Distance Learning: Friday Spelling Test

One of the things that we are trying to do for our students is keep things as normal as possible but from home. On a normal Friday, we have a schoolwide assembly and generally after we have a Teamwide spelling test that is administered over the PA system by our amazing office staff.

So, today we decided it would be fun to have our own Distance Learning team assembly complete with karakia, mihi and waiata as we would any other day of the school term. It was great to see so many students hop on and join us this morning, especially since it was at 9am! 

NOTE: Names have been blocked out because it is not Cybersmart to post last names online!

It was fun seeing some faces that I don't see in my general literacy and maths classes as we spent about 30 minutes together. Mrs. Flavelle from our office staff joined us and administered our spelling test. The students completed the test using a Google Form, which allowed their answers to be submitted right away. As always, the students with a perfect score will be entered into a drawing to win a special treat once we are back at school.

GOOGLE MEET TIP: 

We are learning as we go along, and one of the coolest things we have learnt is to download the Chrome Extension "Google Meet Grid View" This is a great tool when you are meeting with more than 4 students so that you are able to see everyone in one view. 

Distance Team Meetings

That's right! We are also meeting together as the team of teachers from our intermediate block using Google Meet. It is important that we keep in contact with each other in order to continually make what we are doing better and to ensure the our own well-being is looked after.

We are our own community of learners as we branch out into this new way of teaching for us, and we are our best supporters. Especially, as we are now learning not only how to run a distance learning classroom with intermediate students but how to do it from home while juggling our own families and flat mates who are also all home and wanting our attention.

As we branch into our new normal, I am so thankful to be doing it with the lovely ladies of Team 5 at PES. 

Maths Term 2: What's working?

After further reflecting on my end of Term 1 goals with Rewindable Learning and Create Tasks and then all the PD we received from Jo Knox in regards to accurate OTJ, I placed more of an emphasis this term on practical things that we know work to boost maths confidence and tried to provide different group settings for my students to fully understand the concept of addition.

At the beginning of this year, the majority of my maths class were working at or below Stage 4, and many of those at Stage 4 had gaps in their understanding, which hindered their personal confidence. So, I decided that I was going to begin each day with X-tra Maths set only on the basic Addition facts setting.  For the most part (once the initial fun of a new program on their Chromebook wore off), the class was not overly excited about having to go through their addition facts each day.  However, I spent some time with each micro group early this term reviewing ways to add numbers together without using out fingers or holding the bigger number in our head.  We used counters and 10-frames, number lines, doubles and tidy tens...over and over and over.

One thing I did differently this term, was that I broke my micro groups up even smaller 1-2 times a week and met with fluid groups of 3 from across the class based primarily on their previous levels of understanding still focusing only on addition.  We began with adding 2-digit numbers using our whiteboards at the bean teaching table.  As we added, we reviewed place value and continually discussed the number of 10s in a number as we broke numbers up to add them together using 10s and 1s.  As students were able to add 2 digits, I mixed groups up again and moved some onto over the 10, followed by adding 3-digit numbers using HTO's and then some over the 10 as well.

It is important to note, that X-tra Maths was still happening, but something was changing.  The complaining stopped, and they were simply walking in from Morning Tea, sitting down and getting on with it.  Some were even going through the program twice, without being asked, in an effort to increase their score.

I also wanted to be sure to place an empahsis on Strand more directly than in the past, so I began having a whole class lesson each Monday to set up the topic, which generally consisted of an online game or interactive site for the class to use prior to completing their learning tasks.  This was great because it provided something different and fun for the class to work on while they waited to meet with their learning group during the week.  It was also interesting to see that since our strand this term was primarily Geometry based, my students took to it very easily and have been having a lot of fun working through the given tasks.

Students also continued using MathsWhizz this term, which allowed guided instruction with immediate feedback for both the students and for me.  I often use the Topic Focus setting once a week in an attempt to further student understanding on specific topics of need or to reinforce topics that we are directly working on in class.

