Devices: DFI day 7. It's more than a tool!

Devices:  this day focuses on the devices our young people use and we will experience Learn Create Share using Chromebooks and iPads.

Fiona Grant has kicked of our morning with a great overview of our cyber smarts! Commenting, a special focus for success is the promotion of positive language. Don't assume it's already there for anyone. It's something us as educators need to be very aware of along with our learners. In the past the learners feedback was very limited if not absent. Now with the use of blogs students are encouraged to give feedback. Initially I noticed as an educator students were focused on the mistakes made - spelling errors etc, this was telling of what they observed of us! EEK! This act of commenting positively has brought about a real mind shift for students AND teachers!

Smart learner, footprint relationships have become the key elements of smarts with the others being more of smarts that are then linked into. This focus is intentional for the first three terms of learning year.

Part of this is the confidence in which the students use their device to achieve learning outcomes. Ubiquitous - learning is accessible at any time/place by the learners. Again if the three smarts of learner, footprint and relationships is embedded then ubiquitous learning will be successful.

Connected, when designing learning we want it to engage our learners. Using positive language to capture our students. Think about what images, text we are presenting? Does it promote positive and helpful - this needs to be our default our norm.


Hapara Teacher Dashboard: Sharing work
Some don'ts...don't ask children to share their documents with you. Do not ask them to make folders. When you do this you disempower everyone involved as you it goes against the workflow that has been set up for the learners AND teachers.
Always have children making documents in the folders they already have. This is where there are will be found by teachers and no issues of lost files 'can't find it Miss'.

Gmail: a good place to see at a glance if students have opened up your email.

One-to-one devices:
The Treaty of Waitangi was a fundamental in our decision to go one-to-one.
Partnership: our fist point of action what to partner with our families, to talk with each other about the possibility of having one-to-one devices. What it would look, sound and smell like. So many of the small but important details that make up todays kaupapa around the use of one-to-one devices in our schools.

The Chromebook Experience: normally at this stage we'd all be given chromebooks to work through this lesson. A great way to experience what our learners do. We gave a 'Digital Dig' tasks a go. This is a really good activity to re-visit every start of year to re-focus the learners on key skills/functions they will need for learning.

iPad learning journey. After a lot of testing of various tablets it was found that iPads were the best for our learners, our junior learners. 1-1 ipads are set up very intentionally in comparison to a blended learning area. Well before the school year gets on the way, the set up of the iPad is very important. They are the same in every way possible to support classroom teachers.
Kawa of care for our learners is key also at this young age, this includes the care of their stylus.
Explain Everything is an enabler of students and teachers to create learner artefacts. We had the chance to look at this programme. Gerhard made a point again to use the actual names of the tools. It makes good sense as students like us will use this foundation of tool naming to launch from when we move onto using the correct names of tools. We had another explore session to experience some of what our junior students and teachers experience.
1. Try and create in EE
2. Import pre-existing learning activities onto white board
3. Explore what learners have created on EE

SHARE: Blogger tips from Kerry was the last session today.   Kerry took us through a quick lesson on how to add a page to your blog.  It's a good idea to have an 'About me' page for your audience.  

Enabling Access- Sites. DFI Day 6

Connecting with cohort:

This was a good opportunity to check in with our Auckland cohort on how distance learning was going. Positive reports on all fronts. A key theme was the act of teachers to provide for learners regardless of how many students tune in. Schools are already communicating with whanau to work out what the needs are to get students connected online. Good thing we have hard packs and the learning channel there to support distance learning!

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Dorothy

Pedagogy and Kaupapa

Visible connected learners

Act of sharing causes connection. In this time of distance learning sharing and connection has been made through camera and mics on devices. Where cameras haven't been able to work I've found it hard to get a sense of whether children understand what I'm teaching.

Twitter is the domain that pulls from all our blogs - really simple syndication! Our students across Manaiakalani and outreaches across Aotearoa have been blogging a whole heap! Impressive stats are being collected in this time of lockdown. Our students are certainly sharing and connecting via their blogs.

