Today is our second-to-last Digital Immersion Friday.
We have been asked to make a reflective video on our year's experience as an MDTA.
I actually found it very difficult to write a reflective script for this video.
I don't know how to articulate my years worth of experiences in 3-5 minutes...
I had a look at my reflection from June (a mid-year marker) and found that it will be quite different.
That video was more explaining what I'm doing and how it is going, rather than focusing a lot on myself and my experiences personally. This is how the two will be different.
I will post it here once I have finished it... (to be continued)
The MDTAs were required to make a movie each for the Manaiakalani Film Festival.
Here is mine.
This video was shared on my class blog - check out my classes post (and the gazillion comments) here.
The side of the Film Festival that people don't often think about is the hours and hours and hours of prep that go on behind the scene.
I made the slide/drawing that made our schools videos available to the other schools
(this included helping other new teachers to blog their movie in the right way)
And I also made our school banner.
This...
Turned into this...
I was very proud of my banner and got many compliments on it, which made the extra hours at home and at school worthwhile. Our students and staff were very proud to say they were from TPS.
I got to have lunch with our presenters at The Coffee Club, along with Juliana and Aireen.
The kids after the evening show being silly with our display (they were crazy but we love them!)
Overall it was a great experience and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. Next year is the 10th annual FF, so it will be an even bigger deal than this year and I am already thinking of what movie I will make...
We had a presentation for year 3 parents on the school overview, that nobody seemed to know what was happening with.
Archana has never done one of these information evenings before, so we decided to have a look at it together.
I created a presentation and Archana and I worked on it together on Monday night.
As neither of us had done this kind of presentation before, and there was no previous example to look at, we did feel a bit lost and just did what we thought would be best.
Archana linked in lots of great examples of students 'create' work, especially on slides 17 & 18 which show powerful meaning ways that students use their chromebooks for learning.
Reflection
The presentation went well, I felt it was very awkward at first as we all were a bit unsure of how it was going to go. I really liked the team approach we took to presenting - Archana and myself took turns to talk to the slides, Juliana clicked through them for us, and Rhonda and Sally added in whenever they felt we had missed something. We were also mostly either sitting or leaning as well (rather than standing) which I felt made it more comfortable for parents as it was more equal in approach, not a dominating approach.
I do feel that it was a little lecture-y, and could have been more collaborative to really make the parents feel comfortable and that they could ask questions, talk to each other to clarify understandings etc.
(Food for thought for next time!)
I never thought I would be presenting to parents in my first year of teaching, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Next year I also think it would be beneficial to do multiple of these events, at varying times (e.g. one at 6pm, one at 3pm), and begin them earlier in the year (term 3) so parents can organise their payments etc before the christmas boom arrives.
Today at Digital Immersion we focused on our PCT Sites.
I had stopped using my site months ago, almost like I had made this wonderful thing and fallen out of love with it. It just sat there, neglected.
I googled for inspiration, and had so many ideas however my friend and colleague Heath reminded me to keep it simple and not make it too hard for myself.
I began with this image.
Then I just went to work, literally working for hours on my site.
I will not link the site here, as it has private and confidential school documents and information within it that are collected as evidence of various aspects of my professional life, but I will share screenshots of it so you can see the design of it.
The home or 'landing' page
As you click through the bunting at the top, each page is slightly different, however keeps the navigation bunting.
This is the 'Professional Development' page.
This is the 'Goals & BT Meetings' page, with links to Google Docs containing the meeting minutes.
This is the 'Inquiry' page. Each of these is a seperate doc which details the cycle of inquiry undertaken in that particular learning area/time.
This is the 'Observations' page.
This is the 'Release Logs' page, with my document linked in.
This is the PTC's. Each of these 12 criteria open up into a new page, each containing evidence for that criteria, reflections for that criteria, and a link to my blog label streams (note how within my labels I have PTC labels - e.g. PTC1 that you can click, and see every piece of evidence related to that criteria).
At the beginning of the day I hated my PTC Site, but now I rather like it and am quite happy with the bunting design I chose as it makes navigation very easy. The colour scheme is some of my favourite colours (the teal mainly) and I am so pleased we had today set aside to re-develop our sites.
If any of my school colleagues reading this would like help with your PTC site, please let me know I am more than happy to help! :)
You can see one example here. The teacher films themselves and a group of students doing a particular lesson, and shares the video, the planning, a reflection and the student outcomes of said lesson.
