Documentation

Over our recent break here in Korea our Early Years Coordinator at BHA attended a workshop with Fiona Zinn that explored the documentation of student learning. Our Early Years program is inspired by the Reggio approach and considers documenting student learning to be a key pillar of this. Laura returned from the workshop full of ideas that she wants to implement with the team and today she shared some of these with the specialist teachers about how we can develop the framework of our portfolios.

We consider the use of portfolios to be an important element of our assessed curriculum. They provide students and parents with valuable information on progress, feedback and an opportunity for reflection. As the IB states in Making the PYP Happen...'a portfolio is a celebration of an active mind at work. It provides a picture of each student’s progress and development over a period of time both as individual and group learners. It enables students to reflect with teachers, parents and peers in order to identify their strengths and growth as well as areas for improvement, and then to set individual goals and establish teaching and learning plans.' (pg. 50)

To develop our approach to portfolios, Laura spoke about framing them around three areas:

(1) The voice of the teacher - this could come in an explanation of the task that the students engaged in. It could also discuss the type of play that occurred during the task. This section might have more 'teacher talk' as the purpose is unpacked.

(2) The voice of the student - this section could include photos or videos of the students. An opportunity to record a reflection would also be represented here. The opportunities are vast in this section as they allow for student input into the documentation. What ownership does the student have over the learning in the sample? How are they reflected in the work?

(3) Analysis of learning - this section highlights  the skills, knowledge and conceptual understandings that are addressed in the learning experience. How are the students achieving this?

I think this is a nice framework to reference when we think about developing portfolio pieces. There is plenty of scope for creativity in the way that this is interpreted, however, the focus is firmly on the student and the learning. Laura also lead the discussion around aspects such as graphics, colours and fonts. Her explanation here was that the colour should come from the students themselves instead of from things such as banners, borders and zany fonts. We also discussed the use of images as a form of communication, especially considering that 90% of our student and parent population do not understand English easily yet.

This was a great opening discussion and one that I look forward to continuing with the team as we unpack our beliefs and understandings regarding documentation. I'm hopeful that the rest of the Junior School will be inspired by the work of this group.

Photo Credit: cambodia4kidsorg via Compfight cc

Reimagining our Early Years program

This year at BHA we have several professional learning communities operating in unison. I'd like to touch on one of those in this post. The team of five teachers in the kindergarten, plus any other teachers interested in learning about the early years, are currently in the beginning stages of redeveloping their approach to teaching and learning. They're working through the valuable and collaborative process of developing a shared image of child. I was lucky enough to be able to be part of a group that went through a similar process in my previous school and found the conversations both challenging and rewarding.

So far this group has examined their own personal opinions and ideas about children. They were asked to share what they thought a child was and these responses were collated and discussed. Teachers were given the opportunity to highlight which elements of everyone's statements they agreed with and which parts they still had questions or other wonderings about. This required further discussion to unpack and will be useful to re-visit later in the year once everyone has had the opportunity to reflect on their own and others' ideas.

This graphic was created to help make visible the key words about image of child that the group valued as a collective.

The session today was spent looking at these words and talking about what they meant. There were some comments about similarities between words, about which words were by-products of our images, and which words were useful to help support the creation of our image.

The next steps for this group will be to narrow down the words to a smaller selection - we're thinking between 5 and 10 - that truly sum up our thoughts about our image of child. From this list they will map out what it is that they believe they should be doing in order to foster the growth of this image of child in their classrooms (and across the school).

It promises to be an exciting year for this group of teachers (along with the rest of the faculty of course!). We're lucky to be hosting a regional IB conference in November and all of these teachers will have the opportunity to attend workshops that will help grow their understanding of a play-based curriculum. We'll also be looking to connect with like-minded schools in order to share ideas, practices and strategies. I'm very much looking forward to being part of this process.

Outdoor Learning

This year in Grade Three, my colleague and I decided that we wanted to head outside to engage in some activities, problems and inquiries. We took the inspiration from our Early Years department who have embraced outdoor learning as a daily part of their program. Recent educational research has indicated that outdoor learning programs can increase student achievement by almost 50% over the course of a year. One of our Vice-Principals is an authority on all things Early Years and she gave us some good ideas to start with. We were also aware that many schools in the UK already have outdoor learning programs. So we thought we'd give it a crack ourselves.

During the this first semester that we've held outdoor learning the students have:

• Practiced their navigation skills to find their way around the school and crack codes.
• Explored the pond area and made some fascinating discoveries.
• Developed teamwork and communication skills by working together to solve problems.
• Tested and re-tested theories in order to make conclusions.
• Explored ways of building knowledge in group environments.
• Reflected on shifts in thinking and understanding.
• Created Andy Goldsworthy inspired art.
• Predicted, collected, analysed and explained mathematical data.

We've been lucky to have some parent helpers each week and this has allowed us teachers to document the learning. This is another thing that has come from the Reggio-inspired program of our Early Years team. Individually, us two teachers have noticed some interesting things about each student during outdoor learning. But I report on my class and she reports on hers, so we need to find time to meet and discuss our findings. Plus the real power of documentation comes in the discussions held by the observers. It is the combination of these different viewpoints that helps build a complete picture about each child.