In our own local blogs - specifically year 7 & 8 children have refined their sharing on blogs to grab the attention of their audience. Our age group are well into blogging and if you are not intentionally teaching/reminding students to be mindful of audience the blog can just become the old 1B5 that they 'work' in and that's it! This has been a huge plus of this lockdown time. The parts that make up connecting learning.

Maria: Visual appeal - shop window!

User experience - easy to locate ‘stuff’ (2/3 clicks)

A chance to visit sites to check for the above. A really good chance to not only visit sites but more so to reflect on how my own is set up...is it appealing?? User experience??

High school sites are as expected very different to that of primary schools. The various levels, range of class levels etc is reflected in high school sites. Having children myself who have completed college the site I saw from Karen at Tamaki College is really helpful. To be able to go back to review the standards/expectations/example of tasks would have been a great support to my children!

Local team site sharing time!

Really appreciated this time together to simply share what we work out of daily as educators and the other hats we wear in our school community. I am impressed the wonderful range - multimodal provisions in the sites that were shared. The familiar faces of teachers doing fun things like reading a big book, notices and reminders etc. Rewindable learning is key in our sites. The familiar 'What do we do again Miss'...our sites support this well! We had the chance to hear from the site owners for couple minutes at a time then we gave feedback via a form.

Some feedback I got from sharing our Team 5 site that all teachers for year 7 & 8 have their own pages. Hope my team get to see this as it's the work of Team5@PES.

• Awesome!!!
• Such a well thought out site with tons of intentional planning to ensure the success of your tamariki! Responsive to current climate with limiting the links too!
• Excellent site! Easy to follow, love the faces of teachers that match the group, has their names as well, so everyone knows where they should be. Like the visible timetable so everyone knows what's happening. Like instructions next to the slides. Great job!
• Brilliant organisation. Lucky kids

Blogger tips with Kerry was a good reminder for me! I found my blog list had students over quite a few years still sitting there in my class blog. Needing to get onto this pronto - adding students from my class this year! You'd think I would have had this done.

A great big thanks to Dorothy, Gerhard and the great team of leaders today!

Another productive day!

Collaborative teaching and learning. DFI day 5

Gratitude chain: what a great way to start today's session of DFI.  30 seconds to firstly acknowledge what person prior to us was grateful then into our grateful korero then onto the next person all in 30 seconds!

VISIBLE: can you see it?  This has been part of the Manaiakalani kawa since it's beginnings.  Our journey has see many of the locked away - kept to thyself practices diminish because it doesn't work!  No that's right we need to make what we do VISIBLE which does mean sharing of great ideas we all have.  Teachers experience that today in open learning spaces, the development of teacher around learning AND behaviour is so much quicker.  Students, teachers AND whanau are more a part of open spaces across schools and the community via our online hosting of all that we do.
Our default is visible.  Visible learning supports the Kawa of what you say is what you'll do - they'll be no surprises!

Hapara was specifically designed to support Manaiakalani.   This was designed so that the learning would be visible to the teacher.   It's a great tool to support our students and brings stability to our current situation of students carrying out distance learning.   Our whanau have access to Hapara also to support their children from home.
John Hattie supports - our feedback and feedforward makes a positive difference for our learners.  John Hattie is a Professor of Education first at the University of Auckland then later at the University of Melbourne in Australia.   He is very big on VISIBLE learning! 
Our researchers

We need to keep sharing the process of teaching and learning in a visible setting.  We must follow the process of limiting the links.  Remove the barriers of passwords and limiting the links.  It's the best way to go.  Thanks Dorothy for the korero here!

MULITMODAL....MULITTEXTUAL
How can we make our delivery inclusive?  Not just about uploading our worksheets, we actually need to move away from this and look at how we can include all our students.  How can our students take on more responsibility for their learning.  Self manage and self scaffold.
First key concepts is:
a. Engagement - the HOOK
Are our sites engaging, does it hook the attention of your audience?  Does your homepage have all your communication points present?

