This term my lessons have been around Smart Relationships. With Room 3 @ St Bernadettes we used Interland: Kindess Kingdom as our inspiration for our own Smart Relationship animation using Google Slides.
To be successful in this we learnt about using the shortcut Control D to duplicate objects and slides. We also learnt to group our drawings so that we could copy and move them easily. In publishing our animations onto our blogs, we learnt about editing the code so that the animation
One of the challenges for the children was in making sure there was a clear message to their animation. They quickly gained the skills to create the animation but got so excited that the "why" wasn't there or very clear. We used small teams and the big screen in order for children to share and get feedback so that they could go back and improve. This was very powerful.
This is my teaching slides which I used for the students to see my process.
Digital Backpack - A new offering and can add on to what we are already using. Gives chn access to digital resources on any device at any time. This means that it is responsive to the type of screen that it is being read on. This builds on Student Workspace. There is something like 350 resources already uploaded to the library however they are updating all the time. The library is full of original texts. Schools that sign up for this can add their own texts and will be helped to scan and upload and ensure they have the right copyright levels to share.
How diverse are the texts being loaded? Resources for Kindergarten to Grade 12. Most resources are in the public domain. Harpara believe there is a wide variety but they do lead towards the classics. More NZ based texts are coming the more customers turn up in NZ.
This is available now. It has been trialled in Canada.
New Hapara Admin Settings - Designed to make using Harpara more efficient for teachers.
If you are a big Highlights user, you can now jump straight to Highlights. In the admin console under the optional settings - landing modules, you can now choose Dashboard or Highlights. This is not a personal setting it would be made for all teachers in the school.
Additional Updates - The search function can be used to search folders or drives for specific workbooks/docs. This has been around for about 5 years now but is a little well known secret.
New Onboarding Experience: Bright Purple Question Mark at the bottom of every page. New is the quick start guide. The Learning Hub is where anyone can go to to get tips and tricks or refresher idea. Wherever you are in Harpara there will be relevant pages for you to look at. Therefore each page on Harpara has relevant ideas for each page rather than just on the home page.
Another update is that now when you are in “current screens” it used to be that you would have to close the tab that you saw on current screens then you would have to go back to the browser tabs, but we’ve added a simple little edition to the student tiles that allows you to now close the tab directly from current screens.
There is a "reason for shutting tab" option that can be turned on in Harpara Admin. You can have up to 4 reasons for closing the tab and can personalise the wording to suit the learners. This would be a valuable tool to get schools to do so that students understand why their tabs are closed. Becoming positive digital citizens.
If you see Harpara folders in your drive, please do not delete them.
If there are any questions or suggestions we can get in touch with them. They are known for listening and responding to feedback.
Take on some study and have a go at the Google Educator Level 2 exam.
Through the Google Teaching Centre, I have looked at the different apps and google tools that are included in the exam. On reflection, I need to do some further study on google sheets (I really only know the basics), Google Earth (haven't really used this) and Google Scholar.
So study time it is ....
Google Sheets
What is a Pivot Table and how does it work? A Pivot Table is one of the basic data analysis tools in Google Sheets. Pivot Tables can quickly answer many important business questions. One of the reasons we build Pivot Tables is to pass information. We would like to support our story with data that is easy to understand, easy to see. Although Pivot Tables are only tables and thus missing real visuals, they can still be considered as a mean of Visual Storytelling.
A Pivot Table is used to summarise, sort, reorganise, group, count, total or average data stored in a table. It allows us to transform columns into rows and rows into columns. It allows grouping by any field (column), and using advanced calculations on them..
To insert a pivot table you need to highlight the data you want to include from the sheet and click data. From this tab you will see pivot table.
Conditional Formatting
Google Sheets offers a lot of advanced capabilities that help extract meaning from a pile of data. One of them, simple and at the same time powerful, is conditional formatting. It helps turn bland rows and columns of black text on white backgrounds into a coloured and visually appealing dataset. This saves time, and also makes the data more readable and meaningful.
There are a lot of sites that explain how to use it but I found this one helpful.
From the above I learnt about Lit Trips/Tours. Google Lit Trips is dedicated to helping teachers use Google Earth tours in literature lessons. In a literature trip students explore the places that are significant in a story and or the places that are significant in an author’s life. There is even a Lit Trip on there from Dorothy.
Google Earth uses KMZ files.
Google Scholar
Advanced Searches - can limit results to researchers or include specific publications ("all the words" "with exact phrase")
Once an article/citation is found you can save it to your own personal library using 'save' link below the result.
Scholar autonatically generates citation formats. Can copy in MA, APA or Chicago Formats.
To copy citation of a text, click on the quotation mark under the text.
Not all articles are publicly viewable.
Google Explore
Citations - APA, Chicago and MLA can be done directly from the tool.
Google Search
Free to use or share and edit is 'not' a usage rights option.
So with the study done, some mock questions tried, I registered and took the exam.
Biteable is a great create tool. You can make standout videos in a snap with the Biteable video maker. It's easy to use and navigate around. You can use their templates or create your own by uploading images. Add animations, footage, sound and effects and you have a winning combination. Best of all the lite version is free. The lite version has the Biteable watermark through the video but that doesn't detract from the quality of the video or the content. It's also easy to share on blogs by exporting and then downloading to your computer.
