Curiosity Matters
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Curiosity Matters! How might teachers enable students to develop the habit of enquiry and to embed a spirit of curiosity?
Description:
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit” ― E.E. Cummings
There is little doubt that curiosity matters. How can educators sustain and enhance curiosity? How can we teach students to be curious? In this workshop, Michelle will share her own journey working through her puzzle of practice: How might I assist students develop the spirit of curiosity? Participants will discuss and engage in thinking routines and strategies that can be used to assist develop and sustain students' curiosity.
Audience: Primary
Presenter: Michelle Caruso - North Ryde Public School
Bio: Michelle is a dedicated and passionate Primary Teacher and Assistant Principal who has a strong vision that curiosity is an achievable goal for all students. Last year Michelle embarked on a journey with a team of teachers that looked at a ‘Puzzle of Practice’ around facilitating curious learners. As an educator she values the important goal of enabling students to develop the habit of enquiry and to embed a spirit of curiosity.
Code: WS01
Discovering and Sharing Stories of the Past
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Discovering and Sharing Stories of the Past: How might we make historical inquiry engaging and accessible for our learners?
Description:
‘In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’
Charles Darwin
This workshop offers a taste of how thinking routines and protocols can be employed amongst colleagues to foster collaboration in service of inspiring fresh ideas into teaching and learning programs. It proposes a model for differentiation that allows teachers to cater for the needs of learners within the classroom and scaffold student learning through the provision of targeted, frequent, timely and effective feedback opportunities.
Audience: Primary
Presenter: Erin Taggart - North Ryde Public School
Bio: Erin is passionate about driving and delivering future focused education directed at engagement and deep understanding, as well as equipping students with the skills and dispositions to work collaboratively in service of becoming effective problem solvers and change agents. Her vision is to build teacher and student capacity to thrive in dynamic, global environments.
Code: WS02
Slow Looking
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Slow Looking: How taking the time to observe more than first meets the eye leads to deeper understanding and greater engagement.
Description:
‘When people look slowly at things for themselves, they tend to grasp complexities and make connections in a way that no amount of expert information can convey’ - Shari Tishman.
Slow looking can be defined as taking the time to observe carefully more than meets the eye at first glance. In this workshop, Simon draws on the work of Shari Tishman from Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and takes a practical look at how educators use strategies to foster slow looking, including categories to guide the eye, open inventories, scale and scope, and juxtaposition. Whether in Kindergarten or Year 12, Maths, English, Science or any other discipline, slow looking helps learners come to discern the multiple ways in which things are complex and uncover the intricacies of stimulus materials, objects, systems and relationships. When educators deploy approaches to help learners look slowly at the world around them, they build a culture where noticing and appreciating complexity is at the heart of how learning gets done.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Simon Brooks - Simon Brooks Education
Bio: Simon works with educators around the world interested in building vibrant school cultures, where children delight in their learning and develop deep understanding through the process of becoming critical and creative thinkers. For many years, Simon was Director of Teaching and Learning at Masada College in Sydney, where he developed close connections with the Project Zero team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Simon is the recipient of the UNSW Dean's Educational Leadership Award, and in 2014 was honoured to become a fellow of the Project Zero Institute at HGSE.
Code: WS03
Starting Strong
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Starting Strong: How might we look differently at students, schooling and standards via The Descriptive Review of a Child Protocol?
Description: Do you want to learn how to know a student better, and as a result of that knowledge, better meet the student’s academic, social, or physical needs? Are you interested in delving deeply into practices, gaining different perspectives, examining assumptions, and building trust? Protocols, or structured conversations, have gained enormous popularity in schools around the world as essential tools for guiding professional conversation. This workshop offers an introduction to The Descriptive Review of a Child, a process for reflecting on students and their work. The primary aim of the Descriptive Review is to recognise and specify a particular child’s strengths as a person, learner, and thinker, so that the school can respond to and build upon those capacities.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenters: Cameron Paterson & Sarah Hill - SHORE
Bios:
Cameron is responsible for the strategic leadership of learning and teaching, innovation, and promoting excellence in teaching practice at SHORE in North Sydney. He taught in the teacher education program at Harvard in 2010-2011, he is on the faculty at Harvard’s annual Project Zero Classroom and he is a Project Zero online coach.
