Responsive Schools

 Responsiveness as a fundamental school philosophy

Responsive schools have....

Responsive curriculum according to the needs of students & community and the passions and interests of teachers.

Responsive teachers. Who use formative feedback throughout the lesson, day, week, year to respond to student needs with the goal of raising students achievement. They respond to trends, data and progress by reflecting and reviewing their practice in response to achievement and student voice.

Responsive schools teach...

Learning to learn. Students are taught the skills of a responsive learner.  Reflect on their work, seek support, respond to challenges, change cause of actions, solve problems in the community.

Writing model

Best Writing Practice Model 

(developed 2013 with Michelle Holly in conjunction with ALL/ALiM findings and the intermediate schools learning and change network of Auckland)

Students need based on work from Murray Gadd:

• to have something ‘personally significant’ to write about and an intended audience who they want to write for;
• to hold sufficient topic-specific knowledge;
• to hold sufficient literacy knowledge for their level of development;
• to have access to what ‘achievement’ or ‘success’ looks like; (TKI Models)
• to be able to organise themselves for the writing task through effective planning;
• to be able to encode words and sentences by calling on and using their knowledge of letter sound relationships, word analogy, word meaning and grammar or syntax (This means being able to ‘communicate meaning by recording the best words in the best order’;
• to be able to reflect on and makes changes to their writing as appropriate. (This generally means ‘revising for meaning’, ‘editing for impact’ and/or ‘proof reading for the reader’;
• to be guided by goal setting, demonstration and feedback/feedforward. This will enable them to know what to do to achieve success;
• to feel free to take risks;
• to have faith in their ability to be successful (self-efficacy).

What we know

• Learning from each other is so important. Lots of sharing, more sharing than ever.
• Students need to know what success look likes in achievable chunks.
• Everyone can insert a word or change on in one single sentence, to what quality or impact this has on the message for the reader is the differentiation.
• Students need to feel safe that they can achieve success.
• Reduce the red pen dis empowerment.
• Teachers should model model model (DAT’S) children can use your work and recraft it. Make it better. You are their safety net. Sharing content/ideas is ok.

Demistyfing our inaccurate truths

• No one ‘wants’ to write unless they have something to say. 
• You do not need to write a lot to be a good writer.
• If you write a lot, you need to be able to hone in on one section and rework, rework, rework.
• All writing should be celebrated, through sharing (Kagan structures) and the trickery of only publishing part of your writing.

"So read your buddies writing, highlight your favourite part, why is it your favourite? What writing techniques have they used (talk this part)? Do they agree? Choose your own favourite part. Now publish that and let’s make a best sentences with onomatopoeia wall, so we remember how interesting they are to read."

Community of Learners (what does it look like in my class)

Trust.
An agreement of expectations of conduct.Identifying and ensuring success everywhere and for everyone. Focus on writers not writing.Don’t keep reinventing the wheel to teach a different skill. Use the same piece of writing mutliple ways. DEPTH.Read read read read and make connections to writing FOR them. Never assume.Get students reading writing of their peers and justifying why it is good. Give them a framework in which to read and provide feedback from.Stop criticizing and critiquing and start structurally recrafting.