The Blog-o-sphere

I have always loved reading - almost as much as I love writing I think.  I have always love reading others people's thoughts and feelings and getting a glimpse of how they see the world.  I frequented the biography and auto-biography part of the library as a teen, and still prefer these to fiction at times. It has been interesting to note now that with the advent of "The Blog" it has become much more common for the average John Doe to write and share about both their personal and career life experiences.

 As I came back into teaching last year after a good gap (having five kids does that) I made it a priority to seek out some great NZ teaching blogs - finding several who now, when the notification of a new post goes DING in the inbox, it's the first thing to be read.  It was the ding tonight, and thinking about the post from Claire Amos about feeling the fear and doing it anyway, that I was lead to reflect on how much I am thankful for what I'm terming "The Blog-o-sphere" and how its positives have impacted on my own teaching and learning journey.

So ... a few key positives of "The Blog-o-sphere" for me:

• You get to have a peek into the thoughts of other educators.  
• You get to see into their heads and classrooms.  
• You realise it is a journey not a destination
• You are consistently challenged to think about not just the HOW I am doing things, but the WHY
• You get introduced to cool things like Twitter as a PD tool #engchatNZ 
• You get to learn and see in action things like SOLO and MLE
• The knowledge that there are so many amazing committed teachers who LOVE their jobs is so empowering! 

We do this job because we are passionate about helping our students to embrace the love of learning.  Reading about how teachers are trying new things, not being afraid of stepping outside the box and  being willing to try new things for themselves is refreshing.  It is encouraging!  It is life-changing!

Yes, there can be some negatives - and the key for me is remembering that every teacher is in a different space, with different family circumstances and commitments. I am me, and don't need to be a copy of anyone else.   I have my wee tribe at home, and I am committed to them and my amazing husband as well - and by the way my tribe refers to "mummies big kids" so I'm pretty sure they know how much my students become my 'kids' as well and the passion I have for all their learning.

So, today I am thankful for "The Blog-o-sphere".  To all the bloggers and readers out there, thanks for your inspiration and encouragement .... have a great teaching week!

Twitter

Apparently, according to the wisdom of some Y11 students, Twitter is 'out' and 'no one uses that anymore.'  Good thing I don't follow the social media trends of all students then ..

Following on from reading a blog post over the holidays by another educator, I decided to set up an educational Twitter account and start (or at least attempt) to take part and widen my circle of knowledge surrounding using social media for PD.

Source

Tonight was the first night I managed to actually take part in a PD conversation that involved more than two Tweets.  It was great to be involved with #edchatNZ tonight and discuss what assessment means to us and what it looks like for us.  It was amazingly fast paced, so I will be going back and re-reading, but I am looking forward to learning more from my fellow educators in the future through this forum!

Thanks so much everyone!

Starting with SOLO

One of my inquiry goals this year is to investigate (and implement) ways to improve the literacy of my Junior classes.  The school I am at has had some PD prior to my arrival on SOLO taxonomy.  I started investigating this about 8 weeks ago, and quickly found a strong model of understanding that students could identify with and that I thought was going to be useful in my classroom.

This model for learning, named "SOLO Taxonomy (structure of observed learning outcomes) provides a simple, reliable and robust model for three levels of understanding – surface deep and conceptual (Biggs and Collis 1982)." Source

It has  been great to not only be able to use the Pam Hook website and books that our staffroom has, but also to engage with other English teachers around NZ who have had actual classroom experience with this through the Secondary English list.    A source that I would not have sought out first, but ended up being useful was Pinterest - just goes to show you, don't discount the odd places.

So, all excited and inspired, on the first day back in term I had a go with my Junior classes.  We had briefly touched on the concpts of SOLO at the end of last term - so we recapped the levels of thinking before starting on some activities.   Over the holidays they had been assigned a novel, so they took the main characters and events and then connected them to each other using the sides of the hexagons.  It was a great way for them to start to see how characters and events intertwined.  Later in the day I used the hexagons again to link ideas and concepts together from feature articles.

Breaking down the concepts - (love my whiteboard tables!)

Seeing what ideas link

Senior class using hexagons to get ideas from a feature article and linked the articles ideas with their own prior knowledge.  The group then shared their ideas and putting them together for a collaborative knowledge hexagon.

Inaugural

inaugural

ɪˈnɔːɡjʊr(ə)l/

adjective

1. 1.

   marking the beginning of an institution, activity, or period of office.

   "his inaugural concert as Music Director"

   synonyms:

   first, initial, introductory, initiatory, launching;

I guess it isn't my first blog post ever, but before this it has only been family pictures and boasting about the milestones that my wee tribe have achieved.  Inspired by the educational blogs of Claire Amos and Alex Le Long, (links in the sidebar) I want to use this blog as a space to share my own learning and teaching journey as I grow and learn along-side my students.

Welcome to my journey - I look forward to sharing with you.