Sarah has a degree in Special Education from Penn State University in the United States. She is currently a learning support teacher at Shore and is an inclusion advocate for all learners.
Code: WS04
So what are these Thinking Routines anyway?
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So what are these Thinking Routines anyway? A beginner's guide to using Thinking Routines to foster engaged thinkers and learners.
Description: In this is a practical workshop participants will focus on Thinking Routines - simple, content-free scaffolds for exploring ideas. Participants will explore Thinking Routines that introduce, explore, synthesise, organise and dig deeper. Through the routines themselves participants will have the opportunity to discuss ways these can be incorporated into their teaching, used for assessment and uncover what is happening in their students’ minds.
Audience: Primary
Presenter: Helen Maynard - Emanuel School
Bio: Helen Maynard is the Director of Studies, K-6 at Emanuel School and has been at the forefront of developing the school's Thinking Culture for a number of years. Helen is a passionate advocate of making thinking visible and facilitating professional learning communities that foster change that deepens both staff and student thinking.
Code: WS05
Teaching for Understanding with Universal Design for Learning
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Maximising the benefits of Universal Design for Learning with Teaching for Understanding
Description: This workshop will explore the practical application of Universal Design for Learning strategies for differentiation in combination with Teaching for Understanding. Participants will develop BIG understanding goals, consider what success with these will look like and explore how Universal Design for Learning can allow them to minimise and even remove barriers to learning. Participants will develop an understanding of the Universal Design for Learning guidelines and build confidence in applying these to their planning process. They will see how Teaching for Understanding allows teachers to establish clear and life-worthy goals for their learners.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Nigel Coutts - Redlands
Bio: Nigel is Dean of Teaching & Learning P-6 at Redlands. He is a cultivator of thinking, creativity, deep understanding and a love of lifelong learning. He is passionate about learner agency, maker centred learning and the role education plays in preparing children for success in a rapidly changing world.
Code: WS06
It’s all about the routines! Let’s think some more..
Fully Booked
It’s all about the routines! Let’s think some more.. How might we leverage the 8 cultural forces to promote deeper thinking and learning?
Description: Often when we think about good teaching and learning with consider programming and instructional design. But is it more than that? How can we create a culture of thinking and learning? How do we shape and mould it so that it supports students’ development as thinkers and learners and promote deep understanding? In this interactive session, Ryan will move beyond the thinking routines and help participants unpack the additional cultural forces such as expectations, language, modeling, time, opportunities, interactions and environment. Using these as the levers of transformation, we will focus on ways in which we can deepen the culture within our classrooms, enriching our use of thinking routines.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Ryan Gill - Masada College
Bio: A passion for everything teaching and learning with a focus on critical and creative thinking. Having taught and held leadership positions in the UK and Australia and a founding member of the Project Zero Sydney Network, my current role has developed to focus on the pedagogies and practices of teaching and learning, actively promoting a learning environment in which collective and individual thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted.
Code: WS07
Learning to Reflect, Reflecting to Learn
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Learning to Reflect, Reflecting to Learn
Description:
We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience. - John Dewey
Are we providing enough opportunities for the students we teach to reflect upon their learning? How can we encourage them to not only think about what they have learned but how they learned it? To engage in deep and meaningful learning, students must be given the time and opportunity to think deeply, challenge ideas and acknowledge that setbacks and failures are part of the learning process. One of the key ways that this authentic rich learning can become part of classroom culture is through reflection. Practical approaches to documenting student reflection will be shared as a way to not only make student learning more visible but to also help learners develop the disposition to reflect and learn from their experiences.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Carla Gagliano - Masada College
Bio: A K-6 educator, Carla Gagliano is passionate about teaching for understanding and helping her students to become critical and creative thinkers. In her current role, in addition to inspiring the learners in her class, she has the opportunity to work alongside colleagues to continue developing a culture where individual and collective thinking is valued and promoted.
Code: WS08
Becoming
creative thinkers who make connections between learning and life?
