Day 6-DFI-Enabling Access, Sites Agenda

We had the opportunity to look at other teachers class sites from all different year levels and got to evaluate them with our Bubble groups. We got to look at the great things we could take away from these sites and notice the things that perhaps would not work with our year groups.

We learnt about 2 main criteria that make a google site successful-visual appeal and functionality. Thanks to Makaore who was quick to point out a few things that one needs to consider when building a site for your learners. He started the discussion by paying tribute to a wonderful quote by Stuart McNaughton who heads the Woolf fisher department and after analysing a lot of data, had the following to say........

Makaore points out that the purpose of a Google Learning Site is  to empower all learners in a digital environment. So when you are building a your class site you should keep in mind that learning is accessible anywhere, anytime, anyspace, it is rewindable (so you have the opportunity at anytime to view it) your planning and teaching is visible. There are weekly overviews and timetables. You can access your learning during lockdown. Your site should become a hub of information about events, groupings, and events and progressions for both learners and parents.

I am very happy with Team 2 site. This is a collaboration of 4 teachers (as we work in a ILE) Below are screenshots of our site for/our space

We have created big colourful buttons for these year 2's to access their work.

Then under every heading for reading, writing, and maths the children are in groups with group names, they push their group name and it will lead them to their activities for the day.

We have created a Home learning button where they can access videos, hangman, puzzles

The site is very compatible with the needs of our learners in this space and it is very easy to navigate. But this is T2 and any site is always a work in progress (as things are constantly changing) and as educators we are constantly evolving reflecting these changes in our sites.

DAY 5-DFI-Collaborative Teaching and Learning.

 

Click on the picture to see the google site I created today.

Dorothy reminded us how important it is to keep learning visible not only to us but to all whanau. This concept makes us fall in line with the Treaty of Waitangi, the participation component.

She stated that success had always been  measured upon the learners being able to jump into the teacher's head and be on "the same page" but she did counteract that "idea" further reinforcing "success" needing to be equitable and therefore accessible to everyone. 

Kerry Boyde-Preece mentioned that our class sites should be "Multi modal" for our learners. Multi modal learning is when teachers provide several different types of resources to enhance a lesson. By creating Multi modal google sites we basically  have the understanding that with learning it is not a 1 size fits all philosophy but  we are able to provide a number of different options to cater  for a range of abilities. 

This has other benefits as well, our learners are engaged, motivated and really excited about their learning.  The power that you have as a teacher in using this platform enables you to plant seeds to produce life long learners.

Kerry Boyde-Preece made a really cool analogy she stated that not only is your Class site an extension of your classroom but its very similar to a shop window-in the same way they are selling to the consumer -we too are selling what we have to our learners- it is our site that is our hook. 

DAY 4-DFI-Dealing with Data.

 Today Dorothy spoke about the Share aspect of the Manaiakalani "Learn, create and share" pedagogy.

She introduced the topic with such a cool analogy, she commented that "we have been sharing since time began" food, stories, our visions. To think through social media platforms, facebook, twitter, you tube these platforms empower us to communicate to the rest of the world our very own thoughts, ideas, learnings, and also being able to create collections of feedback and feedforward..Powerful stuff. Sharing is part of our DNA our social fabric.

Dorothy mentioned 'sharing with Purpose" allowing our learners to have an authentic audience, whether that be one another, the local community or beyond.

We use the platform blogger which allows our learners to connect with others which was not available before the digital age.

Today was a good day. I had a great opportunity to delve further into google maps. I saw how useful this tool would become with learners, if you simply wanted to show them their surroundings (like a geography lesson or a history lesson) it would be great to just be able to show my children around their community. Below is a google map showing all my favourite beaches in my community.

We also got to create a graph in google sheets. I have always wondered how people have been able to visually represent trends through graphs on their blogs. Well now I know! This is a tool I will be able to use in my teaching practise. Below is an example of how I was able to pull information from my google sheet and display the same information in a visual way.

Reading Inquiry.

 Now that I have been taking my reading groups on a regular basis and I have done a few running records (not an expert, by any stretch of the imagination)  I have got a better gauge of where my children are at, and where they need to be. But in essence I guess this whole journey has given me an indication of what strategies I need to implement to get them to where they need to be.

