Beyond the routines - How might we leverage the 8 cultural forces to promote deeper thinking and learning in our classrooms and schools?

Workshop 4 - Beyond the routines - How might we leverage the 8 cultural forces to promote deeper thinking and learning in our classrooms and schools?

Description:
Often when we think about effective learning and teaching we 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 promotes 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 and schools.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Ryan Gill - Masada College

Bio: 
A passion for everything learning and teaching 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 Australia Network, my leadership of Masada College focuses on ensuring the pedagogies and practices of learning and teaching actively promote a learning environment in which collective and individual thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted.

 
Code: WS04

Artful Thinking: ‘Look with All Your Eyes, Look’

Workshop 5 - Artful Thinking: ‘Look with All Your Eyes, Look’

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

There is a growing body of International research that demonstrates a direct link between an arts-rich education from an early age and an increase in students’ confidence in their intellectual abilities across all learning areas, problem-solving skills and general life skills. Artful Thinking is a program developed by Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. The goal of the Artful Thinking program is to help students develop thinking dispositions that support thoughtful learning – in the arts, and across school subjects.

The following three questions will be targeted during the workshop:

1. How can we as educators work collaboratively across academic disciplines to re-imagine the role of visual arts in the 21st century classroom? 

2. How can we lead students to deeper understanding and greater engagement in taking the time to observe more than first meets the eye and develop thinking dispositions that support thoughtful learning? 

3. How can we develop approaches to guide students to build a culture where noticing and appreciating complexity is at the heart of learning?
   
   Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Kylie Bowra - St Augustine’s College

Bio: 
Kylie is an innovative Educator who is infinitely passionate about boy’s education. In 2018 she received the NSW Teachers Guild 'World Outstanding Teachers' Award. She has spent the past three decades inspiring, innovating, and igniting the minds of hundreds of adolescent boys across Sydney. In addition to being the Leader of Professional Learning at St. Augustine’s College - Sydney, she is the Founder and international presenter of “Can You Speak Boy?”. Kylie is also a steering committee member of Project Zero Australia Network.
 
Code: WS05

How can we nurture a culture of thinking for teachers and students?

Workshop 6 - How can we nurture a culture of thinking for teachers and students?

Description:
How do you value students’ thinking in classrooms with so many competing priorities?

Join a group of passionate educators as they explain their journey cultivating a culture of thinking in their own classrooms, as well as coaching others to do the same.

Audience: Secondary

Presenter: Kate O’Connor, Kylie Chapman, Kate Stehr & Louise Luke - Kiama High School

Bio: 
Kate is a teacher with 25 years experience in NSW state high schools. She has been embedding a culture of thinking in her classroom and working with teachers at Kiama High to do the same since 2017.

 
Code: WS06

How might we help our students become more independent in order to more deeply and critically engage with feedback?

Workshop 7 - How might we help our students become more independent in order to more deeply and critically engage with feedback?

Description:
The importance of feedback to the thinking and learning process is well-known and well-documented. As teachers, we want to see our students develop as thinkers and learners and we want to provide them with targeted feedback to facilitate this development. However, how do we provide students with timely feedback when the cultural force of time is finite? How do we help students engage more deeply in the processes of both providing and receiving feedback? How can we foster the development of the disposition of being a feedback seeker? 

In this workshop, we will explore these musings and think about how we might foster a culture within our classrooms and schools where feedback, whether it be from a teacher, a peer or the student themselves is highly valued, ongoing and constructive.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Anna Flourentzou - Brisbane Girls Grammar School

Bio: 
Since completing Creating Cultures of Thinking through the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2017, Anna has taken on roles such as a facilitator and a coach to a number of teachers at her school to cultivate the creation of a Culture of Thinking at Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

Resources: Anna has kindly shared the slides from her presentation. Download as PDF
 
Code: WS07

What counts as a culture of thinking in our 21st Century classrooms?

Workshop 8 - What counts as a culture of thinking in our 21st Century classrooms?

Description:
‘Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards… until, at some point, we may reach that elusive stage where we are bored by nothing.’ (de Botton, 2004)

In this workshop we will explore thinking dispositions, found in Project Zero’s Understanding Map and Artful Thinking pallet. We will collaborate to answer the question: What counts as a culture of thinking in our 21st Century classrooms?

We will explore practical ways to nurture thinking dispositions and David will model the planful use of thinking routines designed to make thinking visible. At the end of the workshop participants can expect to take away practical ideas to be implemented in a timely fashion.  

David will share several thinking routines that he has used in his own classroom, sorted into four categories: 1) questioning 2) storytelling 3) philosophising 4) theorising. The workshop will be inquiry-focused, interactive and pragmatic; whilst acknowledging that the pedagogy being modelled is grounded in research.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: David Kerrigan - John Purchase Public School

Bio: 
David Kerrigan has been a primary classroom teacher for 10 years, being mentored by Simon Brooks for four of those years. He is a passionate educator who values collaboration; works hard during professional learning; has a natural aptitude for creative thinking; has developed a strong culture of thinking in his classroom.

• Resources: David used the following Thinking Routines courtesy of Project Zero and HGSE.
  Beauty & Truth - A routine for exploring the complex interaction between beauty and truth. - LINK

• Connect Extend Challenge - A routine that helps students connect new ideas to those they already have and encourages them to reflect upon how they have extended their thinking - LINK

• Creative Question Starts - This routine provides practice developing questions that provoke thinking and inquiry. - LINK

• Step In, Step Out, Step Back - A routine for nurturing a disposition to take social/cultural perspective responsibly. - LINK

• Step Inside: Perceive, Know About, Care About - A routine for getting inside viewpoints. - LINK

• Stories - A routine for uncovering accounts of complex issues. - LINK

Code: WS08

Teachers are learners too! An autopsy of the love affair between digital platforms and discussion protocols for sustained collective efficacy among colleagues.

Workshop 9 - Teachers are learners too! An autopsy of the love affair between digital platforms and discussion protocols for sustained collective efficacy among colleagues.

Description:
It is a truth universally unacknowledged that educators are learners too. And we must have been in want of the digital platforms to reignite this old flame. It is educational canon that a shared ideology among colleagues has the potential to cultivate student achievement, even in the face of great inequity. But, how do leaders garner collective efficacy and, more importantly, a common language of thinking among colleagues? Born out of remote learning agility, Jake will explore with you how digital platforms might be used to facilitate healthy professional dialogue and bolster the foundations of early implementation practices for sustained change. In this interactive workshop, he will unpack the protocols of facilitative leadership to examine the facilitator’s responsibility for supporting collegial learning during discussion, between discussion, within the school and between schools, and beyond. Jake will then leverage this to share with you practice-based resources that he has designed to create a natural symmetry between transformational leadership practices, thinking protocols for colleagues, and the change-potential of digital platforms.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Jake Tonkin - Ryde Secondary College

Bio: 
Jake is a leader of learning in NSW whose experiences in steering and cultivating collaboration within, between and above schools across the state have constantly pushed his educational thinking in new and exciting directions. Jake is interested in the power of language to shape thinking and the residual impacts of explicit routines on developing reflexive and habitual lifelong learners.
 

Code: WS9

Using the Think-Track tool to plan, implement and evaluate use of thinking routines in mathematics teaching and learning.

Workshop 10 - Using the Think-Track tool to plan, implement and evaluate use of thinking routines in mathematics teaching and learning.

Description:
How do you make mathematical thinking visible in the classroom? How do you foster metacognition and thinking dispositions while teaching mathematics?

In this workshop we will look at planning, implementing and evaluating students’ thinking using Think-Track tool and thinking routines. We will explore making the teacher's thinking visible while planning and pressing for students’ thinking. Participants will have the opportunity to experience, view and discuss examples and collaborate to create their Think-Track to implement in class.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Noroja Rouzbehi - Department of Education

Bio: 
Noroja has been teaching mathematics and computing at NSW State high schools north of Sydney over the past 15 years, inspiring students & teachers to create innovative teaching and learning processes in classrooms & across school networks. Noroja is passionate about leveraging making mathematical thinking visible.

