End of Year Reflection

 

Designing a Digital Maths Dictionary

 My main focus of inquiry this year is word vocabulary through all curriculum areas. last week my students and myself have begun putting together a digital math dictionary to help with all the math language that we have been learning over the year.

Our first slides are all around time. I have tried to keep the language child friendly while still providing the correct language. To help me do this I have three columns, the first has the maths word, second the math meaning and third I have tried to add an image to help with understanding. 

We will continue to add to this as we discover new maths language. I will also be adding the link to my class slides as from next term, so that my students can have easy access.

 

Design for learning, Teaching

 Over lockdown, to help our students to learn I was making video presentations using screencastify. This provided rewindable learning for my students. When we came back to school, and we were asked to provide Ako Ano's ( rewindable learning) for our students, I decided to continue making these video tutorials for my students to help them with their learning. 

Previously I had just recorded myself with a group of students and linked this to the Ako Ano image on their group slide on my site. I found this could be confusing, lots of different voices recorded in real time, for my students, especially if at the end of a session they couldn't remember what their learning was meant to be about. 

By changing the way I make the rewindable learning, I have become very critical on myself. I now make a point of referring back to the intended learning intentions, show examples of writing or equipment needed to complete a set task around the learning something I feel I was sometimes missing out in real time. I use the slide show as an introduction to our learning and then use screencastify to record the slides while I talk through the learning with examples for the students to view. 

This new system is also a bonus to any students who were out of the class at the time of their groups teaching or absent as they can very easily assess the learning that they may have missed.

Ako Ano   Here are my Ako Ano's (rewindable learning)

learning-focused culture

Over the past 3 weeks we have had a learning focus around different cultures. First we had Matariki. We celebrated by incorporating making Matariki stars and Matariki kites into our weekly programme through writing and maths. We made the stars and kites and then wrote up instructions of what materials we needed and how to make the stars and kites.

This week it was Cook Island Maōri Language week. We were kindly shared slides from the RTLB cluster 8 with lots of great clips, images and slides on different aspects of the cook islands from their history of the flag, to cultural dances, food, greetings, colours, numbers and much more. we used these slides to learn more over the week and then each student shared what it was that they had found interesting or had wanted to learn to the class. After the sharing the students made slides to put on their personal blogs of what they had enjoyed. 

We also had a group of 8 students who wanted to begin their own dance group, after viewing the cook island dances. They are still practising and are hoping to share the dance with the class in the next few weeks, which I will video and add to this post. Once they have perfected their dance they wish to teach the whole class the dance in our 10 minute dance breaks at reading time.

 I feel this was a great learning outcome for all students. they had an awesome time learning about the culture of the Cook Islands. Here is the link to all our individual and class blogs.

Our blogs

 

DFI Computational Thinking

Today is week 8 of our DFI sessions and I am so very grateful that I have been a part of this cohort as I have learnt so much. Being in the junior school I have not used a lot of the tools that are available and especially during this lockdown it has been a great help and provided myself with new ways of connecting to my students.

We have looked at EMPOWERMENT this morning both learners and teachers and how being digitally literate helps both learners and teachers take control of their lives in ways that we could not have imagined.

We have over come barriers of distance and time during this lockdown in being able to access the digital tools required to make learning accessible to all. My example of this would be on my class site for Maths. I wanted to use craft as a way to access maths learning in particular fractions (as in class we would normally use this type of activity in the juniors as a hands on activity helps develop the understanding. 
Using a site that was made during DFI on dinosaurs I provided clips of activities to make and then through a slide show provided instructions and explanations of the fractions, for example:-

Take the kitchen roll and cut it in half for the dinosaurs legs or use 4 toilet rolls.

When thinking about how to make the dinosaur's , flower etc I needed to be aware that the video clips I was selecting were using nice card and paper that my students might not have access to. I looked around my house and have begun collecting all of my recycled goods that my students may have access to. So I then provided an example of the completed task using what I could easily find around my home.

I have made a new button during DFI on my class site to celebrate my students' art and craft which I have included below.

link

We also looked at the advice from Woolf Fischer on the need of 5+ a day. In the junior school we already practise this during sharing time, which we aim for after each learning session, where students get to talk about what they have learnt and the audience gets the opportunity to ask questions. But I will now also encourage the use of blog commenting, we were about to learn how to blog when we were forced into shut down, however through online correspondence and talking on the phone one of my pupils has begun to use blogger from home and records his work on a daily basis. I leave comments and he is beginning to reply to my comments. I have asked him to be my blogger expert when we return to school, he is very excited!

