Appraisal Goals

Following my first visit for my appraisal Marcelle and I had a chat about my next steps when delivering my maths programme. Having netbooks in my classroom I am now integrating ICT into my reading, writing and maths programmes. BUT the reality of using technology in the classroom was witnessed in my appraisal. Unfortunately my netbooks weren't allowing me to save into favourites so I thought the next best option would be to type up the websites and save them into a word doc so that the kids could go to that copy it and paste it into the URL space. For some students this was no trouble and away they went but for others it was a difficult task navigating their way around. Spending time struggling on their own to sort it out rather than move onto the next task I had allocated or asking another person in their group meant they wasted some of their learning time. Hence one of my goals was to establish netbook experts. I thought it was important to have experts for each group this way we don't just have a couple of experts who are pulled out of their learning time with me to sort a problem out for someone completing an independent task. Hopefully by having a couple of experts in each group they can help sort each other out. To help me in my attempt to make the kids more independent I can now save into favourites YAY! So I have created a folder for each group within favourites. Using the teaching station I was able to show the whole class how to access their favourites folder and the task that had been set. The experts then showed everyone how to do it giving everyone another opportunity to watch how it is done but also to confirm to me that each of the experts knew what they were doing. This has worked well so far :-) and the confidence in using the netbooks will hopefully cross over into the other learning areas. I guess integrating netbooks into our learning is like anything else it will take sometime for it to be 'the norm' and for everyone to easily access it takes practice.
Another goal was to get the kids more confident in using the language to explain what they were learning. Last year I went on some maths PD and discovered during that the benefits of getting the kids to come up with the WALT at the end of the lesson to check who got it and who didn't. I do find this useful but the other day a couple of kids were telling me what they learnt and said things like 'what a third of 18 equals,' (which was more about the problem we had been working on). What we were really learning was fractions of a set. This got me thinking that perhaps with them coming up with the WALT they were not being exposed to enough modelling of the language of what they have been learning. As a result I have since established a page in their modelling book where at the end of the week I talk about what they have been learning to do and then get them to help me put it in their words to write in their modelling book. I have told them that they can use this to come back too if someone asks what they are learning to do and they want to say more than just learning about fractions. We are referring back to this learning goal at the beginning of lessons (when it still applies to what we are learning). In the short time this has been established in class I have noticed an increase in children's ability to answer the question of what they have been learning to do, which is great to hear!
All through the groups modelling books I write the children's names when they give me a strategy of how they work out a problem which provides great formative assessment. When I think kids might have just about got a concept I will pose a problem and give each child a piece of paper to show their working on and glue this in the modelling book as another snapshot of where they are up to with their learning. But one thing that was picked up on was that there wasn't one place that I could quickly glance to see who has got a concept and who hasn't. Hence this became my next learning goal. So on the bottom of the page with our weekly WALT statement/goal I have used a pink post-it note to show which kids have 'GOT IT' and a yellow post-it to highlight the kids that still need some 'PRACTICE,' at it. Then after each lesson I have started putting in little pink and yellow bubbles the kids names in the appropriate box. It is interesting that after introducing it to them they are now at the end of the lesson putting themselves in the boxes saying "I think I still need some practice at that." This is great to see as it merges the two latter goals together as kids are obviously becoming more responsive to their learning goals and were they fit with it.
So all in all I think as a class we are making some good steps towards achieving these goals and I look forward to contining to see improvements in their mathematics learning.
Below is a snapshot taken from one of my modelling books showing how I have set up the new language WALT focus and the assessment at a glance.

