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.

Workflow - DFI learnings

http://hpscelinep.blogspot.com/2020/04/oreo-cheesecake.html

Something I learnt: For the people to see what I'm looking at, I must present my work. This is not something I did during my screen recording. See the above link for the blog post.

This week our focus is on Learn which is the first of three key concepts for schools in the Manaiakalani cluster and our workflow. By workflow we are referring to being organised on our computer and making things a little easier for ourselves.

We talked about Google Keep which is an app I use personally a lot. I use the collaborative feature regularly with friends and family and it just makes things easier and more efficient for everybody involved. I don't yet use it professionally but am able to see many ways that it could be used within a work environment. Yesterday I went through my art cupboards to see what I needed for the art order and put it into the google doc. Google Keep could replace the doc in this area. Similar to a shopping list it could be an opportunity for teachers to add things they need, as they need them and when the art order gets put in, everything is in one tidy google keep that is regularly updated. This is just one of the many ways a Google Keep could be used in a school. It is something you have access to everywhere you phone is, it can link to your google drive, it's quick, easy and collaborative. Lots of opportunities through this app to improve workflow.

We did some work in our emails, adding labels, filtering emails into those different folders so that they are easier to find. I'm one of those people that doesn't like having unread emails and likes to have everything neatly put away so it was nice to be able to do this digitally also. My personal email got a clean out too thanks to these tips too.
Another area we looked over was our calendar; creating events and organising google meets. The new google calendar extension was the thing I loved the most. It's basically a straight to the point google calendar of your day right at your fingertips. Picture below.

Screen recording was the last thing we did today, I have seen lots of people doing it but I haven't known how to do it myself up until today. Although not something I use in my day to day life, it's nice to have this knowledge in my tool belt. Another awesome session of DFI with plenty of things to take away and apply in my everyday life both professionally and personally.

Digital Poster - DFI

It was my first day on the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) course that is held online every Friday for the next 8 weeks. Above is a digital poster that I created using some of the new tricks I learnt throughout the day.

Maniakalani was first thought up in 2005 with a group of innovative teachers, principals and board members who were eager to raise achievement outcomes for students in low decile schools. The aim was to motivate the learners (that statistics showed were failing in the current school system) by engaging them in a modern and innovative digital environment. The hope was to offer students a 21st century approach to learning by empowering our students to use their voices.

Today I Marie Kondo'd my google drive which has been something I have wanted to do for a long time but didn't really know where to start. Seeing examples of other peoples drives gave me fresh ideas about how best to do this in a way that is both organised, easy to navigate and useful in a day to day situation. I managed to find a home for all un-homed files as well as merging a few folders together so that everything was in the same place. Naming and filing labels is important and something that I work hard to support my students with.

Working on the digital poster gave me the opportunity to implement some of the tricks I learnt throughout the day. This kind of digital design is where I'd like my students to be heading so it was nice to know some of the smaller things to help them get there. It's as simple as giving your designs a coloured back drop to make them more appealing. One of the cool tools I learnt to use was the background remover, I used it twice in my digital poster, it was super easy and made my poster look more appealing. My focus over the next term with my students will be backgrounds, different fonts as well as different font sizes.

Personally, I learnt quite a few tricks that just make things easier. Command 'D' to mute yourself in a google meet. Command 'D' to add a tab when you're not in a google meet. The voice tool on a google doc was quite nifty and reliable. This is definitely something I could use in the classroom too. Endless possibilities here. I learnt that command followed by a number takes you to that number tab (very helpful when you have lots of tabs open). One thing I learnt that I probably should have known was NOT to underline titles or other parts of texts. In the modern world, underlining is left for hyperlinks.

Less is More

Settling back into school after the COVID lockdown I had a few important focuses. My first was emotional wellbeing and my second was 'less is more'. As a teacher, I feel go, go, go all the time, trying to fit all areas of the curriculum into each day which feels chaotic for me and I'm sure feels a little chaotic for the kids.

As the children came back, I really wanted to focus on slowing things down and doing things right. My first step was not putting the pressure on myself to hit every curriculum area in a single day but instead integrating the curriculum areas to create rich learning experiences. Another thing I have made a conscious decision to focus on was giving myself more time to teach and students more time to learn.