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How might I help my students become creative thinkers who make connections between learning and life?
Description: Building a culture in which students think deeply about their learning involves helping them see how their learning relates to real world applications. As Ron Ritchhart writes, if students are to find worth in their learning it is important for ‘the teacher to place the activity within the context of a larger goal or enterprise that matters’ (Ritchhart, 2015, p.165). If students are to go beyond memorising to developing understanding of complex ideas, it is helpful for them to explore and apply them in the context of the world around them. How do we make the time for thus? What would it be like if we made the time to look deeply into ideas raised by learners during class discussions, even if we ‘don’t have the time’ to do so? If we don’t give students the opportunity to wonder, then they’re just passengers… let them fly the plane, and see the learning that happens.
Audience: Secondary - Maths focus, but all welcome
Presenter: Craig Verbruggen -Bishop Druitt College
Bio: Craig is the Director of Learning and Teaching at Bishop Druitt College, Coffs Harbour. Previously, he was Head of Mathematics and eLearning Coordinator at the same school. Craig has a passion for integrating technology into learning, mathematics, physics and engineering. He has run workshops on peer instruction, digital citizenship and data, and has fallen in love with cultures of thinking pedagogy.
Code: WS09
Playing with Lego
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Playing with Lego: How might visible thinking routines be used as building blocks to help students develop the thinking dispositions necessary for structured writing?
Description: If thinking dispositions are at the heart of a culture of thinking, then this workshop is interested in the pulse; the natural thinking reflexes that students develop; the thinking behaviours that empower students to adapt; the “residuals” of learning. This workshop will explore how visible thinking routines and protocols offer a practical approach to building students’ capacity in literacy. Jake will introduce the Teaching for Understanding (TfU) framework as a model through which to reframe students’ writing goals and present alternative strategies to formatively assess students in their understanding and growth. He will offer practical strategies that take students beyond writing to functional acronyms to being able to apply analytical understanding flexibly in fresh and challenging contexts.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Jake Tonkin - Ryde Secondary College
Bio: Jake is the Head Teacher of Teaching and Learning at Ryde Secondary College and is committed to nurturing the newly formed discourses in his school about what learning is, how it happens and what it looks like. He is passionate about shifting the perception of visible thinking as a toolkit of reserve activities to a broader notion of routines as cultural builders that cultivate patterns of behaviour and thinking (which can be mined from the language of every curriculum, with enough dynamite).
Code: WS10
What’s All The Drama?
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What’s All The Drama? Linking process drama and Thinking Routines.
Description:
Through taking on role and exploring relationships, situations and events, students begin to empathise with the characters in the text.
Ewing and Saunders STC
In this practical workshop participants will explore literary texts with process drama strategies and then use thinking routines to make connections, reflect and deepen understanding.
Content will be presented from a Stage One and a Stage Three perspective.
Audience: Primary
Presenters: Joanne Elmes & Jane Crawford - Asquith Public School
Bios:
Joanne is a Stage One teacher who is exploring how she can activate her students to own their own learning. By pressing for thinking and encouraging student autonomy Joanne seeks for her students to become critical thinkers in the classroom and beyond.
Jane is a K-6 teacher and Assistant Principal who is passionate about teaching and student wellbeing, and who has taught both overseas and in Australia. Through encouragement, a range of strategies to promote thinking and a positive environment Jane strives to give all students a platform to express their opinions and openly discuss critical learning elements.
Code: WS11
‘It’s not you, it’s me’
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‘It’s not you, it’s me’: Your relationship with thinking and your classroom - How can I encourage my students to challenge others’ understanding as well as their own?
Description: Modelling our thinking as teachers is vital because it shows students we are not merely ‘giving them the work’ or ‘going through the motions’. Effective modelling allows for more meaningful interactions and relationships that foster mutual respect and ongoing collaborative inquiry. Using practical strategies including thinking routines, questioning techniques, and other ideas from Ron Ritchhart’s ‘Creating Cultures of Thinking’, Logan and Jay explore how teachers in a culture of thinking might promote student thinking and become role models of learning and thinking themselves. In this workshop, Logan and Jay share ideas and example lessons relating to cultivating curiosity and developing a culture of respectful discussion.
