Professional Learning Teams

Facilitators: Kaye Fletcher, Robyn Barratt and Catherine Kleinitz

So. What did I hope to gain or learn from this PD?
The main skill I was hoping to get out of this PD was to become a more useful contributor to professional discussions, including those with colleagues, in particular those within my PLAT. Although all of the skills I learnt about and practiced would also be useful when discussing problems with colleagues in general as well as with students in my role as a facilitator.
A brief overview of aspects to successful coaching that I found interesting is that:
•    Change is an internal choice and the role of a coach is to guide the colleague or student in question to make change for them and feel empowered by this process.
•    Coaching is not about problem solving but rather by helping colleagues or students to reflect on their own skills and strategies to solve issues.
•    Paraphrasing is a skill refined over time.
•    The role of a coach is different to that of a friend or ‘problem solver’.
Other main points discussed about change included:
•    Culture and the importance of recognising the individuals backgrounds and beliefs through
o    Use of language
o    Accepting diversity
o    Use of protocols
o    Building trust
o    Rapport/body language
o    Use of tone
o    Physical versus verbal signals
•    Paraphrasing being an important step in the coaching process by acknowledging and clarifying problems in a manner that is supportive through
o    Emotional paraphrasing that displays a genuine sympathy to the person
o    Content paraphrasing that highlights your understanding of the underlying issue and seeks clarification
•    The use of protocols when providing feedback to peer observations. The format we discussed and role-played being GAIN SO FAST.

In reflection I found today an informative and useful experience in that it provided a framework to help me build upon the skills I already have in coaching. It also helped me to clarify what the actual role of a coach is.

Some useful documents including power point presenattions and proformas: ACEP Documents

Student homework plans

Student equipment survey responses and reflections

• ‘reflection is crucial’
  • looking at the vacancy information from job descriptions and where we are in relation to that?
  • guiding principles
• building teacher capacity
• comic life self-reflection activity
  • successes: use of ict to deliver curriculum
  • challenges: less teacher centred/ more student centred but still having a high level of mathematical expectations.
  • ideas: pbl,smaller packaged units of work, choice, essential questions framework, more thinking structures for students, TOC , online concept mapping
  • threats: my skills as a curriculum designer, is my use of tech as skillful as it could be..am i getting the most out of my learning activities?
• TED Talks clips
  • octopus
  • distributed feet
    • bipedal octopus

Session 2: Higher order thinking

• post it activity
  • higher order thinking
  • what is a thinking
• definition writing: What is a thinking oriented curriculum?
  • sharing understandings
  • Thinking skills
    • quotes from some of the web sites given. Introduction to TOC
• My definition: A curriculum where learners are made aware of their own thinking (metacognition). They are encouraged to manage/reflect on their skills/strengths/weaknesses and use this as a structure/scaffold to support their own learning.
• useful presentations (PowerPoint):
  • Planning to use TOC
  • What is a thinking curriculum?
• Self audit of thinking tools
  • My audit
• 30 questions for a thinking classroom

Session 3: Communication Model for 2009

responses

Communication model

overview/feedback/outcome:

• using studywiz as the point of entry to the internet

Session 4: Mentor model

SWIT Table