Innovative Learning - University of Canterbury 28.10.17

Anne Sliwka, University of Heidelberg

Innovative Learning: What does the OECD say?

OECD: Key features of innovative learning environments

• They are well organised for co-operative learning, hard work and challenge
• They demand hard work and challenge is offered & students encouraged
• There are clear expectations with formative feedback 
• “Horizontal connectedness” occurs – age, stage, community - mixed ability learning groups.
• Educators need to consider not just the surface structure but the deep structure of learning taking place…what type of learning is happening? For who? How? Who could be extended?
• Metacognition & self-regulation are emphasised in instruction and students are (hopefully) more aware of their metacognition and need to self-regulate
• Despite the above point, some students struggle to self-regulate and may need support/direct instruction and cater for those students who need more direct instruction
• Professional learning communities occur on a daily basis (team, whole staff, community)
• Core concepts need to be taught through instruction and through co-construction
• Subsequent assignments or learning tasks, based on the concept, are varied to allow for student needs e.g. a rubric may be used to guide students; examples of what students 

Creating a Deep Structure of Instructional Quality: What Matters? 

• Classroom management
• Do students have time on appropriate tasks? 
• Is there little to no distraction? Can students focus?
• Cognitive activation
• Active thinking and problem solving 
• Individual learning support 
• Scaffolding 
• Response to intervention

Questions & Possible Next Steps for Our Team

• Friday “project day”…passion time, involve parents?
• Literacy & Numeracy festival evenings?
• Different students need different things at different times – e.g. more/less modelling, co-construction time, quiet, independent time – how can we provide for all of these?
• Do we always offer and encourage all students to love challenge? Can we develop our discovery stations and provide examples to scaffold our students to deeper learning? Test ideas and monitor  target students and students with low-confidence.
• How can we tap into our students’ innate curiosity more?
• Do we trust our parents to join us on our learning journey and invite them into the environment after 9am?
• Selling the positives: Could/should we supply an article to the paper? What would our students write if they were creating a story for the paper?
• Terminology: responsive learning environment versus flexible learning environment. Agile leadership, learning and teaching. `How can the language reflect what we are doing?

Reflection November 2017
I have worked on setting up challenges for children to opt into over recent weeks, including:
* Floating - make a boat that floats with 5 plastic bears
* Literacy - boggle word challange
* Maths - make ten challenge
* Building - build a block construction with a ramp, working with one or more buddies
The boat challenge was the highlight, with most children taking up the challenge, some independently and some working together. There was a lot of learning - finding materials, joining materials, testing, problem solving when things became unstuck and sharing what they learnt.
It also sparked further discovery sessions around floating and sinking.