Thursday 19 April 2018

Board Information Evening.

On the 10th of April our ACCoS Kāhui Ako Lead principal, Across School Leaders and our learning mentor shared our journey so far with our boards of trustees. The evening was held at Auckland Normal Intermediate School which is our lead school and was attended by board of trustees, principals, deputy principals and our Across School Leaders.






   

Across School Leaders shared a summary of this years journey.


Teacher Agency -Catherine and Alaric
  • Co-construction of a shared understanding of the concept of teacher agency between the ISLs and SMT of the schools in this initiative, building effective working relationships in the process.
  • Co-construction of the teacher agency progression matrix with the ISLs, who then distributed and facilitated the collection of data from the teachers within the 4 schools in the initiative.
  • Analysis of data will occur in week 2 of term 2. Findings therein will guide our work for term 2 and onwards.


Learner Agency -Leigh and Mark
  • We have aligned our understanding of what learner agency is, and co-constructed a shared definition that schools could use in their individual approaches.
  • Collection of baseline data. We created a learner agency questionnaire to be carried out with a sample of students, as well as a teacher survey to use as a self assessment tool. ISLs undertook to complete this by the end of Term 1.
  • An action plan will be developed after analysis of the data that has been gathered.


Writing -Erin and Clara
  • Co-construction of 3 major focus areas for PLG’s across all 3 schools in initiative. 
    1. Pedagogical approaches to writing - informed by recent research & evidence.
    2. Extending teacher content knowledge 
    3. Where does the student fit in all of this? Evaluating what we do. 
  • 2 Meetings providing professional development for ISL’s.
    • Leading Collaborative Learning- focusing on teacher inquiry cycle and developing rich, challenging questions
    • Understanding the Literacy Learning Progressions- with Jenny Thomson
  • Networking meeting organised for early Term 2 involving all teachers in this initiative. Intention is to set up across -school cycles of observation and critical feedback between the teachers. 
Where to next: From Action Plan
  • Creation of a survey for students to gather information on their attitudes towards how we teach Writing. What ‘works’ for them? What does not ?
  • Using John Hattie’s ‘Top 10 influences on student achievement’ - looking at effect sizes in relation to pedagogical approaches being trialled through PLG/’s.


Oral Language -Mark and Erin
  1. Have completed baseline data collection at both schools with a random sample of approximately 50 Year 1 and 2 students. 
  2. Have established hunch and structural timeline of inquiry for 2018. Some key resources have been identified, including people from beyond our CoL who we hope to involve in future PD.
  3. Planned collaboration and professional development between CPDS and RPS
Where to next:
  1. Action plan being co-constructed
  2. Opportunities for networking and collaboration within CoL , and beyond Col - including ECE. 


Wild Card (Working with the Learner) -Lisa and Sue
  • EGGS staff have now all joined a cross curricular PLG for 2018 which relates to one or more of the 3 strategic aims for 2018: Curriculum design, Pedagogy for Innovative Learning and Building Relationships and Restorative Practices. Student agency is at the heart of all three strategic aims. 
  • The PLGs are furthering the cross curricular and collaborative connections between teachers.
  • There are 14 ISLs and they have each identified how 'Working with the learner' and 'Learner Agency' will be developed within the PLG that they lead.
  • Staff are developing their own Action Plans to identify research and strategies needed to enable the above. Staff are at the stage of researching, developing goals and gathering student data, under the supervision of the ISL.
  • Cross curricular projects in the junior school are being developed between staff from different learning areas at EGGS this year.
  • The two ASLs in the school are coaching the ISLs and periodically meet them all together to share findings so they can learn from each other, and report back to the curriculum group.

Mathematics/Pāngarau Initiative -Sonya and Sue
The principals involved in the Mathematics/Pāngarau Initiative initiative agreed that maths was a strength in all three schools and wondered if teachers were catering to the strengths of our learners.
Historic learning data has been gathered over the past three years and this year student attitude data will be used as a comparison indicator to gauge how successful the initiative is in strengthening teacher pedagogy and content knowledge when teaching maths in our schools.
One key carry over from our ACCoS achievement goals is the involvement of our parent community and schools are still working through how this will be part of each school’s action plan.

Where to next: we wonder how teachers will share their learning in school, across schools and across Kahui Ako and this will be discussed when all teachers involved in Maths across the three schools come together to share inquiry goals and to begin across schools collaborations.


Sarah -Transitioning Early Childhood & New Entrants
Achievement 1 - we have tapped into a need to create of local forum to rebuild relationships with 30-40 people attending our meetings.

