Defining the support you are giving your team

Here are some graphics that work well when you are considering the support that members of your team need and thus impact on how you lead. This may help in giving  specific feedback to team members that will be effective in helping them move forward with their thinking and contribution to the team. It is from the work of Ken Blanchard, he talks about how situational leadership and how you lead will differ depending on the context.  Have a look at: How we Lead, some great posts to consider.

Deep and Powerful Learning

I have been reading a lot lately about powerful learning. I particularly like this Ted talk as it brings together many truths and resonates with core beliefs about aligning vision and practice.

Children need to have a say in their learning, it needs to be relevant and real. This relates to Fullan's ideas of the needs to connect, create and help humanity.


Well worth taking the time to view.

Modern Learning Considerations

An interesting graphic to help consider aspects of collaborative practice and the impact it can have on aspects of learning. Here is the link to the graphic.

21st Century Learning

I have been reading a lot recently about learning in the future and how this might look and be a little different to how we currently practice. This article reaffirms that New Zealand classes are well along the track to making changes towards learning for the 21st Century. It does however, bring up a few aspects that are worth considering that are focussed on teaching rather than classroom space.

Websites for Learning

Worth a look! Try to learn something new over the break.

Maths Week

It's Maths Week this week and here are some links to some great sites that will provide extension opportunities for many budding mathematicians.

Huge thanks to those involved in putting the maths week site together.

TKI - Gifted and Talented Online > Maths and Statistics. This page provides links to resources to extend able mathematicians.

Interactive Sites for Education provides links for many subject areas, here is the link to the maths topics.

Minecraft is still an app that many children enjoy and there is no better way to engage than to do it with something that they love. Here are a few links to Minecraft resources, click on the images.

By following the link from Smart Apps for Kids you will be guided to a page providing more Minecraft Resources than you need, 67 free Minecraft resources.

Brain Development, Learning and Implications

Today I had the great pleasure in hearing Nathan Mikaere-Wallis share his knowledge, insight and wisdom with the Christchurch Junior School Leaders. Nathan was part of the Brainwave Trust, and is part of X Factor Education, Christchurch. He has been a lecturer at Christchurch College of Education, lecturing in human development, brain development, language and communication and risk and resilience. Nathan has a background of working with children in counselling settings relating to domestic violence, sexual abuse and childhood trauma.

There were a number of core messages in his presentation.

• Brian research is relatively new. In the 1990s there was more research than in the previous 300 years.
• Teenage brain research is 8 years old.
• Healing brain research is 3 years old.
• The frontal cortex isn't fully developed until an average of 26 - 27 years.
• First 1000 days of a human's life is pivotal to brain development.
• Historically we believed that brain development and potential was mainly due to genetics. We now know that brain can be moulded by the environment.
• What is happening at this time influences the brain stem development and frontal cortex potential.
• Other factors have an impact; gender, place in family, temperament, parent's education, poverty, extended family.
• There is an impact of the ability to learn cognitively in the future.
• Di-ad relationship in early years effects brain development.
• Relationships are the most important aspect of learning.

What can we do for children whose learning potential has been impacted?

• Ensure they have a strong relationship with a key person - this challenges the idea of a transition class.
• Extend the duration of this relationship - can they have this teacher for a longer period of time?
• Predictability in the classroom.
• Consider starting school closer to 6.
• Personalise transition to school practices.
• Reduce focus on cognitive learning and national standards in early years.
• Focus on learning dispositions (Te Whariki).
• Consider practices of mindfulness.

To hear more from Nathan you can listen or download a podcast from National Radio. You can also follow him on Facebook.

Preparing Children for their Future

This a provocative and entertaining clip that suggests a future outcome for a student taught in a restrictive learning environment. It might be useful to share with teachers or learners about the kind of future that we are preparing our students for.

• What can we do differently?
• How can this be avoided?
• How are we equipping them for a future?

Learning needs to be...

• engaging, personalised, real life, collaborative, relevant, responsive and messy
• connected - subjects don't occur in isolation in real life
• helpful to our students
• changing to meet the needs of a changing world, we can't keep doing it the same way
• flexible

Our students will need to...

• deal with data
• work globally
• self manage
• organise, collaborate, plan, reflect and assess
• learn through real life enquiries
• work with different people; ages, cultures, thinkers
• be digitally responsible

What are we doing to encourage this kind of thinking and learning?

Challenging Practice

Why do you do what you do?

Would you want to be in your class?

How much of your day is having an impact?

How do you use student voice in your learning design?

A Message to New Zealand Teachers

This slideshow was developed by CORE Education and then is being added to by children all over NZ to tell teachers about what they want and how they want to learn.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ypjel4hVvtS7myOXhIJ2TtdByxVtt9eS_YN5Ut1ksoo/edit?usp=sharing

As this is not my creation I don't want to publish it but would loved to have it embedded so you can watch it grow. Please visit the link at this stage to see what NZ children are thinking.

