Writing with Gemini AI

One of the things we have been thinking a lot about is how we include our Maniakalani Learn, Create, Share pedagogy with our BSLA program. 

This week, my Literacy class was reading the story "Staying Afloat."  We have been working to write complete sentences using lots of good detail and description. After we discussed the elements of the story, the class had 10 minutes to write their own retell. Then, they were shown how to put their retell into Gemini AI to get a picture based on their writing. They learnt how to modify their writing to include the best detail to get an image that properly illlustrated the main idea of the story. 

 Here is an example that was written by a student in class: 

  One day kele and Vika, also granddad, were going on a boat. Granddad told them to wear a life jacket but kele didn’t want to wear one so he told how a boy who was in tonga,  but strong  fell into  the sea. Kele gasped so he had to wear one at last. When they were fishing kele fell into the water too but grandad could get him in time. At last Kele was out  grinning because he got a snapper and said who is the best fisher now!! Here are our first two tries at an image. 

The first image didn't show grandad or the sister Vika and it didn't show Tongan children so we made a few changes (as seen in the above paragraph).

   

 But, we were still not happy because there were no life jackets in the second photo and they were in a motorboat. 

So we got back to work and this is how we modified it to get the best photo from Gemini: 

 One day a Tongan family went fishing in New Zealand. Kele, his sister Vika, and granddad, were going onto Grandad's vaka. After putting on his green life jacket, Granddad told them to put their life jackets on. Vika put on her pink life jacket but Kele didn’t want to wear one. Grandad told how as boy growing up in Tonga, he fell into the sea. Kele gasped so he had to wear one at last. When they were fishing kele fell into the water too but grandad could get him in time. At last Kele was grinning because he got a snapper with his blue life jacket on!!

RPI: Writing Like An Author

 As part of our RPI Homework, we were asked to lead students through the "Great Beginnings" activity. I decided to use the same text as we used in our RPI session to offer a high ceiling for this activity and made a few adjustments to make it more Year 4 friendly. 

First, I introduced the word "Imitate." We had a great 5 minute discussion as a think pair share, after discussing what it means to imitate, where students discussed whether or not it is a good thing to imitate others. We then jumped up and did a GoNoodle dance video "Boom Chicka Boom." After we discussed that it was a good reason to imitate. The next thing we did was watch a video about an artist who imitated vanGogh's paintings and ended up learning some amazing things about their own painting style. 

A few great connecting points that she made in the video (and that I put on the whitebaord) were:

"You find new ways to bring energy and expression to your own work."

"....to discover your own voice and style."

"...a way to evoke emotion and find your own voice."

Then, I read the text selection aloud before flipping to the next slide where I outlined the vocabulary words that I wanted to unpack with the class (as seen on the slides below). 

Students were then paired up with a buddy to work on the "Writing Like an Author" task. I took the sections that the students needed to expand on and colour coded them to the text selection on the next slide to help them to understand what they needed to write and where it needed to be inputted into the text. 

Class on Air: Writing From Home

With our country in Level 4 lockdown, in response to the Covid-19 epidemic, teachers are learning how to effectively adapt their pedagogy to ensure that their students are learning from home. For those of us in Manaiakalani schools, we are exploring new ways to have students participate in our Learn, Create, Share pedagogy from home. In addition, our Manaiakalani Class on Air team was challenged to begin thinking outside of the box when designing our lessons during this period of distance learning. 

This past week, our country celebrated Anzac Day as we do each year. However, this year, due to the lockdown things were a tad bit different across the country. As a result, the lesson that I prepared for my students was also a tad bit different. 

Check out my Manaiakalani Class on Air episode where students were encouraged to come up with a way to make their own poppy or poppy display around their house. After creating their poppy, students were tasked with writing step by step instructions and presenting those instructions in a creative manner on their blogs. 

Say More. Tell the Detail.

As part of our CoL meeting last week, we heard from Dr. Janni van Hees and she shared with us some practical ways to get our kids using higher level vocabulary.  One of the strategies she shared with us was referred to as Say More. Tell the Detail.

I decided to try this strategy with my Literacy class this week with the hope of linking the concept to our writing assignment from last week.

Dr. van Hees suggested showing students a simple statement like:

A bird flew into our house.

