Student voice

In my readings today I kept coming up with comments about student voice. Interesting as that's a factor I've identified for our eLearning Strategic Plan. It's all very well deciding things that we think are important for teachers and students - but we often forget to ask the students what they think is important to be learning - especially around digital citizenship.

In a reflective post on the NZATE conference Jess talks about how student centred learning needs to be relevant, authentic, have choice and opportunities for collaboration, and must be real.

My friend Anne asks: What is the desire of the (child)? What is their goal, aim? And am I supporting that? and What inner resilience do our learners need to withstand chaos, uncertainty and challenge? What of the learners who do not have this inner resilience?

WellyEd (Wellington Connected Educators) sent me a tweet asking me to be involved in Connected Educators Month - but not from my POV - rather from the POV of my learners - student voice!

How about contributions from you @NewlandsRimu @jessierose3 @shakespearenut @dragonsinger57 https://t.co/WxIIukHBZR #WellyED ??

— Welly ED (@Welly_ED) September 5, 2015

We’d like to blog each day of October, but we want to hear from the learners of Wellington – your students. Maybe you already have a class blog – we’re happy to cross-post – as long as the post is a new one for October. Maybe one of your learners has their own blog and would like to write a post for us too. Maybe you just have a keen writer who’s interested in a new audience. What we’re most interested in is a snapshot of learning from Wellington classrooms.

I've signed up - I have no idea what the contribution from my class will be but that's part of the excitement!

When I think about our inquiry and the inquiry cycle I am reminded that all aspects of the inquiry needs to contain student voice.

As I/we work through our school's version of Inquiry - Capture, Develop, Create - I need to listen to my students. I need to encourage them to questions their (and others) answers. And I need to encourage them to keep on questioning and developing their own meanings to what is happening in their world/s.