Start of Term

The new term kicked off with 2 days of training delivered by Andy Hind. Discussions over the 2 days focused on how we can create a culture of professional learning and reflection. Andy challenged us all to "be better', I feel we ask students to do this all the time and it is only right that we have that expectation of ourselves too. As teachers we need to model the desire to learn, to be open to learning and it is very exciting that this academic year school has decided to set systems in place that will allow for this to happen. Our #GISPLFridays are going to play an important role in suporting our professional growth and of course as we will be responsible for setting our own learning goals this can be really personalised and help us to become better. These are my initial goals for this academic year.

We also engaged in discussions around the role of Middle Leaders. Andy shared a useful template with us to support deeper reflection and one to one conversation with a buddy. This was a very powerful way to get us to reflect and consider our actions, to listen and to ask good questions. These sentences supported the conversation:

• The reason I chose to take this action was because ...

• The outcome of me taking this action was ...

• What I learnt about leadership as a result of this was ...

I particulary enjoyed the conversation around levels of engagement and learning and created the following in order to clarify my own thoughts a little more:

I created the following image to share with my students during my first lessons with them as I want my students to become more independent in their learning, I want them to take an active role in their learning and thus feel more empowered. My aim is to move from:

teacher led to student directed; teacher to student generated questioning; teacher dependent to student independance; from teacher led to socially cooperative and cognitively collaborative; from simple thinking to complex, deep and metacognitive thinking; shallow and hidden learning to visible, transparent, deep and constructive learning; contrived to authentic and purposeful learning

Having been back in school for 3 weeks now and having engaged in some tech walks, emails and face to face conversations to support teachers with using tech to enhance their teaching and learning environment, these are my current thoughts and this will be an evolving document as I develop more skills in Tech Coaching. I am looking forward to attending the iPad summit next weekend at ISKL and in particular to meeting and learning from other Tech Coaches who are more experienced. I am looking for an opportunity to shadow an experienced Tech Coach and thus implement those good skills that will enable me to support teachers and thus build their capacity to "be better".

This is a Year of Learning for me - a) new role of Tech Coach and b) teaching Language in Maths to EAL students - and I am very excited to be challenged by both of these learning opportunities.

I am very excited about this new tech tool - Versal - as I think it has a lot of potential in helping teachers to create tech rich lessons; the gadgets within the platform will allow teachers to build deep learning experiences where students can pracitce and apply their knowledge. I have shared this tool with some teachers and have received positive feedback and I am looking forward to working with some other teachers to co-plan dynamic and active lessons where tech is being used purposefully, authentically and constructively by the learners. I will of course get feedback from students too as to how they felt about using this platfrom.

#PL #Reflecting #Learning