PLP Webinars and Learning Scales!

PLP Professional Development

Over the past few weeks I have been working on my professional development opportunities and have had several exciting things happen. The first is a blog post that I wrote for the PLP Pathways site. It was about the Flyin Ryan Hawks Foundation partnership that I started for my team this year where students created their core values videos to launch our PLP work this year. The blog post can be found here: 

http://plppathways.blogspot.com/

Use the link to see the full blog post. 

I was also asked by Penny Bishop and James Nagle of the Middle Grades Collaborative to work with them on viewing a new platform for Vermont middle schools to use to host PLPsites and allow a scope and sequence for teachers to use when implementing PLPs. This is a new project that they are undertaking working with a software producer to create. I am excited to get into this and think about what this will look like at all types of middle schools, including my experience teaching a very rural, impoverished community before coming to PAML. It is always my goal when reaching out to schools to try and help teachers who can be so isolated at these types of school to get the resources that they need. 

Additionally I have been asked by a teacher from South Burlington to give a presentation at PAML for the PLP committee at their school about what we have done here as a school to implement PLPs. I am hoping that this meeting can take place, as it is always important to share out what we have learned and to hear what other schools are doing. 

We also have a very exciting chance for our students to present at the Beyond Bullying conference in March sponsored by VAMLE. Our students have been asked to develop a workshop for other students about digital citizenship. I think this is a great leadership opportunity for our students! 

Learning Scales and Student Reflection

Since last month I have been thinking about how to get students to use the learning scales to track evidence of learning. I have created two learning scales that the students are using. One for our unit on immigration where students are showing evidence of a graduation standards over the course of the unit. Students are using the scale and reflecting several times through out the unit: before, in the process and after. Here is the learning scale: 

We had also been noticing that students have not been meeting the expectation for writing reading summaries on their weekly book blogs so we have created a learning scale for this and are going to have students look at it this Friday before writing their blog post about their reading. Here is that learning scale:

PLP Webinar #2

PLP Blog Post

Last week I also wrote a blog post for PLP Pathways about our work with the Flyin' Ryan Hawks Foundation. Here is the piece I wrote it is going to go live this week. I also have a webinar on Thursday 11/19 at 3:30.

When looking at the Personal Learning Framework one of the key components to the Identity section is having students think about who they are and their core values. Ultimately, this can be a foundation to help students design goals.

For the past few years I have been trying to help my students think about their identity and develop a sense of self. However, I was finding that I always had a group of students who really struggled reflecting on themselves and communicating their values. Being an avid-skier, I had heard about something called the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation and felt it may fit this need in my classroom.

The Flyin Ryan Hawks Decision Program

Ryan Hawks was a well known freeskier out of Mad River Valley who went on to compete in the Freeride World Tour. Ryan passed away from injuries sustained at a Freeride World Tour event in Kirkwood, California. Shortly after Ryan’s passing, his family found a document on his computer where a few years before, Ryan had crafted his own core values.  The Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation was established “with the idea of EXPOSING people to Ryan’s core principles, INSPIRING them to explore and compose their own set of core values, and ACTING on the core principles they have composed.”

Implementation at Peoples Academy Middle Level

Being personally inspired by the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation, I started to hear more and more about the Decisions Program the Foundation had started. This program brings Ryan’s Core Values into schools and organizations as a way for students to write their own core values.  I knew this would be a great fit for my students, especially those who had a hard time engaging in self reflective work.  I reached out to South Burlington High School teacher, John Painter, who had a Rowland Fellowship last year where part of his fellowship was to work with area school to implement the Decisions Program. After my meeting with Painter, I knew that the FRHF Decisions Program would be a great way to kick-off this year’s PLP roll out in September and I could not be more thrilled with how the project took off.

In the start of year year we introduced our students to the FRHF and Ryan’s core values through video on the Foundation's website. Students were instantly inspired by Ryan’s story. It is so important to give our students real life examples of things we ask them to do. Ryan not only thought about his core values, but also set goals and achieved many of them. This was a powerful way to engage our students to think critically about their own core values, which can be a very difficult exercise for 12 and 13 year olds.

Next, we had our students reflect on how others saw themselves. How would their family describe them? How would their friends describe the student? Finally, how would they want to be described?

This started our conversation with students about their core values; the qualities and characteristics they want to be have in their life that will guide them. As teachers, we also were crafting our own core values list and sharing them with the students. We asked students to come up with a minimum of four core values, but many went above and beyond those expectations.

Finally, we had students go into iMovie on their iPads and turn their core values into a movie that would become a part of their PLP. The iMovies included images and music of their choice as a way to highlight their personal core values.

