Trip+to+Auckland

n This is a summary of what we did on the trip. Please add to the summaries and the PMI for each school. Each school from our cluster that attended also need to comment on the impact of the visit to each school for them. Any photos taken on the trip could be embedded as a slideshow using a tools such as Bubbleshare, RockYou, or Picture Trail.

Viscount School
We began with a talk mostly focusing on inquiry at Viscount and then went into classes to see their 'newsboard time'.

**Notes from the talk at Viscount**
__Transparency__ Children are taught about teacher assessment tools such as running records. They practice testing Three way goal setting and WALT and WILF. All children know exactly what level they are on for reading, maths etc. They know how much they have improved and what they need to work on. __Literacy Focus__ Focus on teaching reading due to high levels of ESOL children and inquiry which both requires high quality reading programme. Instead of getting children to answer questions generated by the teacher, have them write their own questions so that they start to understand the complexity of writing questions. __Newsboard__ News articles presented to the children and each class works on this article according to the learning needs of the class. Our class had a focus on critical literacy and so were looking in depth at the messages and purpose of the articles. I particularly liked the ‘silences and gaps’ where you look for what the article is NOT saying. The use of the Activeboard made it very easy to view and access articles on the web. __Learning Community topic__ Start this way every year. This year they had to go into the community and find the best learner they knew. They asked questions of this learner to establish what characteristics they had that made them a good learner. They brought these back and compared with other children. If a number of children had the same characteristics listed, then it was assumed that these were important characteristics. They then displayed these and tested themselves against these characteristics which helps them establish both personal and class goals (if many of children have similar weaknesses). __Reflection__ All children do this at the end of each day. They have to reflect on what they have learned and relate this to themselves in how this will impact on them personally and how they are going to use this learning in the future. There has to be a high level of trust between the children and between children and staff in order to have children be completely honest __Inquiry__ Using sticky notes to put what they think the answer of inquiry questions might be. Use one colour for hypothesis. Eg Where to refugees come from? Children posted answers such as next to nana’s house. The question needed to be reframed as eg Which countries do refugees come from and what do these places have in common? The hypothesis of the children helps you to sample the way children are interpreting the question so you can check what direction they are going to go in before they start researching. Can stop time wasted. • First term – learning community • Second term – learning styles • Third term – thinking • Term four – questioning

Last task of each of these three week inquiries is to choose the context for the inquiry. Art Coster – different forms of thinking. We need to teach skills explicitly to help the children improve rather than think kids will just pick it up when it is infused in other subjects. __Induction__ There is a teacher development professional centre. There would be five or six full days for new teachers in their first year to upskill. They do bring in a specialist reading teacher to upskill teachers and this has been effective. Five days in-service on reading. Everyone teaches reading the same way. Two days on maths and how to use the assessment kits. Started off hiring many beginner teaches due to wanting to mould them but then realised that experience is also important. 27 teachers on staff who started teaching careers at Viscount. John Hattie’s research highlights the fact that it is the quality of the teacher that has the largest impact on learning. __Culture of Success__ Build on the strengths of the children in the school. In Viscount, 90% of the children are Polynesian, which means that they tend to be talented at sports and music. They hired a full time sporting professional for coaching the children. Then this success flows over into other areas of education. Also a full time music specialist with a music centre containing a recording studio. Steps of the inquiry process • Choosing the context • Knowledge attack • Scenario • Essential questions • Hypothesise • Search • Sift and Sort • Synthesize • Report • Evaluate • Thinking • Action plan • Action

A group of children had made powerpoints to explain each step of the inquiry process. ‘What college is the best one for students?’ ‘What is a leader?’

