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.

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. 

Connecting reading with real life!

Today for guided reading I chose a story about chess, as a way to support my girls who were interested in it last week. (Read previous blog post here, Read the story I am discussing, here).

In the story, one girl is being taught how to play chess by her 'expert' sister. As we read along, I used real chess pieces to visually support their learning and help them make connections. 

On page 12, (second photo) the main character uses words like 'horse' and 'castle', and her expert sister corrects her with the right words - rook and knight. At this point, I would bring out a rook and knight and we would talk about why Miri would of called them horse/castle, was she really wrong to call it that, what was its 'proper' name etc. This continued throughout the story.. (e.g. pawn, bishop, king). This allowed students to match the word from the story with a physical thing right in front of them, something they could touch and hold and connect with. 

After we read, I pulled out the chess board and the students helped me put out all the pieces in the right places. We split the group in half, forming two teams (one for each side of the chess board). As the story described how the different pieces moved, we practised doing this with the right piece, on the real chessboard so the students could connect the word that described the action, with the real action (e.g. they didn't know what diagonally meant for the bishop, so I showed them). 

Then, we started a real game! I tried my best to stay out of the game, and be an observer. Both of the two groups I did this with showed a real understanding of the 'strategy' the story talks about that you need to play chess, thinking a few moves ahead, remembering the end goal of capturing the king. 

 When the bell went for morning tea, the group was still playing and was sad to leave!

I felt that the students really connected with what they had read, more so than any other story we have read this term, and by having a more abstract kind of follow up activity, they were excited for a change of routine. By the end of it, they had learnt new words and phrases from the book, but had also cemented their understanding of the events in the story by exploring those events themselves!

Kia kaha kids!

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! 

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!

End of term 2!

The same as last term, I sent my students a survey to find out their thoughts and feelings about their learning this term.

It becomes obvious who really thought about the questions and who just wrote anything. 

You can read their responses here.

For a quick overview, I have taken some screenshots.

For the questions 'what was something Miss Ashley was really good at?', and 'what is something Miss Ashley can get better at?'

Things I was good at - soccer, growth mindsets, helping, reading with the students, helping them with maths and teaching them how to tell the time. 

Things the students think I can better at - learning other languages (this has been a focus this term and I always say "I'm trying, I'm only learning!" when pronouncing other languages). Discussing with Archana, we think the students didn't really understand what this question was asking them, but that's alright.

It was awesome to see most of the students thinking hard about what they have learnt throughout the term. Lots of students learnt doubles, how to group numbers (i.e. 2 lots of 3 is 6, which is early multiplicative thinking), what a half and quarter is, equations with blocks (using physical materials to help him solve problems), skip counting and times tables. Yay!

We have had a real focus this term on making connections between the text and their own lives, using powerful words to describe characters/settings in details, and sounding out unknown words and learning their meaning.

Kiwi-can is an outside provider who comes into the school and teaches students values and some life-skills. A lot of my students remembered learning about integrity, taking ownership of their own actions and being held accountable for their own learning and actions.

I also put in a couple questions to get their thoughts about what they want to learn about next term.

We did a two week unit on plants this term, and myself and Archana want to do the same again next term. I asked the students to vote out of a given list which things they wanted to learn about (green column) and then if they had anything else they wanted to learn about (blue column). 

My students are getting better and better at thinking about their own learning, and they enjoy having their voice heard and being asked what they want to learn - having some of the control back. 

Definitely some food for thought in here!

Integration success!

Today Anne Sinclair from Manaiakalani came to observe Archana and I. 

We chose to do an integrated literacy and numeracy lesson around fruit kebabs.

First students watched a video about how to make a fruit kebab. 

Then they had to tell us (the teachers) how to make the fruit kebab - the aim was to speak in full sentences, use text connectives like 'next, first, then, after', and use specific verbs. 

It was hilarious! The kids loved having the control over us and telling us what to do. They started off with things like 'pick it up', 'put it on', etc. So we played along and were silly with them, doing the wrong things, in the wrong order etc. Then Archana and I role played being on the phone to each other, and explaining the process to each other. We used the phone example because students would understand that we can't see each other and can't physically help each other, you can only use words, so you have to be careful and specific about what you say. We followed on with a sequencing activity, then introduced our maths focus, where students had to find out how many pieces of each type of fruit we would need, for the whole class to make a kebab each. 

After Anne left, we also then made real kebabs!

Here is Anne's feedback - 

The class are really responsive to both of you as co-teachers and you have set a really inclusive atmosphere. It is a happy and comfortable classroom, where there is evidence of respect and wanting to learn. After the roll the learners went quickly to their tables and listened/viewed the video through headphones and their chromebooks (as data projector broken). You are very relaxed Ashley and it shows in the way you interact with the learners. You know them well and you and Archana are working as a pair, so they are getting two sets of ideas, two sets of instructions, two sets of explanations, two sets of directions and two sets of feedback and support. I like the way you made the create real and then did a role play with the learners, pretending you did not know how to make a fruit kebab. The pretend conversation on the phone was such a good motivation to make them think more deeply on giving instructions. They were so excited to give you the directions.