Is it working?  Definitely! Slowly at times, but we are getting there.  After testing for my Term 2 reports, I realised that I only have 4 students still working below Stage 4.  One student who was in that Stage 1-3 group at the beginning of the year answered his basic addition GLOSS question with quick ease and his reason was simply, "I just knew it because of xtra maths!"  That same boy was new to our school at the beginning of the year, and out of curiousity I asked him if he was nervous when I tested him in February.  He looked at me kind of weird, and I explained further that I was wondering if he made silly mistakes back then because he has improved so much.  He slowly smiled before confidently saying, "Naw...I've just learnt heaps this year!"

2017 PES Maths Inquiry

This year, the teachers at Pt. England will be receiving Maths focused Professional Development.  In addition to this PD, we will be conducting our own personal inquires into our own teaching practice of maths.

My 30 (Year 4) Maths students range in ability from NZ Curriculum Stages 1-early 5.  The majority of my students are working below or well below grade level expectation.  

I have decided to focus my inquiry on investigating which method(s) of rewindable learning will be most beneficial to achieving accelerated learning with my below and well-below students.  I will also be inquiring into the best ways to build student confidence and understanding of basic maths knowledge in an effort to have accelerated learning take place by the end the school year.  

Source Attribution

Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher

Today was our first day meeting as the Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) cohort.  We had a wonderful day meeting together at the Spark building in Auckland, NZ sharing what we have defined as a problem that we are going to inquire into.  We also spent some time identifying possible hypotheses as to why this is a problem area for our students.

Problem Defined:
How can we extend prior knowledge and critical thinking in an effort to promote dialogic conversations in year 4 students who are reading at/above grade level?

Possible Hypotheses:

Students have not been given the freedom (in earlier years) to explore further on their own into aspects of their text/topic that spark interest.

• Students are not equipped with how to further explore a topic of interest from their text.
• Students need to be taught how to manage their time appropriately in order to complete learning tasks.
• Teachers are not definite on when to shift the focus of learning from decoding to reading for content and formulating deeper understanding from exposure to multimodal texts.
• Teachers are afraid of the time commitment needed in order the plan for extended reading lessons that go deeper for understanding.  
• Teachers are unsure where to look for age appropriate reading material.

Planned Innovation:

What would be the best way to compile a cross-cluster database to house texts linked by topic according the reading level?

Evidence of Need:

According to the Wolf Fisher Research Centre, our students learn by talking about what they are learning (dialogic conversations).  These conversations are mostly effective when students have a deeper understanding of a topic from being exposed to multimodal texts.  

Data Gathered:

• Student PAT and STAR results-Nov 2016 
• Student PAT and STAR results-Feb 2017
• Running Records-Nov 2016 
• 2016 Teacher OTJ-Reading
• Reading previous student Blog posts 
• In class micro group discussions

Term 3: What I have learnt so far by focusing on the "small things"

Term 2 Inquiry Reflection

"Critical" Friends

As part of our ongoing school wide professional development our staff is looking at ways to provoke increased reading with our students.  We are blessed to have Dr. Rebecca Jesson share various discussion provoking ideas with our teaching staff and as a result we are taking part of a special teacher growth experience that we are calling "Critical" Friends.

We have been put into groups of three with teachers from around our school to spend time looking at various ways that our staff teach different aspects of reading to our students.  I was able to spend time with my two Critical Friends observing their interactions with one of their reading groups.

The first group (year 7/8 students) was focusing on creating a "dialogic" classroom.  They spent a chunk of time taking a deeper look at the emotion that was evoked within them as they focused on the cover picture from the reading journal.  The students were respectful, responsive and engaged in the activity.  They were able to answer questions when going around the circle to provide their responses.  The teacher had the students orally repeat words and phrases back as a group often during their discussion.  Prior to reading the text, students were asked to remember the questions that the emotions provoked within them.