One of my examples of this has been during my Yolanda phonics lesson. After attending the Yolanda phonics course and observing other teachers carry out their phonics lessons I have established a daily phonics routine that works for me and my learners. Instead of rushing through a quick 10 minute lesson of phonics every morning, I have extended my phonics lessons to 20-30 minutes. We do a letter of the day, we talk about the sound and try the corresponding action (e.g. the vibrating throat). As a class we go through the 5-6 words starting with that letter which we will later recall. We write a sentence for each word and 4-5 students get a chance to read the sentence before we read it as a whole class. We do this for each word. In 2 short weeks, I have found a drastic improvement in their sentence structure that has transferred to their writing. The extra time spent in my phonics lesson has made writing more enjoyable for the students and given me the chance to focus on different areas of students writing.

Below, on the left, is an example of one of my ESOL students in late Feb before the lockdown. On the right is her work after a week of specialised phonics. Both pieces of work were written independently with a whole class discussion prior.

Hands on Maths

In term 1 my focus was to get to know my students and this was important because it has guided my practice to date. My class is made up of students of all abilities but the one thing that holds true across my class is that most, if not all of them are hands-on, active learners. I also found my students were far more engaged in their learning if they saw the real-world relevance of what they were learning which is why the following parts of our maths program have been both fun and beneficial for the students.

Maths challenges:
This idea came from a junior classroom I spent time in during university. It began as a way for students to learn the order of the planets (part of our inquiry topic) and ended in a math challenge wall. Every Friday students are given the chance to do their math challenges, which is a knowledge-based maths challenge, e.g. can count backwards from 20-0. The math challenge is their own responsibility, they can practice it at home and at school but the idea is that they take responsibility for their own learning. Their challenges are displayed for them to see. On Friday they can choose to attempt their math challenge. If they pass they go up a planet and receive a certificate. If they don't pass that week they keep the math challenge for another week. Every student starts at different stages so the higher they are doesn't always correspond with their math ability. For example, one student might be on Saturn but is on the challenge identifying numbers to 100 while a student on Mercury could be skip counting backward from 100. Students see great success in this and are always excited to go up a level.

Calender maths:
Calendar maths is a great opportunity for us to talk about numbers. What's the date? What date was it yesterday, what day will it be tomorrow? How many days until the weekend? Students favourite part about the calendar is that it is only a short period of time that they are sitting, they are all capable of answering questions related to calendar maths and they like referring to it for the date throughout the day.

Tally marks rewards system:
The tally marks rewards system came out of thin air. When we had sticker charts I used to tally mark who was getting stickers in the corner of the board to remind myself to put up stickers. One day we were doing a math activity where they had to find a number then go write it up on the board. Some students wrote the word, others wrote the number and a couple of the students did tally marks. I hadn't specifically talked about tally marks so I was surprised when I realized the students had picked up on tally marks without specific teaching. The following week I decided to do specific teaching on it so students understood exactly what they were doing. We did surveys on favourite animals of students, favourite colours, favourite ice cream flavours etc. This just happened to be during a time students were moving away from the sticker charts and needed an 'older' way to praise positive behaviour. The tally system worked well. For every event on the board (e.g. Kiwi Can) the students can earn up to 5 points as a class. 5 meaning awesome work, 1 meaning needs to do better next time. Students tally them and every morning we count the tally's from the day before and count out that amount of tally's into marbles which then go into our marble jar. This idea came from the kids so the buy in has been big.

Hands on maths:
I do a lot of hands maths in my class. Not just using equipment (although we do use A LOT of equipment) but also things that get students moving. For example taking photos on their iPads of all the number 7's they can find in the classroom or finding 4 different things that are the shape of a triangle.  The cool part about this is that students can be set tasks that are tailored to their learning needs. Another example of our hands on maths is through games. I noticed many of my students hadn't played games like snakes and ladders, trouble, fishy fishy or any game that involved dice. This became very evident in their gaps of knowledge regarding dot patterns. These sorts of games catered to all the different levels in my class and all of them enjoyed them and were capable of participating. The posters in the photo above are one of the newest activities I have made for students. The students have to screw the bottle cap answers onto the end of the equations. The students like the tactile part of this activity.

Morning maths board:
The morning maths board is the newest addition to my morning routine. It aims to get students talking about maths and using maths terminology (an area I have identified as a work on). It starts with a number of the day, we do the number before, we do the number after. Double it, half it, odd or even. Students learn how to tell the time, what different shapes are, their vertices and their edges. They get to look at fractions, tens frames and different maths problems all within a 10 - 15 minute window. If there is an area in math that students need to focus on then there is room for it on the maths board. Students get to come up and put numbers up (which gets them moving) and there is something on the board for everyone to have success. As they get better the questions are able to get harder and more conversation is able to be had. Kids love it, I love it and the best part is, it is done and dusted within the morning routine.