Reflecting on a Teacher’s Week – Instructional Rounds & Me!

Today I joined a large group of principals being introduced to Instructional Rounds. I’ve been fortunate to have already completed this training once before. It amazes me how when being presented the same information by a different presenter, your understanding deepens. As I can only take in a certain amount of information in one day before it goes to ‘spam’, completing this training was good for me. As I’m a constructivist, the quote from Piaget below is very applicable. I certainly was structuring and re-structuring my knowledge all day.

”I am a constructivist. Knowledge is not ready made. Each of us is continually creating our own knowledge. We are continually organizing what we know, structuring and re-structuring our knowledge.” Piaget

As I write here to reflect on my learning, I’ll share what I’ve learnt this week. I learnt how to use ‘Windows Movie Maker’ properly, deepened my understanding of content planning for literacy by working with a team  and attended Instructional Rounds training.

At the end of a very long day, my Teacher Professional Leave partner and I delivered a short talk on tools available for ‘network’ sharing. I was quite nervous at the beginning – one of my demons I thought I’d rid myself of came back. It was very nice of a couple of people to say they didn’t notice, but I know they did!  However, it may be nice for anyone who visits this space and has had the same experience, that you are not alone. I guess it’s like riding that horse, I’ll have to get back on and do it again or ….maybe not!

I’ve uploaded the video we created for schools to use when introducing Instructional Rounds to their staff. This is our very first video and we’re pretty pleased with our product. Not perfect, but a milestone no less!

One very pleasing outcome of today is that the Instructional Rounds ning will be upgraded. This will enable new members to join. We have 19 educators waiting to be accepted and others who visited and realised the membership was full. Anybody reading this who would like to join, keep visiting.

Cheers Nina