Attribution

The second classroom (year 2 students) learn using iPads and the Explain Everything Application, which I use with one group of my own learners. The learning group I was able to see, read orally from their reading book and their teacher did a great job stopping to have the students discuss necessary/new vocabulary.  She began by asking what word was used to "DESCRIBE" the web in the story.  I loved seeing that year 2 students were already being asked to describe things from their stories (a concept my year 5/6 students have a very difficult time with when writing).  After the students completed their reading, their EE activity was explained.  I loved that they had videos embedded that provided the students with opportunities to expand their own knowledge on similar subjects.  I thought this was great given recent discussions on my own team regarding how to help our students apply (and gain) prior knowledge to apply to their reading.

Being in the classrooms was so fun, and a great way to spend some time reflecting on my own teaching practice.  I look forward to observing (and learning from) my colleagues in the future!

Term 2-Phase 2

Already this term has provided some teaching challenges, and I have had to reflect on my teaching for each group as well as the class as a whole.

 Our students are so blessed that they are able to receive many different forms of literacy intervention. At various times during our literacy block, I have over half of my class receiving literacy support. It is such a wonderful opportunity for them to take part in these programs/teaching sessions and nearly all of the students have shown great progress over the past term. However, as the classroom teacher, it presents some unique challenges with scheduling, lesson planning, and small group teaching sessions.

With that said, I have reworked the literacy program in my classroom. We begin everyday by orally reading a chapter in a novel. So many of our students do not read for entertainment purposes, and reading is one of my favourite things to do. Spending this 5-10 minutes a day reading to my students is so valuable for many reasons. At first, they were very reluctant to sit and listen, but today, I accidentally went to move right into our writing lesson and was stopped by a number of students reminding me to read. I use this time to model reading a novel with the kids. Before beginning each day, we review what happened the in the previous chapter, and while reading I often stop and discuss various vocabulary words, figurative language and make predictions about the events to come.

Each Monday, I have decided to begin class with a Dictogloss that show cases the writing concept for that week.  So far this term, we have focused on onomatopoeia and character descriptions.   This provides students with an opportunity to sound out words that they hear, take notes, work with a small group to construct the paragraph, and revise/edit punctuation and spelling errors.  In just two weeks, the difference in student interaction has improved greatly.  There are still a few extremely shy students who are finding it difficult to work with others but I have been shuffling their partners each week to promote different level students working together.  Plus, there are a few students who are unable to do this assignment due to their own personal language/literacy constraints.  I still have them listen to the reading and try to take notes.  They also still listen to the conversation with a small group in order to have the oral interaction with their peers.

Students have been working this term to read and create Comics and Superheroes.  I have decided that we are going to be learning a concept during our whole class writing sessions that will have a shorter follow up assignment.  As a result, this term, I am working to include more writing based reading follow up tasks.

So far....so good, but it's only week 2!  However, I am very excited for this new challenge, and for the opportunity it presents to present more "CREATE" opportunities with written language with my reading groups.

Term 1 Inquiry Presentation

This term, I decided to do a walk through of an individual student's journey during the past term as we work to solidify the building blocks within their writing tool kit.

2016: Bring Out the Lego!

It's here!  A new school year!  Complete with new challenges, adventures, trials and successes!  This year, I am so excited to be part of Team 4, working with our Year 4-6 students.  Our block is separated into two learning zones, and on our side we have only Year 5-6 students.  There are four teachers working with approximately 90-100 students in an Open Plan Modern Learning Environment.

I was gifted a big box of Lego last school year, and I was so excited to bring them out for our students to play with during our first rainy day lunch.  Once the initial shock of seeing so many Lego wore off, the excitement and creativity that flowed through the students who chose to play with them was inspiring.  As I begin to think about my personal teaching inquiry this year, I keep being reminded of that big ol' crate of Lego.

At this point in their school adventure, my students have heard so many things about what to do and what not to do when crafting their own piece of writing.  Unfortunately, for most of them they have a toolbox of tricks and bits of information that is as unorganised and shocking as my crate of Lego.

