Teacher Inquiry 2022

It has been an unusual start to 2022. Normally T1 is all about routines and relationships but there have been other things to contend with like prolonged absences, low confidence returning to school, students returning to school with no stationary, students struggling socially and/or struggling with the routine of having to get up early and learn for a whole day. 

For me I have put big focus on relationships and hands on learning in order to engage students and get students back to school. With students slowly returning to school then disappearing to isolate it has been very difficult to get testing done in order to establish a starting point. Because of this we have been doing a lot more group work and whole class learning. This has been doable only due to the low numbers. 

Instead of reading groups we have been doing read five in attempt to get up milage. We do poetry twice a week and big book twice a week in a whole class setting followed up by independent activities.  Instead of independent activities I changed a lot of activities to small group work or pair students up in mix ability groups.

Having completed our testing the next step is returning to formal learning and trying to do so even in the current COVID climate. The question I'm asking myself is how do we do this while also keeping confidence high and continuing to keep student well-being at the forefront. 

My focus is first and foremost going to be reading as this is the area I have noted as an area of focus. While I will maintain the read five that I have been teaching this term and the online learning component the students have got used to, I will start to incorporate guided reading for all groups and follow up tasks via EE. I have slowly been reintroducing EE into their reading program. On top of at school reading I have started a reading reward chart for at home reading which is starting to be a regular part of the students at home routine with the focus on mileage. Writing has been quite structured from the beginning but as numbers increase there will need to be a bigger focus on select groups and students with specific needs to help support their writing. The smaller class size has given me a lot more time to spend with my top writers to extend their writing instead of spending most of my time focused on the learning writers. Making time for all writers is something I want to focus on moving into term 2. 

Maths is an area I have focused a lot on this term. Small bursts of learning. Coming in from MT and Lunch the students simply read a number, as they have got better they tell me the number before or after and some students are going into + 10 and - 10. Repetition is key here. Like the other areas, small class sizes has made whole class learning much easier. As numbers increase and after completing testing I am starting to see what students needs are and through group work I'll be able to meet them.

The big thing is going to be sticking to the schedule no matter what numbers there are. If there is 1 student in a reading group then that's who gets the teaching. For students who have missed out and therefore are behind in certain areas a decision will have to made with what to do with them. For example, if a student is normally in the top maths group but has been away therefore doesn't know the topic, they can be paired up with someone that understands it and can support. If that is not possible, I would look to move the student down a group until the new topic starts. I think this allows the students to enter the class without the stress of missing something and minimises the stress on me while trying to recap while also teach new. 

I think for me it's going to be about going hard on formal learning while also being fluid to the different needs of the students and their wellbeing requirements as students come and go from school. This term has been all about preparing students for formal learning. I have put in very solid routines and focused lots on the independent tasks students will work on while group work is being done. Because of these foundations I believe we are all reading to jump back into formal learning. 

How is the transition to formal learning going for you? Have you been doing formal learning from the start? How have you found the fluctuation of class numbers?

Teacher Inquiry Focus 2021

                       Inquiry Focus

Will a focus on oral language in maths accelerate student confidence and capability to use spoken and written maths vocabulary and language? 

Below are my classes 2021 starting results. By improving the students oral language in maths I am hoping to see an improvement in all areas of their maths but I'm especially interested in their strategy data. Can being able to understand and use maths language going to improve their understanding of their maths. Will they be able to better explain their learning?

I picked these students for a range of reasons. Some because maths is a topic they engage well with, others because its an area they have some success in and some because they are right on the cusp and with support can be pushed. I believe all the students I have selected, with support, will move. 

 link - a large copy

This is one of the ways I have started to teach my students new vocabulary.  Every week we have a new focus word. We talk about the word, do examples that include the word and we use the word as much as possible. I use synonyms to the word as much as I can to link the words together. I will allow more time for students to display their understanding of the 'math word of the week'. Going over the words multiple times in different weeks is something I will be doing to increase their exposure to the word.

Wall displays are something I want to focus more on. Displaying work / posters that will support their understanding and knowledge of these words. Something I have considered is making our very own classroom maths dictionary. I want to make it in a way that can be displayed in the classroom. Watch this space to see what and how that looks. 