Achievement 2 - we set 13 goals for 2018 and have achieved four of them so far this year.

Achievement 3 - we had a successful meeting in February on supporting children with special needs. Guest speaker, Felecia Tomich, shared resources and information on how we can support these children at a ECE/NE level.


Here are the slides from our evening

Thursday 12 April 2018

What is Teacher Agency and how do we become more agentic?

Such are the questions that the Teacher Agency Initiative have been exploring over term 1.


In school leaders from Kohia Terrace, Victoria Avenue, Meadowbank and Remuera Intermediate Schools shared ideas and conducted research, resulting in a co-constructed definition of Teacher Agency.  We are using this to frame our learning over the year.

Teacher Agency is the belief and capacity for teachers to act in a purposeful manner to drive their own professional growth through responsive, collaborative and reflective practice in order to improve teaching and learning.


But ... what does effective Teacher Agency look like?  Once again, we collaborated and this time produced a Teacher Agency Progression Matrix.  The purpose of this is two-fold:


  • To gather baseline data from across our 4 schools around our levels of Teacher Agency.
  • To provide some indicators around the actions and beliefs of teachers at different stages in the progression.




We are currently sharing the definition and matrix with teaching staff and individuals are recording their best fit on each of the five strands.  We have also compiled a matrix that explores Teacher Agency from a school perspective.  The data from these self assessments will help us set our direction for term 2 and beyond. 

Our next step will be to continue to build understanding around this topic.  We hope to support and encourage teachers to act with and develop their agency, for example by inquiring deeply into their practice, collaborating with others and making changes (they only need to be small but well researched) that impact on student outcomes.  


Teacher Agency Leaders: Catherine Palmer, Alaric Nicholls
Teacher Agency Champion: Janice Adamson 




Wednesday 11 April 2018

Mathematics/Pāngarau Initiative sharing at the BoT


The Across School Leader leading the initiative is Sonya Van Schaijk from Newmarket School. 
She is supported by Sue Spencer from Epsom Girls School. 
The champion for this initiative is Virginia Kung from Newmarket School.

The three schools involved in this initiative include Auckland Normal Intermediate, Parnell District School and Newmarket Primary School. Included in this initiative are the following educators from the three schools. Belinda Hitchman, Ainsley Whitfield, Bryce Mills, Andrew Lawrence, Emily Hempstapat, Emma Williams and Masina Gagamoe.
This initiative caters for approximately 1,450 children and the professional learning involves 77 teachers across the three schools.
The principals involved in this initiative agreed that maths was a strength in all three schools and wondered if teachers were catering to the strengths of our learners. 

So far historic learning data has been gathered over the past three years and this year we will include student attitude data as a comparison indicator to gauge how successful the initiative is in strengthening teacher pedagogy and content knowledge when teaching maths in our schools.

Each school has a slightly different way of framing teacher learning but ultimately we are all focussed on teacher learning. 

One key carry over from our ACCoS achievement goals is the involvement of our parent community and schools are still working through how this will be part of each school’s action plan.

Recent connections have been established between all the in school leaders through regular meetings and our planned next step is to bring all teachers involved in Maths across the three schools together to share inquiry goals and to begin across schools collaborations. 

Where to next: we wonder how teachers will share their learning in school, across schools and across Kahui Ako and this is still to be discussed.

Wednesday 4 April 2018

2018 Auckland Central Community of Schools Writers Festival

Planning is well underway for the second annual ACCoS Writers Festival. This year's event will be held at Remuera Primary School on Thursday 17 May - in the same week as the Auckland Writers Festival. The goal for the day is to immerse the students in a number of rich, stimulating and enjoyable tasks relating to the writing craft, both in and outside the classroom. It is hoped that students will pick up some new writing-related skills and be inspired to create some wonderful texts on the day and in their own time, following the event.

This year's guest author is Mr Paul Mason. Paul has written many children's books, including the 'Skate Monkey' series, 'Sports Day on Mount Olympus' and 'The Twins, the Ghost and the Castle'. His website can be viewed here:

Paul Mason Writer

Paul will be running a number of narrative genre workshops for the attendees - one on characterisation and one titled 'What's the Problem?'. Another fantastic aspect of the day will be the involvement of students from Epsom Girls Grammar School, who will be running a workshop of their own - student agency in action!

I am looking forward to a great day and would like to thank the ACCoS members for supporting this venture.

Mark Hassall (Across School Leader)
Remuera Primary School