School visits

Recently I had an amazing opportunity to go on two school visits.  I went to two school who are at the forefront of our e-learning movement.  One school was new, purpose built and the other has been around for many, many years and was still making amazing things happen.  During both visits I walked away with a head full of ideas and questions.
The first school showed me what I hadn't thought of before.  The teachers worked in teams to plan for their students.  Each teachers strengths were utilised to provide the best for the children in their care.  Expectation were high, everyone knew what they were trying to achieve and the whole staff seemed to move in the same direction.  What I found amazing was that all the children who I talked to were able to tell me what they were doing and why they were doing it (and I mean all the kids I talked to the year 6/7s and the year 1s).  They could tell me the task that was set and what tools they could use to complete the task.  While the children were engaging in purposeful activities all teachers in the room were working with various groups.  I could instantly see how I could make my own practice better from watching the children and their teachers.

I also liked the absolute transparency between school and the community.  The teachers had their weeks planning online for the parents to see what was happening in each class. The resources were also available and easily accessible for teacher, students and parents. What a powerful tool!
This was one thing that I could do right away. I couldn't invite another teacher into my class or knock down a wall to the class next door to create a collaborative, team teaching environment, but I could be transparent right away.

I started by putting my maths planning online, with the help of Google sites. This is a new tool for me so it did take me a little while to figure it out. Once I got my head around it, it was fairly easy to use.  I created a page for each group. Each group had their WALT, my teaching progressions and resources available to them.
As part of my teaching resources I had links to videos that illustrate the strategy I was teaching, practice activities, and other resources that related to the task.  I thought that this might take me longer to plan each week but that wasn't the case. My planning took the same amount of time as I had links to all resources in my planning anyway, my teaching progression was there also. It was just a matter of making that planning available for the children to see. It has made a huge difference.

I would start by teaching each group a strategy using materials and discussing how the strategy worked. I would then set them questions to help practice the strategy (at this point they could choose to use imaging or materials).  When the children were on independent questions stage I could see that there were at different places in their understanding.  The problem with this is that usually you would be working with another group and at times those children who were stuck would need to wait until you checked their work to get back on track.  This was not the case in my class.  I always encouraged my children to work together and teach each other, but now they had access to support whenever they needed it.  The kids who were still struggling with a concept were able to go and view the video I made available to them as many times as they wanted until they felt confident.  The children who were needing to move on could pick the follow up activity that was suitable to their level of understanding.  I thought that at first some of my students would just pick the easiest work to get all the answers right and move onto something they considered more fun.  I was pleasantly surprised to find my children picking harder questions (sometimes harder than they were ready for) but with the help of videos and their peers they could extend their understanding and experience success.  Some of my students have come to me begging for more practice questions, harder practice questions, so they could be the best mathematicians.  My students who hated maths are now loving it.  Those who found maths difficult are really enjoying the support and those who work at a faster pace can go on and extend them selves with out having to wait for others to catch up.  Not only is their maths improving but also their self management skills.

That was one thing I changed from being at school number one. I'm currently working on my project after visiting school number two, but you'll have to wait and see how that's going.