Miss West and the Protractors

During the process of completing a class on air episode, I was able to reflect on my teaching. Being able to watch myself teach allowed me to be critical of what I could be doing better, and what I have been doing well.

 Follow the link below to see my Class on Air site!

Digital CV

I have been been creating a digital CV which I will be able to use and continue adding to it in the years to come. My digital CV shares artefacts demonstrating capabilities of my practice in a digital environment.

Click the link below to visit my digital CV:

MDTA Documentary

I have come to the end of my first year teaching! It has been a year full of rewards and challenges, and I have had a huge amount of support throughout.  Having the opportunity to work closely alongside my mentor teacher has been amazing and has supported me immensely in gaining confidence teaching in a digital environment.

One of our challenges is to accelerate the learning of our ākonga. To support this challenge, learners all have a digital device to help them overcome potential barriers to learning and to support them in being future-focused learners.  In the same way, I am coming into a teaching career where schools look very different to how they did when I was at school. It is important for teachers to be future-focused in their pedagogy. Being part of the MDTA where I have had weekly digital immersion professional learning, part-time university towards my BEd (Hons), as well as working alongside my mentor teacher throughout the year, has supported me to accelerate in my learning to ensure I become a confident and future-focused teacher.

In this MDTA documentary, I share how learners in my class have used Learn-Create-Share:

Developing a PRT site

Today, we had the opportunity to continue working on our PRT sites. Collecting evidence of the practising teacher criteria is a requirement of becoming fully registered. I had already started gathering evidence of my practice, however I had only been storing artefacts on my site as links. I had spent time ensuring the information was there, rather than the aesthetics of the site. Therefore, time was spent making the pages easier to navigate, through use of buttons, in order for the audience to comfortably look through my site. My site is now starting to take shape and becoming more personalised to me. Here is a screenshot of the home page of my site so far:

Throughout the day, it became evident just how much we have learned this year and how many artefacts we have created which support our growth in the Practising Teacher Criteria. My next step is to continue adding more artefacts for this year, as well as embedding artefacts/ docs where possible, rather than just adding links.

Inquiry reflection: Week 3, Term 4

At our inquiry collaborative meeting for the beginning of term 4, we shared advice and ideas which we have learned throughout our inquiries this year.

Here are some of the discussion points that stood out for me:

• We need to be making exciting learning experiences which engage students. How do we create something purposeful for our term theme?
• For some students, we need to be extending them in reading using novels. However, how do we keep them engaged in the novel? We discussed student agency and choice. We thought about those students who are are beyond their current age for reading, however are not engaged or don't see the purpose in reading. We also thought about how these students need choice to read what they want. We need to be finding something which hooks them.
• How do we get students reading independently for information? We need to be creating and using learning experiences with our students, such as quizzes, which require students to have read texts to complete the task.
• Our learners need to have purpose. That is, they need to know why they are needing to learn something.
• How do we get learners past where we are aiming? Often, we make progress with students (e.g understanding phonetics for beginnings of words) but then are challenged to create further progression. How do we get students past this barrier to keep them moving forward?

Created on www.wordclouds.com/

Reflecting on my Inquiry: Week 9, Term 3

In term 3, I was able to observe students engaging with digital hooks for reading while exploring their effects on learning in more detail. Testing more students resulted in more questions than answers, as there was not a clear connection found between use of digital hooks and levels of inference and applied knowledge. I should have had students complete the same reading test before and after time spent interacting with the digital hooks, regardless of their reading level. Instead, I tested students at their current reading age, which in many cases had changed since we had regularly begun using digital hooks. 

I have been reflecting on the direction my inquiry should go next. This has involved a lot of questioning and being critical of my practice. It has been clear to see that implementation of digital hooks has helped in engaging students in the topic of their reading, however it has also made me question how, when, and how often I use them. 

Reflecting on my Inquiry: Week four, Term three

I have reached a point in my inquiry where I am having to ask myself the following questions:

• What is working/ what is not working?
• Where to next? 

The slides below summarise where I am at in my teaching inquiry to date.

Making music...and more!

Today, Rob Wiseman, a year 7/8 teacher from Pt England School, came to teach us about GarageBand. I had previously had a play with GarageBand, but did not realise there were so many things you could do with it!

