Kāhui Ako Bursts & Bubbles 2023

At the Kāhui Ako Bursts & Bubbles presentation this year, the 2023 Kāhui Ako Teachers present 3 minute bursts about their inquiries this year.

Here is my presentation:

Here is a video of the afternoon's presentations:

Where to for next year?

 In 2022, I inquired into developing confidence using videography roles within the Pt England Network News programme. There were some great things I learned through this inquiry, particularly the value roles like videographers can provide to develop confidence in some children. Going forward into 2023, I want to continue to utilise roles within the Pt England Network News programme to develop confidence in children. I will continue to think about what the role of videographers may look like and add in more opportunities for children to do movie editing. I will work through challenges. One of the big things that played on my mind during 2022 was that I was very conscious not to have the same children out of class too often to video at sports tournaments as, even though there is huge value in leadership, creativity, problem solving and making decisions when out as videographers, I didn't want their role as videographers to hinder their progress in classroom subjects.

Next year, as I continue as a within school Kāhui Ako teacher, I want to look into a very different challenge. I want to use learning opportunities provided in the creative space to look at developing persistence and success in children who find focus and success a regular challenge in their schooling. How this looks, I will spend some time developing over the first term of 2023, so watch this space!

Bursts and Bubbles 2023

Last week, the annual Manaiakalani Kahui Ako Bursts and Bubbles was held! I picked out some of the inquiries which really resonated with me this year which I could utilise in my role.

Dot Apelu: Focus on supporting children to connect with their local community. 

Scott Mansell: Emphasis on local histories to raise engagement with learners.

Jo Gormly: Building solid foundation of literacy. 

Kelsey Parrant and Robyn Anderson both focussed on enjoyment of reading. Robyn's inquiry focus made me wonder how I could share tips for good reading etc on PENN. This is something to think about moving forward!

Christine Tupou-Fonua: Teacher & Student well-being - how does it influence achievement, engagement & enjoyment?

Poto Faalili: Preparing Year 8 students for Year 9.

What does Enthusiasm tell us?

 Over the last couple of weeks, I have had two videographers from my target group of students who have shown interest in being the videographer at in-school events. In these situations, they have been the ones who have suggested being the videographers. This sign of enthusiasm tells me a lot about the mindset of these students, how they feel valued and confident in themselves and that being a videographer is something they are good at and can lead in.

This anecdotal evidence is hugely valuable to see the success in using videography as a way of developing confidence in some children.

In an article on the Western Weekender, an opinion piece (Confidence and enthusiasm) talks about the importance of enthusiasm and confidence in a business environment. I think the same can be said in education. In the article, it states that "being enthusiastic in what you do breeds confidence." This article also makes an interesting point about confidence. It explains how people feel reassured by people who are confident which in turn leads to greater trust. I would add an extra element to this which is that this could be seen as a never ending cycle as feeling trusted by others can also help your confidence to grow. 

End of Year Analysis: CoL Inquiry 2021

We are at the end of 2021 and what a year it has been! Since coming back to school, I have been unable to teach my Extension classes due to Covid-19 restrictions. As a result, I have formed a final data analysis to show what potential the implementation of my 'tool' could have had, had we had more time in the classroom this year.

I hypothesised that providing speaking prompts and increasing speaking mileage would close the gap between reading and vocabulary level when it comes to speaking and presenting. This was decided after I found that my target group were all great readers (above their chronological age) yet they did not demonstrate the same vocabulary understanding, use and knowledge when it came to speaking and presenting.

I compared the vocabulary test results for children who took both tests. Note that this test demonstrated ability to understand vocabulary through reading, a skill which we know these children are good at. Results showed that all children (except one) improved in their ability to understand a range of vocabulary they come across when reading. The one child who did not show an improvement stayed at relatively the same level.

Next, I turned the PAT vocabulary test results (above) into an approximate 'age.' I wanted to see whether we have managed to close the gap between reading age and vocabulary level. Note, that the focus was to increase children's vocabulary levels in order to achieve this. You can see on the graphs that the gap for each child (difference between the blue and red column) does appear to be closing up for most children. 

 Unfortunately, I was unable to collect final term 4 data to show any increases in oral language of these children. However, I was able to collect a few second oral responses in term 3. These changes are explained in another blog post.

