Professional Development Updates...

During the Level 4 Lockdown, which now seems so long ago, I took advantage of several online professional development opportunities that were offered. Distance learning in LS2 was about doing what we could to keep our learning going, so that's exactly what I did. 

Hapara Champion Educator:

This online course took about 15 hours and was well worth every minute. I finally has time to fully explore the Hapara Dashboard under guidance but at my own pace. I have had access to the Hapara Dashboard for many years but was not using it to its full potential. I found the teaching DLOs in the course to be really useful and referred back to these several times. Having never used Workspaces before I had fun learning how to create a Workspace, add html to the cards to change the look of the font, and create moving headers. The latter being something I will add into the next Workspace I create as I learnt from the Hapara online community after I had completed the course. Here is the link to the Workspace I created https://j.mp/35egNGP. Ironically the most challenging part for me was recording the three minute Screencastify that accompanied my completed Workspace when I submitted it. They say practise makes perfect so after five attempts I'm now almost a Screencastify expert!

Using retelling to support comprehension, oral language, and writing:

This webinar run by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey was fantastic! They shared some really practical ideas to help students develop retelling skills. My favourite takeaway was the Story path. 

After reading you lay down a pathway of prompt cards. The students move through the pathway using these cards to retell the story by standing on each prompt. I introduced this activity to my group who find most aspects of reading a challenge the day we returned to school in Level 2 and they loved it. Instant success as these students weren't simply trying to sit in a chair and remember the story, they were instead interacting with the resource in pairs, retelling the important events by walking through the pathway and responding to the prompt cards.

This activity was so popular we created our own version for non-fiction texts. This was equally successful and is an activity that encourages everyone to actively participate. There are no 'scary' parts as each person only has an audience of one during the risk taking part of sharing initial thinking. 

STEPSWEB Teacher Module

We have run the STEPSWEB program in our school for a number of years as additional support program for students who need extra literacy support. In the past this has been done through withdrawal groups and was something I had almost no connection to. At the start of the Level 4 lockdown STEPSWEB opened up their site and program to all our students. This was not only very generous of them, but hooked me in immediately as I saw the benefits for my learners. 

I completed the 90 minute teacher module and am so glad I did. This program has a wealth of word lists within it that allow the students to practise spelling rules and phonics while growing their vocabulary knowledge. There is also an option to personalise word lists. Since then I have regrouped my learners and have been able to set challenges for all my students that align with what we are learning in class. 

Symphony Math

This is a new adaptive learning program that we have introduced in our school. I took part in a training session on Zoom to learn about the features of this program. This program is now a permanent part of our maths lessons and challenges all my learners at their own levels. What I really like about this program is the option to hear the questions as you read them. This is an invaluable tool for those learners who struggle with reading the instructions.