Toolkit - Teacher Dashboard

After school today I went to a digital toolkit, organised by Manaiakalani. I chose to go to the one about teacher Dashboard, as I am new to it and don't know the in's and out's of it just yet, only basic functions. 

The main purpose of the toolkit was to learn how to create groups within a learning area, then send that group of students a particular piece of work.

I created a screencast video to explain the process.

The guy running the toolkit explained to me that it worked best for teachers whose students had Ipads, and didn't work on Google Drive (mostly students under 8). This is because most Chromebook classes also use Google Sites, so students are able to go to the site to access the learning, and make copies of any relevant documents they might need. Although that is true, and it might seem like double-dipping information, I will find this useful as some of my learners, particularly in the lower reading group, find it difficult to navigate the syndicate site and find what they are required to find. They don't quite understand the mechanics of Google Drive enough to understand what effect their actions have. These students usually end up with 5 different versions of the document, as all they know is 'file make a copy', but they make so many copies they get confused and don't know which one they are actually working on.

I think I will try this method with that particular group, and see if it helps them be able to find their learning tasks easier (as it is already in their drive, they don't need to go and find it). 

Teacher Only Day

Today is teacher only day and we spent the morning doing school-wide writing moderation. 

Firstly we discussed why moderation is important, and looked up what the MoE says about it as well. 

We then went through the E-asttle marking rubric and conversion charts so establish where we are marking FROM. 

In groups, we went through a few writing samples from different year/age students and marked them. This was very helpful as you had to discuss WHY you think that child deserves that level in that particular area, and having to justify why made me think more critically about the judgements I was making. 

After lunch we talked about our PB4L goals for this term, and planned lessons we could do to explicitly teach students the behaviour we want from them. 

(Rather than telling them what NOT to do, we are going to SHOW them what to do!)

This was a helpful reminder of what the school-wide expectations are for our students. As a school, we also discussed how some of these things need to explicitly explained. We need to call the spade a spade, and just get over it. The main example of this is teaching students what appropriate behaviour is when using the toilets. Some of our younger students for example, do not know they have to lift up the toilet seat to pee, or how to wash their hands properly, or even why they should wash their hands. For older students, this same principle then includes using the toilet products in the right way - not peeing in the sink, putting sanitary products inside the bins provided and not flushing them, using toilet paper to wipe with, and not throwing it around or wetting it and getting it stuck to the ceiling. It was an interesting conversation to have, as I hadn't really thought we would NEED to explicitly teach these things, but apparently we do.

Over the next 4 weeks we should complete three lessons based on the image above - teaching students how to act in the corridor, toilets and office spaces. 

Culturally responsive pedagogies (pt 4)

As part of our culturally responsive classroom, we tried to celebrate every language week that came along, including learning a song or dance from that culture which we could preform at assembly to share our learning with the school. Here are what we learnt!

For Samoan Language week

For Maori Language week in May

Some of our girls preforming a traditional Tongan dance at a staff members farewell assembly.

We will also learnt something for Tongan language week. As we have a student who is from Afghanistan, but there is no Afghani language week, at some point in time we will learn something from his culture as well so he feels included.

Digital Immersion - day #15

Today we had a special guest Matt Goodwin, who was part of the MDTA in the first cohort. He is now a third year teacher, and part of the Manaiakalani on Air programme. This is a programme where certain teachers make their teaching and learning more visible than ever - they upload their planning, video their teaching, and post links to what follow up the students are doing related to that lesson. It is designed to be an example of what that teachers teaching really looks like - not a put on display or a 'how to' session. 

We reviewed Matt's most recent lesson, where he took a reading lesson. 

We also gave Matt and Anne some feedback about the site that this programme lays on - layout, functionality etc. As it is a new programme, and only really viewed by other teachers, it was useful for them to get an outside perspective on their site. 

After lunch, we had Meredith Bean from Apple NZ in to teach us more about the Mac operating system that we all use as teachers, and answer any questions we may have had. It was very good to see the background settings of my Mac, as this is my first time using a Mac so I didn't know about all those extra features before. 

We went through how to change screen savers and set up hot corners, how to change your dock size and set up the genie effect, how to add or change languages, how to set up dictation/voice typing and much more. We talked a lot about how these things can make learning more accessible for learners; being able to change font size, colour, highlight colour, physical commands (e.g. two finger click, swiping to change screens etc). Although my learners use Chromebooks not Mac computers, so not all these features will be there, some are and so I can use some of them to make learning more accessible and specified for my learners.