Here are some tips and ways GarageBand can be used.

1. Ensure you have a microphone!! This will improve the quality of sound for your audio.

2. Recording instructions/ text for learners. This is such a powerful tool! Using garageband, you can enhance their learning by providing verbal (rewindable) instructions or text! It took me a couple of minutes to record myself reading some task instructions, and then no more than  five minutes to edit this short clip. It would then take a little longer to embed this clip into an accessible place for learners (such as a class site), however this could be time well spent if it is to help learners with understanding of a task and expectations.

3. Music. There are so many musical possibilities with GarageBand! As explained in a previous blogpost, this is something I would like to explore at some point. There are options to create a track by scratch, or use a wide range of loop tracks available. 

4. I really enjoyed learning about the possibilities of enhancing movies using garageband. When doing this, it is important to import your movie into GarageBand with all video editing completed. In GarageBand, there are many options to create and mould music to your movie in a much more advanced way than on iMovie. You ideally want your music to fit well with your video which is why you want to have completed all video editing before you play with sound in GarageBand. I am really excited to use GarageBand to create my backing music for the upcoming Manaiakalani film festival!

Big thanks to Rob for spending the day sharing his GarageBand skills and knowledge with us!

Always a learner - Infographics

Today we attended the Manaiakalani Digital Immersion PLG with other learners from around our cluster of schools. This was another great opportunity to connect with our wider whānau. 

The day started with a discussion around the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy and the learning outcomes of Manaiakalani. In particular, we discussed 'Share' in relation to our teacher inquiry.

We spent time learning about the purpose behind the Summer Learning Journey (2015/2016), run by Rachel Williams who works for the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. Have a look at what Rachel researched, here. Find out more about the research here.

As a result of the discussion around this research, we looked into the value of blogging for our learners. We aimed to share our learning by creating an infographic of data collected off blogs. I researched a number of infographic designs and then created my own infographic using Procreate.

(created using Procreate)

After completing this infographic, I was left with the feeling that it was incomplete. As interesting as these data were, I had not managed to share the WHY. WHY is this information relevant? WHY am I sharing this information?  Does this information show the power of blogging?

I realised that this infographic had failed to show the power behind blogging for our learners. In this example above, I focused on how many blog posts learners created. This is something I could have done from looking through an exercise book. It is not expressing the power behind blogging. Therefore, I found evidence of where a learner's audience comes from.

I used canva.com to create this final infographic:

(created on canva.com)

This infographic links strongly with my sketchnote which I created last week, adding some real-life evidence of learners connecting with the outside world and sharing their learning. 

These infographics are by no means perfect. The data presented are definitely not the most powerful data I could have collected to express my message. However, being my first attempt at creating infographics, I am able to say I have learned a lot about how I can improve, and there is a lot of room for this improvement! 

This is what I will do differently next time:

1. I will put more focus on having purpose to my data collection, prior to collecting it - ask myself why I am collecting the data before I collect it. In other words, PLAN for my infographic.

2. I will share more information and detail in the infographic, which are meaningful for the message I am trying to express.

3. In relation to the topic of blogging, I will put more emphasis into the power and benefits of blogging for learners - what makes this style of learning unique?

The fun in note taking!

Our focus this term is the share element of the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy. When we share, we connect with people in the world we live in and contribute our knowledge, in an authentic way. Our audience is authentic when they CHOOSE to LISTEN to us and respond accordingly.

Today, we learnt the skill of sketchnoting. Sketchnoting is when you make notes through sketching (visually translate words into drawings). It can be used to record notes when listening to someone, or when reading something. Kathy Schrock clearly explains this in more detail here! Our task was to complete a sketchnote on something we had listened to, or read. Part of our discussion this morning was looking into the importance of sharing with an 'authentic audience.' My sketchnote briefly sums up this concept, which we read about in Dorothy Burt's post and discussed.

The process of completing my first sketch note took time, however I can imagine that through developing this skill, one would get much quicker at clearly recording their ideas in a graphic form. I thoroughly enjoyed this task, to the point the artistic side of it probably became too much of a focus, rather than the content I was trying to express!  