Audience: Secondary - but all welcome
Presenters: Logan Wakeford & Jay Trevaskis - Covenant Christian School
Bios:
After teaching PDHPE for six years at Covenant Christian School, Logan came to a realisation that his students were longer engaged or challenged by the questions he asked, since they knew that eventually he would give them the answers they thought they needed. Building on this insight, Logan has spent the last two years exploring what a culture of thinking looks like in the classroom, conducting action research to identify ways to foster and challenge students’ thinking in service of developing their own understandings.
Jay is Director of Teaching and Learning at Covenant Christian School and is committed to making his students think and strive for deep understandings.
Code: WS12
“But I’m not a maths person!”
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“But I’m not a maths person!” How can we encourage students to have a growth mindset in maths and see maths as creative exploration?
Description: This workshop explores how an action research project which started with encouraging students to become better problem solvers, has become an exploration of how students can develop a growth mindset in mathematics, and what impact that might have on their learning and engagement. Much of what I have been exploring is based on the research of Jo Boaler of Stanford University and involves teaching students about how the brain learns, celebrating and learning from mistakes, exploring topics through framing problems, using open-ended questions, disassociating maths with speed and developing flexible mathematical thinking through number talks. This interactive workshop will disseminate Boaler’s research, using examples of how I have used her ideas in my classes and the benefits I have seen so far.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenters: Meg Bennett - Carlingford High School
Bio: Meg Bennett is the Head Teacher of Teaching and Learning at Carlingford High School. She is passionate about engaging students in learning Mathematics through creative thinking and developing a growth mindset, and engaging teachers as a collaborative community of professional thinkers and learners.
Code: WS13
Fearless Learners
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Fearless Learners: supporting students to take intellectual risks in the pursuit of deeper learning and understanding.
Description: In this workshop, participants will undertake selected learning experiences applied by the presenter to promote fearless and risk taking (in a good way) intellectual behaviour in her students. Through the application of selected VT routines, chosen to complement the learning goals of the academic course, Vanessa sought to develop a culture wherein students felt sufficiently supported to take ‘leaps of faith’ with their learning and enquiry, to achieve deeper and more lasting learning. Through action research, Vanessa attempted to (and still pursues the) answer to the question: How can I best support my students to become fearless learners through the application of visible thinking routines? The work and findings of her research will be embedded throughout the presentation.
Audience: Secondary Focus
Presenters: Vanessa Johnston - Arndell Anglican College & Hadley Johnston - AISNSW
Bios:
Vanessa has taught in NSW private schools for the past 15 years, specialising in HSIE Legal Studies, Geography, Business Studies and Commerce. She has participated in the HGSE Visible Thinking course, and worked as a facilitator for a team of teachers undertaking action research using Visible Thinking whilst at her former school.
Hadley is the former Director of Learning and Teaching at Northholm Grammar School. He introduced Cultures of Thinking and Visible Thinking as the School’s learning framework, and participated in the HGSE Visible Thinking Course, and a school based trial of VT routines applied to a PBL framework.
Code: WS14
Changing the role of technology from a consumable to a creation tool.
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Changing the role of technology from a consumable to a creation tool. How might technology play a role in helping students develop a deeper understanding?
Description: During this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to experience a range of technology tools and teaching strategies that look to assist in slowing down thinking and exploring it an way that encourages depth and motivation. We will discuss the TPACK model, the SAMR model and Challenge Based Learning and discover their role in assisting our students. An iTunes U course will become available where apps and other resources for the course can be downloaded on most devices for the session and future use.
Participants will work hands-on (and minds-on!) with apps, robotics and other tools which could be used in the classroom tomorrow.
Audience: Primary & Secondary
Presenter: Jason Milner - Northholm Grammar School
Bio: Jason is a passionate educator and learner. His focus on helping his students develop a deep understanding of knowledge has taken him into the realm of technology and CBL. Through this passion he became An Apple Distinguished Educator and a Microsoft Innovative Expert allowing him to share his work at national and international educational conferences.
Code: WS15