Growth Mindsets

Attending the Learning Network conference a few weeks ago has had a profound effect on my teaching, feedback and thinking, particularly thinking about growth mindsets and the impact they have on learning.

I stumbled across this post from Karen Boyes which I enjoyed and started me thinking about what we celebrate and report to parents. Are we celebrating the attitude children have to their learning or is the focus on achievement? Do we ensure we have shared enough about the progress children have made and the effort they have put into learning? What are we awarding certificates for? Do they reinforce what we believe about mindsets and learning?

I am always one for quotes and pictures and I have grabbed these from the article Karen shared. If you would like to read the article in full, follow the link, http://www.karentuiboyes.com/2014/11/effort-vs-accompishment/

Feedback and a Growth Mindset

Austin's Butterfly is a fabulous illustration of how children are able to respond to quality feedback and make improvements to their work. In order to do this children must have a growth mindset and be aware that learning is a process, seeking to challenge and improve. The use of praise is interesting too, Austin is given praise for persevering and his efforts that lead to improvements.





Dylan Wiliam shares a snippet of his work with self and peer assessment.  This is not the marking of another's work but time for students to formatively assess each others work which has huge benefits for both children involved in the process.

Mindmapping and Beyond

When I had the privilege of teaching Year 6 students a few years ago, I enjoyed introducing them to the skill of mind mapping. I love these diagrams and ways of recording notes. I would have a lot of fun making them and they are far more interesting to revise than pages and pages of written notes. Maybe time could be spent in reading and/or writing lessons developing this skill.

Click on the picture to visit te@chthought and explore this idea further.

Guy Claxton and the Idea of Building Learning Power

Guy Claxton is an English educator, researcher and scientist who has made his life work investigating and spreading the word about learning power.

His website is well worth investigating and can be accessed through this link.

The basic premise of this is that teachers will work on building students power to learn and creative capabilities. The brain is always growing and intelligence can be developed through experience.

" When teachers focus on building learning power in their classrooms, the impact on learners can be startling. I've seen this happen in schools across the UK when teachers have begun to think creatively about the ways in which they can help young people become better learners."
Guy Claxton, 2007

Education and Change

There is an interesting article floating around about what is becoming obsolete in teaching. I would have to say that these changes seem to becoming very slowly and I have been taking part in discussions about these things that are now obsolete for a long time.

What do you think?

Maths and Gifted Education - get children talking

These are two topics that I am very passionate about. What I love about this article is it confirms the approach being used by Australasian schools. I have had the benefit of many hours of maths learning this year and key to this learning is teaching children about mathematical concepts through inquiry and talk.

Children who 'get maths' need to be challenged to think mathematically and rich mathematical tasks that are open ended and lead to a discussion of pure mathematics do this. We need to get our bright children talking and discovering mathematical ideas rather than keeping them busy with pages of problems or websites and games.

Sources for these activities include:
nzmaths.co.nz/problem-solving
blackdouglas.com.au
Otago Maths Problem Solving Resources
Think Boards
Andrew Jeffrey Resources www.andrewjeffrey.co.uk
Number Sense
Open Ended Maths Activities, SullivanP., & Lilburn, P. (2004)
Figure it Out Resources

12 Lessons about Gifted Kids from Matilda

This is a simple outline of some characteristics of gifted children evidenced in Roald Dahl's Matilda. 

Well worth a look, thanks Judy for sharing.

Maths Talk Time

We recently held a Parent Talk Time on maths. This was talking about how number is taught in schools today. Here is a copy of the power point that was shared.

Parent Talk Time - Maths by cmrhowison

More learning opportunities

I often thought when I was actually attending University how great it would be to be able to slip in and attend many courses that I was interested in. Now you can, here is another link to open source education that is free. You can attend the courses and achieve a certificate or you can keep on learning about something purely for interest.

Have a look by clicking here.

As Adults We Need to Keep Learning...

I am always astounded by the links that you find to quality material to learn new things online. The challenge is now to find the time to listen to and absorb all the wonderful things that are out there. Here are a couple of worthwhile links.

Have you always dreamed of studying at MIT? Well now you can.



Jonathan Fields has a very good blog with links to all kinds of fascinating material. Use this link as a starting point to explore further. This particular links provides seven keynote sessions that are listed in the comments as being more worthwhile than 2 years of a reader's tertiary education.

The Seven Survival Skills Our Learners Need

This is a thought provoking presentation by Tony Wagner, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education. Not only does it contain a video of his presentation but also a slideshow of the presentation that accompanied the presentation.

Our curriculum is world renowned for developing these skills in our learners. What will be the long term effect of the focus on National Standards? How can we honour both the core values of our curriculum and ensure our children are achieving and continuing to achieve?

You can find out more about Tony Wagner here:

Follow him on twitter: