Action plan

Here is the action plan that the cluster followed:

Useful links

These links might help clusters who are interested in adapting this model for themselves:

NEMP

Really good writing

Moderation

Making a start on moderation

Moderation processes

Assessment

Assessment resource banks (ARBS)

Transcript

The project started with a hiss and a roar, with all schools quite keen to be involved. And our first session was really around getting to know each other, just discussing general classroom practice, what they wanted to get out of it, their ideas behind writing and it was really important that we had some chances to talk about our own beliefs and our own practice. And we did that in these virtual syndicate clusters, so we grouped all our junior teachers, the middle and the senior syndicate.

Being small schools, we were schools of three or less teachers and we were all teaching principals at the time. We went from zero to eight so there was quite a broad range of teachers’ experiences in there, their class levels and what they would bring to the project. We then established some very simple tasks. We were using NZCER ARBs and the NEMP tasks. I facilitated the project, so we weren’t facilitated by someone from the University, or the college, or the Ministry. We facilitated it through my work and the principals’ agreed focus.
So the teachers would go back to their schools and administer an assessment task in the first instance, then bring that to our shared syndicate meetings, get together with the other teachers that they were clustered with and work through a moderating process. And then a ‘where to next?’ - looking at ideas that would feed into their teaching and planning and perhaps start thinking about the reflective process on what they were doing in their class programme.

We were looking at two syndicate meetings, the cluster syndicate meetings (each) term. The principal group met either side of these, to plan and refine the planning, and then reflect on the practice that had been. There were also in-school activities that we were expecting the principals and the staff to be doing. So at one of these we looked at what makes good writing because we want to get down to the very ideas that underpin each school’s belief systems in relation to core aspects of the curriculum. So each school did that themselves and there was a range of responses from the schools. Some looked at quite deep understandings about writing and some just looked at the nuts and bolts, the surface features, the core bits.

We did this with the children as well because it was important for us that we drew the children’s ideas and thinking into it. Of course the goal from the EPDP and the original goal from our principals’ group then was for our teachers to go into each other’s schools and develop that critical friend idea. So we brought that back and then that was shared, so there was lots of vigorous discussion and that’s healthy and lots of re refining and reflecting as we went through the project. Probably, at the end of the day, the tasks, (the assessment tasks) were not the priority at the end of the day. Really it was the open discussions, the reflecting on practice, the reaffirming and confirming of our own beliefs and understandings and actually raising the capabilities of our teachers and consolidating their ideas and their understanding and developing quite a cohesive consistency across the five schools. So although we were five quite distinct schools, (and a) range of deciles, (there was a integrated school zero to eight plus smaller primaries) we actually did end up with some consistency of understanding and practice.

The children and staff developed what we called quality writing in each school and you developed it for your own school. The children had great input into it. We celebrated the success with the improvement in children’s writing through the opening of our newly developed school library. We had the fancy cutting of the ribbon and a beautiful cake, great excitement. Children then read their stories to adults and other children in small groups, just showing what they could do in their written language.