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The how of agency and a PLC culture is something that I have been taking myself from the surface knowledge to the deeper understanding. As a teacher and learner I am someone that is always prepared to push boundaries, challenge thinking and give things a go. The how of agency started with me setting up choice boards, looking at the timetable and trying to do big classroom things. What I have learnt over the last few months is I needed to start out small to ensure that the thinking and reasoning behind agency was understood by the learners. Also adding to this, creating a strong culture of PLC so that we could base our decision on facts of what our learners know rather than assumptions.
So I started with the language programme. This is no means the correct way to do it we are making it up as we go along and reflecting what we have learnt and how the learners feel.
For my writing I stopped and reflected on the idea of asking someone to sit and write about their weekend. Sometimes do we really want to write about our weekend, of course we don’t, because maybe we spent our weekend being bored, sitting in bed, playing or doing something we didn’t feel like writing about. So to honor that and give them choice I decided to let them write about anything.
Using the self assessment tool from @makinggoodhumans I changed the “I can” statements to fit with our writing focus. For example “I can write using finger spaces”. At the beginning of our writing session I shared this with the learners reinforcing the concept of goal setting, reflecting on our learning and that we learn by making mistakes.
After sharing it as a whole group I conferenced one on one with each learner letting them share with me where they would place the different I can statements. I then asked them to get their writing book to use this to gather evidence to see if where they had placed themselves was a fair representation. This connected with the next question.
Question 2: How will I demonstrate that I have learnt it?
Whilst conferencing with the learners it was fascinating to hear their thinking:
“I thought I knew that so I put it in the expert column but then I looked at my writing and I worked out I still need support so I moved it back again”.
This led to interesting discussions, children moving their statements back and forward as they tried to reflect on where they felt they were. Once they looked at their writing books they were able to again reflect and discuss what changes they wanted to make. This gave the learners the ability to understand what they needed to learn and move their reflections beyond assumptions in connection with writing.
Having set their goals they were able to write however they wanted to as long as they focused on their goals. By giving them the choice on what to write about I noticed a huge difference in not only their writing but also their commitment to writing.
When learners have a clear understanding of where they are, what is expected and how they learn the ability for them to dig deeper and be empowered is evident.
So where to from here:
As we move into the weeks to come we will continue to use this self assessment tool and make it part of our everyday learning environment. So my reflection is not only is this a powerful way of engaging our learners but it truly can be used in grade one with grade one learners. They can and do take ownership for their own learning. What a powerful journey we are on together!
Our next step is mathematics and I cannot wait to see how this plays out!