In all, I believe my focus on increasing speaking mileage with the support of speaking prompts has supported the children in the Extension class learning environment. It is something I highly recommend as a focus in all classrooms to support development of our children's oral language capabilities.

My Bursts in Bubbles Presentation

 Here is my Bursts in Bubbles 3 minute video to summarise my inquiry and findings this year:

Bursts in Bubbles 2021

During the Manaiakalani Kāhui Ako Bursts and in Bubbles event this afternoon, I took summary notes about the inquiries I felt I could utilise in my own current practice and incorporate with my own findings in my inquiry.

Anita Unka (Y1-2): How can I use feedback and feedforward in writing to build relationships with whānau, enabling greater shifts in student achievement for our tāmariki?

Gaps in oral language, limited vocabulary --> limited ideas when writing.
Writing flexi-connects - whānau on other end in a meet while teacher and child at school.
Through lockdown, the flexi-connects changed where the child was with their parent and Anita was on the other end of the call.

Poto Faalili (Y7&8): How will being culturally responsive in my teaching and an integrated approach to teaching and learning accelerate student achievement?

Engaging boys, particularly those that turn up to school late.
Student voice via talanoa.
Priority to see this group every morning at 8:30am. Changed to lunch with lunches. Well-being was important in this as well as talanoa about learning.

Amy Tofa (Y7&8): Will building self efficacy in students enable them to be more independent in Project Based Learning and accelerate their progress in Reading? 

Lack of self efficacy for completing project-based learning.
Lack of confidence.
Frank Paris to build self efficacy.
High anxiety impacts self efficacy.

Christine Tupou-Fonua (Y7&8): Can we make accelerated shifts in literacy through teaching identity & cultural competencies?

Coconut Model Work (see her blog)

Clarelle Carruthers (Y4): How will using a variety of high interest texts and providing open tasks impact students critical thinking?

Critical thinking and vocabulary.
Frustration by children was a big issue.
Whole class theme for reading each week to encourage more collaboration and vocabulary development.
For true critical learning to happen, the children need to be doing the work - remove the scaffolds.

Kelsey Parrant (Y5): Will a focus on vocabulary and interest specific texts have an impact on reading achievement for my learners reading below 8 years? 

Lack of understanding or strategies to understand meaning of vocabulary when reading.

Robyn Anderson (Y7&8): Will a focus on oral language in maths accelerate student confidence and capability to use spoken and written maths vocabulary and language?

Oral language and maths
Stepping in with scaffolds too early as the teacher wasn't helpful.
Robyn also developed some speaking prompts to support the children in learning to talk.
Giving children time to talk was essential.

Aimee Litchfield (Y1&2): How can I develop the use of oral language and use a wider range of vocabulary to see acceleration across all curriculum areas?

Unable to express themselves with more than one word.
Daily picture prompts.
Increase in vocabulary.
Next steps - to develop fluency.
Strongly implement learning in oral language through to writing.

Lockdown: August - September 2021

We have spent most of this last term in lockdown due to Covid-19. During my time working from home, I have been responsible for the continuation of PENN, our Pt England Network News. I have been really fortunate to have an amazing team of children working with me to make this happen. Daily email correspondence with the children has been essential. Rather than me selecting which children are going to present each day, I have made it the responsibility of the children to commit by putting their name down to present each day. This has been really successful and there have only been a few occasions when I've had to follow up on children who have forgotten or find replacements when I can't get hold of someone.

Here is an example of the finished product:

You can see that another big part of my job from home has been to put together examples of learning that have been happening at home during lockdown. It has been great to share so much on PENN each day and to document this time in our lives! As well as looking through many children's blogs myself, I have received regular emails from some teachers with children's work they want me to share but I have also received emails from children who are proud of something they have done and want some of their learning shared. Celebration of this has been a huge part of what I have been working on from home. 

In addition to producing the news each day, I have taken my year 5 & 6 and year 7 & 8 extension classes weekly and have run Creative Space meets each week for Team 4 (year 5 & 6) and for Team 3 (year 3 & 4). On Fridays, I have run an elective class for Team 5 (year 7 & 8).