Take away points and impacts for each school that came Korokoro - Enjoyed seeing a competent CLASSROOM TEACHER use the interactive whiteboards- she used it to support a session on the mat with Yr 7/8 students and it contributed well to the engagement of the students. I was impressed with how the management team poerated and it backed up everything the Principal and DP had presented at a presentation I attended at conference last year.  Maungaraki - I thought that the belief in valuing staff as their greatest resource and backing this up with specialized professional development was very impressive especially the induction programme for beginning teachers and those teachers new to the school. I liked the emphasis of starting each day with the news board activity was extremely powerful and I witnessed some high quality teaching, with students full involved and taken to deep levels of thinking which impressed me. Petone Central - I liked the clear support of staff through induction programmes for new teachers and focussed development for those who had been there longer. It was good to see the projectors and interactive boards in use particularly in the news-board learning situation. Sacred Heart - I liked the in house PD that was ongoing at the school, so everyone had a chance to build on thier ability with ICT and Inquiry that fit the school model, everyone is on the same page. I was surprised to see that the classroom I visited was very low tech, after the amazing admin building. Wilford - The induction of beginning teachers and staff development and the value they place on this. The continuity of newsboard and reflection across the school at specified times. Waterloo - Whole school learning models and themes, cohesive philosophy driven by principal and DP clear direction and expectations of staff. Childrens artwork was great and can we have some more coffee (or a coffee machine) like theirs. Muritai - I found Viscount very interesting. It was Decile 1a and had a strong line of ecology, which is the answer really. They had clear systems and a stable management team with firm views. The DP had strong control within the school - strong interface with students and staff. I enjoyed the experience of seeing an active board in action and was impressed with the application. I saw the benefit of it though was unsure of how much effort was required to set up each lesson. [|Summerland School] We arrived at Summerland and had a talk with Blair in the library about direction and history of school. We spent time around classrooms many of which had been effected by leaky building syndrome with scaffolding holding up the ceilings in some rooms. Following this we had a Q&amp;A time with Barbara the DP. The staff then kindly ran mini workshop sessions on topics including Flickr, Google Docs, great websites for juniors, thinking skills and (others I can't remember - please fill these in). Take away points and impacts for each school that came Korokoro - I really liked the layout of the school with the mixed year levels working alongside each other in a 'castle'. Thought that the classroom layout was interesting and very different to standard 'rectangle' classrooms - loved the teacher workspace between two classrooms for both teachers to work out of. Made a huge difference not having the teachers desk in the classroom - felt more like a children's workspace/learning area. Maungaraki - I liked the thinking skills programme which they have put in place. Years 1 &amp; 2 De Bono's Hats, Years 3 &amp; 4 Thinkers Keys, and Years 5 &amp; 6 Bloom's Taxonomy. Petone Centra l - The use of thinking skills was great particularly those tied into the reading programme. Sacred Heart - It was amazing to see the use of Thinking Tools in a Junior setting and the results they were getting at this stage. The teachers were very positive under pretty bad building conditions. Wilford - The implementation of thinking skills at each level. The use of thinking tools for a wide range of purposes. Some great display ideas for everyday use. Waterloo - Again whole school theme. Teachers passionate about thinking skills, hats keys etc.. Where we eal with a few they seemed to have all. Muritai - This is a fun school with a strong thinking culture and must be a prerequisite to employment - i really enjoyed Blair's honesty in presentation and found this to be incredibly valuable in terms of shaping staff values. The leaky buildings must be a nightmare - just like Muritai in a southerly. In terms of comparison to Muritai - we brought back lots from Summerland from apple bus and aligned out thinking skills programme on their model that Carmen/Tom has alluded to. It is a great model. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">San Antonio -
 * ** Plus ** || ** Interesting ** ||
 * It was wonderful that staff were willing to share their knowledge in the after school sessions. People got a lot out of these. The leaky building syndrome seemed to be demoralising for staff though their attempts to turn scaffolding into castles or art walls showed a resilient attitude. || Thought the school was coping well with the structure damage. Teachers had offices between classrooms. ICT gear was all leased. ||
 * Got some good ideas from wall displays ||  ||
 * A superb systematic thinking skills programme which all Junior staff embraced and regularly used with their classes. Evidence of different thinking skills styles were on display on classroom walls and in class made books etc. This was also supported in teacher planning, which was collaborative. ||  ||
 * We were welcome in all classrooms to observe and some teachers took time from their classes to talk to us. ||  ||
 * How thinking tools are taught throughout the school, how they are used for assessment and within inquiry. ||  ||
 * New school colour coded well resourced. Enjoyable after school sessions. Classrooms had interesting teaching spaces able to move freely ar ound the school ||  ||
 * New school colour coded well resourced. Enjoyable after school sessions. Classrooms had interesting teaching spaces able to move freely ar ound the school ||  ||

<span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 255)">[|Pt England School]
We started talking about the whole ethos at Point England School. Point England is a decile one school with a community that sees success as the ability to leave the Point England area which was often the area that new immigrants to the country were settled. The school has a strong belief that every child should have access to the same opportunities so there is a core set of activities that every child in every class does in relation to digitally enhanced learning. These have to translate into a measurable growth in the achievements of the children as the children at the school enter at a lower average level of ability to other schools and still aim to have them leave achieving at least at the average level for their age. This means they need to make more progress than average children each year at school so anything brought into the school has to make a difference to their learning. They use a number of different data collection tools to assess the impact of programmes on children. The believe that things need to incorportate 'SiSoMo' (sight, sound and motion) to capture the interest of students. They see digitally enhance learning as the 'hook' that gets children into being enthusiastic about their learning.