Students were so engaged in this project, many of them worked on their videos at home and shared them with their parents and friends while they were still in the creation stage. Having students craft their core values in this way gave us great insight into what drives our students and who they hope to become. We used these core values to then launch into the PLP, looking at how their core values will guide them in their life and think about what goals can set to help stay on the right track.

Parents Reactions to Students Core Values iMovies

One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was the reaction parents had while viewing their students’ core values iMovies. We had students start their student led conference this year by showing their video which was placed on the About Me section of their PLP. You could see the joy on the parents’ faces while watching the videos. Many parents asked to watch the videos multiple times and asked thoughtful questions to their children about both the process and the values the students selected. We asked parents for feedback after the student led conference, and it was overwhelming how many parents commented on how nice it was to see their students’ core values iMovie.

For more information about bringing the Flyin’ Ryan Decisions Program to your school or classroom please contact John Painter at jpainter@sbschools.net.

Maura Kelly is a 7th grade humanities teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville, Vermont. She has a passion for working with young adolescents and believes in the power of a strong middle level program in developing students to be ready to face challenges in our world today. When Maura is not teaching you can find her out skiing and biking around the state of Vermont.

Vermontfest

On November 5th, I traveled down to Killington to present at Vermontfest. This is an annual
technology integration conference that is highly attended by Vermont educators. I presented on the implementation of PLPs at PAML looking at how a whole school developed and implemented a school wide plan, but spent alot of time focusing on how we are implementing them at the 7th grade level and my work with PLP Pathways.


The presentation can be found here.

There were over forty people that attended the presentation and I received great feedback. People were very interested in what we are doing here and were very impressed with what we are doing with grades 5-8. There was a teacher from South Burlington who was there who wants to hear more about what we are doing and is going to his PLP committee to see what questions they have and will partner with the PLP Pathways for support.

Audrey Homan was there from Tarrant and she recorded audio from the presentation and is thinking about putting together a podcast for Tarrant. She is also interested in interviewing some of our students on her radio show to get their perspective about PLPs in the 7th grade. This seems like a neat opportunity for our students. Audrey also sent me a thoughtful thank you card for sharing my thoughts about PLPs with teachers just starting to think about how they are going to make them happen in their classrooms.

I also have a video of part of the presentation that John Downes took that I will upload after.

Goals 2015-2016

Domain 3:  Instruction Component 3d: Using Assessment in Instruction

Specific goal: Over the summer we started working on proficiency based learning and assessment. My goal for this year is to integrate the implementation of learning scales into my humanities classroom for three of my units of study. I would like to use learning scales as a way to monitor student learning and to give feedback to students. I would also like the learning scale to allow students to self assess and monitor their progress within a unit of study.

Strategies for working toward achieving the goal:

1. Work with Jordy to collaboratively build three learning scales for units of study over the course of the year.
2. Have students use evidence of their learning to reflect on the learning scale in their blog.
3. Design mini-lessons that specifically address elements of the learning scale for students to work on.
4. Use power school to track comments given to students while conferencing with their about their learning scale on specific units of study.
5. Talk with other humanities teachers vertically about the learning scales that they are creating and using in their instruction.

Evidence which will be used to assess goal attainment:

1. The three learning scales that I will create.
2. Evidence of students blogging about the learning scale and annotating their work as evidence of learning and growth.

Specific goal: 4d. Participating in Professional Community 4e. Growing and Developing Professionally

Last year I was approached by Susan Hennessey of Tarrant Institute and Don Taylor, teacher at Main Street Middle School, looking into doing a monthly google hangout about PLP implementation in the 7th grade in the middle school. I instantly jumped on this opportunity and found that it was one of the most enriching professional development opportunities that I have taken over my time as a teacher. This Don and I are partner with the Middle Grades Collaborative to bring our PLP google hangouts to a broader audience. My goal for this year is to participated in a larger professional community through partnering with Don Taylor to build a professional development platform for teachers around the state to implement PLPs in their classroom. I think that this goal will push me to think more about how I am implementing PLPs in my classroom but also help to create a professional learning community that is across the state.

Strategies for working toward achieving the goal:

1. Partner with Don Taylor to build a PLP Pathways site that will hold resources for educators about Act 77 and PLPs in the middle level.
2. Host monthly PLP Pathways google hangouts with Don Taylor for other educators around the state.
3. Write a scrips and record a webisode resource for teachers every month offering resources and examples of PLP implementation.
4. Write blog posts for the PLP Pathways website
5. Use twitter to connect with other educators to share resources about PLPs
6. Present at conferences about PLPs at PAML

Evidence which will be used to assess goal attainment:

1. Recordings of the monthly google hangouts.
2. Blog Posts about the PLP Pathways
3. Conference attendance certificates
4. Recordings of the Monthly Webisodes
5. Links to the PLP Pathways website with pages I have contributed to