Syndicate crafts (cycle 1)

As part of our arts curriculum, my syndicate created a crafts rotation. Each teacher got to chose a craft they wanted to do, and they would have 3 sessions with each group of students to complete them.

This week the first cycle finished - and so did my bath bombs!



I am so happy with how they turned out. The students enjoyed doing something different, having a relaxed environment and having independent tasks to work on that were different from their norm. It was awesome for me as well, to meet and work with students who I normally don't see, and get to do something apart from reading, writing and maths like we do every single day.

 

One of the students even wanted to try out their bath bomb...

You can read the students blog posts by clicking their name below -

Timeus      LJ

Kahlicia     Kensington

Hamish     Soane

Troy     Stephany (and a second post)

Amelia     Alyssa     Irys

The feels

This morning I was browsing through the 'shared with me' file on my Drive. I hardly ever look at this folder, as there a million and one things in there that I don't actually have to look at or know about, as everything that gets put onto the shared syndicate server goes there. 

I saw one really long piece of writing that one of my students had sent me, so decided to read it just out of curiosity.

Then my heart waned..

It was written by the newest student in my class, who only started school here two weeks ago. She was writing about her two best friends. 

As I scrolled down, I saw the comments on the side.

The comments are from her friend (one who she had written about), giving her feedback about her writing. 

"grace, you have to spell your words correctly. ask someone if they could help you spell your words correctly."

"grace you need to do capital letters at the beginning from when you do a full stop"

"you need to do spaces before you put the capital letter at the beginning of the full stop"

We have never done this in our class. I never showed the students how to share their work with each other. We have given each other feedback before, but not in this way. Nobody asked S to give her friend feedback. They just did it.. All on their own.. 

And they gave constructive feedback related to their writing goals - not talking about what they had for lunch or what tv shows they liked. 

These kids make me so proud.

Digital Immersion - Day #14

Today we focused on making stop motion movies. 

A stop motion movie, is where you put together HEAPS of still photos and it creates a movie.
You take a photo, move the props ever so slightly, then take another photo.. again and again and again and again.

Stages of progress

1. Create a plan - what is going to happen?

2. Create your movie set

3. Set up camera on tripod

4. Start taking photos! (Keeping in mind that each photo will show for 0.1 seconds, so take it slow and take a lot of photos!)

5. Get photos off camera, onto laptop

6. Import files into iMovie

7. Edit, add sound effects, etc.

8. Remove photos with your hand in them... (whoops!)

I had a lot of photos where my fingertips stuck into the photo, so I had to go through my movie frame by frame and delete them, like these ones... 

That took a looong time haha. And unfortunately there was a 20 seconds (ish) section where I just couldn't edit it to get my hand out, nothing worked.

The movie I chose to make was made with trains I borrowed from my nephew. It is to show students how making a simple mistake, and doing nothing about it, can make it into a HUGE mistake and sometimes, a disaster, so we should always try to fix our little mistakes before they turn into big ones.

Details of my process..

Taking photos - 30 minutes

Getting photos onto laptop - 1 hour (there was alot of photos..)

Editing - 2 hours

Total number of photos used - 708

Here it is - hope you enjoy!

Culturally responsive pedagogies (pt 3)

Another aspect of our targeted cultural teaching was in writing. Everyday, the students would 'record a bit of their life'. In this book, they could free write, sometimes about a given topic or often they were just asked to write about themselves in whatever way they chose. Sometimes students wrote poems, sometimes they just narratives but mostly recounts (e.g. on the weekend I...).

Although this might seem pointless to some of them, it was our way of trying to empower the students to see that whatever they experience in their own lives matters and has valued - and that they can be an author too!

Kordell - my birthday

It was Kordell's birthday.

How old are you going to be? 9! and I can't wait.

My nan made a cake for me and everyone and cookies for all of us. I like the cake the most.

I played tag and hide and go seek and I had fun.

I have heaps of dogs and their names are Luce and Louis and Russell and Carol and Lola and Poppet. We had a pinata. I whacked a pinata and out came chocolate.

Hope T - at my aunts house

Hope T - At my aunts house

At my auntys house i went to the movies we watched was stuart little 2 with the mum Dub the little boy and the mouse when my aunty watched it she  side that movie was funny because  when the mouse turns into a cat and the cat turns into a mouse and the food that they ate was yum because! Then we went to eat and we ate mcDonalds then we went to the zoo. It was cool we saw a boy with a super hero costume.  We took for long  and my papa was waiting for me to go home.