My inquiry this year is to use formative assessments to help take those crazy toolboxes of writing tricks and bits of information and turn them into something that opens a clear pathway of understanding for my students when they sit at their computer and begin to type.

My students will hopefully learn to become excited writers who are able to turn words on a page into a document that meets the necessary requirements for the task at hand.

Turning this...

Into this....

Term 3 Inquiry Presentations

This term has ended just like the previous, and as a staff we have been sharing what we have learnt in our inquiries this term.  For me, this marks the end of the 2015 school year, and I have learnt so much about my personal teaching style and student engagement.  I look forward to the 2016 school year, and the pathway to deciding my focus for a new school year in the months to come.

Manaiakalani Digital Immersion Term 3

At today's Manaiakalani Digital Immersion we were tasked with exploring a CyberSmarts assignment that our kids could use focusing on the "create" element of our Learn, Create, Share model.  We decided to focus on the next Digital Learning Object (DLO) for the students in our team.  It was decided to use the Smart Values heading of CyberSmarts and focus on The Pt. England Way and the 3 P's (Partnership, Participation, Protection).

We have a very basic layout for our students at this point in time, but our main idea is to lead the students through the learning task of the Smart Values-Making Links assignment prior to beginning their DLO animation.

Term 2 Reflection: What have I learnt so far?

Maths Progression: Problem Solving

In addition to having my literacy students begin to use a SOLO based rubric to monitor and self-reflect on their learning, I have begun to have my Maths class do the same.  We have been working on becoming confident problem solvers the past few weeks.  

My students are often able to tell you how to solve a simple problem using an algorithm, but many lack confidence when it comes to telling a group of their peers.  They also struggle to explain more than one method, and choose the best method possible.  

Over the past two weeks, I have watched the confidence in my students grow tremendously.  They are no longer afraid to make mistakes because they have discovered when it comes to Maths, a confident mistake often leads to correct understanding after our group presentations and discussions.  

Today, my students spent some time reflecting on themselves as a learner over the past week.  They reviewed the level they were at last week, and decided whether or not they have made enough progress to move to the next level.  As shown on the post below, Quasia entered today's date on the same level as she was at last week.  At first glance, one might think this meant that she did not make any progress during the week.  However, that is far from the truth.   Looking further in Quasia's post she discusses what she feels she has achieved this week and what her next step is in order to achieve 'purple.'  

Check out Quasia's post below, and feel free to click here to see her personal blog and leave her a message on her progress.

Reading Progression: Managing Time to Complete Assignments

Today, my literacy class had their first go with using a SOLO based rubric to help with their personal reflection on their assignments.  I decided to begin our SOLO rubric journey using a Key Competency that the students in my class really need to work on: Managing Self/Time to Complete Assignments.

Luckily, another teacher at Pt. England, Ben Baxendine, has already started a similar journey using SOLO based rubrics to enable his students to easily monitor and reflect on their progress.  This provided a pathway for my focus, and allowed me to start off at the point he has begun to feel the most successful.

I introduced the rubric to my students first thing this morning, and we spent some time going through each stage (or colour as referred to the levels as a class).  Students then spent some time looking at their most recent reading assignment and determining which level they felt they were on.

Once they decided which level they were, the students wrote today's date in the corresponding 'colour box' before posting the rubric on their individual blog.  Each student was also asked to write a paragraph or two under their rubric discussing why they were at that level and what they will have to do in order to achieve their level goal for our next assignment.

Here is one example of a student blog post:

This is my reading progress.

This is my reading Progress.Apparently I am in the orange zone,because I have't been managing my self ,and been doing my work properly .

 I have been talking too much and been getting too distracted,I understand why now.

And next time I will know what to do,and hopefully move to the Green or Blue zone.I hope u use this too.

PD: Dr. Jannie van Hees "Crafting Writing. Crafting Writers."

