Effective Communicators

What we have been doing all this term all in one place!

Effective Communicator Week 7

This week's challenge was fantastic!

 

My class had great fun trying to work out the code although when the answered appeared they thought Morse had been a spelling error.

Once I asked them to go and search it up on Google everything clicked!

 

They really enjoyed completing this one and getting another piece of the puzzle.

 

One week to go and it will all be finished.

 

 

Effective Communicator Week 6

One thing we all agreed on when setting up these challenges each week, was to utilize our own students in our syndicate and the different ways they communicate.

Most weeks on our own blog we have been high lightening all the different languages spoken in our syndicate and teaching the rest of the school one phrase they can share with others.

This week is no different.

Effective Communicator Week 5

This week we decided to have a maths flair to communicate.

Thankfully I do these types of maths problems a lot so my class loved solving this challenge.

Effective Communicators Week 4

This week we are celebrating our schools birthday- 143 years old!


So why not set a task based around this. One of pathways to becoming an effective communicator is learning about how we can communicate using technology.

So the task…

 

 

Which sent you here

 

Task

 



Week Two of Effective Communicators

Week Two of our Effective Communicators saw the whole school working out another clue.

All classes how now received their first puzzle piece and they are desperately trying to work out what it could be.

I let my class solve this week’s clues in groups of three. We stopped at time to discuss and talk about what parts of the Effective Communicators pathway we were using so they gained more insight into what it meant to be an ‘Effective Communicator’.

I was extremely impressed with my class this week as they didn’t really need my help at all. I posed questions to them when they were stuck and tis enabled them to solve the clues!

This is what we started off with

 

Next we had to solve this. My class quickly realised that there were two different puzzles in the envelope.

 

     This gave them the clue to the next piece of the puzzle.

 

From the picture of the door, you can tell I work in a very old school building!

Inside the chest was their next piece of the puzzle which contained a cross word.

 

My class caught onto this clue quite quickly realising they needed to highlight all the other letter. What was harder was some couldn’t quite comprehend the answer – ‘wills has the key’ = Miss Will (a Teacher) had the key they needed to collect. Once they clicked on they received a key with their room number on it. This went back into their Effective Communicators bag and then returned to the blue box to await their next clue and a brand new puzzle piece.

Effective Communicators Launch!

We have officially ‘Launched’ our terms Effective Communicator!

This term it is our team’s job to promote one of our new graduate areas. All last year as a school we worked on what we wanted our new dispositions to be called and the steps in which students would achieve them. Where would they start at the beginning of school? What they would need to do to achieve the next step and so forth. We used words like ‘starting’, ‘learning’, ‘using’ and ‘leading’.

Each team was given the challenge to launch a new one each term. We choose Effective Communicators. Term one was Team Players where as a whole school we spelt the words out on the field and the Ninja Turtles arrived by helicopter to present us with a gift. Term Two was Self- Managers and the whole school watched a magician and he promoted the idea of Self manager.

Now it is our turn! One of the main ideas I had wanted to do was to promote Effective Communicators right throughout the term. Rather than just having a launch at the beginning of the term, I wanted to continue involving the whole school until the end of term three. Making sure the students had a good idea about what it meant to be an effective communicator.

I am very fortunate that I work with a great team and there were plenty of ideas flowing. Knowing that I am a ‘yellow’ brain and that I tend to think outside the box, I did run a lot of the ideas past our principal first to gauge whether or not I was heading down the right track.

Obviously I can’t give away what we are doing all term but I can show you our first week and what we did.

We first used our News Centre to communicate to the rest of the school they needed to watch our video we had made.

By watching the video, they received their next task.

The clue was printed onto a colourful background and rolled into a scroll and placed into their Effective Communicator bags.

The first weeks clue to solve

Each class has their own bag.

Visioning for design.

The Graduate Profile is one stage of moving towards our MLE. Most schools in Christchurch who are part of the rebuild have gone through the same process.

Schools Education Vision - Project Brief- Master Planning - Design - Construction

One of these meetings was based on our vision. How do we want learning to look? What do our children need now? ... and in the future?  On our journey to this stage teachers have had the opportunity to visit a number of schools who are considered to be MLE. What strikes me is that some schools have been built  brand new, designed with this idea while others have 'developed' from what they already had- their old buildings.

Unfortunately I didn't get to visit Waimairi School but listening to the teachers who did and their feedback it was probably the one school I felt really portrayed the idea about 21st century learners rather than the idea it was all about the building. I think that is one pitfall we can get into thinking a MLE has to be new with all this 'flash' ICT equipment, amazing furniture, new buildings. But to be honest that is not what it is about. The building does not make it, it is what is happening inside that does. I think this sums up perfectly http://fcl.eun.org/learning-spaces  what 21st learning is all about.


One question we were asked was to do with our practice- how will this look like? What LEARNING ACTIVITES are needed?

Most MLE take on four things;

• Collaboration
• Personalised learning
• Authentic learning activities 
• Learning through presentation

The nest step was to look at our own Graduate Profile and based it around these ideas and questions.

Our first one was EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATORS
What activities?
How will we make it work?
What do we need to enable this to happen (resources)?
What will staff need to do.

Below are some of the ideas we came up with.

        


What I always enjoy about these activities is what other teachers come up with and how sharing our knowledge and ideas develops our own thinking and may even change some of the ways we work and teach!

I was keen to take one and try it out next term and was lucky enough a few colleague's in the UK wanted to start up a pen pal club. So that is one way we are going to be 'Effective communicators'.