Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 4 - Data

As Dorothy said today, 'sharing has been happening since time began'. I totally agree. Thinking about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share, why create if we do not have the opportunity to share? We create so we are able to share what we have learnt or experienced. For myself, I post a lot on my social media because I want to share with my friends and family what is happening in my life. I share on my professional blog to show others what I am experiencing in my teaching practice. Therefore, I totally tautoko that importance of Tohatoha. 

Another important learning I gained from the Tohatoha deep dive is sharing as we learn and not sharing when we are finished. I will be putting more focus on this in my classroom practice. Students need to understand that sharing is in the process of learning. 

I use Hapara to manage student work, devices, log ins, activities but it was interesting to learn about other features I did not know about. One of the features was creating groups in Hapara. I am creating a group in Hapara for my target group with my Teaching as Inquiry. 

I have some confidence in using Google Forms. I use Google forms for surveys and also for quizzes. My students enjoy completing quizzes because it gives them their marks at the end of the test. I once created a quiz last year where I did not tick ONE RESPONSE ONLY. The result was me going through multiple entries from some students who wanted to get 100% for the test. Validity of data gone out the window! Learnt my lesson from that mistake. 

For our create activity in Google Forms today, I created a short quiz to refresh my students' memories about our class novel. We started the novel then stopped during Lockdown. 

Here is my Google Form:

The Google Sheets session was really helpful today. I totally agree that looking at data tells a story especially after my profiling mission last week with my target group with their writing results see blog Profiling by digging deeper blog post 

In completing my profiling last week, the content I learnt today about Google Sheets would have made my task so much more easier. I did not know about Conditional Formatting. That would have cut the time I spent formatting my sheets to a fraction. 

Our create task today was to analyse blog posts in student blogs. I first analysed one student from my class. I learnt last year, she did not make as many blog posts as she had the year before. This year, she has made more than double the amount of blog posts from last year by the middle of this year.

After working on Dwayne's blog, I decided it would be good for me to analyse how many blog posts all my students have made this year so far. First I gathered the data by finding out how many blog posts have been made in 2020. I then entered these data on a Google Sheet. I sorted the data from least number of blog posts to the most blog posts made. After that, I created a chart. Very easy to identify the students who have been doing a lot of blogging and the students I need to work with to give them more confidence and support with their blogging.

Here is the analysis for my whole class in a chart.

Great learning today and I am finishing off the day with a challenge to ensure the next time I analyse my class' blog posting, the chart will look much different to the one above. 

My profiling continues with collecting student voice

I created this Google Form to collect student voice from my target group about their strengths in their learning and also to gather information about their thoughts about writing.

I recall Aaron telling us to focus on what the students' strengths and use those to maximise their learning in our inquiries. 

I am really interested to learn about what the students view as their strengths in their learning and other information this form will collect from my target students. 

Here is the Google Form:

Profiling by digging deeper

Profiling

Aaron has emphasised time and time again the importance of profiling our students before beginning our inquiries. This year I have spent a lot more time and effort in profiling my learners. I have a group of 10 students who are in my target group. My curriculum area of focus this year is in Writing. 

What I wanted to know:

I wanted to know the story of the students and their writing progress for the last five years. I wanted to find out when they made progress, accelerated in their writing or even stalled in their progress. After all the data collection I wanted to analyse what has been happening and with which teacher and year level did major changes occur. 

Data collection:

I accessed through ETAP the writing results from the year 2014-2020. I wanted the beginning, middle and end of year assessment data in Writing. The data collection itself was not as challenging as I thought once I sought assistance from the ETAP helpdesk. 

Once I printed out each year's data, I collated the information on a spreadsheet starting from 2020-2014. After doing that, I realised, if I wanted to see a trend I was actually looking at the data backwards. I should start from 2014-2020. Therefore I made a copy of the first spreadsheet and started from the year 2014-2020. See table below and 2014-2020 Writing Levels Spreadsheet

Analysis

Looking at the above table, at first I thought well its is showing some progress and some dips in progress. I also thought, it is normal for students to start in the junior school at level one and progress to levels 2, 3 and so on as they move to the senior school. I also noticed that a few of the students in my target group did not have a lot of data on our database as they joined Glenbrae School later in their primary years. To me, that does not mean their achievement is not valid or unimportant. We will have to their first assessment entries as their baseline data.

Diving deeper into the data

However, as I sat at home that night, I kept looking at the data and thinking there is more to what I am seeing on the surface. I need to dig deeper. I was actually very eager to see what the data said and I knew I had to dig deeper. I had to investigate.  Therefore, I made yet another copy of the spreadsheet and started to identify the difference between each assessment point.

With that question in mind I started comparing assessment results by comparing if there was a shift from the last assessment entry of if there was a drop. 

After doing that analysis, this is what the spreadsheet looked like. I also wrote down my notes on what I was seeing from the analysis. Refer to table below and Profiling analysis and notes spreadsheet  

What did the data tell me?
The more I studied the spreadsheet, the more I was intrigued with what I was learning. I kept thinking as I was looking at the data, "What has been happening throughout these years for my students in writing?". Below are some of the findings I found analysing the data. I still feel there are some more trends I have yet to identify.

Now what?

With that I have learnt from analysing the data, one of my goals this year is to accelerate my students in writing and ensure they do not fall back on their writing skills and results. The how will be in another blog post but I am happy I took the time to look at what has been happening with my target group with writing in the past. I also plan to share my analysis with our teaching team so we are able to unpack and discuss what the data says and the trends. I always value the input of our teaching team and I look forward to what they can bring to the discussion. It will also be good for my colleagues to do an analysis of their own target student as I find there is so much value in profiling the students. 