I used an app for the iPad called 'Procreate.' This would have to be my new favourite app which I think is going to be useful for many aspects of teaching, other than just sketchnoting.

Here is my sketchnote:

Sketchnoting is a great skill which many of our learners could benefit from. It is also another valuable skill which I am adding to my kete of ways to make learning rewindable! In order to get our learners using it, we felt it would need to be carefully scaffolded. As part of our PLG, we discussed how this would look. Suggestions included using google slides or keynote with pre-made symbols and words on the sides. After mastering sketchnotes using these provided elements, learners could then start developing skills to be able to organise and create their own sketchnotes! 

End of term 2 Inquiry reflection

I have had a light bulb moment with my inquiry and feel like I have found a clear path to follow! It sounds simple and straight-forward, but I have realised that learners are more likely to take part in discussions if they are engaged in learning! As a result of this realisation, I have stopped using a tool which was not having an effect I had hoped for. I was not prepared to continue using a tool which was not helping the learners. 

The tool (a site) provided links to a number of prompts which learners could use to confidently take part in online discussions. Each of the orange buttons took learners to a number of sentence starters.

Through the site, learners could link to a google forum which started with a question to discuss around the reading(s). When learners did not actively take part or show motivation to take part in the discussion, I realised the tool was not what was required. In fact, observations and discussions with learners, showed me that I could do much more to engage learners in reading! So...what can I do to engage my learners more in reading? 

Visiting other schools in the Manaiakalani cluster

This morning we observed classes in other schools in the Manaiakalani cluster.

At each school, I was fortunate to be able to spend time in a range of classes, from year 3 to year 8. In a year 3/4 class, we saw Learn-Create-Share in action, all interwoven into the one lesson!

Learn-Create-Share in action

Learn: Equal sharing strategies; discussing key mathematical ideas.

Create: A range of responses to the problem: 48 tins of cat food were shared equally between an unknown number of cats. How many cats may there have been and how many tins would each cat get?

Share: Learners were grouped into mixed-ability groups and were openly discussing the maths problem with each other. Learners were brought back together again and shared their ideas as a class. Learners were sent off again with 2 groups working together to help each other.

Digital Learning in action

In 3 different year 5/6 classes, I observed digital learning. We observed how a year 5/6 teacher made learning accessible to learners when a reliever was in the class. Learners were provided with a google doc with a range of activities to complete. As tasks were completed, learners highlighted the appropriate section of the table. I really liked how this provided learners and the reliever teacher with a visible way to monitor learning throughout the day. In another class, I observed learners creating chapter summaries of the text, The BFG, in preparation for a school trip.

Number of blog posts

In one class, I was made to reflect on the quantity of blogging by my learners. Learners had a goal of sharing five blog posts about their learning per week. My next step will be to think about how I could embed this as a part of my class every week. To work towards achieving this, I could create a regular 'blogging time' into the school day, where the focus is to blog about the process of something they are learning/creating.

These visits provided the chance to reflect on what I could be incorporating into my classroom or changing as a teacher.

Part 2 of Film Interview Creation: Accepting when done is done!

As explained in my last blog post, we have been creating an MDTA interview movie. In this movie, I explain my experiences (so far) of being a beginning teacher in the MDTA. This movie (which is only 3 minutes long) took hours of planning, filming, and editing!

I was very keen to create my own backing music using garage band, however I had to put this idea to the side for this project. I decided I need to experiment with garage band a bit more before creating a whole backing track! I have therefore used an iMovie track for the music. I am not eliminating the possibility of adapting this movie by using my own garage band creation at some point - it just may take longer than originally thought!

My biggest challenge to overcome during this creation was accepting when done was done! I could have kept tweaking this movie for weeks, however I had to draw the line! This realisation is something my learners constantly have to overcome when they create and share work on their blogs. They have to accept that the best use of their time may not be to keep dwelling on little things, but rather reflect on the process and their learning, be proud of what they have created and then keep learning new things!

Here it is: the final product!

Day 1 of Film Interview Creation (Filming at Pt England Beach)

We have started creating 'interview' style videos to explain our experience to date as part of the MDTA.  Our first task was to create a script of what we wanted to include in our video. After this, Steph and I went down to Pt England beach to record our spoken part of the video. We wanted to film ourselves down at the beach (just across the fence from school) to share the beautiful area of Auckland where we work.

