Sept Reflective Summaries

Here is a link to veiw or download our September Reflective Summaries. We have used these school reflections to help collate our overall cluster milestone and reflective summary (you can read this shortly on the vln).

There will be a link posted here, on our cluster blog, so you can read our reflective summary. It makes for some encouraging reading! It's worth seeing the overview of the progress the cluster has made this year - which is hard to see when we are all working hard in our sub clusters and individual schools.

Here are a few stats and common threads, gathered from our school reflections -

- 6 / 10 schools have followed through and completed their teacher inquiries this term.

- 2 schools using these as part of their appraisel process.

- 9 / 10 schools report a substantial increase in teacher confidence and capability in ICT integration. Many schools preparing purchasing plans for increasing the number of devices in their schools.

- Most schools reflected a year of embedding their inquiry process and establishing consistent planning and assessment practices across the school.

Here are some other links to some fantastic sites, wikis, videos and other web 2.0 activities happening in the cluster!

School Video 1

School Video 2

School Video 3

School Website

School Wiki

Class wiki for spelling

Classroom Blog

School Radio Show Blog

Use of Skype in the classroom

Wallwisher in the class

Registered Teacher Criteria Wiki for eLearning

Every ICT Cluster is focussing on teacher practice that impacts on student achievement. This is also the aim of the renewed Registered Teacher Criteria.

This wiki below has been created by Suzie Vesper and Rochelle Jensen from Digistore and it provides links between the criteria and eLearning. It's an amazing resource that should help with our subcluster action plan goals and also our individual Teacher Inquiries!

Principal's Inquiry Plan

Last term we started our teacher inquiries. Here's a planning document from one of our Principal's, Tim Lovelock. His focus is to develop a school-wide eLearning pedagogy that becomes a part of the teaching and learning culture of their school.



By now you should be seeing some results from the strategies you have been putting in place. Don't forget to record some reflections on your word doc or your blog as the term unfolds and do contact your lead teachers as a resource to help you move through the teacher inquiry cycle.

Cluster Reflective Summaries

Thankyou for all your hard work preparing the reflective summaries for this terms Milestone Report. We are most of the way through preparing the report for the preliminary submission date on Friday.

We thought we would post the reflective summares here on the cluster blog for us all to share the progress so far. It's been quite rewarding to read your descriptions of increased ICT integration and the other developments happening in our schools. It would be well worth your time reading some of the reflections.

Don't forget you can visit our cluster reflection summary on the VLN website or on this blog, which we will use to share the summary with you, also.

Core Education Courses

Core have started advertising some online courses that teachers can take on a huge range of topics - from eportfolios to enhancing literacy through elearning strategies.

They use a variety of online forums, texts, videos and 'webinars' to cover the course content. There is a range of costs (many of which can cover 5 - 10 staff from 1 school) and could provide an interesting tool in your school's PD programme within the cluster.

Kath Murdoch Timetable

Kath Murdoch Downloads

Questioning Resources

I've had a couple of requests for some resources and strategies to help develop the questioning skills of our students - a focus for some of our teacher inquiries. Here are a few links that will hopefully give you some things to try. Are there any links you know of that you can add? Post them in the comments below.

1. Question Skills Wikispaces

This is a great wikispace with resources and links to explore. It has information that defines what effective questions are with a framework to work in. The 'questioning links' page has some more sites to visit.

2. The questioning toolkit

This site encourages classrooms to create their own 'questioning toolkit' based around the different types of questions you can ask.

I've used an actual toolbox with resources in it to help us in class. A teacher could make some laminated cutout shapes of tools with the description of the types of questions to ask. The students could (after learning the different types) chose the questioning tool that could help them at any time.

3. Socratic Questioning

This is a 'disciplined' form of questioning that's really powerful for students to dig deep into an issue. This site has a good example of what Socratic questions are and some examples under each of the 6 types. Here is a link to a 'taxonomy' of socratic questioning, too.

4. Posters - thick or thin questions

Here are some resources you can download and print for classroom displays

Web 2.0 Tools

Are you looking for some websites that can help with your Teacher Inquiry? Paula, from Myross Bush, posted this link to a great collection of web2.0 sites you can try out.

You can search for specific sites - there are lots of categories - and I've yet to see a bigger collection! Happy hunting!

Writing Ideas

Are you looking for some strategies that will help extend, engage your writers? This presentation has some great web2.0 tools and other strategies for you to explore.

It's been created by Mark Warner (@markw29) who has a teaching and learning blog with some great resources. Thanks to @fievels for the link!

Classroom Strategies

It's great to see teachers putting some strategies in place that will help them achieve their focus for this year. Here are a couple of resources to help us create those strategies in our classrooms.

This is a popplet of the different forms that strategies could take. Remember that, for a strategy to include an aspect of eLearning it does need to have an ict tool as some part of the process - whether that is at the start / middle / end of the journey.

This answergarden widget could store some of our ideas so far!

What strategies are you trying so far?... at AnswerGarden.ch.

Teacher Inquiry - Edtalks

Here's an edtalk that was recorded at the last Learning@Schools conference about Teacher Inquiry.

This edtalk, by Claire Amos explains how her school, Epsom Girls Grammar, uses the teacher inquiry model to help the staff develop their elearning practice within certain curriculum areas. There are some interesting parallels between our clusters, especially with the focus being on improving student outcomes by using elearning strategies and tools - she also mentions the 'measurement' word!

What is a TeachMeet?

The Lead Teacher's are going to organise a 'Teachmeet' for the end of this term. The aim is to help us all share and collaborate some strategies to help us with our teacher inquiries.

Here's a video, by Brainpop, that explains what it is. Wikipedia also has a good definition.

(If you haven't seen Brainpop.com it's well worth a visit. They have a massive range of videos and interactive quizzes you can view - some for free, most you need to register for...)

Reflection Resources

We've decided to provide some resources to help everyone reflect on their teacher inquiries. Yes, some form of reflection is a cluster requirement but it's also a very important part of the inquiry process - probably one of the most crucial elements to helping us grow and develop as educators.

Here are some links you can use to help you reflect 'in' and 'on' your teaching. The video below explains the benefits and the differences between in / and on. You might watch these during your first pod meeting or at your own leisure - it has soothing music to calm the nerves...

We've decided to offer everyone the use of this word document, also, as a guide to record your reflections in writing if you wish. You could download the template and save your document as you go. It could then be emailed to your lead teacher when needed and they will upload to the cluster site for milestone evidence.

Here are some other links that give more examples of how reflections can be made and recorded.

Blogs - reasons why teachers should blog

Another Blogging link

Video - watch a teacher reflect on her teaching practice in maths.

Staff Meeting Slideshow

Here's the slideshow from our first round of staff meetings. Feel free to go over again and discuss any aspects at syndicate or Pod meetings.