Below is an example of one I made with some of the students in Room 3 at St Bernadettes this morning in our cybersmart session. They loved the many backgrounds and animations they could choose from.
Cluster Teacher Only Day: Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey (The Literacy Place)
Embedding Oral Language Across the Curriculum
"Talk plays a central role in learning; in learning how to think and in talking your way into meaning." - Christine Edwards Grove, Michéle Antsey and Geoff Bull
What does research tell us about student talk in the classroom?
5 Nations Study - Alexander 2001 (UK, France, India, Russia, US)
- Teacher talk was dominated by questions.
- 10% of questions were open.
- Student responses were on average 5 seconds and 70% were 3 words or less
Nuthall 2005
A hands up culture controlled by the teacher severely limits student talk and often results in a small group dominating the talk in a competitive manner.
"Why would we only ask one or two to speak when we can engage everyone through talking."
Think/Pair/Share Culture:
Important to ensure that they have a think time (at least 5 seconds) before the share with their partner. Share doesn't have to always happen as a class it can be just with their partner. With a new to English speaker put them into 3's.
Must come up with criteria for talking. Set partners: If you are going to change partners often, research says, then don't worry about ability. If you are keeping them together for a set amount of time (no longer than one month), then research says they should be closeish in ability.
Students Actively Listening to each other and not just the teacher.
Think, Pair, Record
Think, Pair, Record
Think, Pair, Walk and Talk
Having students listen to the audio of a video only helps them to focus their listening.
We listened to this and predicted what the setting, characters and whats happening. We had to justify why we thought those things. Then we watched it ...
Students talking in full sentences and elaborating on ideas:
This has to be an expectation for all no matter where they are or who they are. Sentence stems will support this until it becomes natural. Likewise talking strips and elaboration role cards.
Using alternatives to questions:
Final Thoughts
- reduce teacher talk, put the power in the hands of the students
- no hands
- ensure their is a 5-8 sec think time given at each time.
- horsehoe model is the best organisation for a talking session
Uru Mānuka Teacher Only Day: Reading with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey (www.theliteracyplace.com)
Reading Strategies:
These are the strategies that are the most beneficial and have been researched.
These are the three Sheena and Louise identify as the biggest game changers.
-self monitoring
- the ability to be able to infer
- summarising
Reading strategies support readers comprehension at all levels. Comprehension processes depend on what you read and your purpose for reading. There are levels of comprehension literal, inferential (Author and Me) and evaluative. Children need time to talk no matter what the level. Discussion prompts.
Our brains are not cognitiely wired to read. So they have to connect the language part of the brain with the visual part of the brain so it does take time. Therefore comprehension is easier once they are not having to chunk to decode words. This is their model for teaching the reading process:
Activating prior knowledge supports comprehension. Given what the text is decide on the best strategy that will get them into the text.
Explicitly pre teaching words.
The dot to dot activity supports this and can be used in a variety of different ways. Either single connections, multiple connections or connections over time (throughout the reading).
Another way is:
Self Monitoring:
Everybody gets stuck when they read sometimes. Everyone uses different strategies to support their comprehension, including adults. It's ok to check ourselves. Some children tend to skip over the words if they are unfamiliar or reading it but moving on without questioning what it means. This is important to tackle.
Understanding Words when self monitoring
Word Hippo is a child friendly programme for finding synonyms, antonyms, definitions, understanding and pronunciation.
Predicting:
Predicting is about engagement so unless everyone makes a prediction then what is the point. Smart Guess is a better word, followed up by why do you think that, what are your clues? Let's not predict just about what the story will be. A further example of this would be predicting what job would be good for this character and justifying why. Predicting, like all other strategies, needs explicit modelling too.
Follow up to strategy teaching:
.
Summarizing and Retelling:
This includes note taking too. Both need to be taught explicitly as a strategy. This is a great idea for summarizing a paragraph.
Note taking Exercise - Jan 1992, 3 containers washed off ship in storm 1 c = 29000 plastic bath toys yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs now all over worlds oceans. Some found 15 yrs later.
Inferring:
Using real estate ads. Why have they used these words, images, what are they trying to say.
What's in the handbag activity. A range of objects in a bag and the children infer who owns the bag. These two activities help with the beginning of inferring. Creative activities encourage children to create a relationship with a book.
Synthesizing:
A level 4 activity. It's about understanding then solving the unknowns and making those connections before digging deeper. A couple of good activities for this is designing a board game or diorama or designing business cards for character.
Book Clubs/Literacy Circles:
Great for extended conversations. Book clubs can be done virtually to using google meet. A great way to connect our learners.
Final thoughts:
- classroom culture encourages comprehension and time needs to be given over to this.
- talk is the key to developing those deeper level skills.
- children need to be clear about the strategies they are learning and how it will help them.
- strategies need to be explicitly taught and modelled by the teachers. A couple of activities may show short term success but not give long term benefits across genres.
Reading Strategy checkups are great for identifying next steps and understanding.