Connecting students with others

The other day a colleague shared his learning from a workshop he attended at the beginning of the year, of being globally connected. It was cool to see what he had learnt and what he had taken away from the workshop and used in his class. One thing that stood out was e-pals (modernising the old-fashioned pen pals to become an online pal). He had used his contacts around the world to do a similar thing and it was neat to see emails between children saying 'mince and cheese pies were her favourite food and she enjoyed netball,' her buddy replied with 'what is a mince and cheese pie?' This opens up real and exciting learning opportunities for the children. Giving their writing an audience and purpose and more ownership over ensuring it makes sense and that they give detailed descriptions for others to understand. He also touched on some other cool websites like Kiva (which would be great to use if you were doing an entrepreneurial study as you loan people in third world countries a small sum of money to get their business ideas up and running. This means recognising a good idea as well as giving someone the break they need, showcasing another way of life that many are not exposed to. But getting back to e-pals. Following my colleagues sharing I attended a session at Southwell to do with e-pals. This teacher had used it with a range of age groups and loved seeing the learning that came out of it. She had made contact with schools overseas but also said it is nice to make contact with a school in your area and then at the end of the term meet up face-to-face for a picnic. She talked about the benefits that she had found from using e-pals. Getting the kids to take home their email replies and use them as a reading task at home. The idea of the audience and if their buddy is a good writer it may encourage them to lenghten their own writing as well as proof-read their work especially if they find their buddies hard to read due to surface features. E-pals do have pre-planed units for getting to know each other and the different cultures each pal brings which she had used and created a DVD with her class to showcase their school and community. The only down fall being that sometimes the buddy school isn't as into it as you are and this meant her school didn't get a DVD back which can be disappointing. So getting excited about the prospect of e-pals I headed home and jumped on the website. I thought about buddying up with a London school and looking at what it is like having the Olympics at their backdoor step. But with holiday differences this wasn't going to work. So then I started to think more locally. I have a friend who has a Year 3 class at Frankton. Her and I have started going on each others class blogs and leaving comments. My class just love getting comments from anyone but the idea of a comment from another schools teacher really gets them excited. So with the kids excitement and this newly formed link I thought why don't we try giving it ago with the two schools. On the Olympics theme I thought why don't we buddy them up and give each buddy a country. They can then be responsible for researching about that country that is attending the Olympics and put together there work on a Google Docs or email a powerpoint back and forth depending on ability. Stacey and I are going to meet in the holidays to look more at how we will work this for Term 3. But it is an exciting venture and one I am sure the kids will benefit from. One of my students yesterday came into school excited that she had made a face-to-face link with a girl from the Frankton class. It just so happens they do Ballet together. So I guess the limits to this e-pal concept are only limited by our imaginations.

Restorative Practice

I am still struggling with the right time to use restorative practice in class.  I have used it a lot in the playground and find that often with the younger children they almost just want to be listened to and have someone hear their grumbles. So getting them to explain to each other how it makes them feel means they feel as though they are being heard. Asking students 'what do we need to do to make this right?' they will often volunteer the suggestion of apologising on their own. I have noticed that even within my class I need to work on developing the language that they use to describe how they were feeling because often they will use angry when really it might be that they are frustrated and maybe their actions came across that they were angry so they need to be able to better explain this, or you get the generic 'I felt sad' answer.
I have used restorative chats in class but find it a difficult juggling act between it being the right time and not taking away from learning times. I have found that there are occassions during guided reading/writing/maths where various children completing independent follow up tasks are being disruptive. It would be an opportune time to have a restorative chat about their behaviour, who it is affecting, how it makes me feel, and how we can make it right. BUT I am often torn. Restorative chats can't really be rushed you need to approach them calmly and not appear like quickly give me the answer I want to hear because I need to get back to my reading group. Therefore it is hard to know if I should interupt a groups learning for 10 minutes when they weren't the ones mucking around. I know that in the long run the children's disruptive behaviour should minimise and it may get to the point one day where all I need to say is I need to catch up with you for a restorative chat shortly and that maybe a reminder to get back on task. Fingers crossed!
It was interesting using circle time on the first day back at school following the course in the holidays. I modelled what I wanted from the students (to talk about how they felt coming back to school) I said I was excited to be coming back, seeing them all again and hearing about what they did in their holidays and that I was well rested after a good holiday and made sure I went to bed early last night. It was interesting hearing them talk about their feelings. One girl came to school late and was upset because we were in the hall not where she had expected us to be in our classroom. When it came to her turn in circle time she said she was excited to be returning to school because she liked school. Others then piped up saying no you were crying when you came into the hall you were sad. But I talked to the class about them being her feelings and that she could share what she wanted and talked about how she now felt happy again because she had found us.
During the two-day course Marg talked about building relationships and how when we get tired we will often revert to the more authorative figure. I guess I am more conscious of this and how I could have approached the situation differently now. There are some students in my class who need constant reminding of how to sit on the mat and manage their behaviour or work independently. When I have reminded these students constantly throughout the day I can sometimes feel myself becoming annoyed by this. I have used some restorative chats with these students but like anything it is an on-going process that hopefully will get easier as the students and I become more confident with the practice.

