Motivation and an Inviting Shop Window

As an avid shopper that has spent a fair few years enjoying London shops and still dream of Saturday shopping sprees down Oxford Street, this week's Manaiakalani DFI course hit a certain cord with me.

Secondly it connected nicely (as things often do) to a conversation I had had earlier in the week with a friend in PR, who explained to me the importance of presenting well formatted reports. He explained how an amazing, however unformatted, 'messy' report, can be turned away or not thought as highly of as a less superior flashy looking one.

For me who has never been one for fancy lettering or borders, making things pretty makes me panic. I don't know weather it is a patience thing or just the fact that it has always taken me three times longer than other to write something, and that I have always been ashamed of my spelling so that by the time I'm finished I just want it gone.

However the connotations I gained through the following words allowed me to see the dressing up of work as something as important as an impressive shop window or nicely laid out shop.

“these windows inspire me to go in”

“they need to sell from this.

“....Trying to represent that inner window so that when someone is walking past they go ‘oh wow, I really want to go into that store...”

The session showcased the use of Google Sites as away of sharing learning opportunities with our students, and we learned the importance of a well laid out, captivating site, verses the opposite.

and.... I surprised myself.

My Website

Here are some key points from the session:

To motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum we need to be creative ourselves.

Working in a Manaiakalani school we can't just expect the device to motivate, it is what we do with the technology (the possibilities) that motivates.

We need to think of multimodal ways of presenting the learning, and different types of literacies to extend and deepen learning.

We should think about the texts we are giving them, how can we use these texts to motivate students through cognitive engagement.

Draw them in so they are behaviourally engaged.

We all have different ways of connecting to learning, if we only teach and present in one way, only those that learn that way will succeed. This struck a cord with me, a student that traditional ways of teaching didn't suit.

Food for thought.... and motivation to take time and put the effort in to make presentations look engaging.

My Digital Pepeha

Here is today's learning Manaiakalani DFI. 

This is my Pepeha.

Transferring Data From Etap To Google Sheets

Not only have I discovered how to transfer data from Etap to google sheets, but also to screen cast. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KPj_cTEmI-XpgVssXIlUihfLO2gzKrz8

The other fabulous learning I took away from the day, were the possibilities google forms have for teaching and learning.

During the day I created a student reflection form using SOLO Taxonomy. I will attach this to the students learning site for them to reflect on after learning sessions. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive 2018

As a teacher within Manaiakalani I have been given the wonderful opportunity to accelerate my learning in Digital Fluency. This is not only a personal opportunity for growth, it will  provide me with the knowledge and skills to influence the learning outcomes of my students.

Session One

It is great to have this opportunity to accelerate my acquisition of digital fluency.
Already in one session I have discovered:

Those little google extensions, tools such as a timer, dictionary, slide player. With a click of a button it pops up.

How to create Docs inserting pictures into a table, with each box having background colour and by making the lines invisible by making them the same colour as the background (had never thought of that) by golly it looks fabulous. No longer will my Docs look jumbled. For someone that was never a 'pretty border and lettering person' this is going to be a fast and effective way to make newsletters, posters and resources looks professional. 

The moment I had a wee giggle to myself was the organisation of folders and documents in drive, and Gerald's comments about drive being like a desk at school, reflective of either a tidy desk whereby items can be found easily or the messy desk whereby frustration and lost items become a regular occurrence. By opening up the folder you intend to keep the document in before making the new doc it will already be organised. Yes I was one of those messy desk girls, everything crammed in, with no organisation at all. The organisation tips may indeed change my life!

Using headings, subheadings, that link up with to table of contents when creating a Doc was new learning today. Also command F to find any word on a webpage, wow if I had only known this while I was studying.

I can feel my confidence growing already. 

What am I taking back to Room 3 this week?

Naming their work inserting their name and their title.

Opening up a Doc in their Maths, Literacy, Inquiry folder.

Create any Docs I make this week with tables and images. 

The Log

Description

Following on from a raging storm the previous night, I dragged a large log (part of a tree fallen down in the playground) into the classroom and into he middle of the mat.
This was the day Jude Parks, our wonderful Literacy Facilitator, was visiting Room 3.
There was some discussion regarding jumping on teachable moments and she observed as the children sat round describing the log, feeling it, smelling it, looking at the moss that covered it. Through the discussion vocabulary was explored, and new vocabulary gifted and used (including students offering translations of words in samoan).
The following day, after a PLD staff meeting lead by Jude on the importance of giving students the opportunity to speak and build oral language, we revisited the log.
This time the students wrote down their vocabulary and descriptive phrases. I facilitated by giving them prompts.
"What does it smell like?"
"It is as heavy as what?" when adjectives were given.
"Does this log remind you of an experience you have had?