BUILDING TIME - time to build a google site from scratch with Gerhard.  When creating a new site, identify FIRST what is the purpose of your site.  Think - limiting links, limit the amount of clicks for your audience.  If you can't get to where you need to be in 2-3 clicks - you need to refine this process.  A flow-chart on paper can come in handy here.   Once this purpose and flow has been decided, next you think about the pages.  What's taking up the most real estate?  The least?  What is the best layout for this?

How do we hook in the behaviour and learning we're after.   The MULTIMODAL elements hooks in the behaviour we are after - being excited, interested - a desire to find more!   The MULTITEXT elements caters to the cognitive!

Multimodes to engage the learners.  This might mean writing, video, song, animation, graph.  We want people to understand information - this is our goal!

Our site should have multiple modes of presenting this important information.  Academically we want to be sure we are reading multiple texts.
1. Main text: the actual text we want them to be able to read
2. Complimentary texts - ideas can be accessed independently says the same thing but in different way
*Scaffolding texts - main ideas can be accessed independently, ideas are still on same wave length as main text.  Vocab list with links etc.    (referred here to matrix created by Angela Moala)
3. Challenging texts - not just challenging vocabulary but various points of views, conflicting information type of challenge
4. Student selected texts - an invite for students to build up mileage and knowledge by students

I was in team Kerry for building site from scratch on 'Fake News'.  It was a great experience working with our team of 5, great questions to help me along the way.   Please go here to see what I managed to create with the support of leader Kerry. 

What will I take from today?

• Limit the links on our sites!  Keep thinking of ways to refine this feature for our learners, not simply for this time of distance learning but into the future schooling that follows.
• Multimodal and Multitextual - an oldie BUT GOODIE!  A must!  Are we empowering learners with the resources we are providing?   Are we allowing our students to contribute to these resources?  We should be
• VISIBLE: if it ain't visible it ain't useful to no one

Kia Ora to Dorothy and national team of Manaiakalani facilitators.  

Have a blessed Easter Break.

DFI: Dealing with Data: DFI Online FRIDAY 2020 session 4

SHARE is the theme for today!   Hasn't this been the focus these last two weeks for us all!
How relevant is it for us today!

After farewelling Team 5 this morning I jumped straight onto our DFI for our fourth session.   Blogger is where I have begun today!   Blogger was selected years ago, today it is still highly functional space for our children. It looks after us legally too so thumbs up all around!
WARNING!  Don't be swayed by the latest look/app, stop and check that it's safe legally, systematically secure.  Blogger still wins this hands down.

AUDIENCE: you want an audience?  We need an audience!  Blogger promotes celebration of completed tasks, the effort to share what you can with your audience!  As an audience we have a role to play too!
Our well being is very important!  Hauora - our students hauora right now is being supported by our ability to interact through comments on their blogs and google meets etc.





DEALING WITH DATA

Google form helps us to collect data!  We had a 15 chalk and talk session with Gerhard.  forms.googl.com is a way to get there.   Great idea is start with a black template rather than a themed form.
In sandpit time I've created a survey I will send to whole of team to find out what our students want for the weeks of distance learning ahead in regards to regularity of meets for various learning groups.  Part of this will be their need around social connections for Hauora - Well being.

Google MyMaps
So much opportunity here to support teaching and learning for literacy and numeracy.
Google Earth has many great functions - 3D imagery, embed html content, does not yet allow importing of spreadsheet.

Google Sheets
A lot of cool tips here for admin involved in teaching AND the teaching and learning we provide our students, whanau and school community across regions.

Blog data case studies - using spreadsheets and google draw to analyse blog data.
We had the chance to hear from Robyn from Panmure Bridge School.   Her sharing was around a case study on a Mele - a student in her class.  The idea of setting goals for blog posts and children planning using statistics to work out how many blog posts per week/month/year.  What is a realistic goal and how it can be achieved.  Along with this I imagine that students will also refine the quality of posts not just the quantity!

We had sandpit time to create our own graphs and analysis of a blog and it's data re posts etc.  That's the image I've posted right at the top!