I was initially interested in letter-sound relationships to help my kids accurately decode words, but now  I have included more "word work" topics which have not only benefited my priority group but all of my readers, therefore I plan on lifting  the reading level not only of my priority learners but also for my other low readers in my class.

I have been able to identify through running records  the importance of vocabulary building for every child in my reading class. I have tailored what goes into my word work sessions depending on the particular needs of that reading group. This is a work in progress and is changing all the time. The challenge for me is that I have 6  reading groups and need to get through at least 3-4 per day.

There are many ways of building up ones vocabulary. But I simply want to be consistent with the rest of the school and use strategies and ideas that have been used on our kids before and have been successful in the past and that are going to be of benefit to our kids.

With my lower groups I focus on 1:1 finger pointing, DOS, and the making of a high frequency words from the text (made from magnetic letters) for the week. With my Higher reading groups I focus on Sight words, 1-2 comprehension questions, and Word families taken from the text. made from magnetic letters. Whenever the group reads the text I reinforce the Gwenneth Phillips prompts, I do believe that the progress I have made to date just confirms that my teaching practice is commendable as my reading results reflect this so far.

But it is important to realise that as stated before this is indeed a work in progress and as different people observe -my practice is constantly tweaked and improved.

DAY 3- DFI-MEDIA.

Today our focus in Digital fluency Intensive was Media.

Dorothy spoke about the "create" component of the Learn, create, share pedagogy. She made me really think about the opportunities I give my little humans to create. It is through create that effective learning comes about. It's as simple as this, As John Dewey put it  if your children are given something to "DO" rather than something to "LEARN" .the doing will demand thinking and then the magic/learning will follow. I always think that the best environment that my children could be in is when they are learning yet they don't even realise that they are learning. This will bring other benefits.  Dorothy had all this wonderful research and quotes describing the benefits of 'Creativity.

I love what Sir Ken Robinson has to say about schools killing creativity (and if you get time or the opportunity to watch this TED talk I highly recommend it) His words resonate with every educator and you find yourself asking- Why is it that when your young you were subjected to fun activities, and you get to play with paint, play dress ups-be creative and discover the world? Yet as you get older it seems that we forget about this creative aspect.

In my class the children are year 2 so they are still very young. So I always try to "play" with them and let them "play" with each other. This is a crucial part of their development and learning journey and it is important that we remember that!

Today was great I spent time creating my own buttons. For one of them I was able to use  a photo of one of my children in the class, as you can see below. I found adding an image of my child to be more powerful and engaging not only for myself but for the child as well

We also learnt about Google slides. I did find it useful learning the different tricks that one can equip themselves with in creating slides.  What was kind of cool was even though creating these google slides were timely for the teacher, you could easily get your individual children to create different tasks by giving them activities to do so they are given  the opportunity to showcase  their hard mahi! I created a slide where children could engage  . Although I use explain everything for most things, I do enjoy Google slides and will try and use this tool more often in my class. However I did create through google slides an

engaging Maths slide that asks the child to repeat the Shape pattern, this was fun despite the struggles.

Finally.......haha

 I was not feeling too comfortable with google meets, so I tested the whole process with a colleague of mine. I have never had to take command of a google meets before. Although we were set up for distance learning during covid, because I work in a ILE with 3 other teachers, as I was fairly a new recruit-but I did get there! Thank Mrs Shirley!

DAY 2-DFI-Workflow Agenda

Today in DFI we began our morning journey with Dorothy telling us more about the Maniakalani pedagogy and Kaupapa. Dorothy explained to us how digital technology accelerates learning through the acronym RATE (recognise, amplify, turbocharge, effective practice) 

I think with my teaching practice integrating digital technologies has increased my effectiveness as a teacher.

Today I learnt how to organise my gmail better as well as my tabs. i was able to pin many of the main or important tabs. I also obtained some really hot tips with my organisation of files to make my workflow easier & smoother.

The main tools that we focused on today were Google meets and calendar. We learnt how to create a google event or meet and we learnt how to invite colleagues to it. We had a lot of time today to present our screens and collaborate and troubleshoot with people in our bubble.

The video above is one of my colleagues who has recorded the meeting between her and I earlier this afternoon commenting on one of the students blogs. It gave us the opportunity to practice on google meets what we had learnt & how to set a google meets up.