__eLearning__ The school does not have a ‘splatter’ approach to innovation. Anything that is brought in to the school is done across the board. If a new idea is brought into the school, there is discussion about whether or not it will work for the kids and if it will fit with what is already happening. At the moment, the school has a focus on the use of Kidpix at the junior level (see the Point England Junior Strategy document in the useful templates section). They use only Kidpix until the end of Year Two to develop a 'mother tongue' in ICT. They use the older version of Kidpix as they believe the new version is to 'flashy' and distracts kids with all the bells and whistles. They have a teacher aide that accesses the children in junior classrooms against a rubric of skills (included in the junior strategy).

As the children get older, they branch out into other areas. We saw many children using Pixelmator to do easy animations. Pixelmator is Mac only and gives you great drawing tools AND layering to make it easy to move objects for the purposes of animation. The children and staff also make great use of Flickr (eg the electronic mihis), Movie Making, and of course podcasting for which they have won international IT awards. The school is always looking to find an 'Authentic Audience' for their children's work to motivate them. They define an authentic audience as ‘an audience that chooses to listen to you' rather than being forced in a classroom situation. The podcast they do is based on books by kiwi authors and has a huge international audience. They have had an author contact the school and ask them to put together a podcast on a book about to be released which has been included on the Amazon page for the book. The children have rubrics they mark their own or partners podcasts against. You can get a copy of this rubric if you leave a comment on a podcast for the children mentioning that you would like a copy. Many classes also have blogs. If you leave a comment on the blog, this is highly valued. In one class, we saw the blog loaded up onto the data projector with each comment read out and analysed. They also use statistics about visitors to their blogs etc for maths. They have a book that comments are pasted into with a small world map beneath they colour in to show the country the comment originated from. These books of comments can then become part of the reading programme. The school run TV station (PENN) is watched by all classes each day.

The school also gets involved in international collaborative projects such as [|Rock Our World] where schools had to lay one track down of a piece of music in Garageband and then hand it on to the next school in another country. They had an overnight stay at the school so that the kids could talk to another class in a different time zone. The school insists that children make their own music rather than use loops in Garageband just the same way as they have to create original drawings rather than use clipart.

__Planning, Process, Product__ Teachers given half day release at the end of each term to plan for the next term. They pick one eLearning assessment task across the curriculum. They then go to through the learning process and all children are expected to complete a digital learning object at the end of the term that generally is marked against a rubric that focuses on the learning rather than the technology (ICT is a tool for learning).

__Wall and Classroom Displays__ The school was filled with amazing art work. They have a policy of NOT removing art work at the end of each year. They want children to come back after the holidays into a vibrant and attractive learning space. They leave a display up until they are ready to replace it. This seems a very sensible idea!


 * **Plus** ||
 * Awesome, awesome, awesome place! So much quality learning going on. Excellent implementation of ICT to share learning with the world. Children and staff were very friendly and welcoming. Children presenters very confident and knew their stuff ||
 * Oh to have a teacher whose sole interest is ICT to develop the news bulletin each day! and what an opportunity for the senior students to be involved in presenting a news bulletin to the rest of the school daily. ||
 * Each classroom had a television to view the daily broadcasts. Everyone stopped work to watch. Motivational. ||
 * An amazing place - great vision from the management team - realistic, relevant and driven. All the staff were supportive of the vision and were achieving great results. The atmosphere in the school reflected the thirst for learning - teachers valued all work and learning through their displays, walls, blogs and website. Children knew what they were learning in all classes and were keen to show and talk about it. ||
 * Literacy and numeracy acquisition at the core. Dp and principal in tune with each other huge whole school e-learning philosophy understood by the whole school including the students. Everyone welcoming. At least 5 computers in every junior room all being used for illustrating stories in paint. ||
 * How their blogs were able to be accessed by anyone. The amount of cool pieces of work on their blogs that reflected their learning. ||
 * I loved the maths assessment sheets on the walls for each individual student so they could quickly identify which strategy or area of knowledge they had achieved and what their next learning step was. ||
 * I loved the maths assessment sheets on the walls for each individual student so they could quickly identify which strategy or area of knowledge they had achieved and what their next learning step was. ||