So what you gonna do with this all Mrs Tele'a?
I will plan a lesson like that of Robyn and Mele's sharing today to support student goals and motivation during this time of distance learning.    I will send out the google form I've created to support our teacher planning.  Also refresh my own plans around rostering when and where to be giving feedback via blog commenting.

Thanks to the DFI team from across Aotearoa for such a productive day.
Ka kite Ano.
Le Atua i lo tatou vā

Andrea

Fractions to decimals: try this out!

This morning we had the privilege of observing Jo Know in action with some of our target group learners. These students are working at standard 6 in maths. This places just below the national standard in maths. Normally a very talkative group they were very quiet. A number of differences for these students

1. New teacher

2. Not in the normal class setting

3. 5 teachers watching their every step

You can see that it was a hard task for our students to relax at first and get into things. Once they did we learned so much! We could see a clear need to develop language and understanding around the focus of session. This was on converting fractions to decimals and vice versa.

Things we can try:

1. Give students the chance to try the following on their own bit of paper, reassure them it's not a matter or right and wrong. It's a matter of trying out any strategy they have.

2. Have students fold paper strip into halves, lable, the same again for quarters then eighths. This seemed straight forward to our students. However once asking to go back to identify now what 3/4 were AFTER paper was folded into eighths, this really threw them. The became indecisive. The prompt for decision making was made when made to use a scissors to quickly cut quarters with a countdown from 5. This action seemed to plant more understanding, some very nervous to decided where to cut!

Here's how it all started:

Teacher could ask the following (to check where students are at)Can you write 0.27One tenth?Three fifths?Five quarters?One tenth as a decimal?0.27 + 0.2 =?

We discovered a number of work ons and were led by Jo to the following the next steps when in class in next with target group:

** Next step going back to improper fractions

Use double number and more line for this.  3/2….the 3 is the ‘COUNT’ of how many halfs.

Lines would be:

• Whole number line
• ½ line
• ¼ line

Materials, push the imaging

Where they can’t work things out...go back to materials then back to imaging

Below is an example of a number line to develop understanding of equivalent fractions and to work with in use of improper fractions.

Data analysis in action - data to empower learners!

We've completed another round of IKAN's and here are our results for our target group.   I have moved one in and another out of this target group.    My target group are made up of students sitting a level below the national standard in maths.

Process:
We carried out the process as explained in previous posts.   Sitting test by going through IKAN twice, on own chromebook and earphones and then our discussion around our new set of results.

Points of difference:
1. Entering data together: 
This time I had the data on the big screen with the group.   I added this months results next to data collected earlier in year in front of the whole group.   Each student shared which stage they were at for the various categories:
a. Number sequence and order
b. Fractions
c. Place Value
d. Basic Facts

2. Colour codes: Green - shift made, orange - same stage, red - back a stage, yellow shifted more than one stage.  Student by student they needed to look at previous data and tell me if it was 'Green, orange, red or yellow'.   All this from the big screen as shown in image above. This meant the students looked closely at the data making comparisons for themselves - some looks of happiness and disappointment.  In reflection all students agreed that it was good useful information to help them.
The adding of colour helped students see more clearly how to track our data as learners and the teacher.

3. Setting the next steps for self: 
From this data analysis students posted on a doc - as shown below of what their problem areas were and how they planned to tackle the learning needed.  You can see some understand the purpose of this workbook others - well I'll need to coach them.   They were directed to say 'How' they were going specifically  try to improve  OR whether they needed help from me.  They attempted this exercise with the answer sheet in hand to see if they could comprehend further their path of error.

We plan to share our own reflective posts soon.  Watch this space!