Getting them to talk to each other and run through the steps with a partner also consolidated the learning for them and when they explained to you it was fun making the connections with real descriptive words - stab the fruit, grab a stick, what kind of stick, stick on the pointy top, poke it on the pointy top. After the class tried giving the instructions you then gave the class a role play by you and Archana giving an example of using clear instructions. You used a recipe and followed the steps. The children were interested in your role play and they took notice of the process.  

The follow up of the instructions were clear and easy to understand. By asking the class to repeat the steps and adding to their knowledge base in a way that they could both hear and see what it would look like, was helpful to their learning. It was great to see you using drama to reinforce and interest the learners in so many skills and to integrate literacy and maths in such a creative way. I could see how engaged the learners were, but there was one small boy who looked lost so wondered what was going on with him.

Introducing the next task was quickly achieved and you were very well organised and planned so the children could get started.  Setting up the task to involve them immediately in understanding the steps was novel and engaging. They all became involved and really enjoyed the competitive nature of the task.  Ashley by moving around the class and checking in with them you were able to evaluate where the learners were in their understanding and those who were struggling. The learners work well together and by setting time limits you are getting through lot more teaching and learning. It is important to keep the pace and energy of the lesson up, as I noticed a lot of post weekend tired learners (who may also have been hungry, as they were looking at the food longingly).  Mixing the lesson up constantly and trying different approaches also helps with the management of the learning and behaviour and gives urgency in the learning.

When they came back to the mat for the next instruction they were very excited, so be clear as to what you wanted them to do and how to respond. If you give a general instruction you will get a general response so be very explicit in your instructions. Taking the lesson into maths was a great extension and it was real and authentic in the context. Some of the learners had trouble visualising what the numbers were and it took a while to elicit the answer from the whole class.  Good to split the class into smaller groups to do the discussion and this worked well. By getting them to calculate the quantities by drawing or using words or numbers of how many of the ingredients the whole class will need to make the kebabs for each person gave them permission to try different strategies. I liked the way you gave them choice as to the strategies the learners would use to work this out.  It was interesting to watch the thinking and to see the prompts you and Archana used to trigger ideas.

The learners then explained their strategy and it was great to see such in-depth thinking happening, where they had to justify their thinking. I liked the way they were struggling, but keeping on as they came up with new ideas from new information. Giving them the locus of control was an important part of your teaching and the learners responded really well to having the ‘power’. With 2 of you in the class you were able to get through so much more and connect with all the learners, so they experienced success. The different approaches also gave rise to discussion after and the chance for the learners to see more than one way of solving a problem. I like the way you and Archana do reflection-in-action and decide on teaching strategies on the ‘fly’ . So  - perhaps, maybe, shall we, is common language between the 2 of you as you co-teach. Talking aloud helps the students to see it is ok to talk about their learning.

Thank you both for giving me such an interesting morning with authentic use of integration, motivation, ‘create’, role play, instruction, direction, reflection, problem solving, teaching and learning! Kite pai!

Anne Sinclair (Professional Supervisor MDTA)

June 20th, 2016

Responding to critical literacy

This afternoon I attended a presentation run by our deputy principal Michelle, who is currently on study leave. She presented her ideas, thoughts and reflection on a critical literacy paper she has been working on. 

Here is her summary

What got me thinking was the conversations she asked us to have..
a simple question like

"what is culture?"

Other teachers who I was discussing with, who I thought I knew well, were very quick to say "ethnicity". This very quickly showed differences in teaching pedagogies that otherwise wouldn't have been so evident. I personally believe that cultures are the ideas, customs, traditions of a particular group of people in a particular place. You can have an ethnic culture; for example the 'Kiwi' culture, a group of norms held by a group of people. You can have your home culture, school culture, team culture, family culture, ethnic culture etc. Each of those groups may hold slightly different ideas, traditions and customs, hence making it its own culture.

Another thing that got me thinking was this image Michelle showed us

This diagram says that when we normally think of 'culture', we think of the things above water. These are the 'culture is ethnicity' type things - dance, language, art, games, food etc. Very basic level, obvious physical signs that explain or represent that culture. When really, culture involves all the things below the water line as well. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the 'below the water' things underpin the 'above the water' things. Notions of modesty, concepts of beauty, ideals governing child raising, courtship practices, and notions of adolescence all underpin the way children dress in their various cultures. This becomes clear as they have 'church' clothes, 'school' clothes and 'home' clothes. And they don't need to be told which clothes to wear to each place. Even as children, they have a very clear understanding of what is acceptable to wear at different locations, wether they realise consciously or not. 

I'm curious.. what does culture mean to you?

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