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Mai i te Kōpae ki te Urupa, tātou ako tonu ai. From the cradle to the grave we are forever learning.
Recently in the classroom, I have been pursuing the idea of using an Agile method or culture to develop student agency in the classroom. It has been a really interesting process. I used the awesome project management software monday.com to set up sprints for my class. These sprints represented all the tasks that we needed to in the week. The students then went into self-organised teams they and checked off their progress. For example, they present there work once they all had completed their part in the classroom. It created a supportive environment for the learners to work in but still, it didn't engage all the students. I still wonder how I could further adapt this process to increase student agency in while using these ideas to try and increase the key competency of managing self how could I further enable disengaged students to meaningfully contribute to the class.
One really nice part of my practice I have adapted though is the weekly Socratic Seminar and Retrospective. With my Social Studies class, I have started to make Friday a celebration day. We firstly take a piece of reading that we haven't read yet and spend 10 minutes reading over it in groups. We then form up in a circle and I have the students critically analyse the reading. I take the role of facilitator and the students lead the discussion. This has been a huge learning process for me. Firstly some students seem reluctant readers and uncomfortable in this situation. I am still trying to think about how best to prepare for these. Should I hand out the reading on Monday to prepare for Friday? Should I collaborate with their English teacher to pull out a common theme? How can I better prepare students to critically analyse text?
The part that seems to be the most rewarding is our stand up. We all get the chance to share the highlights of the week. Even those more reluctant to share in other settings seem to share here. This week I refined it more so we could reflect on what we learnt, liked and lacked. This allowed a campfire like space in the classroom where we could reflect on and improve the process. Would there be a way of getting user stories from the girls in a clear way? The celebration ends with us celebrating the most effective team. Have I got the process correct though? How can I further refine it? How can this process be more gamified?
It seems the refining of the system is infinite at times a relentless pursuit of perfection. I do believe that the Agile manifesto is an important one for education though, the key phrase "Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools", sings to me. Am I able to implement this in the silo of my own classroom or do the shackles of 1-hour blocks mean I am unable to implement the system in a meaningful way?
Please enjoy my bonus video looking at the software on offer at Monday.com it is quite stunning, the software not my video.