SPARK MIT Meeting #2

Today was our second SPARK MIT meeting at SPARK Headquarters. We talked about where we were all up to in terms of our inquiry focus. I talked about my inquiry focus which is all about improving critical thinking skills through the use of 'deep dialogical discussions' with the Year 5 & 6 Extension group. I also talked about the use of 'coding' with the Year 7 & 8 Extension group to extend their thinking skills.



When I reflect upon my experience during term one, I consider myself really lucky to have had the guidance, help and support from Anne Sinclair who has been like a mentor teacher. The Year 5 & 6 students were extremely lucky to have the attention of two teachers throughout the term to help guide them with their learning. Teaching students how to hold deep dialogic discussions was something new for me. By the end of the term I could see how most of them had developed their skills in speaking and holding a conversation with others based on a topic. With some prior knowledge and background research (including lots of scaffolding),  most of the students could talk about their position/stance about an issue (pollution) much more deeply. We gave them an opportunity to reflect on the Paideia Seminar that was held at the end of the term, and most students were able to recognise and reflect on the areas that they needed to work on.

In terms of coding with the Year 7 & 8 group I am also grateful for the help that I received from Zoe from OMGTech. I don't think we would have made as much progress with their games as we did if she hadn't been there for support, advice and guidance. It would have been a very stressful process to try and get the students games completed on Scratch (in time for the cluster exhibition) without her help. The students also learnt many new technical skills along the way. I felt that it was a huge learning curve for me as my knowledge about coding was quite limited earlier in the year.

During our meeting we also talked about the 'innovation' aspect of our inquiries. My innovation is around the use of a range of tools to collaborate with and capture evidence of student learning and collaboration. I have used padlets, shared docs, google slides, a survey (google form), movies (vignettes) and my site (Creative Space) to capture evidence of learning and collaboration. This forms part of a bigger question which was how to assess and measure learning with these students based on my inquiry. What evidence did I have? Monitoring and assessing some of the Key Competencies would also be important. Using surveys to capture evidence of student attitudes towards their learning was considered. I also needed to consider how to get the home class teacher (of the student) to take notice of what the extension kids are doing.

We also had the opportunity to meet with our SPARK buddy. Today I met with Tracy who is a lawyer at SPARK. Tracy has previously been a teacher so we had a very interesting conversation about my inquiry and how she could help support me this year.