning.

We can give learners agency through a cycle of risk and reflect. We should continually ask ourselves what we can do to give our learners voice, choice and ownership of their learning.

And finally, it is okay to start small, and so I did.

The next day was International Day at our school. We were exploring the theme of peace and our team had planned to have learners do the same learning activity. Our plans changed. We began by exploring why we need peace. Then we generated ideas of how we could be peaceful. Finally, we developed a list of ideas to show what we could do to show our understanding of peace. Some learners chose to play with peaceful intentions, other chose to build collaboratively.

Some chose to paint.

Others chose to write.

And some chose to use the app Draw and Tell to explain their thinking.

Before I finish today, I would like to thank Taryn, our administration and all the experts who took their time to share with us.

Finally, I ask you, what will you do to honor your learners to give them voice, choice and ownership over their learning?

Teach Like a Pirate – My Interpretation

Teach Like a Pirate – Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess (@daveburgess) is not a new book, yet it is still a relevant and engaging read for educators today. When first published, I remember the hype, but I was not in a place to join the pirate crew. I was about to embark on my own journey to rediscover my passion as an educator that led me back to Africa as an international teacher. Earlier this year, I found the book again as I delved into Twitter and its amazing network for educators. I committed to the decision to find out what it means to ‘teach like a pirate.’ #tlap

My first question was, ‘Why Pirates?’ The answer is twofold. First, it is a mnemonic for the pirate system and philosophy. Second, Burgess defines a pirate as follows:

“Pirates are daring, adventurous, and willing to set forth into unchartered territories with no guarantee of success.”

With this definition in mind, it is easy to see why many educators are joining the pirate crew as we look to shake up education to support our learners to thrive in an ever changing world.

Part I of the book is dedicated to explaining the pirate system and philosophy.

Burgess defines three types of passion. Incorporating passions into our teaching can be a source of motivation for both educators and learners.

Content Passion stems from the areas of curriculum that you are passionate about. When I think back to the subject areas I enjoyed in high school, I would say economics and history. Now my husband would laugh to hear this because I never remember any historical information, nor am particularly financially minded. However, in high school the content passion of my teachers rubbed off on me.

Professional Passion is the reason we become educators. As Burgess wisely surmised, we don’t always have content passion. At these times, we should focus on our professional passions.

Personal Passion doesn’t require a definition. Bringing our passions into our learning spaces means that we are teaching from our strengths and demonstrating to learners how following our passions can lead to learning.

“Your ability to completely give yourself up to the moment and fully ‘be’ with your students is an awesome and unmistakably powerful technique.”

Personally, I have always felt it important to model expectations for learners. If we want them to be fully engaged, then we need to be fully present. Burgess also notes that learners know when we are not truly present. He adds that through immersion, we don’t miss the ‘teachable moments’ because we are right there with them. He goes on to state that this is the ideal way to support struggling learners.

We all want to create an environment where our learners feel safe and valued, an environment where learners are willing to take risks and fail forward. It is paramount to know our learners and build those relationships; learners need to trust us and each other.

I too feel that this connection with our learners is integral to learning, and this is why I value our morning meetings. Following the Respons ive Classroom (@responsiveclass) morning meeting structure helps us build our learning community and gives us an opportunity to start our day with a bit of fun through a variety of greetings, sharing, activities and morning messages.

This section of the pirate system and philosophy deals with creativity.

“Creativity is not the possession of some special class of artistic individuals, but is rather something that can be nurtured and developed in all of us – including your students!”

Burgess makes clear that creativity is developed through engaging in the creative process. “It is the process of consistently asking the right questions.” He goes on to add the importance of actively seeking answers. “Your brain won’t be happy until it has provided the answers.”

This reminded me of the process of diffused thinking. This is when you think of a problem and then relax and drift off. When you awaken, your brain has incubated ideas for focused thinking. This is explained better by Barbara Oakley (@barbaraoakley) in this video.

To take it further, I see Creative Problem Solving (CPS, #CreativeProblemSolving) as a way to transform learning experiences to both engage and empower learners. CPS approaches problems or challenges by developing new ideas following a process. The process begins with clarifying a problem to ask the right questions. Divergent thinking is used to generate ideas, and convergent thinking to evaluate and develop ideas. This leads to action or implementation. I look forward to sharing how I find ways to use CPS in education in future posts.

Transformation is about making learning irresistible to learners. To do this we need to know our learners and position and personalize learning to make it relevant. I think this ties in beautifully with learner agency, giving learners voice, choice and ownership of their learning.