Where to next?

I still have to gather student voice for my baseline data. I will do that early next week. After that, it is finalising my inquiry design by looking at student voice, professional development, staff discussions and whanau voice which I have to gather next week. 

Putting my DFI learning into practise

Yesterday the Create part of our DFI course was so motivating for me. To think of the many fun and exciting activities my class and I will work through is just wonderful.

Post lockdown, I want to capture the students' feelings as they come back to school. I wanted to them reflect on how lockdown was for them and share their experiences. 

I created a Google Drawing with prompt questions for them to answer. I deliberately made the Google Drawing A4 because I did not want too much room for writing. I wanted the students to explain their responses in detail using screencastify.

Richie and Dwyane were the first to finish their screencastify. I am very proud of my students for their Learn, Create and Share work.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 3 - Media (Post 2/2)

The Youtube session was quite interesting. I use Youtube on a daily basis and my Youtube channel consists of family movies I put together for family events. I have always been cautious of listing the materials I upload on Youtube as unlisted. That was a great reminder today about our settings and setting the sharing settings to unlisted. I really value the reinforcement Dorothy reminded us about regarding the danger of Youtube for our students. Cybersmart is so vital especially with Youtube. 

It was wonderful to explore so many other ways we can use Google Drawings. My students, especially the boys enjoy using Google Drawings to create digital art. We have to have a digital art exhibition soon to showcase their awesome artwork. Below is my About Me, Google Drawing using Vicki's template. 

Google slides is an application I use more than any other Google app. I have confidence in using Google Slides for presentations and for teaching materials but like always my world was expanded beyond my imagination today. I especially enjoyed creating my Pick a Path Quiz today with Venessa. I have always wanted to learn how to create a Pick a Path story or quiz and now I have. I am really keen for my students to do the same. 

Today for my create activity, I created this homophone quiz. There are many little steps in making a pick a path quiz or story and I plan to make many more to be more confident and efficient in making these fun activities. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 3 - Media (Post 1/2)

The presentation by Dorothy about the CREATE aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy was a very empowering session for me. As Dorothy was presenting, my mind was off in so many paths thinking about what I have been doing in my practice and how I can dive into more meaningful creativity activities with my students. 

The above quote is taken from a Pt England School poster. My interpretation of this statement is: our students are active participants in their learning to learn, challenge and create using the content they learn. Our students are not passive participants in their own learning. Like a waka, they are in the waka rowing with us. 

The above quote from Dr Jessen is very valuable. I have been thinking a lot about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share and how I can better implement this pedagogy in my practice. I have also been planning my CoL inquiry in Writing around CREATING as it is the HOOK which hooks the learners. 

I will discuss my CoL inquiry around creating in Writing in a another blog post coming soon. Watch this space. 

A reflective post I have posted to my class blog as a post lockdown reflection

The past six weeks have been an amazing journey of learning, reflecting and adjusting. When we first started the lockdown, my biggest fear was - how are my students going to cope with their learning from home? How can I support them when they are not in class? Will the parents be able to help with their learning activities?

However...I strongly believe we have made it work Room 7. We utilised the technology we are blessed to have today, we utilitised the cluster we are blessed to be in and we also utilised the kaupapa of our school and made it work.

Having the hangouts was a great way to see you all and learn together. There were days I felt like the hangout was just simply a hangout where we chatted then you would go off and enjoy your day not giving a second through to your work. A few motivational speeches from Mrs Tofa changed that (I still have to copyright my motivational speech guys).

The blogs have been my go to for the last six weeks. Looking at your blog posts provided a wealth of knowledge, insight and appreciation to your efforts in your learning. Your individuality really comes across in your blog posts. Some of you really are fabulous authors with the way you present your personal voice in your blog posts.

I tried to incorporate your home life in your learning activities. Your whanau recipes were great, our whanau challenges for ANZAC, our school assembly...just pure joy to see. I hope through this lockdown you have been able to see just how important your home learning is as well as your school learning. I also hope you and your whanau have built on your capacity to work together in your learning. Remember this is all for you and your future. The more effort you put in, the more you will be able to receive in success.

Lastly my thank yous. First I would like to thank myself for being Room 7's greatest teacher (lol) just kidding. I would firstly like to thank all of you who consistently tried your best in your learning during the lockdown. Thank you for persevering with your learning. I would also like to thank your parents and caregivers for their on going support. I hope they have been able to enjoy and learn from our learning activities throughout the lockdown weeks. Big thank you to the Manaiakalani team for their support in setting up our hangout links and being there for me to call upon when I needed help. A massive faafetai lava to our Glenbrae whanau Mrs Patea and our staff members for the great team work and communication and guidance during the lockdown.

A special thank you which deserves to be in its own paragraph would have to be for our government. Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the cabinet not forgetting Dr Bloomfield who is now almost as famous as Taika Waititi or maybe more famous? The support for education and our country has been phenomenal. I am truly grateful for how the government managed the Covid-19 pandemic and how they are still managing the effects of this pandemic on our nation.

Now, as we prepare to head back to school. I know some of you are excited and some might not be too excited about the early morning rises. Just be grateful we had experienced what we had with the lockdown. Covid-19 has changed the world in many ways. We are adaptive and resilient people and now we will go into school on Monday to make adjustments to our new norm.

With that, see you all on Monday. The photo is a preview of what our classroom will look like. I still have to fit in a few more tables in to cater for our class.