Digital Immersion (Term 3, Week 3) - Garageband!

Today we are learning how to use Garageband, with help from a Point England School teacher Rob Wiseman, who in a previous life was a music teacher and audio buff. I took screenshots and screen recordings as we went so I could blog them, as I had zero knowledge to connect to with Garageband and I just knew I would forget everything if I didn't write it down..

He talked us through 

how to get into Garageband 

(which is more complicated than it sounds)

When you open Garageband, you get this screen.

Each of the different buttons shows a different screen when you go into it, so you really need to know what you are wanting to do before going in to it. We went into the 'empty project' button.

Then this opens, and you have to select what kind of music you are going to create - we went with Audio (the microphone). 

It opens up like this. The far left hand box is called your library, the middle 'box' is where your tracks layer up, and the black box on the right is where your waveforms live once you have added audio.

What to do before you do anything!
Change all your settings! Make it how you want.. (And get your head around what is what)

You can alter the key, which here is 'C major', and you can also change the beats per  minute, which here is 120. The Music note and metronome icon on the left hand side mean that it is in 'beats and projects' mode, and can be changed to 'time' mode by clicking it and selecting time.

Rob explained that our laptops will automatically be on 'System Settings', and the audio quality will be better if we go in and change the settings to reflect what microphone/headphones you are using - even build-in output/microphone is better then using System Settings.  (Access this by going Garageband/Preferences).

Each layer of the audio file you are adding is called a 'track' and looks like this in the middle-left of your screen. If you have multiple tracks, you can mute one or more by clicking the mute button, or only allow the noise through headphones. The green bar shown is the volume you are recording - you should aim for the audio to be around that little ball, or slightly higher. 

The '1,2,3,4' on the right hand side gives you a 4 count count-in, so you have time to prepare and take a breathe before starting to talk. The speed of the 4 count will be at the speed of the number of beats, for example mine is set at 120 bpm. If you select the other buttons on the left-hand side, such as the metronome or the tuning fork, you can have those sounds to guide your audio recording.

When recording audio, it creates the waveform alongside your track. The larger the wave, the louder it is; the smaller is it, the quieter the audio is.

Recording Audio
Firstly we just played around with recording...

Then we actually recorded ourselves reading a children's book.

 As you can see, I actually missed a page in the book and had to add that section in. It was hard to try and make my voice the same volume and pace! I also (purposely) took lots of deep breathes, read it wrongly etc so I then had to practice editing those parts out.

Editing in-track

  

The button on the far right-hand side with the camera and music note icons allow you to easily access all the audio and movie files on your computer, and drag them into your open project. You can also easily drag-and-drop from your desktop.

To 'cut' or 'split' the audio file, put the playhead where you want to cut, go to 'edit' and select 'split regions at playhead'. Also de-selecting 'Snap to Grid' makes editing audio easier. 

For super-fine editing, select the region you want to edit, double click or press 'E' and a separate, more detailed editing box pops up at the bottom. Hold your cursor inside the bottom half of the audio track, and it will turn into a cross, allowing you to click and drag sections of the audio to then edit.

By clicking any track and hitting ‘B’, you bring up the smart controls at the bottom of your screen. The reverb and ambience on the right hand side, when dialled up a little bit can make your audio sound much better e.g. giving the illusion of space between the voice and the microphone, which makes the voice sound better.

Compressor - mediates your wave volumes to make them more even.

By keeping a track selected, you can change the voice by playing around with the 'voices' inside the library. If you have exited the library, press 'Y' to bring it back again.

Well, that was a very detailed note-taking of our Garageband lesson with Rob! Here are some shortcuts for Garageband version 10 that Rob gave us. Thank you so much Rob, I literally knew none of this without you! And thank you viewers who made it to the end haha, hope you learnt something new!

Student empowerment through their own E-asttle rubric!

This term as part of our cycle of inquiry, Archana and I have been discussing with our students how they are assessed and what this means for them - trying to make everything explicit.