I got tired and it was fun.

Hiria - at morning tea

Hiria - At morning tea

At morning tea me and my best friend hope.t we were playing tag it was great we were having fun playing tag it was amazing then she tag me then  i had   to run after her around the big play ground i go very tired then we had a long break to rest after we got back to our favourite game it was got super good. Then the bell rang after me and hope.t rushed to class fast!

When we asked the students to write about something specific, for example, an item that is important in their culture, they produced insightful work that showed they were making connections between their own lives and what we were reading/writing/discussing.

This was another way we tried to incorporate the students cultures and personal experiences into our learning everyday. We tried to make sure students understood that their culture mattered, was important, and was relevant to their everyday learning. Connections!

PROBE PD

This week my syndicate leader talked us through PROBE assessments as we have to do them for the mid-year reports. I have never done a PROBE assessment before, and have only seen it done a couple of times before. PROBE is an assessment for reading comprehension in students. You give them a passage to read, and they have to answer questions about it to show they understand what they have read. It is scaled by reading ages, from 7-15(ish) years old. The passages get harder as the reading level increases. The questions students are asked are to test a combination of inference, vocabulary, reaction and evaluation skills. Once the test has been marked, teachers either decide students are 'at' that level of comprehension, or they need to be moved up or down a reading age level, and hence re-tested.

Talking through the assessment booklet was very beneficial, as I found there are multiple ways to do the test, (picture 1) and hence different ways to mark depending on how you administered it (picture 2). If it wasn't for the PD session, I wouldn't have known that.
In my head as I was reading through each option, I was thinking of particular students in my class who would be best suited to each type - e.g. I might try listening comprehension for my student who struggles to read because of a lack of decoding skill, but when he listens to audio versions of our school journal texts, he can answer questions about what happened and hence shows some comprehension; or I might use silent reading comprehension for my very competent readers, to test if they still have the same level of comprehension as they do when they read aloud. 

Reflecting on the PD afterwards, I found that one of the times I had seen PROBE testing done, it was not done in the right way, hence all the data collected from it was incorrect, and reflected negatively on students. It stuck me the ripple effect such a small thing can have. Even if you do the assessment, but you don't do it correctly, your data is skew, hence all reflections on student achievement are skew. So, what was the point in doing it in the first place?

The other thing that struck me was the last page in the booklet...

Teachers, even when they are assessing in the right way, going 'by the book', doing their best, can negatively impact the way the students are assessed. 

There are so many little things that can go wrong. We just need to minimise the initial drop in the water as much as possible, so we can minimise the ripple effect it has.

I will do my PROBE assessments of my class this week, and I hopefully will remember to do a reflection on how I think I went. 

Teaching the teacher!

This week I started helping my mentor Archana build her dream site. 

We sat down together and discussed what she wanted, she made her plan and I started to guide her through making her site from scratch. 

It was very helpful for me to do this, as it consolidated knowledge that I had learnt back in Term 1 at the Manaiakalani Digital Immersion days. It is also a challenge as she has big ideas and knows what she wants, but some of those things I don't know how to do.

So to teach her, I have to first go and learn how to do it.

Which is great! It pushes me to learn beyond what I am taught, and expand my own knowledge. 

On Monday we took this screen recording and audio recording of our discussions. 

On Tuesday, Archana bought her designs and then I had to figure out how to do a photo slideshow. 

I used these instructions to guide me, and figured it out!

(Part 2 coming soon!)

Taking observation into practice

On Monday I observed our Maths PLD lady, Sue Pine, taking a group of students for instructional maths. 

She focused on teaching the group decimals - only the tenths and hundredths place values.

It was a great lesson, and I learnt a lot, particularly how to use decimats to reinforce the conversion of part-whole thinking when discussing decimal numbers. 

During our discussions afterwards, Sue reminded myself and the other teacher observing about the importance of teaching students how to be good mathematicians. The fastest person to get an answer is not the best mathematician, nor is the person who does the problem in their head. Good mathematicians share their thinking, take their time and think deeply about their problem. 

She posed the problem 7x8 to us - 

I said I would solve it by going 7x9=63 then taking away one group of 7. 

The other teacher said she would have gone 7x6 then added one. 

Sue said she would have solved it drawing an array. 

Her point was, that we need to SHOW students how to be good mathematicians. We need to remind them all the time about what that looks like.