Manaiakalani COL teachers share teaching inquiries

 

What a great afternoon sharing alongside all CoL teachers!   We all presented in a session to showcase our inquiries at the Annual Manaiakalani Hui.  It was great to share our inquiries with a whole range of people.   The audience I shared with were from a range of places:

• old teachers friends from across the cluster dating back over 10 years!
• core education representatives
• members of the Woolf Fisher Research 
• Manaiakalani Outreach Team
• new teachers to our cluster
• members of our Manaiakalani Hackers Team 

A few standout points for me was finding out from colleagues a common goal of having students AND teachers 'Explain Ready'.  Meaning:

a. students are ready to explain how they might solve a problem in maths.  

b. they are able to interpret what a word problem is actually asking

c. the need for educators to be more aligned in the terminology

d. the need think carefully of  the style of questioning and processing we need to promote.  

e. teacher choice of language and modelling will develop mathematical understanding to the point of being able to transfer knowledge and practice into other strands and curriculum areas.

As I shared in my recent post my inquiry falls under achievement challenge #4: 

Increase the achievement of Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets

Here is the presentation I shared..  I must say it was fun setting up the 3 panelled board - really made me think about what really needed to be shared given the limited space to display.  Thanks to the Manaiakalani team for their leadership in setting up this valuable opportunity for us all.  You are very welcome to visit my professional blog to read and see more.

Screen casts that 'Explains and shows' my understanding

Following on from our staff meeting led by Dorothy Burt we had our own Pt England group inquiry session.  In this session we are invited to share and reflect on progress today with our own individual inquiries.

I will share about the findings of a colleague around the use of capturing screen casts that display a student working through a problem.  In this you will see their working out with a voiceover that is captured at the same time.

The idea I plan to implement with my target group is this very activity of having students capture their explanation of maths problems they tackle.  

Plan of action:
1. Demo working out a problem they find easy using screen capture
2. Demo working out a problem that is challenging for their maths group

I will need to support this process well with helping students to  identify specifically a problem to solve.   Also the skills needed to capture their explanation/working out well so that their example is a clear example of 'Rewindable Learning' for their peer group.

Screencastify - tutorial video

I can understand IKAN's

Update!  In my most recent post I shared my:
Next steps for my inquiry: CREATE rubric and templates that support the following:
1. Carry out the 'SECOND' step as outlined in Jo's presentation
2. Plot results out of Spidergraph
3. Implement activities that prompt reflection on data
4. Decide WITH student what our next steps are in learning in the number strand
5. Implement support this choice in follow up activities and home learning

I have completed step 1 where my all my students were given the opportunity to sit the IKAN differently to how I have administered it.  Most steps being those that Jo in our staff PD outlined.  I have also completed step 4, students have published this on their blogs.

Process:

• Students sat in their maths groups
• All with own chromebook and earphones
• Went through the IKAN test twice over
• Marked own test with teacher and group
• Circling those answers that were 'silly mistakes'.  This meaning mistakes that were made in the haste of test setting.  They could see what they did wrong and could prove themselves by answering a similar problem.
• Scoring the stages and various domains
• Blog post results and their own reflections that explained this different process and how they felt they performed using this new process

Students have made improvements overall.  Place value has not shifted as much as I had hoped for.   It has improved for approximately half of my class - the other half achieving stage 4 at the highest which still means no progress for a some students.   Target group as displayed: 6 same level, 4 shifted upwards.    

Identify the problem:  This statement stumps majority of my class: 'How many tens are in all of the number 782?  Answer 78 or 78.2.  Students answer '8'.   I can see that my lack in variety of questioning and activities of 'All of the number'.  Time to create a task that will help embed this!!  Look below for a draft of this.

The shift in attitude and 'can do' attitude has increased positively in students feeling more ownership over their learning, conversations with each other about how they made the mistake through to how to correct have been evident when marking in our small groups.  

Creativity Embeds Learning

 Dorothy Burt led us through our staff meeting Monday May 29th. I was privileged to be part of this presentation along with other colleagues who have been using 'Creativity to embed Learning' over some years now. Sight, sound and motion were intentionally used to help students to have depth to their learning. Learning that would stick and stay! Please look through the below presentation as it covers a range of practices and beliefs we've carried out here at PES. They work! Thank you Dorothy for another inspiring session. Many good reminders of things we need to maintain and those we need to improve.

