Are you Holding Back Something too Obvious to Share?

People often "sell themselves short". Ideas that they come up with seem like day to day activities that anyone could come up with. The above video spoke to me in that people should celebrate and share what they do. As we collaborate more than ever in our fast paced world it is important to share all kinds of ideas with your colleagues as what we might feel is obvious, might be amazing to others. As instructional coaches, we work hard to bridge colleagues together to share their amazing ideas with others to spread the wealth of information. In spreading the greatness that colleagues offer we should celebrate what we do for the students we teach!

A journey to Student Blogging

Recently I have been working with my class on a class blog. I was not sure how this would evolve at the beginning of the year but I am amazed at what we have been able to do with it so far and the benefits to student learning. We started with simply going to the blog at eating time and exploring what was on our website so far. We have been and will continue to build on it throughout the year, so it was a good opportunity to explore. My teaching partner and I encouraged students to go home and add a comment about the day. We in turn, tried to add ideas we have been working on in class, or questions for students to begin commenting about. The response from some students was impressive. The confidence that it brought as well as voice and ownership shone through their comments. They enjoyed the conversation with us and asked questions that were on their minds when they got home. We were thinking, "this is powerful learning" but it gets better. As we learn along with our students, we have been able to have students adding comments to the blog during class. My hope and vision is that this becomes part of our daily life in our class community. The comments are now stretching to comment to each other, asking powerful questions and relating to one another with care and empathy. I stumbled upon this blog post on the ABC's of blogging and thought I would add it on as it has many points to what I think the benefits of kids blogging is.

The Benefits of Student Blogging (from A Fly on a Classroom Wall blog)

Authenticity – authentic writing for authentic audiences
Affordability - kidblog.org is for example is free
Builds confidence as students shine, share & respond
Carries across the curriculum
Collaborative discussions as students respond to & learn from one another
Communication skills – writing for an audience necessitates & builds effective communication skills
Connections between students & classes, between home & school
Develops higher order thinking skills (as students write, read, reflect & respond)
Digital Age – learning about, creating and leaving positive digital footprints
Digital Citizenship – students learn about proper etiquette & cybersafety
Editing skills development – undertaken in manageable, bite sized chunks
Facilitates constructive criticism
Focus
Flexibility
Fun!
Improves typing skills
Introduces, interjects & integrates technology into all subject areas
Learning styles are put into play that might not always otherwise be
Provides a medium within which to apply learning
Motivates independent writers & readers
Organic (not static)
Peer mentoring
Reading skills development
Reflective thinking / practice
Responsibility & awareness – provides an authentic opportunity to teach & monitor both
Sharing ideas, understanding, etc.
Student driven (teacher facilitated)
Writing skills development – skills include writing for meaning, organization, sentence structure, spelling, grammar, etc

We have been able to incorporate digital citizenship authentically into blogging as we go along this journey together. A site we have used is http://comments4kids.blogspot.com/. It has amazing videos of kids discussing digital citizenship and blogging tips such as how to leave a good comment. Our next leap - having students add posts to the class blog.
As I went through each of the general outcomes of Language Arts in the program of studies, I realized that blogging meets all of the general outcomes in some way and many of the specific outcomes under each general one.

I love having a class blog. We had worked on kidblogs last year and this helped prepare students for the next step this year. I am hoping as time goes on they will have their own pages with an active individual blog. It has brought forward student voice and ownership to learning. We are finding it very valuable to assess where the students are in their learning and what they are enjoying or not enjoying about school as well. I guess I can say the same about having my own blog - I have learned many things and been able to reflect on teaching in order to improve my teaching for students. Check out our blog at:
http://5mw.weebly.com/blog.html
Students would love to hear from you!
How do you increase voice and ownership of learning in your classroom?

Refocusing on What is Important

In Todd Whitaker's book "The Ball" I was taken by the message and thought it would be a great way to start the school year. It is about a teacher and former student who meet up and have had challenges to deal with in recent years. Through their discussion, they realize that the need to refocus and get back to what is important.

As we've been going back into a new school year, I reflected on this before I started with my class. Students are the reason I teach and love what I do. There are many things in our life and career that can cause our focus to drift but ultimately those little bodies sitting in front of you at the start of the day, wondering what they are going to learn next, are what matters. They are the reason we spend days in the classroom getting it ready, planning intricate lessons that meet the needs of all students the best we can, and stay up late at night researching what we can do better.

As I talked to my own children the night before school started, when they could not sleep due to the anticipation of the next day, and told them I felt the same way, they were surprised. I used to wonder if that feeling of anticipation would ever go away but I think if your passion and love for what you do is there and you are focused on "the ball" in this case, the students, your passion shines through in true colours. Success for me was watching their smiling faces go out the door at the end of the first day saying they couldn't wait for tomorrow. When I got home, exhausted, I checked my e-mail only to find that some of the students had commented on our class blog, wondering with anticipation of the next day's events. With the ball right in front of me again, I was commenting back to continue their learning and with a new burst of energy, tailoring the learning for the next day for my students. If you feel like you are losing focus - just remember why we are here doing what we do and who is counting on you. The ball will be right in front of you, giving you the energy you need to continue doing the best you can for your students.