(Here I am helping Steph prepare for her filming)

We had great fun problem solving the set up of our equipment to record ourselves speak. Interesting disruptions included a range of wildlife as well as a plane and a jet boat noisily cutting into our filming.

(Preparing for my filming)

(Steph preparing for her filming)

The next step will be to edit this footage as well as a range of footage from around school to create our final videos. I also plan to create my backing music using garageband so I also need to start experimenting with this in order to make this possible!

Screencast Part 2: Screencast of class site navigation

Following on from my previous post, in this screencast I explain how learners access their learning in maths by navigating through the class site.



Through the process of creating screencasts as well as through discussion with colleagues, I have come to realise the value of screencasts in learning. Screencasts could be used to clearly explain instructions for learners on the site, alongside the written instructions.

Google Class OnAir & Apple tools

Today, we had a focus on Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir. Matt Goodwin, one of the teachers who has a class OnAir, joined us. Matt brought along the equipment which he uses in the class to film. The equipment included a microphone, as well as a camera which could be remotely controlled to pan and zoom, and which included a wide lens to capture a lesson in the classroom. After exploring a range of the Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir sites (which you can access from the link above), we held our own OnAir discussion around what we had explored. This was a great opportunity to experience what it could feel like for the learners taking part in this, as well as for the teachers who are taking the classes.

I enjoyed setting up my own google hangout On Air and reflecting on ways I could use this in my classroom. Here is a photo from the hangout of me giving it a go:

One idea was to use this with my learners so they can then access rewindable learning, as well as reflect on their ability to discuss and collaborate in group learning. The concept of navigating within, and editing the recording through youtube was a new concept for me too. I quickly realised the differences and challenges between editing on YouTube compared to in iMovie. I also realised how strange it felt being filmed while talking about an aspect of teaching. I can imagine that this is something that would take time to get used to. I look forward to using this tool in the classroom and having a go at creating a Class OnAir in the future.

We were lucky enough to have Meredith Bean, from google, join us to share some great tips for using Apple products. I found it really interesting to learn about some of the accessibility functions which Apple has created to make the products accessible by everyone. There are tools which would be great to explore in more detail as possibilities for differentiating learning for learners. An example of these tools is dictation. Dictation can be used as another way of getting ideas onto the digital device. However, it is not always accurate. Therefore, I would not be confident using this dictation tool in the classroom with my learners. Another aspect of dictation which I feel could be more useful for my learners is the computerised speech which can read back what you have written. I have created a google hangout OnAir to demonstrate how to use this tool:

I feel this could be useful for encouraging learners to proof-read their writing before publishing it onto their blogs. A tool like this could be useful to draw attention to omitted punctuation, words, letters, and incorrect grammar.

Today has given me a huge number of new tools which are going to be extremely useful in the classroom. I am really excited about the prospect of using google hangouts OnAir in the class to make learning rewindable, and to encourage learners to reflect on their learning when with a group and what they can improve.

StopMotion

Today we used StopMotion to create a short movie which demonstrates a concept for our learners. The concept I demonstrated was working together to overcome challenges. I used play dough to create the characters. The characters were three 'blobs' who needed to get over a rocky hill.

This was a really enjoyable 'create' task. I worried I had not collected enough footage for the movie, but was surprised by how many photos I could use multiple times in the clip to strengthen the storyline and emphasise the concept being demonstrated.

  

If I was to use StopMotion again, I would increase the number of photos, and reduce the size of each movement between photos. This will create a smoother motion of the characters.

I feel that my learners would be hugely engaged in a task like this. However, I do wonder how long it would take to complete a task of this nature in the class setting. It would be necessary, as with all learning experiences, to question what the purpose would be of creating a StopMotion movie with my learners, and whether the time that would be spent creating it would be beneficial to my learners. 

I can imagine that creating StopMotion movies could be effectively used for rewindable learning with learners in the junior school, for example, by using play dough to create numbers and letters. However, I do not know how often I would use this technique for rewindable learning, and in my own reflective practice as a teacher of year 5 and 6 learners. 

What a great day we have had! This task required problem solving throughout the whole process and a lot of collaboration and sharing of ideas.

