RPI Day 9: Sharing

The final session has brought all of the loose ends together and afforded an opportunity to consider "where to next?" in our practice. 

Digging into the session, there are 4 main ideas: Visibility, Feedback and reflection, collaboration and whānau engagement. That is: Making the learning visible, allowing opportunities to give and receive feedback and reflect on learning, collaborating and sharing ideas, drawing in the families of our learners to comment and share with the learners.

I will print out the Pillars of Practice (below) to put up in my classroom as I'll often be referring back to it/using it to help me focus my Design For Learning.

The slide below resonated with me. I like the idea of getting reading groups to make screencasts of themselves collaborating on tasks:

Other thoughts:

1. Encouraging learners to "reach out" to Authors via Blogs, Social Media, etc. could really inspire them. I've met and rubbed shoulders with quite a few of my musical heroes (in another life, of course) and the experience has demystified that world for me. It made everything more 'real' and instilled the belief that I could be like them with a lot of hard work. I'm sure it would inspire my would-be-authors to keep stoking that fire. 

2. I've left with quite a few nuggets/ideas that I really want to try out early next term. Below is one which Robyn Anderson has used, to great results, at PBS:

3. Finding my peace in the pace has been really key to handling the additional work load. I'm not an academic, so I will often tune out once the academic words start flying. Fortunately I quickly identified that trusting in the process would be key to keeping my stress levels as low as possible. 3 new curriculum areas as well as this course? Well, with each session being 3 weeks apart I paced myself to let things filter in the first week, plan and execute in the second week, then reflect and evaluate on the week before the next session. 

4. Although I feel as though I need to let things filter again, a part of me is keen to start picking the bigger things apart so I can introduce it at the beginning of next year. I'll review everything in the next few weeks and come up with a few ideas...

Follow Up Survey Results 8/25

The responses to this question indicate that attitudes have remained about the same, with a slight trend towards feeling more positive towards reading at school. When I asked the children for their thoughts, one student thought that " maybe because our school library hasn't been open in ages. That's why we don't go up there on Tuesday anymore". Another said that they are going to the Panmure Library more often as they are reading the Amulet series and want to keep reading them. 

2 more students have signed up to their local library. When asked why they decided to ask their parents to sign them up, they both replied "it's because they have manga, which you turned us onto this year". Graphic novels ARE books, you know! 

One interesting difference, and a great learning conversation, was seeing the change in attitude of the learners to how they think I perceive their skills as readers. A number of children spoke to this by mentioning that when I'm seeing groups and we're discussing things (or debating, as it may be) they like the enthusiasm of the conversations we're having. 

RPI Day 8 - Create In Response To Reading.

So much to delve into, explore and digest during this session. I'm going to need to bookmark and flag a handful of things to come back to in the next few days. 

At the front of my mind right now is seeking more opportunities for learners to choose HOW they create. To date I've been fixated on building speed and efficiency in getting tasks done, but I'm going to reflect on ways I could open my practice up to allow my learners more choice in how they create. I'm thinking trying different "tighter/looser" ways in designing create tasks might be a great start.

"Book Creator" and "Storyboard That" are two different tools I'll draw on next term. ...

One more session to go, but this one felt like it's part one of a two part-er! The "Create over longer units" part is too big to think about right now. I'll file that to look into later on down the track, because I do a lot of Novel Study work in Process Drama. This method could really make it easier than making slide deck after slide deck. 

LOTS to ponder going forward...