Art PLD

 A wonderful PLD thanks to my colleague Marie Hiddleston. It was a timely reminder that there are so many talented teachers with so many wonderful ideas all around you. Was a great opportunity to stop and learn some new ideas that I could take away and implement immediately. Marie took a very hands on PD session and left me with lots of wonderful ideas and an enthusiasm to get into my classroom and do some more art. You can never do too much art!

In the photos below are a few photos of Marie's classes work, she integrated them into her program with ease and this was just another reminder to me that integration is a wonderful way to link learning and make it relevant to the students. 

Simple one lesson art projects that give everyone a chance to have success.

• Fruit trees - linked to Autumn, writing and reading.

• Aotearoa stencil mesh - links to reading, writing and social studies.

• City landscape art - strong links to maths

Learning Through Play - Games, 2021

Learning Through Play

Stop and go start to the year thanks to covid but students are settling in well all things considering. During lockdown level 3 I had three students and in the afternoons I started teaching them card games to find that none of them knew any card games, not even Go Fish. I taught them how to play and I watched as they worked out the rules, learnt how to take turns (e.g. go in a circle), hold their cards so others couldn't see (a challenging task) and pick cards up without showing others. It did surprise me how little the students knew about games yet how much enjoyment and learning came out of it. It was because of this that I implemented a game of the week in my class as part of maths. Last week we started off playing go fish which was an engaging way to work with my low learners about number recognition. This game could also be used for alphabet recognition. This weeks game was memory which is a harder concept for students to grasp but memorising numbers and paying attention were important things for the students to learn. 

As you can see in the photo below some of the students branched out and started writing on whiteboards. A small group of children completed a puzzle together while another group of girls played Pop up Pirate which is a fantastic fine motor task for children. 

Watching how much enjoyment and how much learning can be done in those games was a real energising thing for me. I'm interested to see if board games/ card games start to become something they play at home or choose to do during play based learning times.

Does anybody have any must teach games for children? Especially in areas linking to literacy and numeracy?

2020 Teacher Inquiry - end of year review

INQUIRY QUESTION

Will taking the less is more approach improve student outcome?

My Inquiry question was directly related to coming back to school post COVID. Our schools big focus coming back was allowing the students to come in at whatever level they were and putting no stress on whether or not they engaged with online learning. I knew I would feel the pressure of trying to get the students to where  they needed to be while plugging some major gaps in some of my lower levelled students.  How could I help the lower levels while also engaging the higher levels and without going 100 miles an hour. I thought I'd start with Yolanda phonics. I had watched one of our teachers teach phonics during level three and it just clicked for me. The students were engaged across all levels and it was explicit teaching of things my students needed at the time. Below are some of the things I implemented into my teaching practice in order to accomplish this.

Instead of this being a 10 minute in and out session I started to link our phonics into our writing. The phonics lesson plan went like this.

1. 2 minute recap of phonics the day before. E.g. letter name, phoneme, word, word meaning robot arms etc.
2. What's today's letter? What words do we know? 
3. Go through each word, do robot arms.
4. Students write a sentence with the word in it.
5. Extra activity (not all the time): students would write a silly sentence that attempts to include all the phonics words we have talked through.

Explicit instructions was another big thing for me. With 4 students hard of hearing and another handful with focus problems taking the time to give meaningful instructions was extra important to me. 

Discussing New Words

Some of the things I found really important was asking questions about words they might not have understood and taking the time to talk through those words.  

Using the whiteboard

Using the whiteboard is a good way to allow students a point to return too if they need support. I find students tend to go there for help before coming to me. A common question I started to get asked was, "where is the word ______" because the students know we talked about it and are happy to put it in their writing. The next step for me will be allowing this to be done digitally so the students can come back to it if they need to. 

Peer share

Another good thing I learnt from Marie Hirst (who does maths personal development) is peer share time is important. Get students to turn and touch knee's, this ensures they are focusing fully on their partner. Sharing with their peers is a great chance for students to exchange ideas, check their own ideas and get new ideas from a child's perspective. 

Repeat instructions back

A simple but effective strategy. Targeting those students you don't think are understanding and asking them to repeat the instructions back to you or asking them content specific questions. This often gets those not paying attention to pay attention and it helps gauge how many of our students are understanding.

Taking the time to complete projects is something I am still working on. The same students are finishing work on time and the same students are struggling to keep up. One of my focuses has been allowing opportunities for students who are finished to publish and extend their learning while allowing the students still finishing to get work done. I constantly felt bound by my weekly plan/ LTP so would constantly feel rushed. Now I schedule time to complete tasks. Students who complete all work get an option to complete extra blogs (something they are currently enjoying).