The biggest example is how we mark E-asttle. 

Within the first two weeks of this term, we had gone through the National Standard illustration for year 4 writing and marked it against the E-asttle rubric with the students helping us. As we went, we explained WHY we would give each section that particular score, and then gave examples of the other scores for comparison. 

For example, if we gave R4, we would then look at exemplars for what R3 and R5 looked like, so students could see the difference.

It really was a PD for them.

Next, Archana and I developed our own version of the rubric for students to use. We had a Tamaki Primary School version, but the language was (in some places) beyond the language use of our young students. 

For example, we changed 

to

We also added where they should be aiming for - note the below, at, above to indicate that if they achieve R4's, they will be writing 'at' the national standard for year 4's. 

There were also minor things we had to change in the language, so there was some familiarity for our students. For example, where the rubric said 'elaboration', we would say 'with detail', as that is the words we have used with them all year, so they are more familiar with it. 

I printed out the rubric, laminated them and put them on ring clips. That way, small groups of students could use one rubric together to evaluate a piece of writing. They wrote a narrative using a picture prompt yesterday. Today, Archana and I again went through a piece of writing (this time, one actually from our class) and explained how we would grade it and why - and what this meant in terms of next steps for this person and wether they were below/at/above national standards. 

I videoed some of the small groups discussing their piece of writing (which belonged to someone within the group)...

Considering it was their first time EVER using the rubric to mark writing 'with their teacher hats on' so to speak, they did a great job! (Some needed teacher support, but it was their first time!) They were very fair, and respectfully would say to the person whose writing it was what they thought of it and gave constructive feedback. 

It was exciting for Archana and myself, as it was just another way that the students reflected the positive and supportive class culture we have worked so hard to build. None of the students teased each other or laughed at the mistakes that person had made, but recognised these as next steps in their learning and some even offered advise on how to achieve those next learning steps. Once they had marked one of the group's writing, they then fought over whose they would do next!

It was a positive step towards the students being aware of what they write and what we are looking for. These things are not surprises or mysteries to students, as they are things we are teaching them all the time (e.g. this term, how to plan using a brainstorm and write in 3 paragraphs). For a lot of the students as they marked, they would realise they had forgotten to use paragraphs, add in a metaphor (etc) and have a Homer Simpson doh! moment. So next time, they will really remember to use what they know and put it all in!

We truly have a fantastic bunch of kids and some very talented writers in our class. It was awesome to see them empowered and taking ownership and control over their own writing, working well in a group, being honest and fair and looking forward to trying again! 

Lunchtime games!

On Monday at lunchtime, I was doing my library duty. There were not many students in the library, so I decided not to read them a book aloud, instead I found two of my own students who were setting up a chess board.

I was stoked! Kids who WANTED to play chess, what magic is this..

As I watched them set up the board, I realised they had nooooo idea what they were doing.

Their layout was three rows deep on each side of the board, with multiple kings, 6 horses and no pawns. 

At this point, I intervened.. I showed them how to set up the board properly, and described how each of the players is allowed to move (e.g. diagonally, one block at a time etc).

I challenged one of the students, who had no idea what was happening to a game. I re-explained how each piece could move, as I moved them. She began nervously moving her pieces around the board. I explained that the end goal of chess, was to capture the king - and showed her how I purposely left two pawns in front of my king and queen to protect them. The other girl was just watching and learning, giving advise where she saw it. Twice, I got 'check' on my student, and twice she evaded me (on my advise). Then i got her - checkmate!

What happened next surprised me..

The two girls played each other.. well! They set up the pieces mostly in the right places, knew how each piece moved and played each other fairly. 

At one point, I said 'hey you could take her pawn here', then the girl replied 'no Miss I can't, cause then she will take mine like this' and showed me how the next four moves would have played out. 

I hadn't even seen that... 

In five minutes, they had understood pretty much all the rules of chess and wow'd me by thinking ahead four moves at a time, noticing things I hadn't even noticed.

