Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa

I am privileged to be the teacher of students who are proud to share their language and culture with confidence. So with their support today I stepped completely out of my comfort zone and embraced Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa fully. 

Yesterday I sat down with my Samoan students and explained that this week was Samoan Language Week. We looked at the resources available to us online and with their help decided the direction we would follow in LS2. Two of my students felt it was important that we started by gaining an understanding of fa'a Samoa. Under their guidance, and with promises to help me with the teaching, we created a DLO that would help introduce us to this information. What I didn't expect was the DLO I was sent at 9 o'clock that evening that had been put together by Angela. She had thought carefully about the language she thought we should learn, and with the help of her family had created a prompt sheet for me. 

Ownership of the learning lead to widespread engagement across the classroom. We tapped into the expertise of our Samoan language speakers to ensure our pronunciation was correct and confidently explored our new learning with me leading by example. I was very self conscious but modelled what I expect my students to do. Along the way I was gently corrected when I got my pronunciation wrong, but at the same time continually praised by my co-teachers. 

Our purpose today was to pay it forward by creating DLOs that others could use to learn aspects of the Samoan language. After working collaboratively with our LS1 learning buddies to create these DLOs we had our own sharing time. As I said in my opening sentence, I am privileged to be the teacher of students who are proud to share their language and culture with confidence.

Masina o le Tausaga/Months of the Year 

Created by Christopher, Acein, Diana and Jay-Don

PBS Holiday Blogging Update

Wow! Just Wow! I can not believe how well our leaders and bloggers stepped up to this challenge. Last term I was trying to think of a way to keep the learning conversations and achievement gained over the term in our class, going over the holiday period. To do this I came up with the idea of creating our own holiday blogging challenge that was loosely based on the Woolf Fisher Holiday Blogging format. 

I know my learners and I know that if true buy-in was to take place the task design needed to be created by my learners for my learners using the language we use in our learning environment. As mentioned in my previous post our student leaders were challenged to set this up for their peers. We decided to go on a virtual trip around Auckland visiting the Sky Tower, Rainbow's End, Kelly Tarlton's, the Museum and the Zoo. Each task required my learners to use their smart searching skills to find and use the information provided on each of these websites to create a DLO or respond to a question that was then posted on their blogs.

This was not sold as a compulsory task but rather a way of strengthening their 2017 learning journey. 27 students signed up to take part and out of those 23 completed the challenge during the holiday break, with 5 more students electing to complete the tasks this week. 2 students took responsibility for not taking part and emailed me their reasons and 3 decided not to complete the challenge. Once again we had a significant number of boys take part. Our leaders had organised who would monitor which day and our participants had to take responsibility for adding their links to our Holiday Blogging Record. This worked extremely well and has given me a wonderful piece of learning evidence. 

The focus of my CoL inquiry this year has been to see how I could get my learners talking about their learning. In total our learners published 208 blog posts and between them made 924 comments on each other's blogs. From a teacher perspective that is 924 times that someone read a blog post, noticed the successes and errors, and gave their feedback and feed forward. Many of these comments are part of a thread which means learning conversations have taken place and are embedded in our learning culture!

Screenshot of the student managed blog post and comment record

PBS Holiday Blogging Challenge - created for our learners by our learners!

Our wonderful student leaders were challenged to create and manage our own mini holiday blogging challenge. They have done an amazing job by creating activities that will take our holiday bloggers on a virtual tour around Auckland. There was a wealth of rich discussion as tasks were created and a lot collaborative problem solving to decide who will be responsible for which role in helping to manage the commenting and feedback. 

This challenge has been put in place to grow our leaders and strengthen our literacy skills. To make managing this task easier we have created a spreadsheet where bloggers will post the links to their blog posts and record which blogs they have commented on. 

This morning AJ and Mia introduced the challenge to those who have chosen to take part. What impressed me was the engagement of the audience and the clarity of the instruction. We have borrowed the points system from the Woolf Fisher Summer/Winter Learning Journey that runs over the December and July holidays, so will be giving out prizes to our own holiday blogging challenge champions (and managers). 