I felt inspired! I thought to myself - my kids do this!

When I went back to my own class, I put this problem on the board. 4x6. 

Then I asked students, not "what is the answer?", but, "what are different ways we could solve this problem?"

Here is what we came up with - 

One student used repeated addition, one skip counted in 4's, another skip counted in 2's (which was actually doubling and halving), another used 4 groups of 6 as an array, another did 2x6 twice, and then I showed them how to split the array to use multiplication facts they might actually know at this age (2x3=6). 

I reminded the class what good mathematicians do 

-take their time

-think deeply about the problem

-share their ideas

-ask for help

Observation today!

Today myself and Archana were observed by Anne Sinclair, one of the Manaiakalani mentors. 

It went great! It was the first observation I had where I wasn't nervous.. so yay! Slowly getting used to it I guess.

And it went great!

Here is Anne's feedback notes.

Ashley it is great to see how you and Archana are co-teaching in such a positive and affirmative way. You really do enrich each other’s practice and it is obvious in the way you share ideas and the workload and support each other. In  your reflection of the highlights of working together, you are able to articulate exactly what you give to the partnership.  Ashley you have appreciated having a sounding board for your ideas/questions and someone who is confident with PCK and someone you trust to talk to about your decisions.  Archana has recognised the expertise you bring with your digital skills to enhance the learning for your learners. You both acknowledge the relationship you have has benefitted the learner’s growth over the year.   

After you had introduced the lesson you elicited some great responses  from the learners, who had obviously read the story so could answer  your question fully. I loved the way you did not keep them on the mat for too long but got them involved in the learning quickly. They all moved off and got onto the task as you and Archana moved amongst them. It was great to see how the class worked in groups and got into the activity with lots of energy and enthusiasm. When they came back to the mat you were both sitting waiting for them and ready to proceed. I can see from my last visit how much more you are working together and having empathy for each other and the learners. The Batman and Robin routine is really evident in your practice and this only comes about through trust, respect and empathy.

By encouraging the learners to ‘talk aloud’ and share their thinking, is giving the learners more confidence and permission to participate. Reading the story to the learners and then pausing to get them to identify verbs also gave them a chance to be heard. Archana was able to clarify parts of the task as it continued and then recorded the words on the whiteboard. I can see how much easier it is to manage the class and not waste time with 2 of you. You read the story Ashley and Archana recorded the verbs, rather than you doing everything and taking much longer.  This ‘mixing it up’ also gives variety to the lesson and changes of voice for interest. The learners were so well behaved and engaged and I could see everyone involved and interested and learning! You acknowledge the learner’s contributions - ie. the learner who came in late, but immediately contributed and was acknowledged.

The learners are constantly making connections - fia fia - who stole the show? It was exciting seeing the looks on their faces when you introduced the idea of a visual dictionary. Using the verbs they learnt and having them actually act out the words while you filmed them for the digital visual dictionary. Good on you for taking a risk and trying something, which could have been potentially problematic, but it worked so well. They will never forget those verbs. The class all listened to the instructions and really participated with high excitement. I loved the way you generated such excitement without once losing control of the learning. You are going to compile the movies and put them up on the class site.

After completing the filming you then explained what they would do next. The learners went off to their groups and logged in to the site for their follow up activities. This routine is established, so they know what they do each day and they helped each other.

• Independant follow up slides on the powerpoint, which you went through with students. Explain each slide and get one or two students to offer example answers.

• T to send students off to work on their netbooks on follow up task.

• T to work with students who need support.   

Good on you both for working so hard to provide such a wonderful rich learning environment in your class, which is showing how you are developing the skills of adaptive expertise. I really enjoyed my morning with you and the gorgeous learners, so well done for providing a model of co-teaching and true partnership. I should have filmed this morning so I could use it as an example for others to see. It was also great to see the next steps actioned from the feedback form last observation.  Thank you both!!!

Digital Immersion - Day #13

Today at Digital Immersion we focused on using iMovie. This is a tool I have used before, and used similar programmes to it such as Movie Maker on PC, so I knew generally how to use it.

We were asked to bring in some raw footage that we could play around with, so I used footage and photos I had on my laptop from last term when my class was doing a water campaign around the school. 

I tried to do things with iMovie that I hadn't previously - using sound effects, adding music, adding transitions, adding text while the movie plays, editing such as fast forwarding and changing the volume of particular clips. 

