Our Learning Focus
2020
The Learning Progression Framework
This year some schools in our Kāhui ako have been working on rolling out the Learning Progression Framework in their respective schools.
Watch this space for more LPF progression as it continues to grow..
2020 LPF Schools: Carmel College, St John's, St Leo's
Jill Marsh & Helen Perry
(Across School Leaders)
This year we have lead the teachers at St John's School in a collaborative inquiry to improve writing.
Check out this summary of how we used the LPF to support our learning.
St John's LPF Collaborative Inquiry Google Site
We have documented our inquiry journey through this Google Site.
Here you have access to our meeting slides, the resources we used and data showing changes in teacher efficacy from using this new tool.
Bev Harper & Suzanne Zaisluik
(Within School Leaders)
St John's School have been working hard trialing the LPF and have put together this presentation on how they have been progressing in 2020.
Adrienne Williams & Lucia Dawbin
(Within School Leaders)
St Leo's Catholic School have been looking into Digital Fluency at their school spanning across all staff for the duration of 2020.
Olwyn Hobman & Tracey Law
(Within School Leaders)
This has been a mad year and Stella Maris coped incredibly well.
Formal TAI hasn’t been the major focus, but what has emerged this year is evidence of our embedded reflective thinking about our learners, and responding to their needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all lock-down structure.
Our school have a digital curriculum focus this year and many teachers have been upskilling in order to better facilitate the digital curriculum in our classes. When lockdown started looming, we started making serious plans for how we would engage our learners, cope ourselves, and support parents who had to both work from home, and look after their children while overseeing their learning as well. Our principal, Alan Watts, stated very clearly that wellbeing was the focus. These were not normal times, and we could not expect business as usual. We were to find ways, in our teams, to provide learning opportunities, but under no circumstances were we to overload families and create more stress for them in a very stressful time. We took him at his word, and we all made plans for our students. And they all looked quite different as well!
Gemma Strother & Ingrid Young
(Within School Leaders)
St Joseph's Catholic School used the pandemic as a means to upskill their online learning practices and also use learning resources such as SeeSaw to connect their students learning to their community. This was taken up with great enthusiasm and their efforts were rewarded with great feedback from students, staff and parents.
This upskilling was then linked directly to the formation and upkeep of google-site team sites that everyone could contribute to, keep updated on, and see the progress (below)
A reading to assist in literary knowledge
Within School Leaders:
Paula Pierce
Karen Ashton
Collette Joubert
Peter Keeling
Noah Meggitt
John Smith
Navin Kumar
Across School Leader
Tony Hill
Rosmini College had a year focusing on professional development and increasing student outcomes. Numerous PD sessions were held by leaders and staff around topics that directly link to the achievement challenges and increasing outcomes in areas such as blended learning and online classroom management. We also squeezed in a mini-Inquiry focus to help our teachers/students cope post lockdowns. Both initiatives were facilitated by our leaders and were very successful throughout the year.
Click here for 2020 overview and links.
Click here for detailed/individualised leader summaries and links to all work conducted.
Carmel College has also been trialing the LPF as a tool to guide teachers in increasing literacy awareness, with success measured across a variety of subject areas.
Carmel's LPF Google site
The WSL teachers have collaborated on this Site which outlines their efforts and also shines a light on the success they've had as a result.
Working on the LPF
The WSL staff have documented their LPF journey below.
Here you have access to the notes and slides from our meetings and resources they used to became increasingly familiar with the LPF.
Fiona Sahinkaya (WSL) and Katy Body (WSL) as well as Catherine MacKisack (ASL) have reflected on this journey below
Carmel College has also been working on the teaching as inquiry process as we self reflect on our own teaching practice.
Carmel WSL staff carried out a TAI on a variety of topics and ages ranging from yr 9 to yr 13 in 4 different curriculum areas
Catherine MacKisack cmackisack@carmel.school.nz
Henry Whipp hwhipp@carmel.school.nz
Maree Pervan mpervan@carmel.school.nz
Marion Roser mroser@carmel.school.nz
Anna O'Farrell aofarrell@carmel.school.nz
I orea te tuatara ka patu ki waho
A problem is solved by continuing to find solutions
Anna has spent the two previous years inquiry into practices around her senior language classes and this year she chose to inquire into practices relating to her Year 7 French junior classes.
This year, Anna has inquired into how best to support dyslexic learners within the foreign language learning classroom by examining the effectiveness of various strategies in Year 7 Rotation classes with target students from the 2020 Learning Support Register.
Click here for documentation
Maree has undertaken an inquiry looking at STEM activities in the Science curriculum.
The focus was to improve Science outcomes and interest for students (with a focus on Maori and Pasifika students) by including more STEM activities in the Year 9 Science course, offering more hands-on activities.
Click here for documentation
Henry has spent time on Kāhui ako work putting together a teacher inquiry looking at the use of concept maps to promote critical thinking, especially in those who favour visual-spatial learning.
He incorporated this strategy into his teaching and learning program of a Year 10 Social Studies class.
His results show that this strategy has a positive effect on more able and motivated students and they found it helped them improve their thinking through visualizing relationships between ideas and cause and effects. However, those less motivated or more distracted students did not benefit from the strategy so more work is needed here to improve this aspect.
Click here to access Henry's work
Catherine has spent time looking at a teacher inquiry on working to improve written answers for yr 13 bio students. All year 13 bio externals are made up of 3 exam questions inquiring essay style answers. The inquiry was around helping students to plan an answer using concept mapping techniques.
The strategy had mixed results in that the students already getting E’s took up the planning in limited numbers. Of those that did, their plans were concise and clear. For students who are able to manage themselves this self selection was no problem but other students (the target group) who would have benefited most; elected to not plan (despite strong encouragement to plan) and often did not submit written work for feedback.
Next steps include investing classroom time into teaching the planning process more thoroughly and intentionally rather than just the content and leaving students to plan as part of the self directed work at home
Click here for inquiry documentation
Click here for inquiry documentation (Carmel staff only)
The new online learning site for covid -19 lockdown
To mange the online learning that was needed during the first Auckland lockdown we developed a site
A lot of educationalists scrambled to deliver content in a new way.
Many other facilities such as the zoo and the museum developed features on their own websites to enable an enhanced online experience to replace the "real " experience.
Additionally many education providers/ business made their usual service free for a specified period of time (eg learncoach).
The site was a repository for all this information flooding in and it was updated weekly.
It was shared with all members of the kāhui ako