Goals for E-Learning in Term 2

This term Room 11 have had their application for a class set of four netbooks approved, which is very exciting!
The kids have loved jumping on these and going about their inquiry learning, researching and finding out new facts/information when we have borrowed these from classes in the past. This term I want to;

1) Continue this emphasis on inquiry learning, by giving students time during 'topic' to come up with questions they want to learn more about and structure their own research and learning with teacher guidance and support. Inquiry learning is so much more powerful to the individual.

2) Intergrate them into my daily reading, writing and mathematics programmes. Using websites like studyladder to perfect a new maths skill, using them to read for meaning by jumbling up a poem and getting the students to put it back in the correct order, practicing typing skills during handwriting. Using tools like Etherpad for my reluctant writers.

3) Of course use them to make more regular posts on their individual blogs. It is hard to get around everyone and to encourage them to make posts on their learning when you have one classroom computer and a computer suite time that you are trying to balance with research, posting and practicing skills like mathletics.  Having netbooks in class will allow this to happen more naturally so that our ICT suite time is a time for going on the blogs and what ever else we may need them for that day.

Literacy and ICT

Last week I attended a literacy and ICT course with Innes Kennard. The first activity we did with Innes was looking at a poem by Shel Silverstein. He had muddled the order of the poem and it was our job to put it back together. Without reading for meaning the children can not accurately piece the poem back together. I have since started the bases of a digital file of poems out of order for children to put back into order.  It is interesting that some of the children do not pick up on the clues that follow on while others find the rhyme the clue. One poem I used had about marching and the next line went left, right, left, right, but some children did not make the link between the action of marching.  Another interesting comment he made is that computer work should be collaborative and therefore should be in font size 24-36.

During Innes' teaching career Margaret Mahy would often pop into the school. She spoke to a class once saying she had one line that she really wanted to use in a book. The sentence has ended up in a short story 'Chocolate Porridge and Who Ate It.' But the powerful point was that Margaret Mahy told the children "I never know how a story starts until I know the end." Innes then set the challenge of perhaps starting with the last sentence first during writing time. Writing it at the top of the page and then beginning the story but having that ending there as a reminder. This is something I am yet to try but I am keen to give a go particularly with a few of my boys who hate planning their writing but say they have all of their ideas in their head. Maybe they do and putting the sentence at the top will give me piece of mind that they know where they are heading?

Innes had an example of a procedural piece of writing that again he had distorted the order of. This time he had created a table so that children could transfer the information across in the correct order. A great idea for reading for meaning but I also thought it would be great to use on my students who struggle to sequence their writing in order of the events.

He also had a range of images of animal or peoples eyes and using these as a starting point for a point of view piece of writing - looking at life through someone else's eyes. I have used quirky images from Worth1000 before and enjoy the discussions and stories that come out of these images. It could even be taken a step further through drama and getting the children to look at an image and then tapping them on the shoulder getting them to tell others what they are thinking (pretending the image is them, keeping with the point of view aspect).

Innes also set up digital cloze activities by double clicking on a word and selecting a red line in its place. Then when the children add the missing word in it will show up in red as they write over top of the line. Not having the words in a word bank they may come up with slightly different words but this in itself is a great exercise in synonyms.

A punctuation exercise we did was in having an un-punctuated piece of writing. He told us how many paragraphs the original copy has and we had to try and find where they fitted. The reason for telling the kids how many paragraphs there are is that otherwise they will add in five times the number of paragraphs there really are.