I did learn how to use these aspects of iMovie and am more confident in using them, especially in preparation for the Manaiakalani Film Festival next term!

Enjoy my movie!

R6/T1/2016 Inquiry - Water! from Tamaki Primary on Vimeo.

Update on Bob!

This week I really tried to change my mindset around Bob.

Due to the success on Monday, I felt so encouraged and motivated that he could change and make huge progress.

As Bob is always saying "I don't know" to everything you ask him, I thought I needed to change my attitude from inwardly rolling my eyes and writing him off as he wasn't listening etc, to maybe he actually doesn't know... Maybe he didn't understand the language I used to explain, maybe he isn't familiar enough with the task he is supposed to do, or the tool he is supposed to use, to understand the verbal instruction given, maybe, he actually doesn't know. 

I decided to change my mindset around this particular student, and the ones who are always with him and whom show similar behaviour patterns. I was going to be more supportive, more involved, show them physically/digitally instead of just explaining with words, guide them onto the right task/tool and explain how to use it, show where to click etc, and work more closely alongside them for longer periods of time than I have previously. I also talked more with them - explained in more detail what/how to do, walked through the steps with them, talked more about the thinking we are doing and why we need to do it, how we can support each other, etc. I made deals with the students, for example if you finish two pages of writing (which I wasn't expecting) you can draw a picture of your story. 

And guess what,

it worked. 

Yes, he was not perfect. I'll be the first person to admit that. He still punched someone (only one person though, which is a decrease on his average), and he and his buddy broke a pair of school headphones in our class. He still got distracted sometimes, he still played around during mat times.
But lets keep positive - it was soooo much better than his norm.

I got him to read aloud with some degree of fluency, to write independently and of his own ideas, to collaborate and share his ideas with friends, to take turns to talk, to listen and answer questions, but most importantly for me - he finished a piece of work. More than one actually.. I don't think that happened the whole of term 1 - him actually finishing something on his own, to a standard acceptable for his age. (i.e. one sentence doesn't count as a story).

He wrote two stories - one about his birthday (a follow up from the story we read together) and one about a girl escaping a giant (a writing task using a picture prompt). He was so engaged in these tasks, knew what to do, wanted to finish the work, wanted to add his own picture to support what he had written, came up with words like 'whacked' instead of 'hit' to make his story better, helped me fix the mistakes in his story (e.g. capital letters after full stops). It was so encouraging. He definitely felt that I was making more of an effort for him, and I could feel he was more open to me and more open his learning as well. Our relationship changed for the better.

I also noticed a change in his attitude towards learning as the week progressed as well. On Tuesday, he played up during reading because he wanted to do his writing already.. By Wednesday and Thursday, he was bursting to read the story, then write about it, then draw his picture about what he wrote. He wanted to learn. He wanted to work, and he knew he could! 

He began to increase his self-efficacy, which is really what I wanted. 

This kid can work. He can read. He can write. He can listen. He can make good choices.

Now I just need to make sure he knows that, everyday. 

Culturally responsive pedagogies (pt 2)

Continuing with our cultural theme, we read other books as a class such as Selafina, and Tane steals the show, Papa's jandals and Saia and his turtle (among others). We focused for one week on each of these, dissecting them, getting fluent reading them and learning new words and about new cultures.

For guided reading, we also used stories that were based around the students cultures - Samoan, Tongan, New Zealand Maori, Niuean, etc. These can be seen in our planning here. For all of these stories, we used an audio-file as a follow up activity. This was so the students could hear the words being pronounced correctly, as well as reading them, so they got twice as much exposure to the other language.

These are some of the stories/poems we read
The Sons of Ma'afu story - Audio File
Kuri - Audio File
Poi story - Audio File
Awarua the Taniwha - Audio File
Mara (poem) - Audio File 
Te marama

In all of these, students were asked to make a personal connection to the story.  I remember one student, whilst reading the story Poi, told the group how she had made poi's with her aunty for Kapa Haka at her cousins school last year. What a rich connection! That student was then able to relate to the break-down of how to make the poi, the idea and experience of Kapa Haka and the family ties that associate with it.

We tried our best to record our discussions on our modelling books.

Finding meanings for new words in the story (This is from Kuri)

Recording questions we talked about from the story Poi.

Recording our predictions for the story Poi, based on the title and the picture on the first page.

Reading texts and discussing them in-depth provided rich conversation and allowed students to share their experiences in a safe and comfortable way.