Creating an iMovie

This year, I have made three movies for our team 4 space. In the first movie, learners share a message of kindness. Check out this movie here! This movie was the first movie I created so while creating it, I did not think at all about the type of shots I was using. I was more concerned about collecting footage which included the learners who were speaking.

The second movie I created was about team 4 swimming. The footage for this movie was collected by myself and my colleague, and involved a range of shots. When editing the footage, I played a lot with the timer, speeding up the scenes in order to maintain interest of the audience. I also thought about the sound that I added to the movie, choosing an iMovie backing sound which I felt matched the mood of the movie.  I also used reverse clip, which made it look like the clip was moving in rewind.

In digital immersion this week, we spent time exploring iMovie by creating a movie about learning. Check out this movie by clicking the link below, or  here!

The movie I created shows snippets of a typical day in our innovative learning space. I feel that as I continue creating movies, I get more efficient with the process. In this movie, I played with the filters on the images and footage. I also explored the ability to play with the audio. I started thinking of fun ways I could use this with my learners to create movies and act out characters (possibly as reading follow ups). The screenshot below shows the section of iMovie under which you can alter this!

A recurring issue I have come across while creating movies is that titles seem to automatically alter in format throughout the clip. This is something I am still working on fixing.

For my next movie, I am going to ensure I think carefully about a variety of shots I want, before collecting footage. I feel that through my latest movie, I have tended to stick with panning shots, which gets repetitive after a while! Different shots I want to attempt include close ups, aerial shots, and low angle shots, and a range of other interesting shots. Something else I learned from this process was the ability to place two clips side-by-side. This is an interesting technique which allows me to show multiple shots of a similar thing at the same time. One colleagues used this approach to show the same photo in the same clip, creating a tiled technique. Another colleague used this technique to show the same moment-in-time from different peoples' points of view. Next, I want to learn how to increase this to three or four shots at once to show the same moment-in-time from a range of angles. For future movies, I also want to learn how to use the blue screen, which we are fortunate enough to have in our learning environment. 

During the process of creating a movie, I was able to increase my confidence in the movie-making process, as well as explore other techniques available on iMovie which I can use to improve quality of my movies. I feel that the best way to improve in movie-making is to create more movies! I could be making movies in the classroom to capture important moments in teaching for learners, or by capturing a range of work created by our learners. One thing I am reflecting a lot about at the moment is ways to engage learners and increase their motivation to post work on their blogs. I could use iMovie to assist with this by capturing a range of blog posts and creations in a short movie which can then be posted on the class blog.

The Importance of Perseverance and Motivation

In this post, I bring to you a visual and oral summary of my Teaching as Inquiry to date! Today, we joined the digital immersion PLG with colleagues from a number of the Manaiakalani schools. The first learn-create-share element of the day involved creating a presentation to our colleagues which promoted a fictional object/item to assist in tackling a problem which teachers or learners may encounter. We promoted a pair of glasses which would 'make stuff talk.'

We discussed the 'share' element of Learn-create-share in more detail and discussed the difficulties that sometimes arise with translating our thoughts and ideas in our heads, into a tangible form. This is an issue we face as teachers, and is also an issue our learners often face. A lot of reflection occurred in the classroom this week around giving learners the experience and confidence to translate creative ideas in their heads into artwork.  I faced the challenge today of translating my thought process from my Teaching as Inquiry up until now (which has included research into people like Palincsar & Brown, 1986), into a visual and oral explanation.

The task took a lot longer than expected, and I faced a number of frustrations along the way, but through persistence, and motivation from my colleagues, I came up with this:

 If I can reduce the time it takes me to create one of these reflections, I feel that this could be a very valuable way of reflecting on my learning as a teacher in the future. This would be a great technique to share with my colleagues who did not attend the PLG today as it could be used for their own reflections, presentations, and there is even some big ideas floating around my head of whether this is even something our learners could use to share their learning!

End of Term 1 reflection: Inquiry

My inquiry is about using formative data to determine next steps to focus on in dialogic discussions during guided reading.

During term 1, I found that I need to continue developing learners' abilities to think critically and deeply about texts. I also need to continue developing learners ability to recognise and make sense of specialised vocabulary.