Today I have been having a play with Pixton Comics. Pixton allows you as a teacher to create a class and then children can sign into that class. Everyone creates an avatar and you can take class photos in different situations eg fairy tale, space, graduation ... You can then use your classmates avatars in your comics.
I want to use it for the children to create a comic for one of our Cybersmart sessions. Initially it took me a little time to understand how it worked and what all the different buttons could do but if you were looking for an easy way to present some information then it would definitely be a good choice. Once you learn all the different parts to it, I think that you could create some very high quality comics/storyboards to share learning, teach others or tell stories.
I have been Kelsey's shadow for a week. Kelsey is an amazing practitioner who in this role can have a number of plates spinning at one time and has to keep all of them from crashing. While in my head I know that this is not my first plate spinning role, there is always those little doubts as to whether they will all spin calmly or whether there will be some erratic spinning at times and the best way to manage this.
Management styles are at play 👍 This is not something that I will focus on in this blog post apart from acknowledging the different styles and how they impact the enthusiasm of colleagues and the outcomes which is common knowledge. Interestingly, and it has been my experience, Colin Price who writes for McKinsey Quarterly says that:
"Far more centered and high performing, in my experience, are those leaders who welcome the inconvenient contradictions of organisational life."
Learning is an ongoing practise that can challenge us, engage us and enthuse us. While there are little butterflies at the moment, when I stop and analyse these further, a number of those are because I am excited to try something different and to share my love for the Learn Create Share kaupapa and framework. Therefore I am assigning myself homework and unlike some of the children I have just left, I am happy about it.
I had the pleasure of listening to Dr Rebecca Jessen today speak around T-Shaped Literacy in the Junior School. She presented at a Manaiakalani staff meeting and we were invited (through the medium of video) to be part of it too.
T-Shaped Literacy? The benefits of wide reading in general are well known and something that Manaiakalani have been advocates of for a long while now. There are practice effects that build endurance and resilience (Allington, 2012). Wide reading is also one of the key ways that learners develop word knowledge and world knowledge (Herman, Anderson, Pearson & Nagy, 1987). Wide reading also provides opportunities to learn about new types of texts including multimodal texts.” (Wilson and Jesson, 2019).
Unfortunately the initial uptake on T-Shaped Literacy has mostly been in our middle and senior school classes. In fact there has been some amazing inspirational work from our teachers using this approach. That hasn't been the case across the whole school with the certain belief that this model wasn't appropriate for the Junior School. In this presentation, Dr Jessen, makes it very clear how the approach can be used successfully within the Junior context in order to develop and extend reading and thinking skills. For me, I think it has reignited the spark for this approach within the junior context. I say this because when the approach was first discussed and I was trying to promote and enthuse in my own school context, the junior teachers couldn't see past the idea of three books on the same topic rather than theme. Therefore it died a small death with the belief that it just wasn't plausible. This talk by Dr Jessen reignites the possibilities, the impact of and indeed the easiness, for incorporating T-Shaped Literacy in all classrooms.
The above framework I love! It becomes a planning tool for teachers to guide discussions and not necessarily for learners to see. Certainly a push on those deeper understanding and critical literacy skills. This is not the only gem that is part of this presentation so I hope you take the time to check them all out.
At the moment there is a buzz within reading for structured literacy. This is a very formal phonic heavy approach using decodable texts. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am of an age where I have been through a number of these 'approach buzzes.' I guess my worry or small concern is whether our schools going down this route will find time to remember/try/incorporate other opportunities that will not only develop reading skills but broaden the understanding of our tamariki and the world that they live in.
I know the message for some of the structured literacy approaches is that the format must not be tampered with in order to get the greatest impact. However I would ask our kaiako to remember that all approaches are backed by research and have proven results. They therefore need to think beyond each approach as to what their akonga need to be a successful citizen, not just at the moment but in the future. It is a little cliched but the future starts now and our actions will impact generations to come. We are also stronger as a collective forging a path and not as a divided group.
I love being a teacher! Now of course there are those days that I have really needed to dig deep so as to find more positivity in order to continue giving my best. However, the joy of our tamariki being so successful and striving in a such a complex society is absolute gold and more than worthy of the stressful times.
For the next year I am having a change of role. Now initially, I had a few reservations in regards to coming out of my own classroom, however, on reflection I found that the same joy will definitely be there but on a different scale. Instead of promoting Learn, Create, Share in my own setting, I will be sharing the love of this pedagogy across our Kahui Ako inspiring kaiako and akonga alike to embrace not only the pedagogy but full digital citizenship so that we are all thriving and confident positive communicators online. Same outcome, different journey. Sooo exciting!
So as my journey in life takes a slightly different path, there will be a few tears as I say goodbye to some truly beautiful tamariki in Te Mahuri at Yaldhurst Model School. Their enthusiasm and engagement in learning has been a true joy. Thank you for allowing me to help guide you on your own journeys. Thank you for encouraging me to constantly want to do better so that you get my innovative best so that your enthusiasm and engagement never dimmed. Thank you for simply being you.
So one door closes and another one opens. What am I looking forward to?