Code: WS10

Leadership as an ‘influence process’.

Workshop 11 - Leadership as an ‘influence process’.

Description:
This workshop looks at leadership as an influence process in secondary schools. Key factors for sustainable change efforts include frameworks, leaders, community and institutionalization. This workshop highlights how academic middle leaders in particular, are critical to the process of embedding a culture of thinking at a school. Middle leaders are uniquely placed to influence the quality of teaching and learning in their subject areas and set direction for professional learning communities to develop. When given the right authority, support for action and material resources to lead cultures of thinking with teachers, they have the capacity to influence student achievement. Let’s unpack the work of middle leaders who lead with learners in mind.

Audience: Secondary HODS, Directors of Faculty, Senior Leaders, Aspiring Leaders

Presenter: Susan Garson - Brisbane Girls Grammar School

Bio: 
Susan has taught in public, private, single-sex and co-educational contexts in Queensland for 21 years. She completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Queensland and is currently completing doctoral studies at QUT. She is the Director of the Centre for School Wide Pedagogy at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, primarily responsible for monitoring and developing teaching practices, as well as the organisation of professional learning.

Resources: Susan has kindly shared the slides from her presentation. Download as PDF

Code: WS11

Learner Agency - From Empowerment to mindset 

Workshop 12 - Learner Agency - From Empowerment to Mindset

Description:

“agency”, is the ability to make choices and direct activity based on one’s own resourcefulness and enterprise. This entails thinking about the world not as something that unfolds separate and apart from us but as a field of action that we can potentially direct and influence.” (Ritchhart, 2015 p.77)

Many schools are very keen on the idea of giving students agency. But, what is given can be taken away. In this workshop, we will explore together our definitions of agency and consider how we move beyond empowering student agency towards developing learner agency as a mindset so that “If nothing else, children should leave school with a sense that if they act, and act strategically, they can accomplish their goals” (Peter Johnston 2004)

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Nigel Coutts & Pip Madden - Mentone Grammar

Bio: 
Nigel is Head of Teaching & Learning F-6 at Mentone Grammar. 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.

Pip is a primary educator at Mentone Grammar. She has a keen interest in curating learning experiences that equip young people with the dispositions, capabilities and confidence to tackle messy, meaningful and complex problems, and empower them to feel optimistic about their futures in our interconnected world. Pip leads a bespoke Year 6 program called Global ChangeMakers. She is also an Upschool facilitator at Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship.

Resources: Nigel & Pip have kindly shared the slides from their presentation. - Download as PDF

Personal Passion Projects - If you are interested in learning more about Personal Passion Projects, this page might help.

You can learn more about Agency By Design and JusticexDesign with these links.

 
Code: WS12

Designed for Understanding 

Workshop 13 - How can we amplify student voice to create a culture of thinking and deeper learning in our classrooms?

Description:
This interactive workshop will explore how creating and sustaining a schoolwide culture of thinking can be used to amplify student voice and strengthen levels of student engagement among students. In the session we will consider how thinking routines and the 8 Cultural Forces that define our classrooms that form part of the schoolwide teaching and learning framework at Redlands have helped promote choice, voice and agency for our students. We will explore how using student voice surveys, conducting ghost walks, creating professional learning teams, shadowing a student for a day during remote learning and other practices have helped to increase our focus on reflective practice, create more engaged learners and strive for deeper learning.

Audience: Primary & Secondary

Presenter: Matt Bentley - Redlands

Bio:
Matt is the Head of Teaching and Learning at Redlands, Sydney. Prior to that he was Director of Professional Learning at the NSW Education Standards Authority and Knox Grammar School. He is passionate about promoting student voice, developing innovative pedagogical practices and high-quality teacher professional learning.


 
Code: WS13