Burgess suggests that if you only have one takeaway from this system, it is to ramp up the enthusiasm in your learning space. If you ‘act as if’ you are enthusiastic, you will begin to feel it. If that is not enough, “Make a conscious decision to focus on what empowers you.”

Bringing together passion and enthusiasm will make learning memorable. Last year, I has the opportunity to visit with my year 1 class from 2012. As they shared their memories with me, I was amazed by what they had retained. One asked me if I remembered what a cephalothorax was and others sang a dinosaur song I had forgotten. Neither spiders and dinosaurs are subject areas I am particularly passionate about, but I brought my professional passion, creativity and enthusiasm to our learning space, and made learning memorable.

Part II: Crafting Engaging Lessons

After outlining the pirate system and philosophy, Burgess moves onto the ‘How.’ He suggests working collaboratively to engage in the creative process to enhance the presentation of learning experiences. He shares a toolbox of strategies to energize lessons. He calls these hooks. They are questions designed to help you consider elements in your lessons. Burgess groups his hooks to incorporate different elements such as movement, art, music, drama and dance, STEM, props, suspense, etc.

“How can I harness the power of connecting my content to what students are already interested in?”

“Can they create something ‘real’ that will be more than a classroom project, but also allow them to interact with the world in an authentic way?”

“What types of essential questions can I ask that allow students the opportunity for personal reflection and growth?”

Again, I see the potential for using CPS tools in conjunction with Burgess’ hooks to promote engaging learning. To take it further, I would like to co-construct with learners to empower them.

Part III : Building a Better Pirate

In this final section, Burgess begins by asking:

“Do you want to be great?”

He suggests that great educators benefit learners and mediocrity fails to motivate learners. He then considers what holds us back:

The fear of failure
The belief that we need to have it all figured out before we begin
Paralyzing perfectionism
Lack of focus, or focusing on the insignificant
Fear of criticism or ridicule
Burgess makes three recommendations to overcome these barriers.
First, take action and overcome the inertia. Once you get started, the ball starts rolling.
Second, find a crew. Burgess advices you to grow your Professional Learning Network (#PLN.) Seek multiple perspectives, read widely, seek professional development, collaborate and reach out on social media.
Finally, share treasures. Reach out and share your experiences. #tlap
My Final Thoughts
As an educator who has lost and found my passion, faced criticism and struggled on my journey, there have been many takeaways from this book. Some of my own practice reflects the pirate system and I can see myself integrating more, especially as I look to give learners more autonomy. I am excited to join the pirate crew and strive for excellence.
“Striving for excellence and full engagement is about getting better. It’s about adapting, adjusting, and trying to tweak and improve everything you do.”
Lastly, I leave you with a visual hook. It’s unlikely to be an original idea as I’m sure others have created iMovie trailers, but after all this writing, I needed to play!

Images used in the video sourced from Pixabay.

Should you wish to see Dave Burgess in action, click on the photo below.

References:

Burgess, D. (2012). Teach like a pirate: Increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting.

Saying yes…

August has arrived and we are gearing up for a new academic year. With it comes a twinge of anxiety and a whole lot of excitement. After all, as educators we never know how far our impact will carry.

At this moment, my mind is buzzing with ideas, to do lists, organizing a combined learning space, memories of previous academic years, and it is just a tad overwhelming. Yet, when I take a moment, and think about those memories, I am reminded of how much I learnt last year.

Being a part of a collaborative learning community led to growth and learning I could not have imagined at this time last year. We began the year in two separate classroom as teachers who shared ideas, and ended it as a Kindergarten learning community, that knocked down walls, both literally and figuratively!

So, how did it all begin? It is probably a combination of many things, but the one that keeps coming back to me is our willingness to say ‘yes.’

Saying yes…

Saying yes has not meant that I, or our collaborative learning community did everything that was proposed.

Saying yes is more about being open to new possibilities for the benefit of all learners.

Saying yes is about considering what we can achieve together.

Saying yes is about failure and learning.

Saying yes is about learners’ agency: both educators and students.

In the past year I have said yes to:

working as part of a collaborative team that was able to do more together than I could achieve on my own;

deepening my understanding of how young learners develop number sense;

becoming a Seesaw Ambassador;
writing a blog;
tweeting;

leading PD for my colleagues;

and most importantly of all, our learning community said yes to our young learners.

Our learners discovered their voice and felt valued;
They learnt how to plan and manage their own learning;
They learnt about listening and collaboration;
They learnt creative problem solving skills;
They learnt about failure, perseverance, resilience and grit.

And I’m sure the list could go on. I am reminded of this quote by Mother Teresa that came across my Twitter feed:

Being open to new experiences and learning will have an impact!

Will YOU say yes today?