Year 7 & 8 Controversial Topic Brainstorm: Which country should some Olympic athletes compete for? Click on the link to see the children's work for one of our google meets.

I have developed a number of lessons to support children to be Creative in their learning at home:

This activity was designed for year 3 & 4 children working on Scratch. Here are some examples of children who completed the challenges from this lesson:

Hunter

- Challenge 1

- Challenge 2

- Challenge 3

- Challenge 4

Jackson

- Challenge 1

- Challenge 2

- Challenge 3

- Challenge 4

- Challenge 5

- Challenge 6

For Māori Language week, I ran a Scratch session on creating a digital pepeha/mihi. I ran this with both Team 3 and Team 4. This was a model I provided to the children for this activity:

The week after this, with the Team 3 children, I introduced the extensions that came on Scratch. Some of the children who had been doing lots of Scratch from home were really interested in this. Here is a project which Jaxon made to show how he can make his sprites draw in Scratch.

With Team 2 (year 2 children), I took google meets for each of the classes where I taught them how to do Stop Motion Animation. 

I created this 'How to' Video to support the children (and teachers) in a rewindable way:

Here are some of the fantastic finished products by children in year 2 and 3:

Tomorrow I will run this session with Team 1 (year 1 children). I will also run it with Team 3 (year 3s and 4s) and will include support to children on chrome books to teach them how they can do Stop Motion in google slides.

Implementation of a new tool into my practice

This term, I have begun implementing my new tool for the year 5&6 extension class. Using a range of conversational and discussion prompts from online, I have made a set of speaking prompts for the children. During each session with me, the children will be given a laminated card with a prompt. Their job is to respond to the work from the session using the prompt they have been given. This could be in response to a video they have watched, a discussion point or a text they have read, for example. 

From today, I would like to start giving them their prompt at the beginning of the session so they have a longer amount of time to prepare their response. We will finish each session 10 minutes before the end of the day so the children can share their responses. 

The initial implementation of this tool has been really successful. The children find the prompts useful and they appear much more confident when they have the prompt to support them in speaking and presenting. Here are copies of the prompts:

I have had discussions with a year 2 teacher at school who really liked the idea and thought her year 2 children could benefit from a similar approach. This began me thinking about how we could adapt the design for different age groups.

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

 Last Friday, we had a Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day with a focus on literacy. We had a fantastic keynote presentation by Dr Rae Si'ilata. During the day, we also went to 3 workshops run by teachers in our schools. I took a workshop on my inquiry from last year, where I researched, used and adapted Peter Worley's Concept Box Framework into my teaching to support development of critical thinking.

Here are the slides from my workshop:

End of Year Data Collection

My hypothesis was:

A focus on critical thinking and causal reasoning when responding to texts will support increased levels of critical thinking and ability to create causal links in online written interactions with others for year 5 children reading between 10 and 12 years.

After implementing use of Peter Worley's framework, The Concept Box, into reading lessons, I collected data to compare with the data I collected at the beginning of the year. Graphs from the beginning of the year are also in these slides to make comparisons.

Bursts and Bubbles Presentation: Kahui Ako

This afternoon, we had our annual Bursts and Bubbles function where all of the 2020 CoL teachers presented a snapshot of their 2020 Inquiry. Here is my 3 minute presentation.

Transcript: 

During Lockdown, we were learning about food from Canada. A child disappeared from the google meet and then reappeared with a bottle of maple-flavoured syrup. “Maple syrup comes from Canada!” he stated. Another child said, “That’s not real maple syrup.” And that was the extent of the discussion.

Both children were correct. The bottle quite clearly said “Maple flavoured syrup.” However, there was no critical thinking to explain why. In fact, when I tried to initiate critical thinking, the second child could still not explain how he knew it wasn’t real maple syrup. So what does this mean?

This is just one example of the lack of critical thinking observed in some of our year 5 children who are working beyond their chronological age in reading.

Critical thinking is an aspect of learning which stretches across the curriculum, including the key competencies, however it is a skill which many of our children could do better at and which we could do a better job of teaching.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed that those children who are better readers tend to be better critical thinkers and those children who are better writers tend to be better critical thinkers. The problem with some of our children who are strong readers is that they don’t reciprocate this strong academic level in their writing and as a result, critical thinking is actually not as strong as we would expect.