Take away points and impacts for each school that came <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Korokoro - The consistency that ran through the entire school was AWESOME! A whole school focus with the management team, teachers and students supporting was great to see. I thought that the half day release at the end of each term to plan for the following term was a great idea - you could tell that the teachers really thought about their students needs and the schools overall focus when planning. It was so good to see a school that is so dedicated to ICT still working just as hard with their literacy and numeracy - this wasn't compromised at all with the ICT. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Maungaraki - Specialist teachers can offer so much more to a school! The problem for us is funding extra staff to support this role! Publicly displaying the numeracy assessment sheets on the walls for each child. I also liked the consistent use of learning intentions throughout the school which were clearly displayed in classrooms and on work, so it was clear for learners what they were working on. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Petone Central - Clear data based views of where the schools needs are and where to go next. The idea of Sisomo (Sight sound and motion) to motivate and capture interest. The idea that the students can share and educate a global audience. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Sacred Heart - <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Wilford - how well each pupil knew what they were learning and how they had to get there. Where our ICT journey may take us - the need to get a higher ratio of pc's to pupils. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Waterloo - Again the whole school theme but was working teachers were able to illustrate learning moels in their own way. the most impressive school we saw this trip. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Muritai - The whole mood of the school was superb. The 2 Burts were very strong leaders with well defined, clear views. The school oozed of experience and a simplicity that captured their objectives of making sizeable gains through a clear process. The concept of uploading to a global audience and shared commenting in writing continued a process that the audience was wider than the teacher. Great morning tea. The kids were great, the ukelele's tuneful, technology well used, news programme simple. Seemed to be a can do attitude everywhere and a reliable staff happy to do the extra things to allow the kids to excel. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">San Antonio -

<span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 255)">Bucklands Beach Intermediate
When we arrived at Bucklands Beach, we were given a presentation by Ian Fox on their reasons for adopting electronic portfolios across the school. Ian has spent time researching best practice in the portfolio area and the school used paper portfolios before moving to electronic ones. He believes the opportunities offered by the multimedia aspect of digital portfolios makes them a valuable part of the children's learning. They use KnowledgeNet as their LMS and digital portfolios are built within this. However, they make use of web 2.0 tools as well so sometimes links will take people outside of KnowledgeNet into wikis etc. Many of the children are using [|Glogster] to make a clickable 'poster' with links to the different sections of their portfolios. They used a great timeline tool called [|Circavie] to show their work over time.


 * ** Plus ** || ** Interesting ** ||
 * Computers everywhere!! Digital portfolios looked really exciting. Liked the use of glogster as a portal for this. || I liked their garden areas and areas for students to sit outside during breaks. ||
 * I liked the building set up with each few rooms each sharing a joint computer suite space. || The pupils who spoke to us were at a much higher level than most other pupils - the pupils I saw in classes working on their portfolios had very little on them. ||
 * The school was again well equiped with the electronic detectors on both entrances to the library, a drama suite with a staged area and sloped seating. || Like the table tennis tables they were great . Good to see Intermediate school with this teaching and learning model. what happens when children go to college. ||
 * The student guides were well trained and had a good knowledge of the school and what went on. ||  ||
 * Great resources for pupils to use - music, drama, library, radio and tv studio. The school had high expectations of the pupils who relished in the responsibilities that were available. ||  ||
 * e-portfolio seem to be the main media from here. Computers everywhere. Seem to have authentic use for all those computers ||  ||

Take away points and impacts for each school that came <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Korokoro - Curious about how much time is spent working on these e-portfolios. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Maungaraki - <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Petone Central - Clear ICT focus although perhaps time consuming. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Sacred Heart - This school fpr me hit home what you can do with limited resources. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Wilford - how much work and time that would be needed by staff and pupils for their e-portfolios. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Waterloo - e-portfolios the same as we are doing except we call them Digital Portfolios gave us a few ideas for ours though. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">Muritai - The e-portfolio is a step on for the web 2 and good use to go from blogging / social software to make use of the eculture. Intersting juxtaposition from Pt England which published out for others whilst Bucklands Beach published for within. The 2 year journey was quite clear for the school whereas the other three had that easy nature throughout the school there was a formality to the intermediate. I took away the links to the eportdolios and again the mention of Knowledge net as a essential resource to the eculture pathway. <span style="color: rgb(200, 14, 14)">San Antonio -

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