Digital Fluency Intensive... Day # 5

DFI Session# 5 was about collaboration with sites. Making learning visible is part of our Manaiakalani learning kaupapa. Simply put visible learning means you can see it? Can our whanau see what their tamariki are learning? Can our tamariki see their own learning pathways? Our technology can remove the barriers that stop this from happening and will help contribute to their success in learning.

Learning shared in advance makes a difference to our learners. Modes are the methods we use to engage our learners. We need to hook our learners in so they remain curious and inspired rather than simply looking and walking on. Multimodal captures the learning of a number of learning styles rather than just one size fits all. “What engages one in learning doesn’t necessarily engage another...”(Chrissie Butler). When planning teachers should ask ‘Will this hook my learners?’ If not think again to avoid losing the learning connections that can be made.

 

Google Sites:

• Sites.google.com or if in drive: New - more - sites
• Have a folder dedicated to site with permissions set to share with everyone to avoid blocking visibility
• Class sites must be easy to navigate so students can access learning easily (within 3 clicks) - avoids barriers to learning
• Use post-its to map out site pages - sub pages + content etc
• Buttons can be created within sites and/or via google drawings
• Scroll down the 'insert' toolbar to find shortcuts to link images, charts, slides etc - all can be accessed directly from your google drive
• Embed YouTube playlists and a twitter feed
• Embed forms and their corresponding spreadsheets 

Angela, Sarah and I collaborated to create a multimodal site that will allow our learners to explore the storytelling of myths and legends through multi textual opportunities to extend and deepen their connections to the learning.  

Site Link

The link to our site is also on this spreadsheet created by Angela Moala. The thinking behind this awesome resource is explained in detail on her blog (Angela's blog reflection). 

Digital Fluency Intensive... Day # 4

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DFI Session# 4 was about dealing with data. Today we learnt some tips and tricks to make dealing with data in goggle sheets easier and more manageable. Going forward I will definitely be freezing the headings and name cells so that I can scroll through the data to make viewing separate components easier, and using the filter view options so that I can look at specific group data more easily. The autofill feature recognises sequences and patterns. Just click on the first two cells then click and drag from the bottom right corner of the cell to utilise this feature. The explore tool allows for quick data analysis. It creates graphs that can be imported into the sheet - these can be manipulated from there.

Google Forms have so many uses in the classroom from gathering student voice, to collecting data, creating quizzes and pick-a-path stories to name a few. I have used google forms a lot in the classroom but will be using them more often now to collect evidence with images, links to completed work and blog comments and to explore the world in my maps. 

One of my takeaways from today is to make our class sites easily accessible to our parents and caregivers. Sharing and connecting is not new, it’s just the mode that changes. Our whanau are our authentic audience. Sharing these QR codes will allow them to continue to strengthen their connections to the learning their tamariki are making connections to. 

Here is the link to my notes from our learning today.

Strengthening my connections to Inference...

Maths questions include numerical information that when combined with a mathematical symbol (or the text version of this), prompts students to use what they already know to help them make inferences about what they need to do with the information to find the answer. Having had a rich discussion about this with my friend and colleague Sheree Hodge (Ranui Schoo In-school Maths CoL teacher), I decided to dig a little deeper to strengthen my own understanding.

Inference helps students comprehend text. It is the skill of using what you already know to work out what you don't know based on the clues given to help you visualise what is happening. Simply put, inferencing involves using what you know to make a guess about what you don't know. There are two types of inference, default inference (automatic assumptions) and reasoned inference (a conclusion made based on the information available). 'Once students have identified the premises on which they've based their inferences, they can engage in the most powerful part of the process—examining the validity of their thinking.' Marzano (2010).

'Inferences are made when information the author assumes can be logically made are left out,' Carr (1983). We make inferences every day, and often because this is automatic don't realise what we have inferred wasn't included in the information we were given. If we are driving and suddenly the flow of the traffic slows down we infer that there is a problem ahead by exploring possibilities (maybe the traffic lights are short phasing, or someone has broken down or maybe there has been an accident) to make sense of the situation. No one gave us these details but as the traffic flow has slowed we know there is a problem and automatically draw on what we know to be possible reasons to help us explain the situation. In reading we 'read between the lines' to use the information given about a character or situation to visualise what is happening then use what we know to be possible behaviours or outcomes to help us draw conclusions about what might happen next or explain why something happened the way it did. In maths this is no different because written maths is inference. Students have to infer from the language in the written problem what numbers are involved, the number knowledge they require and whether or not they're trying to find a sum or a missing addend. 

From a word problem our learners need to be able to work out what the mathematical problem is first and in order to do this they need to understand the literacy of maths. If you think about this in relation to English, think about how as a teacher you use word studies to grow vocabulary knowledge. We help our learners explore the different synonyms for a word by unpacking the definition and talking about the different ways that word can be used in a sentence. We then scribe the student generated examples to allow our learners to make a visual connection to what this looks like in context. There is no difference in maths. If addition is used as the example, we need to talk about what addition looks like eg: A + B = C or B + A = C and explore the synonyms of 'add' to grow vocabulary knowledge in context. Once we have this knowledge we then need to use it help us make the inferences needed to find the sum (eg: A + B = ____), or the missing addend (eg: A + ___ = C). What I mean by that is once the students have identified the key mathematical words and the numbers they need to work with, they must then use this knowledge to infer what it is they are being asked to do with the information they have.