These girls then started discussing how chess was really hard, like maths, and how you have to 'think really hard' and think of lots of different avenues you could take. I was really impressed by this, as they had made the connection to the problem solving we do in maths and the critical thinking that it requires. 

The next morning, the two girls asked if they could play chess while waiting for the bell to ring. They began all on their own, I left the room and came back a little while later to find..

Other students joining in, while the two girls taught them how to play!

Throughout the day they kept asking if we could have a whole-class session where they could teach the others how to play chess properly, but as we only have two small chessboards, and no spare pieces, that idea will have to wait..

Although this isn't exactly targeted teaching and learning, or anything to do with the curriculum learning areas, I just loved how these girls WANTED to learn something different, something they didn't HAVE TO learn. Their enthusiasm towards it was just awesome. Go girls!

Anne's observation (Term 3)

This morning I had my observation with Anne Sinclair from Manaiakalani. She discussed with myself and Archana during her last visit, that she wanted to see something a bit different.. It seems that every person she went to observe was doing maths or reading! And fair enough too..

So myself and Archana decided to do inquiry on this fine Monday morning, which for this week was Fire Safety. 

You can view the plan here.

My own focus, was trying to include the 'share' part of the Manaiakalanai 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy within the learning time frame. I find that a lot of the time, the learn happens, the create begins and is never really finished, so nothing gets shared. Or if it does, it happens on a Friday during Managing Self time, when I am not there..

I also wanted to ensure I had something digital to hook in the students and to use as an example. 

One such example was this rap I included.

The lesson went fine, and I made sure we recorded the students create (the rap/song/poem/poster) they created, and then I shared these using the data projector for the whole class to review.

You can view Anne's written feedback, and our discussion around the PTC's here.
But here are some highlights..

You are really well organised, so not fumbling around for resources, but having everything at your fingertips to get started.

The class went off to their groups without any problems and got onto the task with enthusiasm and interest. I loved the way they talk to each other about what they are doing, which is also clarifying their understanding. They are working well in their groups so good on  you for the work you are doing in fostering this collaborative practice.

With 2 of you in your class you can both move around and really extend their thinking, pushing them to think more deeply. I like the way you probe and prod their responses to get them to think beyond the surface features.

Time permitted you to show the work the learners had done on the screen  and the class were so excited to have their work displayed and heard. By taking shots of the poems, raps and posters meant that their important learning was captured, shared and enjoyed and an indicator of their understanding. It was great to hear/see their understanding through the catchy words in the raps and the poems, which was evidence for formative and summative assessment. The posters also had strong messages and the learners were able to explain the dangers in the home through their visuals.

And here are some short clips of my students sharing their poem/song/raps

Digital Immersion (Term 3, Week 2)

For this weeks Digital Immersion, the MDTA's are joining the other first year teachers within the Manaiakalani teachers at Panmure Bridge School. We first discussed....

Connecting with each other: WWW of Manaiakalani Goals

How can I see the Manaiakalani goals in my school/classroom/teaching?

What is working?

What isn't working?

What do I need help with?

Including Sharing begins with us - how do we Share

Dorothy then asked us, in our school groups, to discuss how we share our personal, social and professional lives, and the boundaries between these.

Screenshot from https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/digital-immersion/digital-immersion-plgs-2016/plg-august-2016?pli=1

Our group, mostly made up of first year Tamaki Primary School teachers, discussed that we don't actually know what our school policy is around teachers sharing information publically, or about sharing personal information about themselves.

Teaching as Inquiry Speed Dating

Next we took turns discussing our teaching as inquiry projects throughout the 35 people in attendance today, in a speed-dating type format.

Then we each recorded our reflections on this slideshow. 

(Note that this slideshow belongs to Dorothy Burt)

Learn Content: Woolf Fisher Research on Summer Learning Journey

After morning tea, we discussed the research done into Manaiakalani schools by Rachel Williams. 

There was some stunning results...