The Art of Play

My family and I had a great summer. I was fortunate enough to get to go to New York and see the "bright lights, big city". New York did not disappoint, it was exactly as I had pictured it; amazing architecture, great shows, fantastic food...the city that does not sleep is a great description. We of course went and did all of the tourist attractions, but one that I absolutely wanted to do was dance on the piano from "Big". Sounds a little ridiculous but is a childhood memory, we watched the movie with our children before we went and I promised to bring back pictures and a video.
The piano is located at FAO Schwartz right off of Central Park. It is an unbelievable toy store with many items larger than life - picture a nerds box the size of a cereal box. What struck me here was not the amazing toys, or even the size of the store, it was the people who worked at the store. They seemed happy and were constantly playing and inviting people to play. While most adults stood back and watched, the kids joined in without a second thought; throwing airplanes around the store, jumping on the life size piano. As I was walking by to go to the piano, one of the workers said to another guy - I love coming to work everyday, there are not many jobs and companies that encourage you to play for work.
Dr. Stuart Brown recently wrote the book Play. I have not read the book yet, but I am looking forward to it. He sees play as essential in the development of intelligence and happiness. Often as educators, we get wrapped up in the tasks of the day, the curriculum to finish and need to value the play that our students engage in to facilitate learning to a deeper level. This also creates a culture of curiosity and wonderment in our students and engagement in the learning process.
As I jumped on the life size piano and giggled with all of the kids that were on with me, I thought, as adults we all need to jump on the big piano sometimes and remember how important it is for all learners adults and kids to play.

How do we Develop Core Competency Skills to Prepare Students for the Future?

Tony Wagner speaks of the "Global Achievement Gap" which is the gap between what students are learning in school and the seven skills he feels students need for the future:Critical thinking and problem-solving, Collaboration across networks and leading by influence, Agility and adaptability, Initiative and entrepreneurialism, Effective oral and written communication, Accessing and analyzing information, and Curiosity and imagination. As we look as teachers on how we are engaging students in their learning, these core competencies are skills that need to be infused in our lessons. Through inquiry based teaching and strategies used with SmartLearning, students are constantly working toward developing these skills while learning the outcomes. High inference tasks, creating criteria, and feedback loops give students the authenticity and ownership in the task they are working on and the freedom to explore and represent their knowledge in a variety of ways. Teachers take on the role of "guide by the side" as they support each learners needs in order for them to be successful. Below is Tony Wagner's video on the "Global Achievement Gap".

As a teacher, I have worked hard to develop these skills in my students, giving them ownership in their learning. Check out the examples below from our science class:
Simple Machines

As an instructional coach, I find we are also constantly developing these competencies within ourselves. Through reflective conversations, we can keep these skills in the forefront of our planning, along with curricular outcomes to be effective designers of learning and tasks that enhance and build competency skills that our students will need in the future. How do your teachers build core competencies in students?

How do schools foster a structure of belonging and community?

Often when you walk into a building, whether it is a home, office, school or store, you can get a feeling of the atmosphere and community in the building. How do schools foster a structure of belonging and community? In Community - The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block speaks of creating a stronger social fabric, having groups of people together to explore possibilities rather than problems and create more ownership in the decision making process.

One area he speaks of is physical space. Most spaces are created for control and efficiency. In an earlier post, I wrote about creating learning spaces to maximize student learning based on their needs. Spaces that are designed to be collaborative and welcoming create a culture of belonging and community, assisting people in taking ownership for their community and possibilities they can create. This creates a social structure for these possibilities to be explored and created with everyone in the community being accountable for their success.

Block also speaks of the need for good questions to activate conversations. In the small group gatherings we facilitate in our learning teams we always start with a question to explore. This helps us focus on the purpose and allows people to engage in the possibilities of the topic and take ownership for their learning. The small groups allow for discussion with various staff and give different perspectives that perhaps would not have been explored without a vertical grouping.

So what ways can we strengthen community and belonging through schools? Historically, schools have been the heart of our communities. Neighborhoods were built around them, most people have experience with schools in some aspect of their life. How do we increase belonging in the building? Increasing voice for all - students, staff, parents, and community- creates and strengthens the social fabric of our environment. When people discover and share the gifts they offer and are acknowledged and valued for these, cohesiveness and trust is built. Student voice can be heard through choice in the classroom, leadership teams and vertical grade buddies. These all create ownership for what they are accomplishing and accountability for responsible citizenship- contributing and giving back. Staff voice can be developed through building distributed leadership, having discussions around the possibilities rather than problems and the shift of ownership. Reaching out to community in various ways to have them involved in schools - parent councils, reading programs in our schools (involving community members and business people who may not have children in the school) and classroom presentations are a few methods we have explored in our school.

Block states that the overall premise is to "build the social fabric and transform isolation within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole."(2009) Currently communities are functioning more in isolation than ever before. How do schools return to being the heart of the community and help to foster the structure of belonging and community as a whole?

