Yewlands Technology College: Days 2 and 3 - Posted by Cady Staff

Day 2: On my second day at Yewlands, I started by meeting with the three teachers who will be transforming Year 7, next year, at Yewlands along with some representatives from the primary feeder school. Carolyn, Kirsty, Ray and Dean are the team of teachers working on the transformation, so far. They are an inspired group of teachers ready to make positive change. I got to observe them in action and saw the rapport they have with their students and the passion they have for their subject areas. When we met in the morning, we did two project tunings with Josh and Vendala (two interns from High Tech High) - one about a Humanities-based chocolate project and one about Potato Olympics.

After the tunings, we began to brainstorm the mission statement and shared vision for the new Year 7 experience at Yewlands. That vision included preparing students to be empathetic, resilient, hard-working, curious and independent. When we began to create shared expectations, the teachers had to go back to their regular teaching schedule for the rest of the day. Next week, we will get a full day to work together, discuss significant learning, plan projects and come up with design principles and a mission statement for the new Year 7 experience.

Day 3: My third day at Yewlands was full of meetings, project tunings and the writing and revising of our mission statement for transforming the Year 7 experience. Dean, Kirsty, Carolyn and Ray had their classes covered for the day so we could all discuss plans for next year. When I got to observe them in their classrooms the previous week, I got to see the innovative ways Dean uses technology to engage his students, the great rapport Carolyn has with her students and the way she facilitates group work, the joy Kirsty teaches with and the supportive, productive classroom culture she creates, and the way Ray personalizes writing assignments and pushes all of his students to grow and improve as writers. They are all passionate about their work with students and they believe in the power of project based learning.

We shared significant learning experiences from our past at the start of the day and we built off of the characteristics of "significant learning" to create our mission statements and projects based on our passions. We found that all of our significant learning stories shared the characteristics of creating meaningful, lasting work for a real audience; allowing us to make mistakes and learn from them; pushing us out of our comfort zone; asking us to make "adult" decisions with consequences; and lastly, the significant learning opportunities were fun and made us feel pride in ourselves and our work. By the end of the day, we had created the first draft of our Year 7 mission statement with our shared vision:

We create real-life learning opportunities that inspire and challenge; allowing students to develop perseverance, pride and independence. A strong foundation of reading, writing, communication and mathematics is at the heart of our learning. We are a responsible, respectful community delivering accelerated progress for all.

There is no direct mention of project based learning in that statement, but PBL is a tool we plan to use to make our mission statement a reality in each classroom.

After looking through 60 examples of project cards from High Tech High,  Ray and Kirsty brainstormed two projects - one being an induction project for the incoming Year 7s this year to design plans and persuasive arguments for their own first field trip next year; and the other, a project called How Far Would You Go? giving students the challenge of planning real trips on a budget for a travel agency. Dean and Carolyn designed a Survival project requiring students to work together to build shelters and learn survival techniques from the past and present. Lucie, taking the lead on the transformation of Year 7, also began designing a project called The Power of the Wheel asking students to design machines using a wheel as a power source during STEM Week next year, which coincides with the Tour de France riding through Sheffield. I am really excited for our project tunings next week!