The idea behind this is to share pedagogy - it is not about 'watch me I'm the best', but more about check out what I am doing, take any ideas you want and give me your feedback in response.
All the MDTA's were challenged to create a Class on Air episode.
Before we could do this, we had to build the Class on Air site on which to put it.
When I record my session, I will share the work of these 5 students. I chose them because 3 of them are quite talkative, so will make a good video, and the other 2 need encouragement to talk more. Perfect match!
The content I put in this page was about the treasure map, but when I do it properly I will do a guided reading or writing lesson with them.
After the talk with my class last week about how they were bored doing the same kinds of tasks all the time, I wanted to change it up for them a bit..
I planned to teach them about orientation and direction (as per our maths overview for term 4), but through a project-based learning model.
The project..? Making treasure maps!
I intended to do a small bit of this project everyday, finishing on Thursday (as I am not at school on Fridays). However because of testing and practising for the testing, it didn't happen. Instead, we started and finished within a day. We had to move quite quickly through the content, but as it was a range of different 'stuff' for the kids to do, they were far from bored. At times they struggled to keep up with me..
Firstly, I introduced the challenge.
(To be honest - the kids seemed quite confused at having been given a challenge, it was kinda funny. They are clearly not used to this kind of learning).
We talked through the first few slides from here. We watched the clip on slide 6, then went outside to practice our understanding.
As our practice, I included this game as a physical kinaesthetic activity, and the kids did request more games and they wanted to go outside more. Perfect solution!
If you have ever played Captain's coming, it is the same game, just with changed labels.
After morning tea, we worked through slides 8-12. Slide 12 asks students to record a video of themselves explaining what the directions were to a buddy. This was crazy! All the kids of course needed a quiet space so their voice could be heard, so they spread out through the class, corridor, staff room and stairwell foyer. I gave them only 5 minutes to do this, as we had to work quickly in order to finish within a day. Most managed to complete this, however didn't have time to actually put it onto the slides (it takes a lot of work to do this..).
Next, we worked through slides 13-25. These kids have learnt about measurement/length before, so we did a quick recap so they could remember.
Next - the students formed their own groups and we went outside. I gave them 20 minutes to plan their treasure hunt for the other group.
Although again, this was crazy, with kids everywhere outside, it was preeeeeettty awesome. I did not facilitate any of the groups - they did it themselves. I wondered around, taking snippets of footage and checking in with them.
I gave the Ipad to one of the groups, who after a bit of help went off without me and continued working.
I LOVE their footage - just them talking within their own group, counting the number of steps together, recording, discussing etc.
Once they had completed their maps, they gave them to me for safe keeping and went off for lunch.
After lunch, I had set up the 'treasure' (bags of chocolate) and sent off one kid from each group to hide it according to their map. We went outside again, and I swapped the maps between the groups. And off they went!
All the groups except one found their missing treasure by following the steps on the map. The group that didn't, couldn't, because the person who had hid the treasure, didn't hide it where the map said it would be (ugh!).
Although it was crazy, and rushed, it was a great day of learning - and something I hope the kids remember. Without realising it, as they were so caught up in the 'map' business, they had learnt about orientation, direction and position, they had revised measuring in cm's and what to measure in what unit. What surprised me, and made me most happy, was the teamwork the kids showed. I didn't help any groups beyond correcting their unit of measurement or offering a suggested starting point to one group (e.g. the cone), they did it completely themselves. I love in the videos how you can see and hear them working together. They were patient, they took turns, they discussed, they disagreed and agreed, negotiated, proved, etc.
Because of all the inter-personal learning that was happening, it made this activity much richer than I had even intended it to be.
Today is the term 4 Digital Immersion PLG. This is when all the first year teachers to Manaiakalani come together for digital immersion, and the MDTA join them.
Today we are starting with talking about how our students learn..
Then Dorothy and Fiona created word clouds with our ideas.
All of this feeds into the idea that all students learn best, in different ways. This doesn't mean that every single student needs individualised content which best meets their preference. That's just not feasible. However it does mean, that teachers should include aspects of different learning styles into their planning to consider these students.
And hence...
Multi-modal sites!
These are Google Sites designed to have different types of content on them - videos, pictures, things to read, things to do, etc, all based around one general topic, idea or theme.
