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.

Play Based Learning

Play-based learning is something Panmure Bridge School recognizes the need for in our junior classes. Many of our new entrance children come to school with minimal fine motor skills, social skills, and experiences and therefore aren't necessarily ready for structured learning yet.
I integrate both structured learning and play-based learning by implementing a must-do, can do concept in the class. Each literacy group is assigned to different rotations, their first rotation might be a must do (e.g. reading with teacher) then their next rotation might be a can do (e.g. play). This concept also means students with specific learning needs, e.g. high achievers and low achievers can be given specific tasks to meet their level of needs.

My different literacy levels often (not always) reflect their learning capabilities so matching different literacy groups up together in 'play' can be quite strategic. Sometimes I put them with students that will teach them new play opportunities while other times I put them with students that have the same interests. Both appear to be having positive outcomes for students socially.

We are lucky enough to have a lot of equipment which we swap between classes every term. E.g. Construction might swap with dress-ups etc.

I was unsure about play-based learning at the start of the year but have seen the huge benefits that playing can have on students. Watching the students play and interact with one another has helped me recognize strengths and works on for each individual student too.

One of the things we have been working on with students is the noise level. Because some students play and some students are doing group work it has been important to find the right balance. The first two weeks were a bit loud but after implementing a five strike 'no more play' policy, playing has become more of a soft hum when in the classroom as apposed to outdoor playing. The key was having the expectation, being consistent and following through with the outcome.

There is lots to report on in learning through play but my biggest takeaway about learning through play is that the students are learning. They are learning how to be kind, how to share, how to think outside the box and problem solve. They are learning to work together, compromise and resilience. Everything they learn through play makes them better ready for structured learning.

Reading Rotations

When I was on my second year practicum I was in a year 1 & 2 class with a very capable senior teacher. She had a rotation system that incorporated a range of different activities that fell under the literacy umbrella. Although mine looks quite different from hers, this is where my inspiration for literacy rotations started.

Note: My rotation started with completely different activities than you see below. The photo you see below is where I have ended up.

Initially, I had poetry, big books, whiteboards, iPads, teacher and because at the time I had 6 groups, library or something else of that nature. I found although the students like the rotation idea they got quite restless for a range of different reasons. For some students it wasn't structured enough, for others it was too much freedom and for some, it was simply too challenging to sit and read a book alone so for that reason I took poetry, big books and library time out of the rotations. This was made earlier buy the merging of two groups, leaving me with 5 reading groups instead of 6.
I am lucky enough to have a teacher aid that has been on the Yolanda Phonics course and was capable of taking small phonics groups so I turned one of my rotations into a phonics station. I saw a need to work on handwriting so I set up a handwriting station which was a mixture of activities including using a whiteboard, making letters with playdough or simply working on a page in their handwriting book. Another group often would go on iPads to do Sunshine Classics and if they finished their books then they could go on Eggy Words. Another rotation was guided reading with the teacher then after that they were expected to go away and read their book to someone in their group. This worked well and students were engaged and enjoyed literacy rotations but as I learnt new things options for new rotations emerged.

After I went to the Yolanda Phonics course myself I was able to teach phonics as a class and as my students became more capable I found phonics wasn't something that I needed to focus on as much. I used my teacher aid as an extra pair of hands getting through the reading groups or reading one on one with students I thought needed extra support. Thanks to some in-class support by Heather Collins I started to feel more comfortable with the iPads in the classroom and over time created follow up EE's that are independent tasks students can do on the iPad. Each book students reads with a teacher has a follow up EE to complete that target focus areas for each student. For example, one of the activities is recording themselves explaining what the book is about because I noticed students struggled with retelling the main parts of the book. It also targets oral language which is an area my students need work on. Another activity might relate to their LI for the book, for example identifying adjectives or finding words in their book ending with specific endings. I find my students really like literacy rotations because they know that even if they don't like a specific rotation that if they sit there and do it for 15 minutes they will be moved to a new station. It keeps everything quite fresh and exciting.

Play is only very new to our class. Update to come when I learn more about it.

Takeaway - These rotations can change as I as a teacher changes and as my class changes too. As gaps are filled and new gaps arise the rotations can be altered and adapted for the needs of students. An example of this was when I noticed spelling was something my class struggled with, I put spelling as one of the rotations in an attempt to fill that need.

Classroom Management

Room 2 is made up of 25 students. Of those 25 students, only 9 of them are girls and the rest are boys. This means sitting still on the mat for a period longer than 5 minutes can be quite challenging. To combat this I have started using a timer. I put the timer on for 5 minutes and I don't keep the students any longer than that five minutes. The knowledge that they will be able to leave in a specific period of time seems to be working. My goal would be to work that time up little by little until they are able to sit without a timer.

Monitoring noise level inside the classroom and gaining the WHOLE classes attention has been another area I have been working on. Again, the large majority of high energy boys has made me think about the way in which I do this. I started using a bell or anything that meant I didn't have to raise my voice over them, I even tried a drum for a day (it didn't work). My mentor teacher suggested I try doing it with "no bells or whistles" and see how they react. I swapped out my bell for a "one, two, fold-away" chant which appealed to my whole class because they got to chant it back, it had the added bonus of the fact all students then had to fold their arms away. I kept chanting "one, two fold-away" until every student had their hands folded away. I made it clear that I would know people were listening when their arms were folded. This quickly became the expectation and in a few days, I was seeing a huge improvement. The key for me was being patient and waiting for every student. Setting the expectation and waiting for it to be met. I found if I was letting one little thing go that it escalated quickly from there.
HUGE TAKEAWAY - No bells and whistles, while it might work for some teachers in some classrooms, my class (boy heavy) reacted far better to my voice and the very clear expectations the chant sets.

Update: We have recently heard a new chant, "hands-on top," and the students chant back saying "that means stop." It seems to have the same positive impact on students but they seem to like it more. Added bonus, you can very clearly see they have stopped what they are doing and they are paying attention.

Building relationships - Embracing who we are

My main focus for this first term is building relationships with my students. In the first week, we focused a lot on writing our name, we did this by creating bag tags, bookmarks, labels for our tables, book boxes, and students individual cubby holes. This helped me identify the more independent students and those that were still learning to write their names.

Continuing with the focus of building relationships we did a lot of 'about me' work which was a chance for the students to tell their peers and me all about who they are, where they come from and what makes them so special. One of the biggest things I learned was how prominent religion, language, and culture was in their everyday home lives. With a class made up of 9 different countries, it was important for me to normalize that and celebrate the differences in culture. I started doing this by greeting students in their home language, some chose to respond in their home language, some chose to respond in other languages they knew or were interested in. This has become a daily routine for us. I say Morena to the first student and they respond in whatever language they like. I then use their greeting to greet the next student and so on and so forth. As we got more confident we started introducing new languages, we now know how to say good morning in over 10 languages.

From all of this 'about me' work, one of the biggest things I have learned is that many of the children in my class are nervous to embrace their language and culture at school. My goal moving forward is that every child knows where they came from and they are proud of that.