Being a new initiative, we're still perfecting the setup. We started off very open - playing in the sand and documenting research skills. Each week, however, we seemed to become a bit more focused with the tasks - measuring the perimeter of a playground area, for example. This may be because at our school we need to report on outcomes so we need to provide opportunities for the students to engage in tasks that allow us the chance to assess their understanding. Perhaps our mind has subconsciously been tracking back to this. 

A few weeks ago we gathered some feedback from the students about how they felt outdoor learning was going. From the start we wanted this to be about the student's learning so we felt it was important for them to be involved in the planning process. Some said that they felt everything was going fine. To our surprise, though, quite a few said they were becoming less interested in outdoor learning because they felt the tasks were becoming too regimented and organised. They preferred the freedom of greater choice and exploration. I'm glad the students felt comfortable enough to share these opinions - it really helped us. The teachers also shared their concerns about the students behaviour during outdoor learning. We felt that some were forgetting about the second word in the title. This feedback encouraged us to make a few changes to our setup. So far they've been well-received.

Some students just flourish outdoors. Maybe they find the classroom walls restrictive - I'm sure there's a number of reasons. It's been great to see these students come more alive with their learning. Others are equally as comfortable in the classroom and outside. Some only prefer the indoors. At least this way we're opening up the scope of access to more students and differentiating our approaches to the learning profile of our students. Most importantly, the students are participating in some interesting learning engagements. And I reckon they're having a bit of fun too.

Every week, day and hour.

Over the past week I've had several discussions about collaboration with my colleagues. On one occasion this was at a workshop about documentation, lead by our Early Years Vice-Principal. I attended this workshop in the hope that it would give me some fresh ideas about how to collect and evaluate data in my own classroom. We talked about the processes that the Early Years teachers go through and engaged in some nice discussions about the mechanics of their documentation.

One of the key elements of documentation in Reggio-inspired approaches is the need for follow up discussion about the evidence that has been collected. This enables educators to flesh out their ideas and helps to create clearer understandings about what has been observed. Of course, this isn't only evident in Early Years teaching. Any teacher worth their salt collects evidence through observations, individual and group discussion, work samples and any other effective means. One of the big differences, though, is that there are less ways to collect evidence from students who cannot write competently yet, or perhaps speak fluently in the language of instruction. As this occurs more frequently in the Early Years, observing the students is a popular way to document development and perceived understandings. Advocates for this approach to education, such as our VP, do their best, then, to ensure that specific structures are in place to allow this to happen. Extended blocks of inquiry time are common and more than one adult per group of children is a frequent sight. Unfortunately, for several complicated reasons, this doesn't translate to the Gr. 1-5 classes at my school. So we've been looking for ways to enhance our ability to collaborate. 

As a Team Leader, I try my very best to ensure that our meeting times are focussed on student learning and not the other 'stuff' that fills up our day. One thing I try to do at the start of our meetings is engage in different protocols that allow us to freely discuss what's been happening in our classes - both successes and failures. A second point to consider is the focus of discussions that the team engages in. While our discussions might be about student learning, it is important to guide team members to discuss the right sorts of things. This is a skill I'm still developing. In their article about collaboration, So they can fly - Building a community of inquirers (2007), Linda Gibson-Langford and Di Laycock refer to a term called coblaboration, which was first coined by David Perkins in his book - King Arthur's Round Table - How collaborative conversations create smart organisations. Coblaboration is characterised by chaotic conversation patterns, repetition, group think and dialogue with no action. How many 'collaborative' meetings have you been a part of where these arise? I know I've been in plenty. So keeping precious meeting time focussed is essential.

Another point raised by one of my colleagues is that we need to question our mindset about collaboration. She said that most of the time when we meet to collaborate we come with the idea that we're going to talk about things that are going to happen. This is great, but we also need to consider the value in collaborating about things that have already happened. This doesn't just mean in UOI reflections every 6 or so weeks either, it means discussing and debating ideas based on what's happened with your class that week or day or hour. I think there's a lot of merit in that.

Everyone always talks about collaboration and how great it would be to collaborate more. However, a lot of the time we get caught up in other things that require our immediate attention, but may not be all that important. Last year, when I was in Gr. 4, I tried to encourage the practice of getting into each other's classrooms more often. We discussed this - how we felt about it, what we thought the benefits were, what we thought the barriers were. We also talked about our feelings when someone was in our room - some people shared feelings about this being like an appraisal, but that's another discussion. We agreed on a goal that we would try to engage in one collaborative teaching experience per fortnight. We reflected on this in our meetings and although everyone said they valued the process, finding the time to meet with people in order to discuss and plan lessons was another 'thing' to do in our already packed day. I haven't yet been able to get over to Gr. 4 and see if they're carrying on with the process this year.

This year I've moved to Gr. 3 and our classrooms are set up a little differently. In Gr. 4 we worked in portable classes that, while being roomy, were essentially boxes and to get to another class you had to go right out of your room. In Gr. 3 the classes are alongside each other and have doors that connect each room. One of the first things my neighbour and I did this year was contact the custodians and get them to remove the door. Having an open passageway through the two classrooms forces us to collaborate more - although I must say that I'm lucky that I work next to a teacher that doesn't need too much encouragement with this. We also sat down and looked at the times during the week where we have opportunities for more collaborative learning between the classes. This also involves our Learning Support and EAL teachers. For this to work effectively we'll need to talk over things (that have happened and will happen) in order to plan appropriately. If everything aligns, hopefully it will extend to include all of the 5 classes in Gr. 3.

Photo credit: Shunting