Today, we had our second session with Dr Jannie van Hees.  We spent the afternoon discussing our student writers and crafting effective paragraphs.

My notes from the session are below:

What is a paragraph?  How can we get kids more “crafted” in their paragraph writing?

Don’t forget to keep students in a “Goldilocks Zone” not too...fast, slow, hard, easy-especially with vocabulary choices.

This allows students to have powerful learning at all times.  This is highly powered by gifted words, and bringing definitions alive with a classroom discussion (not jumping to the dictionary).  

What is your ultimate goal with writing for your children? Dynamic, delicious writers, or able to pass an e-asttle format test.  Do not let go of frequent oral language and crafting “dynamic and delicious” sentences together.

It is so important that our student writers understand that editing is an ongoing job, and the writer must always be wearing the shoes of the reader.  

Do your students begin their writing with a sentence?  This is ok some of the time, but it is important that your students do not overuse this form of a writer’s hook.  It is very important to demonstrate varied ways to craft a hook.  

Make sure learners identify and write their topic, purpose(s) and audience prior to starting a piece of writing.  Purposes...move away from using “describe,” “explain,” “construct.”  Instead, use a reason:  “Your parents/aunties/uncles will be able to fully understand what happened during our assembly today.

PD: Dr. Jannie van Hees "Developing a Dialogic, Orally Expressive Classroom"

This term, the year 5-8 teachers are participating in Professional Development with Dr. Jannie van Hees. Below are my notes from our first session.

Conversational Teaching and Learning

How do you explicitly grow student expression in the classroom?

-Think/Pair/Share

-Repeat Back what was said

-Backing Up View Point/Answer

-Individual Conferencing

After this discussion, I am very interested in finding out more about and implementing “Talk Moves” into my daily Maths lessons.  

Students need to be pushed to use the “output” more in order recognise more complex language features.  They need to have “gifted” words provided multiple times a day in order to effectively receive a high level model of appropriate language features. The need to be continuously fed in order to lift their language readiness.

When students are acquiring language knowledge there are three major gains that happen for them.  

1. Deeper Knowledge: Structure and Grammatical Language
2. Fullness of Expression: How to deeply engage and talk with others using rich vocabulary
3. Extended Language Growth and Vocabulary  

Students need to use their brains at a higher level of complexity than they are currently.  This will only properly happen if students are able to practice.  Providing students an opportunity to participate in a Think-Aloud that has multiple steps, which potentially puts them on the spot provides an extremely important life skill.  Students need to have orally shaping conversations that will allow them to “hold on” to information.

Our day-to-day priority of conversation enhances the learning of our students, in addition to the actual curriculum covered.  Students are required to participate in a more enriching manner. Students have to contribute, be focused, have meaningful things to provide, etc.

On a daily basis, students should be provided with a chance to have conversation.  Topics could be anything that the teacher suggests or that is student prompted.  This provides a chance for formative assessment, both on the topic and a students language ability.  This allows the teacher a meaningful opportunity to provide gifted words (including definitions) to help expand the vocabulary of their class.

Point to ponder: How many questions do you ask your students on a daily basis? Questions do not provide opportunities for students to expand their thinking and language. They provide a way for students to dig deeper into their own resources instead of expanding their thinking and engaging their understanding.

Term 1 Inquiry Reflection

At Pt. England, we were fortunate to have a Teacher's Only Day the last day of Term 1.  As part of this day, our staff spent time presenting the progress and personal reflection of our professional Inquiries.  It was a great day of collaboration and learning.  I have included a copy of presentation below. 

SOLO: Sequencing & Character Description

As part of my Inquiry, I am working to develop High Level Thinking activities for my below and well-below students.  During a recent group PD, I was able to work with Andrea Tele'a (another PES teacher) to develop a follow up activity using the SOLO model.  Most likely, I will not be using this activity with my learners until sometime in Term 2, which will give me time to scaffold the ideas of this follow up with my students.