JOHN PURCHASE PS - WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS

Success Criteria:

• I can read, synthesise and articulate information from my reading relating to TWPS' POP
  
• I can participate actively by contributing ideas
  
• I value others’ opinion as much as my own
  
• I can move the learning of other team members forward by challenging, questioning and building on their ideas
  
• I can move the learning others in the network forward by responding to their blogs
  

A theme that resonated with our team was the mismatch that occurs between teachers’ beliefs about established cultures of thinking and actual classroom practice. We felt that this mismatch between a teacher’s belief system and their practice may be fairly common and discussed a number of factors that may contribute to this.

Perhaps this mismatch is a result of spending too much time and rhetoric in meetings, conferences and professional learning initiatives over recent years, exploring the importance of students being active participants in their learning (addressing the why), but many practitioners may not know what this actually looks like and may not know HOW to guide students towards this effectively in their classrooms. We felt Dylan Wiliam/s strategies have been a great starting point for many of our teachers (including ourselves) in terms of the what this looks like and how we can achieve this - but as TWPS has identified, there is more work needed around this.

Leadership
A focus on transformational leadership may also contribute to this mismatch as leaders may have been working towards: creating a shared vision, inspiring others towards the vision, etc. Whereas now, Hattie and others tell us that the most effective leaders are instructional. A move in our leadership development toward working collaboratively and shoulder to shoulder with teachers to develop students self efficacy, self regulation and active engagement, may be helpful.
Certainly the planning stage is an important step, with thought given to how we can identify and explore key transferable ideas in a meaningful away, allowing students to be actively involved in co-developing learning paths and success criteria, so that they ‘own’ their learning, know why it’s important and can monitor their progress.

What do we hope to observe for the POP?
(Of course, not all listed characteristics would be evident in all classrooms / lessons.)

QUESTIONING

• High level questioning, including an overarching transferable question at the unit level, as well as a WALT for lesson level.
• Questions requiring deeper levels of thought and understanding. This may include debate, justification etc
• Student responses which are thoughtful, deep and meaningful
• Use of wait time
• Teachers response to mistakes, recognised as opportunities for learning 

QUALITY TASKS

• Constructivist - applying knowledge and understandings to higher levels eg creativity, problem solving (negotiating and craeting new meaning tother, rather than passive and dependent learners)
• Opportunities for students to demonstrate deep understandings rather than surface learning
• Formative assessment techniques to gauge where students are in their learning

STUDENT OWNERSHIP

• Input into setting learning goals and/or success criteria
• Processes that allow for students to receive and act on feedback eg checkpoints in the middle and end of task.
• Students can articulate what they are learning, know where they are in their learning and can tell us what the next steps are.
• Students encouraged to monitor their work rather than teachers monitoring student’s work

STUDENT DIALOGUE

• More student dialogue than teacher dialogue
• Opportunities for students to talk to each other about their learning
• Discussion protocols
• Opportunities for students to talk to their teacher about their learning
• Opportunities to articulate their developing understandings – to question, tease out, make corrections etc
• An emphasis of teacher dialogue around the learning rather than the work
• Students demonstrate  self efficacy – a belief that they can achieve learning goals – by talking about how they will achieve the goal/ act on the feedback/ utilise success criteria etc
• All students encouraged to participate and be active learners