After showing this to the class, have a discussion about what else we could include as the author to allow the reader to understand (and see) exactly what the author was trying to say. Then, show them this improved paragraph. 

A bird flew into our house. We had a window open and it just flew in. It was super scared 'cos it felt trapped.

Taking this concept into consideration, I knew from the writing samples I had recently scored that many of my students were not including detail of this type in their writing. I have also observed that my students were not used to sharing colourful language when brainstorming and looking at a picture before they begin writing. As a result, I decided to focus my writing lesson this week on painting a picture with our words. 

We began by looking at this picture and sentence:

I saw the sun.

I then asked the class what else they wanted to know.  They came up with things like, 

• When did you see the sun?
• Where did you see the sun?
• How did you see the sun?

We then discussed ways that we could add personification to the description and what other descriptive words they could use when talking about this picture.

We pulled together this list:

• When: On my way to school this morning
• Where: over the river
• How: rays through the clouds
• Figurative Language: Personification the sun is greeting me
• Descriptive words (adjectives): *sparkling river  *bright rays *morning sun

Then, we were able to construct the following detailed sentence.

This morning, on my way to school, I looked over the sparkling river and saw the bright rays of the morning sun shining through the clouds to greet me as I started my day.

Students have been provided with three more pictures to consider while making sentences that paint a picture. I am hoping as a result of this we will begin to see words and phrases from the Goldilocks zone emerge when we are brainstorming for our digital word bank prior to starting our writing tasks each week.

Language Abundance: Chain Linked Writing

Near the end of May, Dr. Janni van Hees came in and talked to the Manaiakalani COL teachers about Language Abundance within in our classrooms (see blog post here). One of the things that Janni spoke about was the idea of creating a dialogic chain (or paragraph) with our students to illustrate grouping details/ideas together in a physical chain.

This term, our school theme is "Move 'Ya Body" and as a focus the students in our learning space are exploring the Maori idea of hauora through their literacy tasks.  After introducing the concept of hauora to the students last week through their reading, we decided to have them write about how they have all four elements in their own lives.

This morning, I launched this concept with the students by providing time for them to Think-Pair-Share what they remembered about hauora.  We then discussed the elements of a paragraph (topic sentences, details, closing).  Students were randomly selected to read aloud sentence strips that were prepared ahead of time.

The class had to decide which statements linked together to form our introduction paragraph and which statements were random details that might fall into the body paragraph links later on in our writing. We also prepared a digital dictation of the paragraph for students to listen to and type into their assignment before writing their own body paragraphs. 

The girls enjoyed being our human paragraph chain. 

The chain was added to our wall as a visual reminder to apply to future learning. 

I look forward to later in the week, when we discuss student writing as a class to have students chain link the sentences they have written for their body paragraphs. Hopefully, this will provide a deeper understanding of paragraph development (and conversation skills) for the students in our class.

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

Term 3 Phase 3

It is so hard to believe that our school year is already well into the second half!  My students are making progress each in their own way, but the best growth I am seeing is in their interactions with each and myself.  We are able to hold small group and whole class discussions with nearly all students participating without any prompting.  Students feel comfortable orally sharing their thoughts, and ideas with the group.  We are working to put those thoughts and ideas into our own words and onto paper.

For some of my students who struggle with writing due to their written language (and therefore reading) level this is a difficult task.  I realised that they had the ability to tell a story, or retell about an incident, but they lacked the ability to put it on paper.  These students are now able to confidently use "voice typing" on Google Docs and embed that writing into their assignments.  They may not always have the correct spelling or grammar at this point, mostly due to the interpretation of the voice type software of their speech, but they are now able to produce their own work and ideas to complete their assignments and share on their blogs.

We continue to read our novel on a daily basis, and my students were so excited to discover that the novel we finished last term had a part 2!  Using the written text of the novel to reiterate the concepts we are talking about in our writing assignments throughout the year allows us to review continually and expand our understanding of the topics we have previously discussed.

This term, I am beginning to focus on working with my students to write there answers and convey the ideas in their writing assignments using their own words.  We will also continue to build our toolbox for writing narratives by looking at developing complex sentences and incorporating correct usage of dialogue.

Term 2 Inquiry Reflection

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.

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.