Manaiakalani Hui - Sharing our inquiry journey...

This year as part of the Manaiakalani Hui the CoL teachers were invited to share their inquiries so far through a 1 minute video followed by more detailed round table discussions. 

Here is the video I created which gives a snapshot of what I have been doing in my inquiry this year. As I have been focussing on developing student self-efficacy I chose not to use images from my classroom, instead decided to use images that capture the message I was delivering. 

Innovation, Creativity and Success...

This is a celebration post and one I am extremely proud of! The clips below show the end result of our pechaflickr style challenge. You will see that they vary in recording style but when you listen to the story that accompanies each clip you will hear sentences that make sense, links between paragraphs, risk taking with vocabulary and the voices of collaboration. To preserve the anonymity of my target students I have shared a selection of DLOs from my group.

When I reflect on this learning challenge from start to finish I know I began with a huge level of motivation as this was (my twist on) one of the ideas I brought back from ISTE, and I was excited to try something new. I think that captured my learner's interests initially, but it was the fun element and the chunked bites of success that kept it going. As I had not given my learners a specific topic they enjoyed the freedom of being able to explore and be creative. The oral language component set everyone up for success because the storylines had been trialled a few times before becoming scripted text. This meant that ideas that didn't fit could be explored and easily eliminated.

Throughout the lessons I made myself available for 'learning chats' that were specific to the content of each pair of learners. I made sure I approached the new in a gentle way as this year has shown me that is what works with these learners. We celebrated the positives, shared our own exemplars of great ideas and each lesson set a focus together for the next. 

The challenge for me as the teacher is to retain the level of interest shown in this challenge as we move on to the next. I learnt a lot about what I need to do to help the levels of self efficacy continue to grow. External factors like ongoing absence and withdrawal group support mean not all my learners have the same opportunities to complete the work, so my next challenge is to ensure everyone is able complete the task.

                  

Success comes with completing a task...

Our writing session today was the most focused and on task my group have been all year! A big statement to make but also one that is very true. Last session we created our own pechaflickr style slideshows and had created the simple storyline plan to accompany these images, so today it was all about fleshing out the details. 

Throughout the lesson I could hear a lot of negotiation taking place as each new paragraph was created. To clarify here my learners were creating a collaborative piece of writing. As I have mentioned earlier, I work with a large group of reluctant writers so for us collaboration is the way to go when we are unpacking new learning. 

Our initial drafts show great promise but what I was most proud of was the efficacy that is growing within this group. No one was 'too shy' to share and feed forward was well thought out and constructive. Developing links between paragraphs was the guided teaching component. I found the best way to do this was to work with three pairs at a time. In each guided session I began by asking for an exemplar to use and this time I was most definitely not at a loss for volunteers. 

With permission I made a copy of the exemplar text and shared it so we could all help make the links between the paragraphs. This style of editing our work was really well received because it was safe. I noticed smiles and elements of dialogic learning conversations emerging. This meant when I left the group they were able to continue the process and help each other to make connections and links between their paragraphs.

Self efficacy remains the focus and I have learnt that patience and gentle praise on my part have gone a long way towards growing this. The final part of this challenge is that each pair will present their narrative alongside their pechaflickr style slides to the class.