Collaboration and Instructional Coaching

Over the past two years I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with many fabulous educators and expand my PLN. As a teacher and coach, this has stretched my skills and influenced the way I teach in my classroom. My PLN now stretches from my school to the far ends of the globe. I have been able to do this through many different avenues such as conferences, collaborative meetings, social media like diigo, blogs and twitter, and face to face reflective conversations. I truly feel blessed with the people I have been able to work with and collaborate with, not only in the past couple of years, but throughout my whole teaching career.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to collaborate with colleagues and present at the AISI Symposium. Our Division spans a good geographical distance so the coaching experience has allowed me to get to know other coaches around our division and share our experiences, hopefully to better our skills as coaches. As we discussed our roles in our schools, we realized that there were common key concepts that were in all of our schools:
- Alignment of goals - division, school, learning team, and individual
- Coach as a staff member
- Support of administration and division office
- Supporting learning for teachers
- Differentiated approach for supporting teachers
As we have developed our relationships and trust within our schools, these five concepts were vital to the success of coaching. Check out our presentation below about different ways we reached our staff.

Help! How Do I Reach My Staff? on Prezi

At the Heart of the Matter - Engagement

Recently we have been working through a sequence on engagement in our learning teams. It is a very interesting conversation as there are many interpretations of what engagement looks like in the classroom. In learning teams we did research using "What Did You Do in School Today" to give us common language of three types of engagement - social, academic, and intellectual engagement. We then did instructional rounds thinking about engagement in our own classrooms and what we could do to improve our own practice in an area of engagement. Finally we came back together and reflected on our practice and examples of each type of engagement we see in our school each day. Conclusions seemed to be that all three types of engagement were needed for students to be deeply and truly engaged in their work. If one of the pieces was missing, full engagement would be difficult. To add to this, if students had intellectual engagement, both social and academic engagement pieces were intact.
Click on the link to see a summary webpage of our learning teams on engagement:
www.wix.com/kwedman/Engagement

Learning is at the Heart of What We Do

I recently had the privilege of seeing Jim Knight present around his new book "Unmistakable Impact". I always learn so much from him regarding the role of coaching but also in his teaching and delivery style. I really reflected on his comment about learning being at the heart of what we do. As teachers we are constantly planning, assessing, and changing to support the needs of our students. I often think we forget how much of the day we spend learning from our students and each other. Whether it is a conversation first thing in the morning with a student that has something to tell you, and informal conversation in the hallway with a colleague, or a formal conversation you might have on your learning team, we are constantly learning and trying to improve our craft of teaching to improve our instruction for today's learners.

In learning teams, you develop partnership principles with the other parties which Jim Knight discusses in his book that create an atmosphere that you can truly engage and learn from (Jim Knight, 2011). The first is equality where you see yourselves as equal contributing partners. The next principle is choice. Through learning teams, the facilitator gives choice within a structure giving the group more ownership of their learning. The third principle is voice. All members must feel that they have input and their contributions are being heard. Reflection is the next principle that is a very important part of our practice. In the hectic pace of the day it is extremely difficult to take the time to slow down and reflect on our practices. The culture needs to make a shift from the culture of doing to a culture of learning and doing (p.180 Unmistakable Impact). Embedded professional learning teams set this structure up for professionals to be able to take a step back and reflect and talk about what is best for today's learners. Principle five talks about dialogue being shared inquiry (William Isaacs, 1999) and should not take the form of threatening or one sided conversations. Everyone should feel they are working toward a common goal. Praxis is having relevance to the work you are doing in the team, this will lead to engagement of the learner. Finally, reciprocity is needed for professionals to gain the full experience of the team. Through learning, give and take, and sharing people feel energized, valued, and alive (Wheatley, 2002). When professionals engage in meaningful, deep conversation they are able to reflect on their own practice and how they can improve. I am very fortunate to be able to engage in a variety of reflective conversations throughout my day which has a positive impact on my instruction. How do you engage in reflective conversations in your day to improve your practice?

Are Learning Spaces in Schools Conducive Environments for the Learning of Today's Learners?

Happy New Year! As we enter into a New Year, it is important to take a step back and examine the perspectives we have in our daily lives. Dewitt Jones, who I have mentioned earlier has a great video on Creativity. As a photographer he talks about looking at daily life through different lens and that most things have more than one right answer.
So what about the learning spaces in our schools? As we look at school reform for today's learners, are there things that we should look at changing to enhance the opportunities we create for the best learning situation for students? We want our spaces to be active, collaborative, places to create and challenge our students to maximize their learning potential.
We were discussing this as a group this week and reflected on learning spaces of 20-25 years ago with open space classrooms. Some people in the conversation had taught in these classrooms, some had been students in these classrooms, but the general consensus was the same - traditional classroom teaching styles had still been in place without walls. This was the only difference.
As we worked through an activity this week, creating the ideal learning spaces for our students, there were many common themes - more space, many spaces for multiple intelligences to be developed, natural light, places to collaborate, and technology. Realistically, we know we cannot do all that we would like to create these learning spaces, but how about one or two things? The key to this is to also reflect on our pedagogy through a different lens and reach today's learners.
What innovative ideas have you implemented or thought about to create learning spaces for today's learners?