Next today we looked at the new digital curriculum that is broken into 2 parts.

1. Digital fluency for example knowing the correct terminology or language

2. Digital technology - providing opportunities for students to create their own digital solutions.

Kerry Boyde-Preece shared with us some very good links and web sites for us to view and discover so that we can help our students attain these goals

We were then given the opportunity to delve deeper block coding and how we could use this with our students. Here is my first attempt of block coding on a Minecraft voyage. It was fun, I'm sure my junior students would love to give it a try as long as it is available or something similar on the iPads. But to also remember that the digital curriculum is not solely on devices it can involve unplugged activities.

In the afternoon we had the opportunity to look and use coding further. I looked at Mihi Maker @ https://make.gamefroot.com/ unfortunately although I got the activity completed I was unable to publish, I just got the circle of doom for 30 minutes so decided to leave the site. If I get the opportunity to try again later in the week I will.

DFI Devices

Today we looked at being cybersmart and what this would look like. As teachers we need to empower our students to be positive when online both in their actions and the consistent positive use of language, unlike some of the media they may view which often has a negative view point.

When our students first became 1-1 digital users we needed to make sure that we could engage the students while also making them digital citizens globally.

Be internet  Kind
Be internet Brave
Be internet Awesome
Be internet Smart
Be internet Strong

As teachers we need to make deliberate teaching acts of the cyber smart categories to ensure that our students are empowered and have equal equity and access to digital devices and the digital language.

Next we went to Hapara Wow! so much I didn't know, but I am a junior teacher.
Hapara makes sites visible to the student and students learning visible to the teacher.

We looked at how drive folders should be preset at the beginning of the year by one person in the school, because if students are requested to make their own folders they are hidden from teachers view.

We looked at how to view student's blogs and the blog commenting that has been happening.

We looked at sharing - if any documents are in here they need placed into the correct folders at least once a week.

We looked at Class info - this contains students emails and provides the opportunity of changing a students password (in the older years) by having them stand beside you.

Highlights - Can be used to help those students are finding it difficult to click on the correct link etc, not for informing students that they are doing something incorrectly, we should still be walking around our classrooms for that.

We then got the opportunity to feel what it would be like to use a chrome book, instead of our usual laptop and the advantages to our teaching of students by knowing essential short cuts and how the whole system works, therefore enabling us to help our students become more digitally fluent.

Here are a couple of the slide we had to complete during our digital dig of a chrome book. We were encouraged to this with our students at the beginning of each new year

Unfortunately I then had to leave for our school online assembly, but luckily for me it was to cover the digital fluency on iPads. Using them in my class everyday I'm hoping I have a good understanding of this but I will see look at the tasks set.

Screencastify:

We have been looking at how to make a screencastify and were given the task of making a quick screecastify covering one of our cybersmart categories.
Below I chose to use smart surfing, and make a small clip demonstarting to my students how to use our junior search engine Kiddle.
I apologise as I forgot to change the title.

DFI Enabling Access - Sites

Today we join again through google meet. This is now our new normal and is very appropriate for the Manaiakalani theme of visible learning.
The Manaiakalani inclusive model was first developed in 2006 with the first cluster of schools. In 2015 the model was taken wider into what are now known as outreach clusters and again in 2017.
Manaiakalani now reaches 24000 learners across New Zealand. Although there is lots of diversity within the different schools, because the same shared language is used we can all connect.

Next we viewed examples of sites and evaluated these. this was for visual appeal and user experience. It was good to see how college and higher primary school use their sites compared with myself in the lower junior school.
We then got time to talk about our own sites with our group and take on board comments that were shared. We then spent time looking at our sites fixing up what needed to change and making videos, slides etc for the coming week.

I was unhappy with my button for Art & Craft Celebrations as I quickly made it yesterday after receiving emails of art from my students.
I tried and tried but the new button kept on having an ugly outline that I didn't want, but Gerhard to the rescue. I had downloaded the button as a png but then screen shot to add to my site, all I had to do was drag the png to my site.

I have also made new slides for next week and recorded my big book and activities for the week. A very productive time.