Inquiry in action

Earlier in the term, I made the change to have three literacy groups in my class. Prior the students were in different reading and writing groups. Now in literacy groups, they are in the same group for reading and writing.

It has been an effective change. There in coherence in our discussions from writing to reading and the students are working very well together in their groups. I also find the flow of the lessons and rotations between groups are really effective.

With learning materials, I have a main text, then supplementary texts to support the main text. There is a lot of exposure to different texts at different levels. The students who struggle to understand some texts are finding support from their peers and also from listening and asking questions in our discussions.

With rotations, I have one main discussion group each day, then a mini discussion with another group. Each group has one main discussion and a mini discussion with me each week. With the integrated literacy groups, I find what we did not cover in reading discussions we can also catch up during writing discussions as the materials are linked between reading and writing.

For students with extra learning support needs, this integration is working very well for them. They are not having to think of which group they are in and what time they see the teacher as the rotations between groups are very well executed.

Where to from here? I am focussing on the quality of discussions. These are some of the questions I am constantly thinking of after group discussions.

How much of the discussion was led by the teacher?
How engaged were the students?
Did we achieve the goal of the discussion?
How much of the learning materials did the students understand?
How were the less motivated students encouraged to participate?

There are so many other aspects to my inquiry which I am working on. I am happy with what I am observing and working on so far and persevering to make more changes to my practice.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 7 - Devices

Another full on day of learning today. I am enjoying the opportunities to learn then create a DLO to share my learning.

The focus for today were devices. I had the chance to the a Chromebook and experience what it is like for my students to work on a Chromebook. Learnt some shortcuts which I did not know before. Below are the slides I worked through to familiarise myself in working on a Chromebook.

We also had to work with using ipads today. Devices which the junior school students use for their learning but it was good to use Explain Everything again. I have not used Explain Everything for a while and I can see the many learning opportunities the students can gain from using ipads. 

For my last create activity today, I chose to use screencastify to create a movie about one of the Cybersmart areas. I chose to focus on Smart Footprint.  I used the information on from the Cybersmart Site and created my DLO using google slides. After creating the google slides, I used screencastify to talk about the content of the Smart Footprint lesson. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 6 - Enabling Access to Sites

I have to say today, I did the most practical work I have ever done since starting DFI. It was great to look at other sites to get ideas from. When we had to share our sites in our small bubbles I was shocked to learn some of the pages were not linked properly to the buttons. A little help from our facilitator Mark fixed this. 

The rest of the day I worked intensely on making my site more appealing and user friendly for my students. The buttons on the site were horrible with the background still visible. I changed this by making new buttons using Google Draw and ensuring the buttons were downloaded as PNGs. Below are the before and after screenshots. 

Before

After

I also changed the buttons and added dividers for the subject pages on my site. Before, I had all the buttons for the terms on the page. Now I have added new buttons and separated the other terms using a divider. I also did this for Writing and Maths. 

Reading page with new buttons and other terms separated

There are many more changes I want to make to my class site but for now I am very proud of how my class site looks now. 

"You can't CONNECT if you won't share" (Dorothy. Burt). 

I have gained so much from the sharing of other teachers and facilitators in Manaiakalani and other clusters. The above quote from Dorothy really emphasises the importance of connecting through sharing of our ideas and work as teachers. 

This brings me to my next point of discussion. VISIBILITY. It is important to ensure what we put online is visible for our students, whanau and colleagues. This a lesson I learn't today and probably will never forget. Viewing Incognito is helpful to view what others can see when visiting our sites.

I am quite proud of the work I was able to do on my class site today. I am glad we were given the opportunity to share our site with others in our small bubbles and receive their feedback. I learnt a lot from viewing the blogs and listening to our small bubbly members share their sites. We are all at different stages in our teaching and also teaching different year levels but we were able to take ideas from each other.  

Below are some tips for creating successful sites. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 5 - Sites

Another great day with our Manaiakalani Digital Fluency group today. I was reminded of how important is it for our sites to be visible not only to our students but for our wahanau, colleagues and anyone else who would like to look at what we are learning in our classrooms. 

Kelly mentioned that the sites have to  be culturally responsive. I don't think my class site is very culturally responsive at the moment and that is now a goal for me to work on. I have to ensure my site represents my learners and the environment of our learning space.

We spent quite some time looking at Multi Modal texts today. The wide and deep reading approach as suggested by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre is one where we can really utilise digital technologies. The digital affordances are great but there is still the very important need for the teacher to ensure the students are engaged in using and understanding the resources. 

Our create activity today was on creating a site using resources our group collected. My group used a resource from the Connected series. The main text is called On the Move. We used Jamboard to collaborate in collecting our resources. When we finished collecting our resources, each of us had to make a visible, eye catching and multi modal site. 

Here is the site I created today for On the Move. My next site I will create is for our Mana Whenua unit at school. 

On the Move Google Site