I identified that children in year 5 who are reading above their chronological age tend to fall into two categories. All of these children already know how to read. One group can independently read to learn and tend to be able to create causal relationships and put ideas from texts into their own words where as the other group are still learning how to do this. I wanted to focus on this second group of children.

Profiling of my teaching showed that I had strengths in using talk moves to encourage children’s thinking. However, a reliance on me made me realise I needed to be using other strategies to encourage higher level causal links to be made by the children.  Therefore, I changed the structure of reading lessons so the children would no longer solely rely on me.

After exploring research into critical thinking by Richard Anderson, I researched and implemented a framework called The Concept Box by Peter Worley. The Concept Box framework is a teaching strategy which incorporates vocab acquisition, discussions and argumentation in order to get children thinking critically. Children are first asked to share any ideas they have about what they have read. Once their ideas are flowing, the children have to think of individual words to represent ideas in the text. The children are then encouraged to discuss which of these words are the most important to convey the more critical elements of the text. Through this process, the children eliminate words if they are not sufficient to the deeper ideas being explored.

In the story, The Lion King, one child  stated, “The word ‘Lion’ shouldn’t be there because it doesn’t go deep enough.” Another child decided the word ‘sad’ did not do a good job of explaining the story but did not give a reason. A child responded by saying, “Wait. You need to have a reason. You can't just take it out." This is evidence that some children are identifying when others are not thinking critically.

Children felt that using the Concept Box framework encouraged them to listen, explain, learn new vocab, make sense and think deeper. While some children are still challenged with the concept, there are more children in the group who are beginning to lead and support others and I have begun noticing a shift where the children are doing the job of guiding their thinking.

I have learned that our children need a strong framework, like The Concept Box, which can be used with a range of texts to support development of critical thinking.

Moving into Remote Learning

A week ago, I arrived at school to a class of 7 children. At 2:00pm that same day, we had heard that New Zealand was moving into level 3 of the Covid-19 response and schools would be shut to children by the end of the day. We are fortunate to be a 1:1 chromebook school for all children year 4 to 8 but we still had the challenge of getting these chromebooks home before New Zealand moved into level 4 on the Wednesday night. We managed it!

On Wednesday at 9am, we moved into our first day of remote learning, starting with a google hangout (also known as google meet) with our class. We pushed these hangouts out to the children via our school site.

Each of the teachers in team 4 now have their own remote learning page.

On this page (click the image above), the children can access their learning for the day as well as the links to the google hangouts which will occur throughout each day. The hangouts have been a chance for the children to connect, ask questions and to be shown their learning for the day.

While the children are working on their tasks, I have been opening up the google docs which they are working on and leaving comments to support them. When they post their learning to their blog, I have been leaving comments to encourage them and get them thinking deeper about their learning. 

I feel that the first three days of teaching remotely have been a real success. The children have been engaged, completing tasks and have picked up on the new structure of learning. Whānau have been highly involved and supportive in their children's learning too which has shown from the quality and effort being put into each of the tasks. 

A highlight of Friday was the holding of school assembly remotely. This was led by our Principal, Russell Burt. Routine and structure is so important and continuing to have all these normal school events is highly valuable to ensuring our children continue to learn throughout this isolation period. 

The Manaiakalani pedagogy has allowed us as a community to move seemlessly into this remote learning. Our children are continuing to learn, create and share whilst they continue to be connected with others, have ubiquitous opportunities, empowered in their learning and their learning being visible.

End of year findings: comparing findings of the end of year cybersmart survey across classes

The data in these slides compares to different classes - one who had an intervention of creating cybersmart clips in class and with a focus on interpersonal skills and critical thinking online; the other who did not have the intervention.

MIT19: Final Summary and Impact Story

Today is our final day at KPMG as the MIT19 group. We have had a fantastic year with many opportunities to collaborate together and be challenged outside of our comfort zones within a strong support network.

