Ian Taylor: Keynote speaker

I listened to an excellent speaker on Friday. Ideas that made me think...

- If someone asked him to do something he thought I can't see why not

- Innovative while we do the work using a No. 8 wire approach

- We are on an unbroken line to the world

- Creating environment that remove boundaries

- Attitudes - power of thinking

- It's not in our culture to write

How can we use these ideas to create excitement and innovation schools and classrooms?

Currently, we are providing learners with opportunities to lead events that they wish to organise (Spelling Bee, Pet Day, School Lunches). Now we need to continue to drive learners to innovate to make our community a better place. Ensuring that all the learners have the opportunity to be a part of this is also important.

Karen Boyes Webinar

I have just listened to a webinar about Mindset and Motivation. Here are the things that I took away from this.
 
If you help a butterfly out of its cocoon it will die.

I think the challenge how do we move learners from their comfort zone into their learning zone?  

Karen suggests the following ideas :
= Explicitly teaching the learning pit
= Using the learning depositions to teach the strategies to get out of the pit.
= Reframing mistakes as learning experiences and sharing the different types of mistakes
 
= Having a safe place to take risk

=Encourage responsible risk taking by talking with learners about the avoidance strategies they use when learning get tough and having clear goals with learners
= Celebrating the process as well as the outcome of learning and look for growth of learner explicitly.

Ideas that I am going to try:

- When learners are sharing their ideas, I am going to only thank them only for their idea and continue to ask for ideas until all learners have offered ideas.
- Be explicit about the strategies (learning dispositions) you can use to break through the wall in the pit of learning
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Reinforce the above statement using walking or biking your bike as a reference,

What is learning?

As part of our review into our charter, we are going to inquire about what children, teachers and whanau think learning is over the next 2 weeks.

Firstly draw a picture about how learning happens for children.  Thinking about:

• Participants           e.g. who helps me learn?

• Interactions            e.g. how do they help me learn?

• Data flow            e.g. how do I know what I need to learn, why?            

• Learning tools      e.g. what supports me to learn? Why?

• Sites of learning   e.g. where do I learn best? Why?

Here is Room 5's thinking about Growth mindset

Fixed	Growth
Gives up Not Yoda Thinks that they’re too good for learning anything new Disconnecting Neurons Doesn’t try Doesn’t go in the pit of learning Sees mistakes as failing Says: “I can’t” “I don’t know what to do” “I’m not good at it” “It’s too hard”	Making new Connections Doesn’t Give Up Finding out new things New learning Won’t give up Will learn Challenging yourself Finding out new things Feels open to learning Enjoys a challenge Mistakes are part of learning Determination Yoda Keeps trying new ways until they get it Gets into the pit of learning Says “I can do it” “I love a challenge”

Creating Growth Mindset

As I am in Room 5 today, I am going to share with learners about developing neural pathways.  Also, I am going to share how learners can grow their brains.

Creating shared understanding

Yesterday, I went into Room 4 to develop a shared understanding about bullying.  As I had a bit more time,  I showed Room 4 how your brain develops neural pathways.  One learner exclaimed with excited, that's what happening in my brain right now as I am learning about my brain.

Also, we looked at the power of the brain to help us or hinder us in our learning.  Yoda helped us with this.

Findings from Year 5-6 Wellbeing@School

When I analysed the data from Year 5 and 6, learners ideas were very different from our Year 7 and 8.    Almost all learners feel they belonged and mostly their ideas around school wide climate, teaching and learning, community partnership were positive.   The areas that we need to consider pro-social student culture and strategies to continue to develop.  Also, this is an area that  Year 7 and 8 need to develop further.