Once the students brainstormed vocabuary. I introduced the photo of the forest. "Talk about what you see in the ngahere (forest)."

This was followed by a video clip of New Zealand rainforest, with bird calls, streams running through and views of the canopy. Again the children talked about what they saw and heard.

Rainforest Video

Finally it was time to write a story about the forest. Children had plenty to draw on they planned their writing drawing on vocabulary that had been explored earlier, and produced descriptive pieces of writing.

Significance

The significance of this is the valuable opportunity to develop oracy. The gifting, exploring, sharing, and playing with vocabulary lead to beautiful writing by the students. Children were motivated to talk, and share their ideas through their writing.
I felt that students sharing the translation of vocabulary in their own language shows the connections they were making, and their want for communication in both English and Samoan, and the value they place on this.

Learning

Key learning I gained from this is that vocabulary has to be connected to experience. Giving multiple opportunities to build up, and on their vocabulary and ideas (physical log, photo of the forrest where it could have come from, video and connections to own experiences), allowed them to build understanding and image the meaning behind words.
Relating the object to their own memories triggered prior knowledge and experiences that many expressed through their writing.
Having something real to touch, smell, look closely at triggered students sharing the translation of words in their own language. This was the first time a particular student had openly offered this language to me and the rest of the class.
Jumping on teachable moments gave them something real, concrete, and in context. It is easy to just touch on these moments during a lesson, but the depth that came from continuing to explore the subject, drawing out vocabulary, experiences and knowledge and plenty of opportunities for student talk took the learning to a new level.
Where to next? To be observant of opportunities like this in the future. To see objects and experiences from the students perceptions. I will try to not assume that students have vocabulary, meaning and knowledge, and instead help to build this through experiences such as these.

#IMMOOC Why is innovation in education so crucial today?

I'm so excited to be connecting with #IMMOOC Season 3
http://sumo.ly/GhMn
Here is my response to the blog prompt.

Why is innovation in education so crucial today?

Not only is there large disparity of academic achievement among population groups in New Zealand, but our world is changing. I feel education needs to be responsive to these realities. 

I believe it is crucial for all students get a broad understanding of the world they live in, and the skills and attitudes they will need to actively participate in life e.g. problem solving skills, collaboration with diverse groups of people, a love of learning and a growth mindset, to name a few. 

Secondly there is change in NZ towards Innovative Learning Environments. An Innovative Learning Environment is dynamic. Working with large amounts of students in an open space, all with their own culture, identity, personalities and learning needs, calls for us to be adaptive in our practice and flexible in our thinking. 

Furthermore, innovation of practice is exciting. It involves us to take risks and grow as learners ourselves. 

Innovation to me means taking all that we know from our experiences, skills, knowledge, research into best practice, and adapting it, personalising it to best meet the needs of the students we are working with. It allows me to think outside the box, be creative with my practice, and find new ways for my students to make those all important connections.

A Transport System of the Future By Community 3

Term 2 

Reflecting On My 'Where To From Here' From Term 1 2017

As an inquiry into developing the skills of Year 3 writers through motivation, purpose and a love of literacy, my previous post outlined my 'Where to from Heres' after Term 1 of 2017. My next steps focused on the development and use of interesting vocabulary across genre, motivation and a purpose for writing, and explicitly teaching the writing process. I kept this as a focus throughout Term 2 and the outcome of this is shown below.

Transport System of the Future By Community 3  

How The 'Transport System of the Future' Came to Be

Inspiration: Students reading a few books on sustainable energy, sparked their interest and wonderings about the hole in the ozone layer. I found a beautiful story on the literacy shed about wind farms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nd9OuX7Bd4

Plan, Draft and Edit:
As we had been focusing on descriptive writing, the students collaboratively created the text, using google slides, to describe each page of the story. The story of course had to make sense, therefore the editing process taught them a lot about using the same tense and sequencing. 

Sharing: 
This is their version of the story

The Windmill Farmer


Taking Their Learning Further

I saw The Future Transport Competition by NZ Transport Agency and New Zealand Government and thought it would tie in nicely, and take their learning further. 

They investigated past and present transport, discovered problems they wanted to fix e.g. petrol cars damaging our ozone layer, too many traffic jams and crashes on our roads. They asked questions and investigated the answers... I created a blendspace for resources they could easily access.

They took their learning journeys from there. They created designs and wrote about them, used explain everything to make the animated videos and imovie to create the video.

We made a google site to combine all their ideas together and share them with the world.

Loads of fun. They are going to be gutted if they don't win lol. 

Where to from here... 

1) Building up each idea with supporting details. 

2) Improvement of spelling and handwriting without detracting from the main focus of developing ideas, vocabulary and structure. 