Integration as been a big one for me. Killing two birds with one stone as it were. Curriculum overcrowding is something we struggle with daily. Trying to fit everything we need to do and teach into a 25 hour week. Doubling up allows us the opportunity to cover all topic areas as well as showing students how these skills are important across the curriculum. My example about doing phonics but tying it into writing is just one example. You could integrate it with art, maths, reading and P.E if you wanted to. Moving forward I will look to take a main focus area and integrate it throughout the curriculum in order to get a true understanding from the students but also to minimize the busyness of the timetable.

DFI - My final blog post

The final day of DFI. It has been 9 weeks of learning to become more digitally fluent. It was especially new to me because of the delivery online VS the in person class offered prior to COVID19. Thanks to COVID, I have both taught online and learnt online. This ended up being a blessing because during lockdown level 3, we were able to continue learning online instead of having to push our DFI course out into term 4.

Over the past 9 weeks I have learnt lots of things, some small, some much bigger, some that I had never done before and some that I just needed to brush up on. DFI afforded me the opportunity and time to be in a space with colleagues in very similar situations or environments as me. I was able to have professional conversations with colleagues about how digital technology fits into our daily teaching world. We were given plenty of support by our DFI facilitators and when they weren't sure (due to regular google updates) there was always somebody else to offer support. It was a nice learning environment, especially the smaller learning groups (thanks Vicki and the rest of my bubble for all the help here). 

What would a DFI look like on a more in depth scale for proficient google users? I have enjoyed learning all things google and would be open to continuing my learning in this area. YAY, I graduated!

DFI - Coding for Kids

 Scratch Junior 

Scratch Junior is a coding app that can be used on iPads and cell phones only. It allows you to add backgrounds, characters and objects. You use the different blue puzzle pieces below to help your characters move. Scratch Junior allows for multiple characters and settings which gives students a chance to tell their own story or retell a story. In terms of the structure of the coding I thought it was a little more complicated than the other coding apps I tried. This would be an app I'd recommend to our students who have prior experience with coding and who are happy to work on a long term project.

Lightbot

Light bot is an app that has different levels to it, starting from the very basic to more advanced. It is relatively easy to use and would be well suited to the junior school. Only once you pass the level you're on can you move onto the next level which means children are not skipping ahead to something they don't understand. The activities, especially in the earlier stages, are short and sharp which means students can see instant success. As a year 2 teacher, I would recommend Lightbot as a good starting point for direction and coding.

Code.org - Minecraft

The world is your oyster on Code.org. Probably my favourite of all the coding programs I have worked on to date. It has coding for a range of different interests (sport, minecraft, frozen, starwars etc). On Code.org it gives you small challenges located at the top of the page which can be read to you if you push on the small book and speaker icon which supports independence. The tasks flow in sequence telling a story that the students can follow. Each task gets harder and harder and students can't move forward in the story until they pass the task they are on. The coding is rather straight forward and focuses mainly on direction. Will be looking to try this with my students next term.

Kodable

Kodable is the type of game students are going to love. You earn rewards to buy things to change your avatars image / get new avatars. It is aimed at students from 4-9+. As you go up the ages the games change and become more challenging. Below is the 4 year old coding game. Students use the arrows to signal direction to help them collect the stars (which are used as points). Feels like a game for children while learning both direction and basic code.

DFI - Chromebooks and iPads

 How to use Explain Everything (EE) 

 

I use EE daily in my day to day teaching. It is a great app for showcasing students learning, getting creative and working towards being digitally fluent. While it is a great app for students it's even better for teachers. It gives teachers the opportunity to pre-create work so students can work independently. It's also a great way to display old lessons by using images, videos and audio clips so students can revisit their old learning.

Above is an example of todays follow up task of their Te Reo Māori. The students had to draw or colour in pictures of different images and label them with the different colours in Māori. It's an engaging activity for the student and breaks up the day of pen and paper. If you would like to see some other ideas of blogs, push on the link.

The only limitation to EE that I have noted is that it's not interactive when students upload to their blog. It can be uploaded as either a standard image or a video with an audio clip in the background. 