Our year has consisted of:
- A beginning of year hui where we began the design thinking process and were challenged to think outside of the box.
- 4 days at KPMG in Auckland City (1 day per term). These days were fantastic opportunities to work together, challenge each other's thinking and learn from each other.
- Attending and presenting at the 2019 EdTech Summit in Sydney. This was an amazing opportunity to share our knowledge and teach others about an area of digital teaching of our choice in an international context.
- Presenting our inquiry and tool to Principals and Leaders from across New Zealand at the annual Manaiakalani Outreach Principals and Leaders Wananga.
- Meeting and working with an amazing group of teachers from around New Zealand.

MIT19 Teachers and their Blogs:

Sandra Quick
Joanne Ryken
Amber Wing
Eugene Becconsall
Kelsey Parrant
Marc Gibson
Naomi Toland
Nicola Cameron
Santi Vega

Thank you to this amazing group of teachers who I have shared this journey with throughout the year! Thank you to the Manaiakalani Education Trust for allowing it to happen, particularly to Jenny Oxley, Dorothy Burt, Anne Sinclair, Pat Sneddon, Gerhard Vermeulen, Dave Winter and to Pt England School and principal Russell Burt.

Below is a screencast of my presentation from the Manaiakalani Outreach Principals and Leaders Wananga, along with some additions from the recent presentation for my role as a within-school teacher.

As I mention in the screencast, the final data did not show what I was hoping however, I believe that expecting miraculous shift and results after a year which has included the researching, creating AND implementing of the tool would not be realistic. Therefore, I am happy with what I have created and what it means for my thinking, mindset and forward direction to support children in becoming critical thinkers who are competent, confident and responsible in an online environment.

End of year findings: comparing findings from the pre and post cybersmart survey

In this presentation you will see a comparison of graphs between the pre and post cybersmart survey data which I collected.

Things to note:

- More children responded at the end of the year than at the beginning of the year.

- These findings were not based on standardised tests but rather analysis of data collected from in-class cybersmart learning.

Manaiakalani and Outreach Principals Wananga 2019: MIT19 Presentation

Last week I presented at the 2019 Manaiakalani and Outreach Principals Wananga as part of the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers 2019 programme. We presented our inquiries as a Pecha Kucha (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide). Here is my presentation along with a transcript of my speech:



Slide 1: In this moment, think about the digital technologies you use which allow you to connect with others. Think beyond this room to the digital technologies our children are using in school while we are sitting here today which allow them to connect with others beyond the classroom. Connecting is interpersonal. It requires critical thinking. Can we do more to provide our children with these necessary skills?

Slide 2: We live in a digital world which is much more connected than ever before. There is therefore a need for teaching children the skills to be able to relate to others and be critical thinkers in what is a highly interpersonal digital environment. Through this, we teach through the key competencies and teach life-long skills which can be applied throughout what is and will continue to be an innovative and quick-changing environment.

Slide 3: The challenge I faced was that children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to scaffolds and resources which are not currently available. Our children are using digital tools to enhance their learning. Therefore it’s important that we teach the critical thinking and problem solving essential for people to be able to make smart decisions when online.

Slide 4: We have cybersmart resources as part of the Manaiakalani Cybersmart Curriculum however two questions I asked myself were: 

How can we continue to develop the incorporation of the Manaiakalani values into cybersmart learning?

How can we get the children really excited about learning, creating and sharing in cybersmart learning?

Slide 5: Some things stood out for me when exploring cybersmart resources which are being used and shared in our schools:

1. Classes with learning sites mostly had visible cybersmart resources available directly on their site OR had a place on the site ready to be populated with these resources.

2. Most of the cybersmart resources which I have seen being used are teacher-led resources/tasks.

3. We have the teacher-led tasks and student-created DLOs/content...now more student-centred, ubiquitous and eye-capturing resources would be useful to engage our children in cybersmart learning.

Slide 6: This venn diagram from netsafe New Zealand shows the many aspects of ‘Digital Citizenship.’ You can see that Cybersafety (as they call it) is only one section of digital citizenship. Manaiakalani’s use of the word ‘cybersmart’ already emphasises that we want our children to be thoughtful when online. I like to think that Cybersmart content is actually the cybersafety and NZ Curriculum Values and Key Competencies sections of this diagram combined.

Slide 7: In fact, when we look into the NZ curriculum, these are the sorts of words that are used to describe children learning in New Zealand. These definitely describe what we would like our children to be able to do and be when learning and working in a digital environment.