Co-teaching in Literacy and Maths

The benefits of co-teaching in teams of two, a reflection on co-teaching with the lovely Rachel Drum: 

• Bouncing off each other, a double act; jumping in, adding on, asking each other questions. Having an extra set of eyes and ears on the learners, Who is having difficulty understanding this? Who needs extra help? Who gets this and needs extending?

• Having opportunities to peel off students that need the extra help, whilst the other teacher takes the main group.

• Drawing together commonalities of learning needs. It feels easier to target learners needs through flexible groupings.

• Children able to flow between teachers, listening to teaching and joining in if they feel if it is learning they need. 

• Different teacher observations of learning behaviours. Each teacher may have different and similar views and relationships with the learner. Ideas can be shared.  

• Fluid groupings, children flow between groups according to their needs.

• Learning from each other. Being able to observe best practice as it happens naturally in the classroom setting. Taking ideas and innovating them to suit own teaching style and the needs of your learners.

• Fun and dynamic teaching!

A Purpose For Writing, and a Focus on Vocabulary and Structure

Intrinsic Motivation to Write

Does this seem familiar? Week 1 of the first school term, students given the prompt,

"Today we are going to write about our holidays". 

Some children start writing furiously, sharing their moment to moment account of action packed holidays. Others sit staring off into space, deciphering whether the teacher means writing about the video games they played with their brother or going to work with dad. The holidays for what they were, seemed like a life time ago now that they are back at school. 

"Why do I have to do this? It is so boring...." 

"I wonder what it is like to go to the adventure park, or on a plane like some of the other kids?... Mum said she would take us to the beach when she gets time off from her night job, at the moment she needs to sleep. Why do I have to do this dumb writing stuff? I don't know what to write.... In the holidays I played video games with my brother, I won!.... now what?" 

What I noticed in that first week were blank gazes, reluctance to write, little knowledge or evidence of the writing process and limited experiences or ideas shared through writing. The first step was to get my learners excited about writing, to give students a purpose to write, and experiences to write about.

This is what happened...

Planting a Seed 

Seeing the 'Why' Behind Writing

Motivated by their curiosity of the living world, and an opportunity to build on prior knowledge of growing plants from the previous school year, the children became horticultural experts. The aim: To use their knowledge of plants to teach others. 

Introducing the Purpose of the Writing; the use of a little drama, humour and a challenge:

Humorously I acted out my experience last year planting seeds with the year 1's, who of course for the purpose of this, knew very little of such matters. From here I set a writing challenge for the children. 

The children were to give a seed packet to a Year 1 buddy. This packet would contain a bean seed, instructions for planting, and a report about plants so their little friends could learn all about the plant they are growing. 

Of course this would require the children to become experts on plants themselves.

Using the Writing Process to Create, with Inspiration as the Fuel:

In order for the children experience success they would need to have content to write about. Feeding in of ideas came from language experiences, activities and reading e.g. planting a seed themselves and recording the steps, reading books about plants, reading and completing science experiments on photosynthesis, plants creating water vapour, and the needs of a plant for survival. 

This would be the fuel for their writing. 

Doubts crept in when I glanced over at other colleagues, as they completed their 8th piece of writing within those first few weeks, and years of pressure to have students writing everyday. Structured writing sessions seemed a stark comparison as my students explored, played, read, observed and talked about their discoveries. But when the writing came, it came with vigour. The children were serious about sharing their knowledge. They used content specific vocabulary and showed a clear understanding of the topic they were writing about. 

Aiming High and Celebrating Success:

According to the Literacy Learning Progressions by the end of Year 3 children need to "draw on knowledge and skills that include: using increasingly specific words and phrases (e.g., adjectives and more precise nouns and verbs) that are appropriate to the content of the text (http://literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz)."

One thing I took away from an ALL (Accelerated Literacy Learning) conference I attended this year was the concept of knowing where students need to be by the end of three years at school and working to those expectations instead of concentrating on filling in gaps in students learning from previous years. 

Also the words "What is going to get you the most bang for your buck? (Anna- The All facilitator I have been working with)", resonated as I contemplated the learning focus I wanted students to achieve. What learning intention would lift a piece of writing to meet the Year 3 standard?

Learning Intention: WALT use interesting vocabulary in our writing. 

Therefore it was my job was to ensure using context specific vocabulary was achievable for all, no matter whether students were writing two sentences or two pages. Words were explored, defined, used and celebrated. Words and their definitions were made visible around the classroom. Language experiences and the world of science gave students new and exciting vocabulary that they were able to use in their writing. Even shorter texts came alive with words such as water vapour and germination. 