CREATE - Explain Everything

Below is a Cyber Smart recap for students I created on EE. The idea is that this is something students can go back to and look through if there is something they are not sure about regarding the topic Smart Relationships. Usually I would save this as a project which means students can download the EE and listen to the audio clips. 

Normally I would use students voices to explain what we have been talking about, that way it is both in student language and feels more like peer support rather than a teacher lecture. 

How to use a Chromebook

First time Chromebook user over here! Lots to be learnt. We focused a lot on shortcuts and how they can make navigating a Chromebook significantly easier. Above is one of the shortcuts (CTRL + F) I found the most useful and thought would be the most helpful for both students and teachers. Control F allows you to search for key words on a page or in a text. I wish I knew this shortcut when I was in University. 

Chromebooks have all the things you'd hope them to have on a learning device. For most students this is their first computer so they adapt quite quickly to the device. For those students who may have used a different device prior to their Chromebook, it may take a little bit longer to get used to. I personally found using the computer quite difficult because it was both smaller and I didn't have a compatible mouse so I had to use the touch pad for everything. However, I was able to do everything on the Chromebook that I would on my normal computer. 

Google Sites - DFI

Google Sites 

Today we talked all things Google Sites. We had the opportunity to look at a wide range of different class sites and think about the pros and cons of them for our learners. 

Things I thought were important...

• The less scrolling the better
• Easy to use for students and parents
• Visually appealing
• Transparent learning
• Student voice / student pictures

Things I found difficult...

• Over stimulation (lots of bright colours that clash), different fonts, different sized buttons etc.
• Too much on the home page can be overwhelming

My main focus was creating an easy to use, visually appealing website. I looked at some examples of what that might look like for me and went from there. I started by creating buttons on google draw. I used the background remover on some of my buttons to make it look tidier. I removed the pages from the navigation bar allowing students only one entry into each page. The less decisions on the website, the more focus that can be applied to their digital tasks.  

Below are some examples of the site buttons I created for my Te Reo Māori page. The idea is they can push on music to find all the music they need in one place. The glossary is an updated google slide that has all the words the students have learnt in school. This is so parents can scroll through and attempt to use these at home to solidify learning. The Te Reo Māori blog button takes students straight to the whole school Te Reo Māori blog where they will find their weekly challenges. The Māori dictionary is simply a link to an external dictionary. My focus was to make everything straight forward to navigate with only a couple of clicks without compromising on content. I want everything the students and parents might need to be available without it looking like too much content. 

Below was my attempt to bring my students voice into the site they use daily. I saw some wonderful examples of student websites tailored for the students with their pictures helping to navigate the site. I loved this idea. The page is for them and their parents to navigate their learning so why shouldn't it have them front and centre. I didn't have the type of pictures I would have liked to display on the blog but I gave it a go and instantly the page seemed friendlier. Moving forward this is something I'd like to improve on. It could even be something I talk with the students about. What would they like the site to look like?

Another idea I had while looking through other schools class sites was a gallery. Parents don't see enough of what their students do at school. They do marvellous, exciting things and they are always having fun with their learning. I get to see that daily. I want my parents to see that too. Why not have a gallery where parents can access pictures. They get to see what they are doing at school and they can add them to their memories for the future.

Another good chance to explore and try new things. In these moments of exploration, I see the full potential of digital learning.

Classroom Creations

 

Returning back to school after a second lockdown has been more challenging this time round than it was the first. The children are feeling uncertain about the future, whether they will be here much longer or if they will be in lockdown again. Understandably so. The mask wearing, although slightly exciting for them, is also causing some uncertainty. 

Despite all this, the students have had a great start back to school. They love the structure of school and are big fans of the visual timetable that helps them know exactly what they will be doing during the day. Today we had a very structured morning, the students enjoyed reading rotations and all produced a blog post on their writing. In the middle block the students were quite full of energy and were struggling to stay on task. Instead of pushing through with writing, which I knew was going to be difficult for them and for me I shifted our focus to 'create' time. The children were engaged and were happy to collaborate with other students to make their creations. It was lovely to see the students settling in and reestablishing connections with their friends. It was exactly what our room 7 tamariki needed to help settle back into school. 

My focus moving forward will be to continue with my 'less is more' concept. Focus on specific teaching and not to worry too much about fitting everything in. 

