Chapter 3: Coherence (Part 2) Pg 49-57

As Bern previously stated in the last post “As always I found Michael McDowell very insightful about his
perspectives in a very practical way.” and I can not agree with you more Bern!  The latter half of this
chapter focuses on ensuring that a  as a school, individual teachers have autonomy to make key
decisions in their classrooms to move student learning forward. As lead learners we need to ensure
that our school is equipped with the tools necessary to identify and take appropriate action on
student progress to ensure that students are demonstrating high proficiency (surface, deep and
transfer understanding) and are showing more than one year’s growth in their learning. 

Micheal McDowell reinforces the importance of writing clear Learning Intentions and Levelled
Success Criteria and ensuring that students themselves understand what they are learning and
how they can be successful in their learning. As a staff, I believe that our understanding of the
importance of even having Learning Intentions and Success Criterias in our classroom has
increased 10 fold from when we first began having them in our classroom. I can honestly admit
that when we first started, I did not grasp the impact that Learning Intentions and Success
Criterias could have on student learning. With our heavy PD focus over the past 2 years being on
setting students up for success in the classroom, when Micheal states “Students have a far greater
chance of developing the knowledge and skills to take more responsibility over their own learning if
they know what is expected in their learning” I can whole-heartedly understand and agree with his
statement, now that my own understanding through practical application in the classroom has improved.

Our next step as lead learners is to ensure that as a school, we have clarity in the level of learning
and consistency in the Learning Intentions and Levelled Success Criteria (Surface, Deep and Transfer)
across each grade level in the school. I believe we are on the way to achieving this, however we are
not at the ‘finish line’ yet. The changes in the way we are using our briefing time to share the learning
occurring in each classroom and present Learning Intentions and Success Criteria to gain constructive
feedback has put us further on the track to establishing some consistency across the grade levels.
Having the opportunity in staff meetings to examine different grade level understanding of a task,
like we have previously done in our Multiplicative Thinking, Geometric Reasoning and Reconciliation
Units have also put us further on the track. Leanda’s hard work in the writing of “From the Pit” and
the constant sharing of information in regards to Inquiry Learning and creating levelled Success
Criteria has lead to the establishment of school norms where we are all on the same page in
regards to the language we use, the colours of our Success Criteria (for Surface, Deep and Transfer
learning) and the importance of gathering students ‘Knows’ and ‘Need to Knows’ at the beginning of
a unit to guide our teaching. 

We as a staff have come so far, and when I was writing this post I was overcome with a sense of
pride in our staff. In saying that, we still have a long way to go. Our ‘What Now’ is to ensure we give
the staff more opportunities to develop their understanding of how we can reach that end goal of
“Students demonstrating high proficiency AND are showing more than one year’s growth” and to
continue to create clarity and consistency in student learning across all grades in the school. We
maybe look at creating our own Scale for Skills for the various KLA’s across the grades that devioid
the content or task and focus purely on the skills we want students to develop. The syllabus would
be a great starting point for this. 

Chapter 3 Coherence Pt 1

As always I found Michael McDowell very insightful about his perspectives in a very practical way. I must admit i found the reference to American Sport a little confusing but I will look into his references post blog. His assertion that "What separates 'what works' from what works best' is that the latter focuses on the relentless effort of the adults to enhance student learning by illuminating student prior knowledge and intervening accordingly and providing students the tools to understand and direct their own learning' is key to student growth. We as teachers know that there are many strategies that work and we all have our own Theory of Action as to why we believe that these are the best strategies. I full understand why some teachers will not let go of tried and true methods in favour of 'new' ones however his point about being clear on the focus being, where the learner is now, what misassumptions they may have and do they know where they are going, where they are now and how to get there links into Hattie's highest effect size (Assessment capable learners) What I find really interesting is how this process is not so straight forward as McDowell explains with his example of the effect size of problem based learning on surface learning but quadrupled at the deep and transfer level. i am wondering if this is reflected in NAPLAN results and the link to contemporary methodology.

McDowell emphasises the importance of student growth and in educators being able to have evidence of this growth by highlighting the gap from start of the finish of the learning cycle. Our PL focus on Surface Deep and Transfer seems to be the right path and is supported by his comment, "...educators and students must develop a common understanding of the levels of learning." (pg49)

The second half of this chapter was not as easy to comprehend and i found myself reading and rereading the graphs and trying to make sense of them. The takeaways were that whilst it is important for teachers to have some autonomy there are some key aspects of the learning and teaching that must be coherent across the grade and the school. 'know they impact' was a clear message for me as one can assume that the impact is there but how to we know. The check in through the surveys to see if the atmosphere of the school and the classroom is conducive to transformational learning can be a start for some teachers - where students have some input to their learning experiences.

I believe this chapter sets some challenges for schools. With the changing curriculums over such a short period of time and the number of syllabuses for primary I wonder how we can support teachers to show 'content knowledge, formative assessments, data analysis, best practices and instructional strategies' across all KLAs

week 4 reading

My apologies to all as I have left my copy of the text at school and can not complete the reading this week.

Jen W

How to Create Levelled Success Criteria

 Excellent choice of article for us to read Leanda!

Direct, realistic and a succinct summary of what you have been developing with us,
as a staff so far.
I like the three questions MM posed instead of the 5 we have - more meaningful
for kids and more tailored to learning.
Perhaps we could have these visible in each classroom?

After our team’s experience with house building in the PBL PL  last week
( I will elaborate in meeting) we realised even more,
how important teacher clarity hence student clarity is,
if you want the students to meet the syllabus outcomes.
We can’t give students tasks to solve that ask them to:
‘guess what I ( the teacher)  am thinking or hoping you will produce’. 

As teachers we have to be clear about what we want,
so the students are clear and know where they are heading and can self assess.
This means as teachers it is an expectation we KNOW and USE the syllabus and we are involved in the planning.

Michael’s step by step method from learning intention,
success criteria, driving question and feedback is clearly explained.
We need to give teachers time to read this together, discuss and maybe use these steps,
as a staff, to do some joint constructions for a particular learning cycle as part of the next
steps on from our role as critical friends where we have looked at each others attempts so far.
Let’s put all our minds together creating! Then we will be all on the one page and all staff
will realise that to ensure at least one year’s growth in one year it is an expectation
at St Patrick’s that we use learning intentions and levelled success criteria in all KLA’s. 

What an ideal final sentence: 

  ‘This simple strategy may assist in developing
your learners ability to become their own teachers.’

once upon a time

Once upon a time, teachers decided that it was most important that students were engaged , knew where they were in their learning and where they needed to go next. Every day the team of teachers prepared for the students to be involved in dynamic learning opportunities and gave the students time to self assess.  One day, the teacher noticed many students had evaluated their growth and knew what to do to move forward. Because of that, the assessment of learning had student voice as well as teacher voice. Because of that students became more confident and independent, understanding how they learn best and how to drive their learning forward. Until finally, the teacher’s role became that of an initial activator, feedback giver and instructional supporter as the students became assessment capable learners.