Anyone who would like to copy and repurpose this resource is most welcome. Link

Setting ourselves up for success is a step by step process...

Making connections with the learning is the key to genuinely deepening understanding. By tapping into the knowledge gained across multiple learning areas we can encourage our learners to merge these various knowledge bites of independent information. Our task today was to do exactly that. Earlier in the year we explored the ways personification and the 5 senses can help us see things from a different perspective (-the original task link is on slide 2 of the teaching DLO below). This term our inquiry focus has been Olympic based. Over the last five weeks we have looked closely at how elements of Hauora, Diet and Training can affect an athlete's performance. By viewing the 2016 Olympic games through the eyes of an athlete standing on the medal dias, I hoped that my learner's would make stronger and deeper connections to our topic.

The images below show the process we went through to help us retell an event through someone else's eyes.

Merging images to make personal connections had everyone hooked. As a class that lives and breathes the ethos of collaboration, I noticed at least half of my learners chose to 'stand on the podium' with a buddy. Another interesting observation is that the colour of the medal was invisible. National and personal pride completely overshadowed the gold, silver, bronze hues.

With the imaginary eyes of the world on us we now needed to fill our knowledge 'ketes'. After all you can't describe something you have never seen if you don't have the tools to grow and foster an imagination. Our tool for this was 'Sketchnote'. I had read Karen Ferguson's post about her own experience of picking out the main ideas and focusing on them by 'sketchnoting', and decided to afford my learners the same opportunity. The image below reflects the way one of my learners added to her own 'kete' using this method. 

Sketchnoting allows us to record information using our own words or pictures. This learning tool is helping my learners make notes that make sense to them rather than simply copying what someone else has written in their own handwriting. Being able to retell their very personal 'sketchnote' stories to a friend underpinned the understanding and allowed those strong connections to be made.

Where did this information come from? The answer, multiple sources. I provided links to online newspaper articles and challenged my learners to use their smart searching skills to find supporting information that they read, watched and listened to. It is very rewarding to watch the seamless interchanging of their subject specific 'thinking hats' as knowledge gained during these lessons was synthesised and recalled to meet the learning needs of this lesson. 

Being given the choice of selecting the way they want to approach the 'create' aspect of this learning has both engaged and empowered my learners. Some chose to show their understanding through interviews or conversations using ifaketext.com; others have opted to write narratives; one learner has decided to write an email home to their family and two groups are in the beginning stages of storyboarding their movies. 

Were connections made today? The simple answer is yes! 

MIT Update #5: Student Agency

This year we have continued our school-wide professional development journey focussing on Writing with Nadine Sorrensen from Team Solutions. The MIT group and myself spent a block with her asking questions and sharing our own learning journey. By using think-alouds and teacher modelling, Nadine and I were able to demonstrate in context that giving and receiving feedback was very much a two way street. Initially the students were very quiet but as they gained confidence they started asking her the types of questions those seeking feedback should ask. It frustrates me here that I didn't record the dialogue, however my excuse is that I too, was fully engrossed in the learning.

We shared our Writing rubric and explained the thinking behind why we had created it. Nadine asked questions of the content that required clarification. Noticing how these students were able to confidently respond showed me that they definitely owned the learning. What was also very evident was the high level of content knowledge that each of the students has developed this year. They have have achieved high levels of student  agency by developing a tool that they use in their own learning.

With the students working on the feedback they had been given I was able to have my own learning time with Nadine. She directed me toward another reading that supports my inquiry. Although not created to use in a digital medium, Jeff Anderson's 'Mechanically Inclined' explores the power of 'organic growing, changing charts that address the what the kids need to know to survive in their world of writing'. Anderson highlights how his student generated wall charts were 'referred to, pointed at, moved and looked at... and a living part of the class's making meaning journey.' This thinking resonated with me. My observations and years of chalkface experience have shown me that if something is generated by the students there is ownership, and with ownership comes the mindset to 'use', as the content knowledge that allows the information contained in these reference points is in place. The thinking behind our rubric was exactly this as we wanted something that our class had connections with and could make meaning from anywhere, anytime and at any pace.