Collaborate - DFI

Multi-modal site

At Panmure Bridge school we use google sites to make our teaching and the students learning transparent. The idea is that everything the students do in a day is made available for students to follow up with at home or for parents to check in and see what their child has learnt that day. This allows for open dialogue between teacher and student, student and parents and teacher and parents. 

One thing I haven't done much thinking on until now is using multi-modal sites as a form of project based learning site. I see a real use for this with one of my high achieving students who has a ILP (Individual learning plan). In the past I have got a selection of books from the senior book room and set tasks / project for her to follow up with. Although this is still an option, multi modal sites allows me to move her learning to a digital platform to allow more independence and more engagement. I can move with her learning, adding or taking things away depending on the route she explores. I could also link EE activities onto the website or encourage her to make her own EE's about her learning.

Another way I thought about using multi-modal sites was on 'holidays' like Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day etc. You could create one with a large amount of resources for independent explore time allowing students to determine their own methods of learning. For example you could create a mothers day site with lots of read aloud books or videos on arts and crafts projects. You could have set tasks the students need to complete or for a slightly different subject you could have links to quizzes that serve as a formative assessment to follow up a topic. 

Although creating a google site may seem taxing, with time, practice and improved digital fluency a google site can be put together in an hour and used for a period of 2 weeks+ depending on the topic. It can be used as a 'warm up' into the topic or a chance for students to explore their own interests. 

Dealing with Data - DFI

My Maps

Today we worked with maps. I could instantly see a place for it in a maths curriculum, especially in the upper school. You could explore area and perimeter with some of the older children. For the younger children you could look at length, distance and time. There are lots of opportunities for project based assignments. Students could plan a road trip, look at distances, gas prices, how far you could go on a tank of gas etc. Junior students could compare how far they live from school compared to friends, who has to walk the furthest. The difference in cycling time VS walking time. The opportunities are endless here. I see integration opportunities to integrate into literacy, inquiry, physical education and even art.

This term our inquiry topic is Safety and I can see a place for maps in this. Looking for the local emergency services and how far they are from your house (walking, biking etc). We could look and see how far everyone lives from school and who has to walk the furthest distance. We could look at hazards (roundabouts etc) on the way home in real satellite image.

On a personal note, I wish I knew about this during some of my bigger trips overseas it would have saved me lots of time and made my trips more efficient and no doubt I would have saved some money.

Spreadsheets

Above is a spreadsheet looking at the data of a PBS student over the period of four years. This data has been broken into months and helps you look at activity levels over the space of a year. This information could be paired with testing data to see if there is a link between regular updating and student achievement. 

Spreadsheets is capable of so much. You would never know what it can and can't do until someone informs you of all the small tricks. I can certainly see the benefit of using spreadsheets especially when it comes to tracking your data, identifying target students, monitoring micro shifts and looking to where you'd like your students to be moving forward. Being reminded of some of these functions has given me something to think about in terms of how I collate my classrooms data. The question for me now is, how can I organise my data in a way that best informs my teaching? An example might be an 'alphabet' spreadsheet which might identify 95% of students don't recognise the letter 'm'. I can see a lot of opportunity to use sheets to support my phonics program as well as keeping track of maths challenges (knowledge based information).

Digital Pepeha

Takeaways of the Week!

The hot tip of the week was around Hapara and staying organised. I learnt that you are able to move the paynes around in order to sort learners so you can have priority learners at the top of Hapara. This means that instead of seeing the names in alphabetical order I can move them around to focus on different students at different periods of time.

Our focus this week was on 'media'. In this case, google draw, google slides and youtube, all valuable platforms that I use regularly in my day to day job.

Below is a youtube playlist that I started but haven't had the chance to finish. A cool feature of google playlists is the collaborative button which allows multiple people to add to the playlist. Ideal for this sort of task because as people come across new, appropriate songs, they can just add it to the playlist for all to see and use.

Another thing we focused on was google draw. This was a nice refresher for me and a good chance to get creative. Below is my 'About Me' which I have added to my blog so people can learn a little bit about me. I often use google draw in order to post pictures onto Blogger.

I also got the opportunity to play with my blog layout to make it easier for me to navigate. A lot of time to try new things out today. Very productive day.

Digital Pepeha

Absolutely loved getting the chance to complete my digital pepeha. I got to learn some new reo, connect with some other people with similiar interests and I got to complete something I've long wanted to accomplish. Thank you Makaore for all the support.