I promised myself I would read John Fleming’s section of the book “Towards a Moving School” during the holidays. I spent a few hours this morning doing just that and digesting the content of his way of improving a school. What I can say is that what he is proposing is actually nothing new to me. Every school has recently been through the development of School Review processes wherein staff members are required to become more assessment literate so that progress of students is made more accountable. Any school wanting to put these improvements into place requires the establishment of a collegial working community in which teams operate to collaboratively develop programs across and between year levels. Fleming mentions the movement of students between P-3 so that programs can be pitched at their level. The lock step approach for skills development is very important so that basics can be developmentally scaffolded.

For the Years F-2 (Australian Curriculum based classroom structures) I agree wholeheartedly with the establishment of Literacy and Numeracy blocks in order that students are monitored through progressive levels in their reading and mathematics understandings. What concerns me, however, is that where students already have the basics, how are they being given the support and time to become creative problem finders and solvers. For me this is where the Thinking Block or Inquiry Process Block would have to come into play. This is also where project based and play based learning processes can be implemented, as well as the development of student choice of tools and also, most importantly, the development of particular talents such as creative outlets in the arts and even science, cooking, ICT and other practical skill sets. The development of friendship and passion groups and targeted groups for supportive interventions could also happen during these sessions. In short – following the fundamentals of the EYLF and allowing students to learn through play, experimentation and practice at point of need.

Further up the school (3-6) focused instruction still needs to occur so that students are further developing their skills base across the disciplines. Targeted interventions within Literacy and Numeracy Blocks can continue here alongside the use of theme based texts and content so that a deeper understanding of the specific subject matter can be utilised in project based learning which will, in the first instance, be necessarily structured and scaffolded by the teacher – with student choice being taken into account and supported – but also with the expectation that students begin to expand their repertoire of choices made when presenting their findings to a variety of audiences – local and global, familiar and unfamiliar.

Supporting teachers in their understanding of these processes is an important factor to consider. The use of Pirozzo’s planning matrices allows teachers to focus on the full repertoire of required Blooms thinking skills and allows for the further development of multiple ways of working with content (thus supporting the expansion of student repertoires for presentation and learning). Add technology into the mix and this supports the inclusion of an aspect of collaboration and audience. It also adds to the choices students can make in the way they develop their workflow processes and the ways in which they organise information so it makes sense to them and to the teacher.

Blooms Digital Taxonomy and the Blooms Quick Sheets are useful tools to help teachers move towards implementing technology in the classroom through the SAMR model. In my opinion it doesn’t matter which devices are incorporated into the model – the apps which do what is required to have students achieve the General Capabilities in ICT are the key facets of this model. There are infographics based on the hierarchy of skills in Blooms for iPads and for Android devices as well as web based tools. One school has published several infographics here and another has produced this document with several iterations. There are similar apps across a variety of devices but the key ones would include :
1. capability for recording text
2. Paint program
3. presentation sequence program
4. mind or concept mapping
5. chat
6. collaborate document use between peers
7. digital photography
8. sound recording
9. video recording
10. document readers (pdf, .txt, word .doc)
11. browser capability
12. LMS and email through browser for forums and bulletin boards, submission of work, etc.

I believe that if students can learn to use these tools in their project work, alongside the development of specific student skills at point of need, then the range of outcomes they can achieve is magnified significantly and the students will be more engaged in what they are doing because it matters to them!