Who's driving? Agency Progression Co-Construction

John and Kristen wanted to co-construct their agency progression (based on learning from Russell Street School) early in Term Two. To achieve this they referred the children to the PMI that they had completed at the end of last term and explained that they would be working on making some changes because of the comments and ideas from their reflections. John and Kristen had several conversations about this idea with the children in Term One. Now they wanted to use this progression with the children on a daily basis. Together they developed descriptions for each of the stages below:

• Agency
• Self Directed
• Self Managing
• Guided
• Directed

As part of this process, John and Kristen highlighted the need to 'Strive for Excellence' at all stages. The children made links to conversations they had had about 'The Learning Pit' (based on learning from Russell Street School). As part of the co-construction process, the children made connections to learning to drive a car and getting your full licence because they identified that the progression moved from 'teacher driven' to 'student driven'. As a result their wall display is based on this theme.

Term Two Expression Unit Co-Construction

At a planning meeting in the holidays, Katie and Clive got excited about the idea of involving children in the planning process of our integrated unit. This was an exciting idea to trial because we believed that the children would have more ownership over their learning, be able to lead their learning and develop a deeper understanding of our integrated unit big idea if they were involved in this process.

On the first morning of Term Two, Katie and Clive explained to the children that they were going to have a go at writing our integrated unit for Term Two. They introduced our big idea - 'Expression'. To gather the children's prior knowledge about this big idea the children worked in small groups to complete a survey on Google Forms. Throughout the morning, the children completed a range of 'Expression' challenges and were engaged in expressing themselves in different ways. By the end of the day, the children had co-constructed the knowledge deep understanding and matrix indicators. By the end of Week One, they had identified the Habit of Mind focus, co-constructed the Habit of Mind deep understanding and co-constructed the matrix indicators. The children had also generated significant questions they could explore throughout the unit.