Slide 8: I began the inquiry process by wanting to create a number of resources such as posters and flow diagrams to support the children, like the well known and highly useful quality blog comments poster. However, with much research and data collection, I realised that there was a need that went deeper….

Slide 9: What the children were missing was the ability to think critically online and the connection of this to interpersonal skills. This was evident through blog comments written by the children in my class which were often positive, however not always helpful, thoughtful and connected to the content they had read.

Slide 10: These preliminary findings really drew my attention to the importance of teaching children critical thinking, interpersonal skills and the connection between them. And the research backed this up! I started getting the children creating short movies to share their learning and knowledge around creating strong passwords. The children were mostly engaged. They enjoyed the competitive element which came with working in groups and creating short movie clips.

Slide 11: I then narrowed down the research to 10 areas which would teach the connection between critical thinking and interpersonal skills. The children began creating 30 second to 1 minute cybersmart clips.

Slide 12: For each cybersmart topic, the learning sequence begins with a whole class brainstorm. At this point, I also explicitly teach them important aspects to think about. After this, the children break up into small groups where they begin to collaboratively plan a script for a movie clip. They then film and edit their 30 second to 1 minute movie before sharing it on their blogs. The biggest challenge that arose was that some children had difficulty with the collaborative planning. However this observation really reinforced that this change in teaching and learning was exactly what was needed to support children in development of key competencies.

Slide 13: Much learning comes from this tool for children of all levels and abilities. It supports development of all the key competencies, critical thinking and ability to collaborate with others. It encourages creativity and gets the children excited about being cybersmart! Finally, it develops skills which are important everywhere, not just online.

Slide 14: The cybersmart clips that the children create could be shared through school news, other classes and across schools. The children are learning through concepts such as Tuakana Teina and Ako, where the children are teaching and supporting each other in their learning - they become the teachers.

Slide 15/16: You can see from these cybersmart clips that the children are happy, confident learners! These are all examples of children who worked through the process from the initial brainstorm, through to working as a group to edit and share their cybersmart clips on their blogs. As a result, they have developed their key competencies while learning to be critical thinkers and while using interpersonal skills (both in personal and in a digital environment). They have learned movie making and editing skills and have created some great resources which could be used to teach and support other children. 

Slide 17: And the children’s responses back this up too! The children have told me that they enjoy working together and choosing their own groups. They have told me that they enjoy filming and making their movies and that they like putting the movies on their blog to share with the whole world. There is not a lot that they told me they wanted to do differently. One child responded by telling me that they wanted to continue making the movies but with more props to support their creations.

Slide 18: So...is it making a difference and meeting the original challenge?

If you compare the blue and red lines, there could be a possible correlation between the ability to collaboratively plan and create cybersmart clips which include both critical thinking (CT) and interpersonal skills (IS). 

Those low in IS/CT in the collaborative planning stage are often also low in IS/CT in the cybersmart clips and blog commenting.

Slide 19: Another interesting potential correlation is that between reading and or writing level and ability to write a comment which includes critical thinking and interpersonal skills. In these graphs, each of the dots represents a child.

Slide 20: So what next for this inquiry?

Based on these findings, it is going to be important to focus in on the children who have difficulty collaboratively planning so that I can support them to develop their ability to relate to others and manage themselves so they can then develop their critical thinking skills in an interpersonal environment. I need to begin looking into the connection between reading and writing level and the ability for children to be critical thinkers in an interpersonal environment 

1. SHARE: Evidence about what I have done differently

Link to overview blogpost

Share data that you have collected/ recorded about the implementation of your changed practices or intervention. What evidence do you have about what you did differently?

As a result of a lot of research, some data collection demonstrating the children's knowledge at the beginning of the year, and several years of observing and pondering, I have implemented a new way of teaching how to be cybersmart into my classroom. Basically, this change in practice/student learning includes a shared class brainstorm of a topic and then time for the children to collaboratively plan a 30sec-1min movie before filming and editing their movie to share their learning.

Data collection began in term 1 where I had the children in my class complete a cybersmart assessment to decipher their current knowledge and skills. This was followed by a lot of research. The combination of these two things clearly showed a need for the children to be taught interpersonal skills and critical thinking in a digital/ online environment. It also showed a clear connection between these two skills.