Why do this?
Not everyone learns the same, in the same way. We are limiting students by forcing them to learn in one particular way, and show their learning in one particular way.
Keep in mind that 'texts' does not mean a book!
Texts can be comic strips, video clips, a written text online or in a book, etc.
MULTI-MODAL IS NOT THE SAME AS MULTI-TEXTUAL.
I played around with sites and tried to remember everything I have learnt (back in April/May).
It was very helpful for me to help two teachers from my school who have no experience with Google Sites as I had to explain/show/etc which cemented my own learning.
This afternoon we had a staff meeting with Sue Pine, our maths PD lady.
After having a great observation and getting lots of testing done throughout the day, I was ready and eager to learn from her.
Now if you are anything like me, when somebody says 'algebra', you think of this...
This is exactly what I thought of - ala year 12 Calculus..
So, how the heck does this happen for my 8 year olds?
We started with this blue piece of paper. The questions at the bottom are
-how much does a T-shirt cost?
-how much is a drink?
Sue told us NOT to use algebraic equations to solve, so I used trial and error which made the most sense to me.
I first started with a t-shirt being worth $20, hence a drink being worth $2, based on the first equation. The second equation then didn't add up to $30.. so it couldn't be that..
So, I made the cost of the drink higher. I tried $17 for a shirt and $5 for a drink.. again, it didn't add up for the second equation. This time it was too much..
So I made the cost of the drink less.. this time $3 and the t shirt was $19.
Again, not enough for the second equation. So I made it in between - $4. and hence t-shirts cost $18.
Booyah!
Another way we could have solved it was by using what was the same in each equation - each one had one t shirt and one drink. Half of $44 is $22, so one shirt and one drink cost $22 together. In the second equation, you are left with $8 so each drink here costs $4.
Then we talked about the maths progressions and put them in order..
I see stuff like this all the time, especially on my Facebook feed where people fight over the answer. I now realise, this is algebra! This isn't just some silly game.
Have a go yourself!
I found this meeting with Sue very useful, as it broke down what algebra actually looks like for different aged children. It's not all about equations, (well not for the age of my students anyway..)
This morning I had my final observation from Paula Were (our literacy PD lady) on writing. To be honest, I was not feeling overly great about it - I was just feeling very tired, have pressure from uni assignments etc etc. Just not excited about it, ya know?
But I decided that whatever will be will be, and tried to just move on with my day.
I wanted to show Paula how I have been using videos in writing as I have found it so effective with our target students. Archana was with Paula (as she is the head of literacy) and the syndicate leader Aireen came to watch as well. Here is my planning for this lesson. My goals from previous lessons were
Teacher goals:
co-construct SC
teacher model how to write
scaffold through prompt
take a video of lesson as evidence
Firstly, we talked about the WALT and co-constructed the SC. This included me giving them an example sentence 'the girl went down the stairs' and the students recorded their suggestions about how to add detail to make the sentence better to get their head around what 'detail' meant.
Next, I introduced our video prompt. (0:00-0:20 only)
I played it once through, and asked the students to record whatever thought they had about the clip.
We went through the clip again, and I paused at particular parts I wanted to emphasise.
At these points I would scaffold the students to realise something the hadn't, use particular words (e.g. reflection), make them think deeper about a particular point (e.g the characters feelings).
After we had brainstormed lots of detail about the character, we then formed sentences which would make a paragraph. I wrote the first sentence for this to show students how we can combine ideas from different people and write it TOGETHER (i.e. teacher modelling).
Here is what we wrote together.
After this, I asked the students to go back to our WALT and SC and tick the things they thought we had done - they did this. One student pointed out that although we wrote we should include a simile, we didn't actually include one. I agreed, and said that can be our next steps for next time - making sure we do include one.
After this, the kids watched the rest of the clip (they were interested and hooked into this character and wanted to find out more..) and I went with Paula, Archana and Aireen. We interviewed a couple of the kids to check their understanding of the lesson (did they understand what the aim was? did they know how to achieve it? did they know who/what helped them?).
After that, Paula, Archana, Aireen and I discussed my lesson and checked it off against a teacher criteria for effective writing practice (I will link this doc here once I receive it).
Things to celebrate about this lesson
Using a resource that students all could connect and relate to
there was a lot of conversation about their own gaming consoles and the games they play
the character was the same approximate age as the students so they could connect to his daily experiences
Co-constructing the SC and ensuring students were able to refer back to it and check for themselves if they had achieved it
Referring back to the WALT throughout the lesson and making sure we only focused on that one aim
the students made spelling/punctuation/etc mistakes, but I purposely ignored these as it was not the focus of the lesson
one student also kept trying to jump ahead to the problem section of the narrative, but I kept him focused that we were only writing about the character
Getting positive feedback from my peers (sometimes teachers don't celebrate each others success explicitly, which did happen today and was awesome to hear!)
Next Steps
Have a specific vocabulary in mind that students will learn through the lesson - not just using words they already know
Ensuring ALL the students are equally actively involved (in the lesson one student did say a lot less than others)
I would love to hear your feedback on this lesson!
From someone somewhere, I was linked to this. This is an idea about what education in NZ will look like in 2025.. Have a read..
Even now, we are starting to see this type of education already - kids using VR and augmented reality (I myself have done this with the Anatomy 4D app), teaching kids to code and programme, and preparing them for jobs that don't yet exist.
Education has become an active social process, compared to the passive content-retention classrooms of the past. What will be the next big thing? How will this change the role and need for teachers?
On that note, today we did Hour of Code.
This is a digital coding programme is designed for children and adults alike, to slowly, step-by-step, introduce the key ideas behind game coding and get you doing each of these steps, before setting you off to make your own game/play around.
There are two main ways of coding..
Using blocks (i.e. like Scratch) and using Java script (i.e. like I did when I programmed the robot at Ulearn).
Here are two videos made up of screenshots, of me working through the two types of game formatting.
I found the Hour of Code really helpful and easy to use - it builds your skills one by one and exposes you to more complex ideas as you progress. This approach would be much better suited to kids, rather than jumping straight into using Scratch or Gamefroot with no preparation beforehand.
I think when I do coding with my kids (either end of this term, or next year..) I will follow this semi-structure.
1. Introduction to games (boardgames, knucklebones, card games etc) - aim: to build understanding of the purpose of games, the reason/need for instructions and get kids evaluating/reviewing games to see strengths and weaknesses.
2. Hour of code - aim: to build basic understanding of how game coding works
3. Use scratch to build onto basic game understandings - multiple characters, how to build in levels/points. Any game with no specified purpose - just practice!
4. Find a social problem in our community and design a game that will help/teach/inform about this social issue
5. Students form groups and design, then build, their own game using scratch.
I think I would also like to have a 'code club' as a lunchtime activity where students from any year level can come and code together to revise/build upon their skills.
Today I took four of my top students (for maths) and did a half hour session on decimals.
Although they don't necessarily NEED to know about decimals at this level, these students have the mental capability to understand this concept and actually have been asking to learn about it for a while..
Sue modelled to myself and another teacher Kaveeta last term how to use Decimats. I had never heard of these before, so was quite intrigued by that session. So for today's decimal session, I printed my own decimats and used them with the kids.
Firstly, we established what was one whole. These kids have a very solid understanding of fractions, so all I asked them to do was cover their 'whole' with the light orange squares. One of the boys instantly said 'these are tenths because ten pieces altogether make up one whole'. Amazing! The decimats afforded a visual way for the kids to see that the ten orange pieces did indeed cover/make up the 'whole' (the white piece of paper). We kept the 'whole' piece under our work all the time to remind us that with fractions and decimals, we are talking about something that is smaller than one whole.
Once we had established that the light orange squares covered one tenth of the whole each, I wrote down the number 0.1. We talked for a little bit here, to ensure that we understood the 1 in this number showed one tenth, not one whole. If it was one whole, it would be 1. Having the numbers written down, and having the decimats at the same time really helped clarify this.
Next, I gave the students some challenges...
(These I wrote down, not said allowed, to check if they understood the place value while written down)
Show me 0.8
Next, I tested them by asking them to work with their buddy..
After some initial 'huh?' about how they could show one whole number AND part of a number, they remembered that one whole is the same as ten tenths, so both pairs covered one 'whole' with tenths then used another 'whole' to show the 5 tenths/0.5... I was quite impressed!
Show me 1.3
Show me 1.9
Show me 2.5
Next, I introduced hundredths. I put ten small dark orange pieces on top of one light orange tenth. We talked about how that piece is EVEN smaller than one tenth, so the number must be bigger (i.e. one tenth is smaller than one fifth in reality, but the number/word is bigger - ten/five).
After some discussion, and various illustrations, they clicked that ten pieces inside ten pieces must mean that there are 100 pieces - hence one hundredths.
We did some 'show me...' using hundredths as well. Then we talked about thousandths. In all honesty, they got a bit lost here, but thats perfectly okay. Their minds had already been stretched so much in the past 20 minutes I wasn't going to go on and on about thousandths (and they don't need to know about them for Stage 5 maths anyway!).
Then we did some 'show me...' using all the different types of paper/decimal place value.
I would write down the number e.g. 2.43 and not explain it or give any hints. They worked out and discussed between themselves what the numbers meant - 2 whole, 4 tenths and 3 hundredths. Then they would use the paper to illustrate it.
Then I would ask them to explain it to me...
I was so proud of these four for pushing themselves to understand how decimals are connected to fractions. We hadn't talked about fractions in class for a few weeks (ala the school holidays) so it was hard and fast revision for them to get tenths so quickly. They definitely need more practice to truly understand the concept, and I would have liked to do some addition/subtraction of decimals using the decimats as well, but the curse of the lunchtime bell... Oh well, next week!
The decimats, just like when Sue used them, were a fantastic way for the kids to visualise how the pieces got smaller and smaller, even when their 'name' (e.g. hundredths) got larger. I will definitely be using this resource again, it was great!
I have been excited about this session ALL WEEK. It is called "A teacher tells how she made her classroom bigger than the TARDIS". Say whaaaaaaaattttt? I know, right? Hence my excitement.
Here is what the description on the booking sheet says..
"Meet a teacher whose uses LEARNZ in her 21st Century teaching and learning programme to extend the walls of her classroom, inspire learners, and make her time and effort go further. During this session, use your device(s) to step your way through a LEARNZ field trip experience with us. Take part in a short web conference as you “walk-the-walk” with us. Then take up the opportunity to register yourself with LEARNZ, set up a class, enrol and take part in a virtual field trip. Get familiar with how you will be supported on your LEARNZ journey. Find out about using LEARNZ to “Connect” people, places, communities, big ideas, the NZ Curriculum, and technology. Find out about the opportunities with LEARNZ to “Collaborate” in your class, syndicate, department, school, or Community of Learners (COL). Find out how you can “Innovate” using LEARNZ and what makes LEARNZ an innovative teaching and learning programme."
I am excited to learn about how to make my classroom bigger than the tardis because trips are so much effort to organise, you have to do it months in advance, get parent permisison and helpers, most of the time you have to pay for it (a major hinderance in low decile schools). It also doesn't allow you to do in-the-moment teaching type field trips. Doing digital field trips also affords you to go overseas, beyond your city, etc etc which wouldn't be possible in an everyday classroom anyways.
Any registered NZ teacher can access this resource for free.
There are two types of virtual field trips available - past and current. The current trips are pre-arranged and the topic decided by LEARNZ and there is a live components to it as well. Once a trip has happened, it is then stored on the website to be accessed in past tense (however you can't view what would have been the 'live' part).
The next trip is next week (week 1 of term 4). It is about Whats the plan Stan? (a National Civil Defence programme aimed to prepare kids for an emergency)
There are prizes available for teachers who complete the evaluation.
Even the curriculum links and AO's/KC's are provided!
You don't have to use the full programme - you can pick and choose what you want to do and how much you want to be involved. You can also choose to be a silent listening school or you can choose to be a speaking school, asking questions to other schools and the experts who are running the field trip.
The LEARNZ team also offer 30 minute introductions to each virtual field trip to help teachers understand the content, ask questions etc. The timetable for that can be found here.
Another awesome feature is that when you register, and type in your school name (hence location), LEARNZ suggests other teachers in your school or your area who are also registered, so you can get help if you are struggling and/or even work together on the trip. How cool!
There were so many different aspects that I almost felt quite overwhelmed, so to help organise my thinking I made a google drawing to simplify it for myself.
This resource was WAAAAAAYYYYY more than I thought it would be - I expected a walk through of the zoo that somebody had recorded sort of thing, maybe some 360 camera footage, but this is just incredible. So much more than I thought it would be.
Can't wait to try it out - maybe next year!
(The next one is literally next week, a bit late now...)