She found that the 'summer drop off' was HUGE (the red line) when students did not actively learn or practice their previous learning over the holidays. The blue line was students who participated in Rachel's research, a summer-long activity based around reading, writing and blogging. 

This youtube clip explains it in a very concise way.

This supports the Manaiakalani statement that our students turn up to school at 5 years old, with the knowledge and skills of a 3 year old, and EVERY year, EACH student needs to make one and a half years progress in one school year, in an attempt to catch up.

Implications for sharing in our classes and schools
Dorothy asked us to share our ideas onto a Padlet (below) as to how, why, what we should be sharing with our learners based on the 'summer drop'.
Here is what we came up with...

Created with Padlet

However, if we want students to work independently online, we need to prepare them to do this.

Screenshot from slides owned by Dorothy Burt

Finally, we viewed our own blogs as an avenue of sharing. 

Learn: Exploring Infographics - Building Knowledge
Here is mine

Making a tivaevae

This week is Cook Island Language week! 

To celebrate this, my class learnt about Cook Island Maori words for our family members, and then made our family trees with labels. 

We are also making our very own tivaevae! 

"Tivaevae or tivaivai (Cook Islands Māori: tīvaevae) in the Cook Islands, tifaifai in French Polynesia, is a form of artistic quilting traditionally done by Polynesian women. The word literally means "patches", in reference to the pieces of material sewn together."

First, we looked at a movie made by Te Papa about the origins of tivaevae. Next, we looked at different designs for tivaevae, check out some examples here and here.

I gave the students some examples I had printed out, and gave them instructions to design their own 'patch' for our Room 6 tivaevae. It tells the story of our class - each of us has a unique contribution to make. Even if we used the same pattern or idea, we may colour it differently or use it in a different way to portray ourselves.

Here is my class designing our tivaevae this afternoon -

Will post an update on how it looks when we collate them altogether to make our class quilt!

Collaborative Planning in Maths

A real focus for TPS this year has been collaborative planning in maths. It is a focus because we are receiving Professional Development [PD] around the problem-solving approach in maths. 

This term, our syndicate has really taken the collaborative planning aspect on board. This means, that the whole syndicate, roughly 100 students, aged between 7-13, will be working on the same problem. The only difference between classes, is that the numbers in the problem may change to reflect the level of students, or even new and harder concepts may be added. 

This is the plan for week 2.

The yellow sections are for EVERY class. 

The green section is aimed at Level 2, year 3-4 in school (my class). These answers focus on using halves and quarters. 

The blue section, introduces fractions such as thirds and fifths, and are aimed at Level 3 of the curriculum (years 5 and 6). 

The red section is for the year 7 and 8 students. This question is even harder again, as thirteen students cannot easily share six chocolates - each person gets six thirteenths of a chocolate bar, which is way more demanding and difficult to figure out. 

As noted in the top of that image, we have a shared focus for the whole syndicate - "finding fractions of a region". This is what we are ALL focusing on for this week, just at varying levels. How this works, for example with my own class, is that they will start at the beginning. If they understand concepts around halves and quarters, and identify patterns about how many friends and how many chocolate bars, we will challenge them by asking them the blue questions (aimed at year 5 and 6). It pushes them to think beyond their year 4 knowledge, which reinforces a growth mindset. If they show understanding at this level, we will push them even more with the year 7 & 8 section. Each section is not exclusive to its own year group - each teacher can take the parts of the question their students need and use it. 

Today we used this question with our class. 

They originally only received the top yellow, and green sections. 

Lets see what they did..

Cutting the chocolate bars in 'half'

Some misconceptions evident very quickly..
(It is actually 3/4, and the opposite to groups)

Giving one 'half' and one 'quarter' to each of the four people.

One student drew the three chocolate bars, then straight away cut them up into quarters, giving three pieces (coloured) to one person. Note - this is what I would have done as an adult!

Then we came together as a class and talked about how to solve it. Students gave Archana their ideas and she recorded them. Here you can see some confusion about how to add one half and one quarter - she had to reiterate that one half IS the same as two quarters, therefore you are just adding three quarters.