Since implementation of the intervention/tool/ change in practice began, I have been collecting a range of data which includes blog comments, collaborative planning, movie clips, student voice, and examples of when situations may not have gone as smoothly as expected online. These assessments have been ongoing throughout the year. Information collected in google forms (blog comments in particular) as well as movies (shared in blog posts) are time-dated.

Blog comments

These are documented in a spreadsheet so I can track blog posts of individual students.

Collaborative planning

Whole class plans:

Here is an example of a collaborative planning script which suggests deep connections being made by those in the group as well as successful collaboration:

______________________________________________________________________________

     The Words we Use…

                S.F.A: Welcome to S.F.A news.

A: Broadcasting to you live!

S: In this production we are telling you about…

S.F.A: The words we us

F: Meaning everyday life online.

S.F.A: Here's a short clip of some of the words we use.

F: How you say it is how you mean it.When do you use it?In your everyday life.

S: Why is it important?Well because it creates your reputation and your furture.Heres the words you should use. *F's comment does not sound right*Movie script: Then S and A come in and say* *Then F is about to press publish*

S and A: Whoa whoa whoa whoa stop right there. Is that what you really meant F? 

F: Yeah

S and A: Try read it again...it doesn’t sound as thoughtful as it could be...

*F reads comment* 

A: you realise you didn’t finish your last slide?

F: I didn’t mean it sound that way….

Now that I think about it.Could you guys help me?

*S and A help F* 

F: Thank you for helping me.

   *S and A correct her*

S & A: You're welcome F.

S.F.A: Did you enjoy this episode of S.F.A news?

S.F.A:Well we hope you did

S.F.A: Sayonara and goodbye.

______________________________________________________________________________

Movie clips

Student voice - What do you like about cybersmart learning?

Student voice - What would you like to do differently?

I have had to make changes and tweaks throughout the year. The current intervention/teaching practice is very different to what I first envisaged. I set out at the start of the year to create a set of child-friendly posters to instruct for a range of situations which may be faced online however, moved away from this when data, research and various conversations did not see this as the biggest need. You may notice that the first movies which were created (Passwords) were difficult to hear. These first movies were created much more independently by the children, without editing, however there were a lot of frustrations. In particular, the sound caused a lot of frustration for the children as they were not using microphones. We have now adapted this so the children use a microphone attached to the camera. We also use the camera on a tripod rather than the iPads now as this creates a more stable picture. Now the children are able to share their knowledge confidently and clearly through their cybersmart clips. I have also been providing them with a lot more support in the filming. I tell the children that I am their cameraman but they are the director so they are in charge. They enjoy the fact they can boss me around!

Children using anchor points in their blog posts

Anchor points are hyperlinks that take you to a particular section of a site page. As a team, we have always found anchor points useful on google sites to create buttons which link directly to a particular task on a site page. However, when we began using new sites, anchor points no longer existed which meant we had to change the way we linked children to tasks. Part way through this year, I noticed that anchor points had returned AND in a much more user-friendly way! We decided to teach anchor points to the children during a cybersmart lesson on creating higher quality and more meaningful blog posts.

It was really positive to see how the children responded to this lesson and took on board the learning. Watch the screencast below to learn how children can use anchor points in their blog posts.

Below are some examples of children using anchor point hyperlinks in their blog posts:

Nina (maths)
Nina (writing)
Zoe (literacy)
Simon (reading)

Language Acquisition in maths

What have I done in my Inquiry this term?

- Targeted students who tend to be quiet in group learning.

- GLOSS for these students showed limited progress in number.

- For these students, I assessed their use/ improvement in maths (through maths-whizz): 4.7, 4.3, 3.2, 2.2, 2.2, 2.0, 1.0, 0.4 progressions per week.

- I was concerned about those who had a progress of 2.2 progressions and below, particularly with the amount of time these students were spending on maths-whizz.

This suggests that those learners (2.2 and below for maths-whizz) required small group support, rather than independent work when not with the teacher. Therefore, from this target group, there are two clear groups which I can be meeting with every second day on top of DMIC problem solving. I will also work to ensure these learners are with each other in group problem solving.