MIT2020: Mission in the Making

What a mission.

Lately, I have been thinking about the missions I have been tasked with or tasked myself with. And missions that others have been tasked with too.

On the weekend, my partner, his brother and I tasked ourselves with the mission of tackling a ridge for the sunrise, up a valley on the West Coast of the South Island.

There are so many parts to a mission, from waking up early, braving pre-dawn swamp darkness, to navigating rain slicked boulder fields and false summits.

I think about Dorothy Burt, the instigator to this MIT journey and her mission to achieve equity for students through connection, devices and ubiquitous learning.

And I think about the mission I chose: to teach listening. 

Kia ora and welcome to my blog where I am journeying through the design process to develop a project on a challenge based idea.  I am one of a team of MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog.

It's great to have you here!

Since the last post, my next steps were to record some student voice, create video models of each listening skill ( broken down) and pull all this information together onto a site for teachers to access.

I was grateful for two days of release time to connect with a great bunch of students who gave of their time and energy to help record and share their ideas.

This was the first time I had deliberately recorded students for a teaching video.

It was a pleasure to work with them and to figure out what it really was that I wanted to capture.

Some of the learning gleaned:

• Multiple camera angles make a difference.
• Many takes are required.
• Scripting is important.
• Always plan for more time than required.

This is what I have managed to create so far:

These are the skills that the children and I put together. 

What I need to accomplish for my next steps:

First I need to gather evidence for Analysing and Identifying behaviours.

I plan to video reading sessions and maths session. Then choose a target group of children, take a sample of each video and analyse it to identify when positive listening behaviours occurs. This should complete

the resource in the following section by providing a rubric and data to show trends and hopefully, improvement.

What I need now is to organise my time and prioritise teaching these skills specifically.

I look forward to having some data to share with you soon.