Students Sharing Their Beautiful Thinking, Language and Observations of the World:

"After three years at school, students independently create texts using a process that will help them achieve their specific purpose for writing. Where appropriate, their texts are clearly directed to a particular audience through appropriate choice of content, language, and text form (http://literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz)."

WALT structure our writing to suit the purpose.

The given task consisted of two different text structures, procedural and report writing. The purpose of each type of writing was discussed in relation to the task.  

Examples of procedural wring and reports were picked apart with the students to show the features and identify success criteria. 

Children planned their procedural piece as they planted a seed, recording the 'bossy verbs' they would use, as they completed the activity themselves. Drawing diagrams to illustrated what they were doing. "How could they make their instructions more explicit? What will the reader need to know? Where should they plant their seed? Why? How deep does the seed need to be?"

They had a plan to guide their draft. Their main ideas already in front of them, and words to expand these ideas further, at forefront of their minds, ready to put down on paper. This was the same when it came to their report. Excited about sharing their scientific vocabulary and all their new learning, their ideas flowed. 

Double Dosing For Those Who Need It

All children needed to experience success in achieving the learning intentions. This meant ensuring those children with more limited language experiences understood the vocabulary, and the text structures. Before each lesson I would take a group of students and front load them by exposing them to the learning that they would be exploring further within that day's literacy session. This could have consisted of watching a video on photosynthesis and pulling out key vocabulary, or reading a report on elephants and identifying the structural features. This not only double dosed these children with the knowledge and skills needed but gave them the confidence to answer questions and share ideas in class. They came to each literacy session with prior knowledge and experience to share. 

Where To From Here?

1) Keep the Learning Intention, using interesting vocabulary, as a focus throughout the term, as the text type changes to meet other writing purposes e.g. descriptive or narrative. Celebrate their success in achieving this and create an environment where words are discovered, shared, explored, played with, and used to add flavour to their writing. 

2) Continue to make sure that children are not only inspired to write, with a purpose fuelling their writing, but they have content to write about. 

3) Explicitly teach the writing process, a need made evident from observing my learners writing behaviours.

My Past Misconceptions Teaching With SOLO

How I Used To Teach With SOLO

Had a great discussion with Jane my colleague today about how, when I first started using SOLO it would be all about the maps. We (the children and myself as the scribe) would sit on the mat and try and pull ideas out of nowhere and construct these maps, and after a gruelling session the bell would go. Off the children would run, never looking at the maps again.......lesson done!

I remember thinking..... "What am I doing wrong?"

What has changed?

This is how it kind of goes now:

Share the rubric as the success criteria for the lesson.

Bring in ideas, facilitate amazing hands on experiences, let them explore, discover new things.

Use a map to organise those ideas, connect them and share them.

Then let them apply their new understandings. 

This may take more than one session but the maps are one part.
Students use the map then move on to apply their understandings.

Today I wanted the class to analyse basic visual language features of a poster. Earlier in the week two boys in my class decided they needed to make posters to advertise the web site they are creating. This is the point they had arrived at through the inquiry approach learning that has been taking place. It was instantly obvious that they had little idea about posters/fliers and the appropriate visual language features.

Sooooo.... I need to teach my class about the language features of a poster so they could be successful in there self motivated creations.
We were walking past the Senior office when I pointed out a fantastically simple poster on the door. We stopped looked at it, I grabbed it off the door and ran in to photocopy it. 

What other posters could we find?..... off with ipads around the school they went, discovering, taking pictures and talking about what we found.

Back at class I told the children we were going to analysis the cool poster from the office, break the parts up, think about 'What if they were missing?' and why each part is important. We did a group part whole map, with me as the scribe. I covered up the different parts one at a time to make it easier for them to see their importance and kept the activity short, fun and with lots of backwards and forwards discussions. I even got them to walk past the poster with the picture covered up and see if they noticed it.......man they giggled when pretending not to see the poster.

Then I set them off with a piece of paper to make their own posters to advertise our web site.
I completely left them to it.

They knew they could use what ever they needed, ipads, art materials etc.
My surprise at the end of the day when I took a look at the end result of them applying new knowledge blew me away. They went from children who didn't know what to do, to graphic designers in a session.

My realisation:

• The lesson was fun! We moved around, explored, talked, discovered new vocab (My ESOL students didn't now what a poster actually was, I only discovered this as they were on their poster hunts). Lots of comparing and contrasting of the different posters they found.

• What do you want the learning outcome to be? What ways can you introduce new ideas, keeping it fun and hands on? What map/ rubric best suits the learning outcome? How will they apply this new knowledge? What would happen if I let them decided on that one?

• If I had finished the session at the end of the part-whole map (which is something I would have used to have done) they wouldn't have had the opportunity to apply their learning...... and create these......