Students who don't typically engage with maths tasks getting involved - YAY!

For the second green question, students think about how six chocolate bars can be split equally between eight people. Again, they cut up the chocolate bars and give each person one half and one quarter each.

Each of the eight people receiving one half and one quarter. 

This group drew the chocolate bars, cut them up till each person had half, then two bars were left over. As the question clearly says that no chocolate can be leftover, they cut the leftover bars into smaller pieces and shared these out as well. 

A bonus question - how much chocolate does each person get, if there are 12 chocolate bars shared between 16 people..

12 Chocolate bars shared between 16 people - one half and one quarter each.

A different group, again showing one half and one quarter for each person.

Tomorrow we will give harder questions (the blue ones, aimed at years 5-6) to most of our class, who clearly showed they understood how to find fractions of a region. With the others, who did not show the same understanding, we will have in small groups with both myself and Archana, and use DATs (Direct Actions of Teaching), to help them fill in those gaps and get them to the level of understanding they need.

Updates to come!

Taking a Toolkit - Eeeek!

This term, as we are under the 'share' branch of the Manaiakalani Pedagogy, the MDTA's were asked to take a toolkit. A toolkit is a Professional Development [PD] session based around a particular objective, skill, event (etc) that teachers within the cluster can sign up for and attend. 

I was honestly so nervous to be asked to do this, but lucky I have wonderful supportive people around me who are always ready to help. At a syndicate meeting, the Manaiakalani facilitator at my school, Maryanne, was discussing the toolkit she was planning to present about the film festival/how to make movies, so I asked if I could join her, and of course, she said yes!

I was so relieved to be able to do my first toolkit with somebody who had experience and confidence in doing them, rather than having to fumble through nervously on my own.. I have always found it so difficult to present and be in front of people in this way.

Maryanne was amazing as always, and prepared the resources for the toolkit - 

Note - This Google Drawing can also be viewed here


She made an entire video with some of the seniors students to use for the toolkit - 

When it came time to actually present the toolkit, I felt so nervous and shy. Maryanne stayed confident as she talked through the presentation and after a little while I was able to pull from her confidence and share some thoughts and ideas as well. 

Everyone discussing our ideas for the Manaiakalanai Film Festival

Even though she will hate me for saying this, Maryanne did all the planning for this toolkit and I was more of an assistant than an equal partner, I still think was the best way I could have been introduced to toolkits, doing one together with someone I know and trust. It was definitely a modelling situation and I learnt so much just from being a part of the process.

I now feel more confident and prepared to present a toolkit on my own next time! 

Thank you so much Maryanne!

Tuakana Teina (Term 3)

Today we had Tuakana Teina and spent a lot of time with Sue Pine, the maths PD facilitator. 

We first discussed how we form OTJ's. 

I created this DLO to illustrate our discussion about the types of data, its purpose and how each type of data should be apart of the OTJ.

Sue discussed with us how we shouldn't be focusing on rote-learning basic facts, and how we should be teaching multiplication facts through contextual learning, otherwise students won't/can't use the facts when they really need to solve a problem.

With arrays, we are actually teaching multiplication basic facts but within contexts of splitting up numbers. Sue's example was 12x9, but splitting into 10 and 2 x 9, then 10 and 2 x 4 and 5, and discussing how splitting 4 and 5 is 9, so its the same.

Her example was this - she asked us to memorise this and then she will test us tomorrow. Asking students to memorise stuff without understanding why or showing them how to use it in a mathematical context is not helpful. 

We then talked about OTJ's, and this is how Sue explained how we should best form our OTJ's. Using the national standards, we 'mark' where the student is working at, for each of the different categories. She overall OTJ should be where the student is MOSTLY working - so this student is mostly working in 'at stage 6, end of year 6' so she will be at the national standard. 

Sue also gave us this document, which shows different ways arrays can be used to teach different strategies.