Handwriting was another area he spoke about. Computers are the way of the future and the modern version of handwriting is typing. From now on I am going to get one child to complete their handwriting on the computer using the keys and getting used to where the letters are on the keyboard. (Perhaps I should be doing this at writing time as well)? Innes talked about separating the keyboard into left and right sides (the letters you type using your left hand and the letters you type on your right hand side). Knowing what level they are on the bottom, middle or top row and what they sit next too. With increased typing speed the ideas are able to flow more easily.

Innes finished by briefly touching on a writing competition through NZTA.govt.nz which would be good to check out.

The ideas were all great ways to incorporate ICT into your daily programme, it is still difficult with one classroom computer and teacher laptop however to feel like everyone is involved and making the most of their time. But I still feel that there are lots of great ideas that can be implemented straight away.

Learning at Schools 2012- 10+ways to raise achievement in literacy with Jill Hammond

The key message in this session was MOTIVATION. In any area of learning children must have a stimuli, something that will motivate their learning. If it is writing they need to have an audience otherwise what is the point? With an audience comes feedback and with feedback comes improved writing.
So often we tell our students how to present their work but Jill posed the challenge of expressing themselves in a way that interests them. That makes sense but I also think they need to have a certain level of understanding in all areas of writing to be able to deliver their message in the best possible way.
One tool that Jill introduced me too was Etherpad. This is a good collaborative tool for writing and will be great to use on my reluctant writers. It reminds me of Google docs but is probably more child friendly. Students can then work together on a piece at the same time or one could be writing and the other buddy could be editing it as they write. When it comes to editing using track changes (in word) can be a useful tool as it gives the students ownership and credit for their hard work as it is improved.
She also spoke about using wordle to highlight to children how frequently they use words such as 'and' or 'then.' I can see this being a powerful tool as you often point out to students how often they use these words but you wonder how much they take it on board, but if they understand how a wordle works and realise that the bigger the word the more often you have used it in your writing it may make them think twice about using them next time.
Another tool she touched on was using powerpoint and using the action button to create a story that has numerous endings. This could be a fun reading/writing activity that requires students to think at a higher level in each creating a different ending for the one story. Later in the year I will keep this in mind to try as a collaborative task with my top reading group to extend their understanding of what a good book needs.
When looking at motivation I loved the idea of Lulu.com that Kevin Honeycutt introduced us to a publishing tool where you can actually purchase the children's work. How cool would it feel to be a 7-8-year-old and be a published author. I can see how students would then take more pride in their proofreading/editing phase.

Learning at Schools 2012-Solo Taxonomy with Pam Hook

The SOLO taxonomy session with Pam Hook was great for learning ways of showing students how to clearly follow their own progress and then create their next learning steps. What I like about this higher order thinking is that it gives students the power and they become responsible motivated learners. While at primary we often have to push for work to be handed in or finished but when they get to high school there won't always be someone reminding them of when assignments are due, so isn't it better to prepare them now rather than later on how to become motivated life long learners? While the names of the stages are quite large (prestructural, uni and multistructural, relational and abstract) I like the images that are linked in and the hand signals children can use. In class I will often use the thumbs up if your confident with the instructions, thumbs sideways need it explained one more time and thumbs down need to stay on the mat and work with me; I can see the hand signals of SOLO taxonomy being used in a similar way.
In the Middle Syndicate we always allow a page or two for each of the key competencies under the headings of thinkers, managers, communicators, contributors, explorers. There are great rubrics based around each of the key competencies which I will be putting into each of the kids learning logs and getting them to rate themselves as managers, thinkers, contributors, communicators and explorers and what they need to do to reach the next level. One important aspect when children are anaylysing where they are at is that they say my learning is at a relational stage NOT I am relational.
One great idea that Pam used as an example which I will be keen to try was teaching children to back their ideas up in their writing (could be used for expository). In one colour paper the children sequence the event, with the piece of paper going vertically up the page. Alongside this they put another colour paper to answer the why questions and add the detail. Once children had this planning under their belt they writing becomes a much stronger piece.
A cute You Tube view that explains SOLO a bit futher was put together by Newmarket School and can be seen on the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV6Dmm7X4Eg