Ted Glynn's Workshop

I really enjoyed our overnight stay and two days of PD in Kawhia at Maketu Marae.

Ted Glynn's Workshop
I really enjoyed Ted Glynn's workshop. His messages were powerful and also affirming because at school we try hard at crossing the boundaries with our community. One idea for student led conferences that we are trialling is children inviting their parents into the classroom to share their learning so the ownership in on the child. I can see the conversations being more powerful as the child and the paretns are doing most of the talking/ask questions etc.

I found the quote from James Nottingham about ability grouping having a negative effect on children interesting. It has has me think about my groupings in class and how I can tweak them. We already cross group or buddy up when researching during 'topic' so now I need to think how I can cross-ability group during other areas of the day.

One thing that has had an impact on my teaching practice is the "Communities of Practice".
We have discussed this in class and I would love children to recognise that in order to be a true member of our class community they need to ask questions/change something/teach others.

"If you truly belong to a group, or are a competent group member, you have power to change/influence a group by your actions (e.g suggest something)" Ted Glynn

Different communities can be brought into conversations through boundary objects, people and practices. (Wenger 1998)
An example of this is our home learning books, to some extent. Currently children are gluing on their weekly HL sheet with the compulsory tasks; reading, spelling and maths, and the optional tasks which encourage children to discuss and interact with their family. A suggestion Ted made was to encourage children to share what they want to share via the HL book e.g glue photos, share special treasures, get parent sharing and writing in the book instead of home learning/work. Parents can currently make comments etc in our HL books so to extend this we could get them sharing and working WITH children on what they WANT to share.

With our big idea this term on cultures/identity I am excited to see my class grow into effective members of our class community and identifying more with their culture and the groups they belong to.