On  a personal and professional note there are some basics that classroom teachers need to put in place.   Basic structures to maintain so students have equitable access to tools that enhance and support their creativity.
1. A roster that works in rotations within class hours that has every child have access to the devices where animation, paint programs and iMovie can be accessed
2. A clear task and rubric to guide the students creation
3. A checkpoint weekly to show progress, give praise and prompts
4. An absolute doing away with the 'Creative' devices - (Apple flatscreens in our place) being used as a reward.  They are NOT - they are part of the everyday learning activities.
5. SHARE:  a showcasing of creative work on media such as PENN (School TV news network), class and individual blog, team/class viewing.
6. Feedback: Give students the chance to give feedback and reflect

Part of my teaching practice finds me role playing, singing, moving and rhyming to help my learners. This has meant my students have had the chance to reflect this in movies we've made to share our learning.    It's in these creative moments that I have witnessed first hand the embedding of their learning.  Embedding that runs deeper and wider where creativity is encouraged and expected.   Engagement high.

Using assessment data for 'Staff' and 'Students'

Professional Development with Jo Knox is a great support to my teaching and students.  AND my COL inquiry even!   This particular workshop looked at using student data to empower the learner.  A good chunk of Jo's presentation broke down steps we go through with assessments such as the IKANS.

You may recall that I have been using the IKANS as a starting point for my data sharing with students.

 I carried my action plan to highlight the strongest and weakest strand from the IKANS with my target students.   A common complaint from us all was 'too fast!'.   Jo shed light on an extended approach to using the IKANS - some of which I'm happy to say I've tried too!

In the above image you will note that FIRST you mark the IKAN, SECOND you show the students the answers.   Allowing them to identify what they think were 'silly mistakes' for themselves.   Students are then allowed to complete these questions and have them marked as correct.

This SECOND part I only carried out partially in showing the students the 'knowledge' they needed to be correct rather than letting them first scan to see what they could get right.    Also note here - we are actually extending the test time - further than the fast screen flashes they experience in test time.

Formative assessment: PAT, IKANS and GLOSS.   How do our students see these results?  Often one piece at a time.  A time I bring them together to date is when I am trying to make an OTJ for upcoming reporting season - mid year summary to prompt my next steps.   Jo suggests to use a 'Spidergraph' (slide 14 in presentation below) to show both GloSS and IKAN.   This in itself will be informative for students and surely motivate them to keep on with their learning sessions.  Empowering students by using their own data.


Next steps for my inquiry: CREATE rubric and templates that support the following:
1. Carry out the 'SECOND' step as outlined in Jo's presentation
2. Plot results out of Spidergraph
3. Implement activities that prompt reflection on data
4. Decide WITH student what our next steps are in learning in the number strand
5. Implement support this choice in follow up activities and home learning

The WHY of this inquiry

Below you will see items posted earlier this month.  What I have not stated clearly enough was the 'WHY' behind this inquiry.

WHY???
I have reflected upon feedback via our PAT, IKAN, small group observations, Gloss results also research across the cluster.  It has been found that the rate of acceleration and achievement is slower when hitting year 7 - 10.
*This is the reason for my selection of inquiry - maths for learners in year 7 and 8 in my target group to see if I can shift achievement through using close examination of their results WITH the student.

My inquiry to use data to empower learners is currently my hypothesis to make learners in this age group aware of what they are actually achieving.  In this knowledge be more driven and focused when presented with ongoing maths tasks that target the areas needing development.

From previous post:
Go to this link to find out more detail about my COL inquiry.   The curriculum area it sits in is maths.

Teaching as Inquiry 2017 - COL

“Recognising and spreading sophisticated pedagogical practice across our community so that students learn in better and more powerful ways...”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2017 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge 

#4. Increase the achievement of Years 1-10 learners, with a focus on Years 7-10,  in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.  My specific focus will be on maths.  However I will share from time to time on the other curriculum areas as I am able.

The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.
The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Labels:

LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,

 CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

Label Key:

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect