Watch me teach!

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! 

Digital Immersion (Term 4, Week 1)

Today, and lately, I have been thinking about how digital technology will affect and change teaching more and more. At Ulearn, I experienced two major breakouts in this field - the OMGTech session and the session where a teacher explains how she did game coding with her class. 

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.

Breakout #7 - Ulearn16

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.

This is done through the LEARNZ website. 

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)

The description

The video

The planning

Student reading resource - with audio file opportunity. 

Student online independent activities. - with a self-marking function that the kids can see.

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...)

Breakout Two/Three - Ulearn 2016

(note - this blog post is tagged breakout two/three because they followed on from each other)

My second breakout is called 

Curriculum for the Future: The Digital Game

Here is the official description of this workshop 
"Curriculum for the Future: The Digital Game is a free digital game designed to generate thought-provoking conversations about learning and curriculum today and in the future. This app is the first resource of its kind to be produced by NZCER in collaboration with Gamelab Ltd. The designers, Rachel (NZCER) and Dan (Gamelab) will introduce the game and discuss how it can be used in a staffroom or classroom to open up thinking and discussion about education."

For context, here is an explanation of the game. 
Curriculum for the Future Promo Video from Soulhaven on Vimeo.

My thoughts and reflections

Link to the game

This game is created so challenge the way people (adults and children alike) think about big issues. Yes, you, a child, are entitled to an opinion and you are allowed to fight for that opinion. It deals with greater issues as well like having to persuade someone to agree to your idea, while still respecting their opinion. It can almost become a manipulation of that person? 

How it can be used in the classroom...
Before the actual game was made, a paper version existed.. Using the paper version first would be great as it sets up the mindset and attitude needed to play the game without the impact and distraction of the digital aspect. When playing the digital game, it would be good to have students in groups so they have people to bounce ideas off and help them understand the concepts involved. I even heard other teachers discussing how they would do this with their staff as a PD. Great idea!

My third breakout is called 

Game design through the looking glass — game design for citizenship

Here is the official description of this workshop 
"A 25 minute taster session on one teacher's story about game design for citizenship using the context of the NZTA 2016 Game Competition. Asking, What does Game Design / Game Creation look and sound like in the classroom and how might this contribute to the conditions to learn about citizenship?"

My thoughts and reflections

This session was so good! I really wanted to see an example of how a teacher has introduced and used gaming in their classroom so I could have an idea for myself.
This teacher, Diana-Grace Morris, began in term 1 by getting the kids to play and evaluate games. Not digital games, normal games. Like knuckle-bones, chess and various other board games. I loved that she did this first, as it would set up expectations and mindsets of how digital games came about, are made the way they are, and used. Very important to establish before you introduce the new and exciting game-maker itself. Next, they began designing a game for the competition they were involved with. This competition also runs next year so will be awesome to be a part of next year for more prepared teachers (I need to get my head around it first!). Diana's class was split up into groups, whom each made a game. Diana talked about how in her class, she let the kids choose their own groups (she did this on purpose). Of course, the kids all went with their friend group. The kids soon realised that it just wouldn't work - themselves, and their friends, typically had similar interests. So, there was a group of writers, a group of coders etc. The kids then had to move themselves around so they could maximise their skill-set. This then meant working with people they typically wouldn't work with and building those social skills. In the end, each group was made up of a writer, a coder, a designer etc etc. I didn't think about the roles that would be required to make a game, so this was a good point to reflect on.

I loved this workshop because it gave me some kind of framework to think about how I could possibly include gaming/coding in my class next year. First, let them play games and evaluate them. Get the critical thinking happening before actually creating annnny game or code or anything. It takes time. Be patient. 

Engagement in reading!

This week I have introduced Literacy Circles to my class. They are split up into 5 different groups.

I have not done anything special or different with the planning itself of this programme, I have just used Sheena Cameron's exemplars. What I thought was worth sharing, was how much it has engaged my kids, particularly the boys (who stereotypically, do not enjoy reading).

In my class, it has especially seemed to engage the boys who achieve on the lower end of the spectrum, which is so exciting to see! They have never read chapter books before, and I literally have to take the books off them to get them to stop reading. 

All the kids WANT to read their books. They are so happy to have a change up in their reading programme, (even though they are still doing a comprehension focus on top of the literacy circles so have other work to complete).

I filmed this shortly after explaining the tasks and handing out the books - 

Every kid in the class, either reading, or whom had already finished their allocated chapters.

Today as well, while having 'Managing Self' type time (where students have to finish off certain things, and manage themselves in order to do so), I found more kids reading independently..

I feel so happy that I have provided my students with something exciting, new and different when they are feeling so tired of doing the same sorts of tasks all the time (in preparation for testing). I do believe that we can balance both a time for focusing and preparation for testing, and keeping things interesting for students. 

Celebrating Eid!

There is only one child in my class who is not Maori/Pasifika - he is Afghani. 

This is him.

As the only kid who isn't Maori/Pasifika, sometimes he misses out a bit.. 

As a school we have week long celebrations for Maori language week, Tongan language week, Cook Island language week, Samoan language week (etc), but there is no Afghani language week... 

So everybody else got a celebration of their culture, and he, and his little brothers, didn't. 

So in Room 6, we made our own celebration! 

Today was Eid, a Muslim celebration which marks the end of Ramadan. It is celebrated by visiting and spending time with family and friends, sharing a feast together, buying and wearing fine new clothes and giving gifts to others. We made the whole day about Eid. 

The boy, Mojtaba, was delighted. Archana and I had told him beforehand that we were doing something special for Eid, and he was bubbling with excitement when he turned up to school this morning! 

To begin our day, I discussed with the class how we celebrated everyones culture through the various language weeks (and more!), but that one culture from our class didn't have a language week, and thats not fair that we didn't celebrate theirs! The kids all nodded in agreement. They understood. Even though they know nothing about Afghanistan and Muslim holidays, they understood that Mojtaba's culture was just as important as theirs and that we should celebrate it all the same. These are some pretty empathetic 8 year olds, tell you what. 

We had several aspects to our day 

-We learnt a song that explains how Eid is celebrated

-We learnt how to say 'Eid Mubarak' and greet people properly

-Decorated cookies that we could then give to people

-Made cards to wish people a happy Eid day

-Ate Sheer Pudding

The rest of the class were so keen to try out the new Afghani food, with some then practising how to be polite about not liking it (haha!). They loved the idea of giving a card and cookie to somebody to wish them Eid Mubarak! The boys even spent the day looking after Mojtaba's two younger brothers who came to celebrate with us.

It was a great day all around. I was so proud of the kids and how enthusiastic they were to learn about the Afghani culture and gives things a go!

Digital Immersion/Annual Hui (Term 3, Week 5)

Today the MDTA's were invited to the Manaiakalani Annual Hui, held at the Panmure Yacht & Boating Club. It was a great day, with lots of different speakers having their bit, all coming together to share the message of the work Manaiakalani has done over the past year. 

First up were the student ambassadors from each of the 12 schools. They each shared part of their learning which demonstrated use of digital affordance, the learn create share pedagogy, amazing teacher creativity or student creativity with their blogs. 

Next up were the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers, sponsored by the SPARK Foundation. They each shared about the research they have been conducting this year. I created this sketch-note to help myself remember key things that different people presented that I thought were awesome/inspirational;/thought-provoking. 

After morning tea was the team from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre presenting data collected from the 12 Manaiakalani schools and introducing the next set of ideas and goals to work on. Again, I created a sketch-note to record my thought process while they talked.

After this, Russell Burt, prinicipal of Point England School, put things very simply. We know how to move the 'bottom' students to the 'middle', and only some of us are doing that, and now the team from Woolf Fisher had just told us how to get the 'middle' students to the 'top'. Russell's message - JUST DO IT! It is for the benefit of your students. You as a teacher choosing not to do the things we know will work because you don't like them, agree with them, whatever, is to the detriment of your students, so get over it, and do it for your kids.

After lunch, Dorothy talked the crowd through the Manaiakalani Outreach clusters. These are groups of schools around the country which want 'our recipe' for success with low decile low achieving students. Although it is not that simple, these outreach clusters are now on a fast-tracked 3 year programme modelled from the Tamaki cluster so they can accelerate their students as well. 

I created another sketch-note the record snippets of the discussion as it went along.

Overall, it was an awesome day at the annual hui. I learnt a lot about Manaiakalani (when I thought I knew everything... ha!) and definitely got some food for thought to reflect on for my own practice. 

Kia kaha Manaiakalani!

The learning pit!

This afternoon we had a staff meeting run by Sue Pine, our maths PD facilitator.

She reminded us that as teachers, we are never in the position of uncomfortable learning and the 'unknown', i.e. the learning pit. We are always the ones who know everything, and yet we expect out students to be comfortable being uncomfortable. 

Sourced from http://francinemassue.weebly.com/the-learning-pit.html

We discussed different things we were struggling with in maths, that were leaving us 'in the pit'. It was refreshing that a lot of us were struggling with the same things.

She then introduced some ways to encourage students to talk within themselves productively about their learning. 

For both terms 2 and 3, the senior syndicate has done the Week of Inspirational Maths upon Sue's recommendation. This is a great way to build class norms about how we act and think in maths.

We discussed..

What do good maths learners do?

They...

• Ask questions when they don’t understand
• Explain their thinking so others can understand
• Use different ways to represent their solutions (visual,
• equipment)
• Revise their thinking when they learn new information or
• strategies
• Understand that mistakes are learning opportunities
• Value a deep understanding not speed
• Check that their solution is sensible
• Check back in with the problem and what it is asking
• Support other mathematicians to develop their understanding

Sue reminded us that we need to explicitly talk about those things in our classes, and have it displayed somewhere in our class so students and us as teachers can always remember. 

Next we discussed how we can support our students to be those good maths learners we want them to be.. 

A few key ways are 

• ensure groups are mixed ability (not 'smart' groups and 'low' groups)
• ensure groups are not larger than 4 students 
• giving students roles within the group (e.g. in picture below)
• giving students question prompts to use
• explicitly teaching group/teamwork skills

One key thing Sue talked about that really resonated with me was the idea of the 'low status of learners'. This means, that there are some students with low self-efficacy, no confidence, etc., so they sit and don't try in group work. Even when they do, other students see them as 'low status' and often don't even listen to what they have to say, assuming they don't know anything and/or are wrong. This resonated with me because this is exactly what my case study for uni was about. I noticed four of the students in my own class had very low self-efficacy in maths, so I wanted to increase that. One gem moment from my case study was one of my students Lopiseni. He often sits back, doesn't try, doesn't engage in group discussions and lets others do the work. One day however, as I was browsing from group-to-group, I found his group were very confused on their problem. The girl who was scribing was leading the group down the wrong track, and none of them seemed to realise it. I asked Lopiseni what he thought, and straight away he offered a helpful strategy that would bring the group back to the right path. He knew all along, but either didn't want to say, or his group wouldn't listen. He then kind of took over the group, with his confidence boosted, and together they found the answer to the problem. This is exactly what Sue was talking about - finding those opportunities to lift up those 'low status' students, so they can fly on their own. That moment definitely was a highlight of that day. 

Something that really challenged me was Sue's idea that we act as if maths thinking is private. In all learning areas, students are encouraged to talk, think, connect, predict etc. In maths however, we seem to expect them to just think and write and know. Why is there such a difference? Why is reading knowledge so social, so discussable, so debatable between students, but maths isn't? Why is maths always 'this' answer or its not. Why is it so individual, when no other curriculum area is? Sue challenged us to think about the way we think about maths, because that influences the way our students do. If we can be comfortable in the learning pit as teachers, this is how our students will learn to do the same. We need to challenge ourselves to change our own conceptions about maths, brought about by the rote-learning we all did as kids. Why did we do that? Was it helpful? How did it effect our overall picture of learning, or what makes a 'good' learner?

I came away with lots to think about from Sue's PD today. Some of it a celebration of my students success, some of it questioning my own personal experiences and beliefs about teaching maths.. Food for thought anyone?? 

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!