My next step is to find out if my learners know and understand what inferring means in a reading context, then see if they are able to transfer this knowledge to a maths context.

Readings to support my learning:

• Marzano, R. (2010). Teaching inference. Educational Leadership, 67(7), 80-01
• Carr, K (1983). The Importance of Inference Skills in the Primary Grades, p 518-522
• Making Inferences to Improve Reading Comprehension
• Reading Rockets
• Why you need to teach inference to struggling readers

Digital Fluency Intensive... Day # 3

DFI Session# 3 had a media focus. My animation reflects the content we explored today to will help us help our tamariki become ‘creators of content not merely consumers’. We need to make sure our learners are safe in an online environment, something that is no different to the way we make sure our learners are safe in an EOTC environment. As teachers in a 1:1 environment we can do this by ensuring the settings in YouTube and Blogger are in place.

‘Creativity is not about doing something better than others, it's about thinking, discovering, exploring and imagining’, Kohl (2008). Joining us in our session today were three of my skilled creators Jack, Alex and Nyjah who confidently shared with their amazing digital drawing skills. They began with a 'how to' presentation that they had created then took us step by step through creating an animation in Google Slides and creating a drawing using the line tools in Google Draw. This part of my reflection is unashamedly a boast post!

My takeaways from today are:

• To make time to make sure the safety settings on blogger and YouTube are in place so that my learners can operate safely in an online environment.
• To share the online safety reminders with our PBS staff.
• To think about the opportunities my learners have to create.
• To share the possibilities of introducing of rewindable learning that our drone can offer sport training. Thank you Kent for this tip.
• To share the possibilities that our drone can offer for live streaming and delayed coverage so we can strengthen whanau connections.
• To use the Google Slides to create my own pick a path style maths challenges to help strengthen my learners number knowledge and vocabulary connections.
• To use the Google Slides to encourage my learners to create pick a path DLOs that reflect their understandings and connections to the learning.
• To strengthen my own digital drawing skills by completing my own digital portrait.

Here is the link to my notes from our learning today.

Digital Fluency Intensive... Day # 2

The infographic above reflects the takeaways from todays session that I have taken from our session today. The shortcuts for calendar are a great way to flip between views (weekly, daily, monthly). Google Keep has so many amazing features! I used this tool often for note taking and thought I was making use of all the features available. I now realise I was not! To be able to upload an image with text and then have the ability to grab the text is something I will definitely use in the classroom as there are so many possibilities to this feature. Angela Moala shared an idea with me of using Google Keep when I am commenting on my student's work. So often we find we are writing the same feedback so being able to have this bank of often used comments that can be copied and pasted is something I will access often.

I found the workflow session linked to organising our gmail and tabs incredibly valuable. I no longer have an overflow of comments sitting in my inbox. These are now all archived or sitting under the appropriate labels with filters in place.

We had an introduction to Google Hangouts and explored possibilities of how we can use this tool outside of what we already do with toolkits. Here is the screen recording of my hangout session with Angela and Sarah. Thank you Sarah for capturing this.

Here is the link to my notes from our learning today.

When a 4 becomes a 5 we celebrate...

For the last year and a half I have watched one of my students who arrives every morning with a huge smile of his face completely fall to pieces and dissolve into floods of tears when faced with any form of assessment. He finds most aspects of learning a challenge but during learning time never lets this take the smile off his face, unless as I previously mentioned the task facing him involves any form of test. I have tried so hard to help him relax and just try his best, but this is something he hasn't, until today, been able to do. The fact that we did his GLoSS test and he smiled the entire way through is the sole purpose for the celebration in this blog post. 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

Historically this Year 8 student (B3) hasn't progressed past Stage 4 in the GLoSS assessment, but today with a huge smile on his face, I listened to him confidently explain the strategies he was using to help him find the answers to the questions I was asking him (he even asked me if it was ok to use skimming and scanning skills to recheck the information!). This time skip counting was replaced with times table knowledge, counting on from the largest number was replaced with place value partitioning and equal sharing was replaced with repeated addition, allowing him to finally progress to the long awaited Stage 5! 

We have a well developed routine that follows the same format each maths lesson. My learners are grouped by ability so that they are learning at a level that challenges them, but also allows them to feel successful. The teaching DLOs all have the same layout, with only the content being different. Each group has two guided sessions with me followed by two follow up sessions, one where they work with number properties and one where word problems are introduced to allow the strategy to be used in context. In both learning situations talk is encouraged. Alongside this, each person completes three independent challenges made up of 15 minutes of E-Ako, 15 minutes of levelled basic facts challenges and 10 minutes of times table challenges at a time they choose. This purposeful 'brain break' affords my learners the opportunity to self manage and find success as these online challenges are revision based and not instructional. 

So what has changed for learner B3? His self efficacy has increased because he feels confident in a subject that he feels he is successful in. I know this because I asked him. "I like maths Miss, because it's fun and I'm good at it now because I know how to use my strategies." He is finding success because he is able to complete the follow up work set for him independently. He is finding success because he is asking questions when he needs clarification instead of waiting for me to notice he is stuck, and he is finding success because he is using the vocabulary that allows him to engage in the conversation and share the thinking behind the strategies he has used.. 

Huge congratulations B3 I am so proud of you!