Learning+at+schools+2010

Sue Short I gained alot of info about questioning and listening skills from Karen Boyes and Trevor Bond. About the type of questions we ask and modeling good questions. About training kids to pause, paraphrase and probe. looking at different question starts and praising good questions. Once back in the class room I made some mobiles that would illustrate these stages and show what good questioning was. the children are taught to use them during language circle and at encouraged to use them at other times. I beleieve this has increased the level of active listening in the class and is starting to get the children thinking more about the information they want before they from thier question. I enjoyed a break out about M learning and the success a school had with visual and oral presentations. It made me think about doing some visual powerpoints focusing on picture annotation and recording voice. I would like to go on to do this with our current values topic. Once back in the classroom I suggested we make visual and audio power points to show what we believed represented self worth. the children worked in groups of 3, totally on task for every session, great language discussions and the result was a very careful representaion of self worth. they could all talk about every symbol, colour and music used. the engaement was amazing. I can not down load the power point onto here as they are too big. The Solo taxonomy break out by Pam and julie was excellent and thier web site - hooked on learning. has given me a lot to think about. I need some more time and Pd to implement some of these ideas as I dont fully understand them yet. I will meet with some other staff members who are looking at developing the model too. Tony Ryans thinking break out confirmed some ideas I had from the last break out I went on with him at U learn. I am going to leave more time for reflection to try and gain deeper thinking about our learning. Using some structure to the reflection. This has been good. but the time factor is still a problem for me. I have to keep an eye on the clock and really make time. we have been orally discussing working goals after each session sometimes using thinking sticks. it works well when I give it the time. The key note speakers gave some good ideas about google and the accuracy of web site. teaching kids how to search. There were alot of other smaller ideas gained from chatting to others about their break outs and the general ethos of the conference. Its great feed off like minded people as it sparks ideas. Some small that can easily be implemented into your own class and others wider philosophies.

Jane Matthews I feel very privaledged to have attended the Learning@School conference in Rotorua. It was absolutely second to none. Highly professional, well organised and the break outs were full of information that was new to me which I always think is a bonus! The break outs I selected were varied. I attended one with Julia. Lots of work around values in schools really exciting and good to hear some new information as well as some time to revise work she has done with us previously. I attended a breakout which guided us through The New Zealand Curriculum Online website. This was just so helpful. There are many great clips and footage of teachers at work doing great things in their classrooms on the implementation of the Key Competencies. I watched quite a few of these once I got home and have successfully begun my own journey of implementing the K.C's with the kids. You can come and see what we are doing in the class room. I also attended a breakout with Pam Hook and Julie Mills on Solo Taxonomy. This linked so nicely with the other breakouts I attended on planning and purposeful assessment with Faye Le Cren from E-time in Christchurch. I am going to wait a little before I start using Solo. I need to do a bit more research and getting my head around it. Their website 'Hooked onthinking.com" has a plethera of information that is user friendly. Again, this website has video of classes in action using Solo. I enjoyed listening to Mary Chamberlain talk about National Standards. A lot of debate and many questions!! Just an outstanding experience. I arrived back in Gore exhausted but buzzing, eager to start implementing some of my new information.

