Manaiakalani Secondary Connects - English - Literacy

Today I joined a Google Hangout meeting for the Manaiaklani Secondary Connects with a focus on English and Literacy. 

As an intermediate school teacher, I am very keen to learn about what is taught in college so I am able to prepare my students for their upcoming college years. 

Aaron Wilson's presentation supported what I have been trying to implement in my practice with T Shape Literacy. 

T Shape literacy I feel is often mentioned in professional discussions but not often explored in deep details (deep diving). I am glad I joined the Secondary Connects today because Aaron shared some very important insights to support my understanding. 

Aaron shared during observations, the WFRC observed a lot of time was spent focussing on a single text which came at an opportunity cost for the students. He discussed a lot of time was invested in one text when the students could be getting exposure to many texts relating to the topic. 

This is something I have been implementing in my teaching. The use of different multimodal texts for students to read and make meaning from. What I learnt today was inclusion of Challenge Texts where students points of views are challenged by another text. 

T Shaped Literacy is often referred to as the Wide and Deep reading approach. The students read a wide range of texts with a deep focus. Aaron discussed today that the narrow focus is drilling deep into a specific aspect of the texts. I have been reflecting about this statement from Aaron. Often when we have a lot of texts, we as teachers want to cover all the ideas in the texts. With time management in the classroom, often this leads to surface level discussions just to cover all the texts. 

Below are the benefits of T Shaped Literacy from Aaron's presentation today.

Definitely added to my kete today. These connect meetings are very valuable. Moving forward, I will now analyse my implementation and modify using what I have learnt today. 

The end of a wonderful DFI journey

It has been a wonderful, full on term with DFI learning every Tuesday. I have learnt so much during the DFI days. 

My confidence in using digital tools in my practice has increased and my appreciation for digital tools and how we can use these to empower our learners is stronger than ever. 

The exam was a good challenge. It was also fun to put what I had learnt to action and also challenge myself to problem solve. I was very happy today when I received the results from the exam. What a great way to finish off the term.

I am very grateful to Dorothy and the DFI team for their support and awhi during the DFI journey. Special thank you

to our bubble leader Mark for his help and support too.

Where to now? Is there a DFI for level two? To anyone considering going through the DFI journey, I strongly suggest you do. It is an empowering opportunity for you as an educator. 

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

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. 

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. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive Day 1 - Core Business

Digital Fluency INTENSIVE. The world intensive often makes me feel uneasy because it brings about a sense of urgency and a need to be competent to work at a certain speed to keep up. When I first signed up for DFI, I was very excited because I have wanted to do this course for a long time. However, when Dorothy starting sending through the correspondence I started to question if I was really up for this course.

Today's first session wiped those fears and anxiety away. The 8 am - 3 pm day programme was not daunting at all. The day was very enjoyable and I felt very empowered. Considering this is the first day, I am so eager to see what else the DFI team have to offer me for my teaching, practical and personal life.

Dorothy, retold the story of how Manaiakalani came about and I felt a sense of gratitude for these principals who met in Novemer 2006 and decided to do something for this area of Decile 1 learners. I have been in the Manaiakalani cluster since I started my teaching career 11 years ago. I know and have met a lot of the names which were mentioned today which adds to my gratitude for being in this digital learning whanau. From the story of how Manaiakalani came about, one word strongly comes to mind, EMPOWERING. The Manaiakalani pedagogy empowers not only the students but also the teachers and our community.

I can see myself using Google Groups at school for our school sports teams, clubs, cultural groups and my class leaders. It will save me a lot of time in corresponding with the students. I tried to find voice typing when I was writing my reports earlier year but couldn't. Now that I have learnt how to access voice typing, I know my report writing will be much more manageable and enjoyable. I can also envision many of my students using voice typing for their learning activities. I am so eager to put the use of voice typing into action in my practice.

The session which I really found fascinating today was the Google Docs session. I have used Google Docs for a long time and have just learnt about some features today. For example the table of contents and using the different headings. I will implement the use of these features with my students when they are writing information reports and explanations. I will also use the Explore tool more in my teaching as I found it was very useful and practical to use today.

For our create activity today, we had to create a tool using Google Docs. I created a resource which my students can use next week in our Inquiry learning. First I changed the page layout to landscape and the page colour. I then created a table with three columns and three rows. I then merged the first row for the title. I also hid some of the lines for the table by changing the line colour to the page colour. I changed the remaining table lines to white. To insert the Youtube clip into my doc, I took a screenshot of the clip and pasted it to my document. I then linked the Youtube link for the clip to the image. I did an image search for an Iphone and a Chromebook then took away the background using Remove.bg. The rest of the resource, I just added more images and text. Mark our group leader suggested I put all the images into one row of the table which was a good tip for visual presentation.