Jenny Stearn The //**Learning@School**// conference in Rotorua was a great place to meet up with teachers and others connected with education. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to talk with others from all over the New Zealand and from a variety of different types of schools. It was just a reminder that there are a lot of people out there enthusiastic, interested and motivated about the direction education is heading in New Zealand. A trip through the easy to follow, updated **//New Zealand Curriculum online//** website was interesting.There are many varied practical resources and links, we must remember to look at this site first, during any discussions on the curriculum. I liked the idea of the //** wallwisher space **// and see this being useful in a number of ways both in the classroom and as one tool to encourage feedback from the adults within the school community. Do you know what happens when you get a roomful of New Entrant teachers together? Yes, they talk and talk and talk and yes, it is all on the topic too! The 90 minute ** //Transition to// //School// **breakout felt like 10 minutes...we could have talked all day. A flow of stories, ideas, suggestions and debate...and now that I know I can add our own movie clip to a**// Kidpix //** picture, I'll have to try that out too. //**Web 2.0 tools**// for teachers sent us to a wonderful wiki site, where we were able to hitchhike around cyber space to discover the possibilities of the web. As in outer space, I have still many areas to explore (!) and yes the answer might be 42. If anyone is out there reading this try http://hitchhikerweb2.wikispaces.com/ and explore the cyberspace for yourself. All in all, it was a great, well organised and stimulating conference, congratulations must go to all those involved. Many thanks to the Hokonui team for sharing an enjoyable time in Rotorua with me and to the cluster for the opportunity to attend, it was certainly a worthwhile experience.
 * //Bringing the Vision to Life//** was a wonderful trip through the process we are going through with our school vision. The breakout provided a variety of examples of different ways of making your vision real and meaningful within the school setting, this included ways of embedding the ideas into the curriculum and using ICT tools to help do this. I got some new ideas and a confirmation that we are on the right path.
 * //Using ICT applications for young children//** allowed us to explore programs juniors were capable of using independently (after a run through the coaching model of course.) //** Voicethread **// is one I would like to have a play with - this can encourage oral feedback on any topic, from a wide range of people. I also had quite a play with //**Comic Life**// and can see possibilities here.
 * //Learning Talk//** was not what I expected, but very relevant for my leadership goals this year. Gems from this Australian chap, David Anderson, were many and varied. **'The conversation is not about relationship, the conversation is the relationship** '. '**Everyone argues about important issues, it's how we argue that's important.' It is between the support and the challenge the relationship lies. ** This last discussion point provided me with lots of food for thought from the perspective of leading a team. In what seemed like a room full of Principals, one could not fail to be a little overawed by the complexity of the job.
 * ...So many possibilities with many challenges ahead.... **

Our school vision. Implementing our school vision has been our goal and topic work for the first two terms of this year. I have tried to work Julia's Mu plan into this unit and develop this idea within the syndicate. I also shared this with the rest of the staff. I can understand how this develops through the various inquiry stages and am looking forward to seeing how the final stages, where understanding is shown in a variety of ways, develops. We have two levels working here, which makes it a little complicated, the teacher level and the student level - I need to make sure the student voice is heard in the final stages. The values workshop had lots of ideas to implement your vision, we can tick off many of these ideas and are definately on the right track. I have recently been playing with ways to reword our vision, like some of the examples we saw. so that it is connected and easy to follow.//** **//I have also worked on those key competancies, using the work we have done previously but have sort of lost my way here. Our unit is just full of key competencies and it is possibly not the best time to sort this area. I'm sure we'll get there.//**
 * //OK so what's changed?

The Mr Blobby Tree I have used a cool wee idea as a way of encouraging the new entrant students to reflect on how and why they are feeling the way they are. It is working very well. I have generally used it after they have come in from outside, but am now beginning to extend it into the classroom. It is most valuable when discussion how they are feeling and reflecting on various behaviours. It could be developed when talking specifically about specific learning areas. eg a Maths group/goal setting The A4 picture was too small. I enlarged it to A3 and this has been a good move. Easier to see.

Amanda Winsloe The Learning@School conference in Rotorua was fantastic, nothing like I had imagined. I am very grateful to of had the opportunity to attend and in such great company of others from the cluster. I learnt many new ICT tools that are available to enhance student learning, many of them are available for us to download on the net. It was great to hear other teachers’ stories on what had and had not worked for them. I was lucky to attend some breakouts of others schools learning journeys and take away parts that I could use in my own planning.

One ICT tool that I liked the most was ‘Newsmaker’ where students can produce a video clip through the writing, reading then presenting process. They have an audience and it makes their learning ‘come to life’. My students are currently enjoying [], where they have been making animations of texts they have read during guided reading as a follow up activity.

After attending a breakout on De Bono’s hats, I now have a different perspective of them, learning that children actually all come to school with their own individual hats - ones that we cannot change. It was interesting to hear how Maori Myths and Legends tie into the hats, giving students a strong background in which to remember each hat. This could be used with any culture and would be a good way to develop a relationship with the school community.

The information on the internet is extensive. After listening to Alan November I realise how important it is to teach students how to use sites such as Google efficiently. There are lots of websites out there that teach students as well as teachers how to do this.