Thursday 29 May 2014

Big Screens, Sharing and Padlet

Today our new 60 inch screen was up and running.
Mundane tasks took on a whole new meaning  - teaching and learning moments all round. I didn't have to say one thing during roll call - they all knew who I was about to say because they could see!

The very first thing I noticed... lots of reading was happening (WOOT!).
We used the screen for a timer for maths rotations - worked better than I thought as the placement of the tv is not optimal for the whole room to see it.

The sharing has been rewarding - during music we used Garageband and people were saving to the student drive and getting down on time so they could share with Airplay. People showing how they did a certain thing, people asking "How'd you do that!". Perfection.

I was minimally concerned about their ability to jump onto the screen in any of our classrooms at anytime - we had a short talk about etiquette and it never became an issue - something to keep an eye on though. They also the ability to bump the current sharer off the big screen f they are on one of the silver laptops ( most of the laptops are older white ones which don't have the airplay function). I can manage this by being elective about who uses the silvers.

Later in the day I threw up a padlet with a topic related question - and they had a few mins to go away and throw an answer up then come back and share someone else's. They were mostly all occupied watching the big screen as more and more answers went up - most people put more than one contribution (YAH!).

Big disappointment at the end of the day (for me) - I had planned for them to use clipping magic.com to isolate themselves away from a background so they could then paste themselves onto an olden days image (to them write/blog about). I got it going and got them to have a turn with the group on the screen - then we went to save the image and suddenly my awesome free resource is a pay per use!
Grrrrrr - so looking for alternatives now (will mention this after I have checked it out...).

After school I popped around to the other classes for a "Big Screen Debrief" - attempted some problem solving and went back to my room to experiment with the interactive pen aspect of the tv... that is ongoing! I am interested in how we will introduce that to our younger poppets - drawing on school TVs and not TVs at home!
Maybe that is only something we think they will have trouble with.

So.. in short ---> reading up, engagement up,  peer teaching up, teacher talk down, social yap down, complaining down.

WOOT!


P.S: More on using padlet in your rooms

Saturday 24 May 2014

Writing Prompts...

Found this on a Pintrest reconnaissance mission for useful teaching tidbits this evening (yes, it is Saturday, hmm!).
I shall print it up big and in colour and we shall do a large amount of language scaffolding about it and see what happens!


P.S. I made the photo a link to the site I got it from...this is also another one called IF that I will also use.

PPS: There will be an edit here when I have!

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Math PD #2







Second part of Math PD today (it's amazing what exhausted teachers can do after the poppets go home!).


They really pack it into these courses but without fail you come away wanting a new piece of maths equipment that you now know how to use in a deeper way - this time - laminated 40 by 30 arrays.

We even did a reading - well a page of a reading.

Jenny Young-Loveridge and Judith Mills (Chapter 3) Multiplicative Thinking: Representing Multidigit Multiplication problems using arrays

Main thing from this page was that building student's conceptual understanding takes time and effort and that teaching an algorithm  as a method for student's to fall back on is folly.
There is now research evidence to show that an emphasis on procedural knowledge and rules undermines conceptual understanding ( and hence the deeper application of knowledge to solve increasingly complex problems). My interpretation is that this also would apply to the rote learning of tables.

We again filled out the sheet naming the numeracy stages and their corresponding levels and definitions of content at each. This is ALWAYS enlightening and as much as I think I know I still struggle (although I did notice much improvement!).  Many people still shocked to note that stages 1 - 4 are all level one.

Problem of the night
Annie has 9 boxes of apples. Each box holds 59 apples. How many apples are there altogether?

MY first strategy was multistage...
9 X 59 = 9 x 60 - 9
((60 x 10) - 60) - 9
600 - 60 - 9
540 - 9 = 531



By the end of the session I solved this with a drawn array...much more efficiently!





Here is my summing up to course doodle...


Friday 16 May 2014

Sign Language Week (in review)

Our Sign Language guru was incredible and for a number of the poppets - 'inspiring'!


They were so attentive and responsive.
Was surprised to see SH visibly out of her comfort zone - she got used it to with about ten mins to go though :)

Cathy Gutshlag was our guru's name. She rocked!
It was in insight to see how much they participated and learnt in one hour long session.
They want her to come back!

Nile Class has a habit of making me proud when it really counts. They were polite and engaged.

More of these interactions please!

We learnt to introduce ourselves with a sign for my and name and then fingerspelling our names.
We learnt some animals and some colours and the importance of faces in sign - the sign for like and don't like are the same but the facial expression makes the difference. They all seemed to crisp this concept with little effort.

I have been incorporating sign into the week whenever I can - even if it meant introducing myself as a smelly fish!
(Drew taught us a new song about jellyfish which, quite co-incidentally) involved signs and exaggerated body movements!
Loved the silent hands sign language applause for Jason at assembly when he got a Special People's Award!

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Assessment Moderation

Today I attended a cluster for moderation.
The session was at St Jo's and I got to sit in one of my previous students desks (it was quite lovely for me!).
The gathering was for my colleagues teaching the same level as me so we could, as a group, try to gain some consistency between our various schools in assessing writing.

It was fun! We all provided samples for the group to score based on the current asTTle marking guide.

Interestingly for our first meeting we were mostly all very close in our marking with the non-majority scoring the mark below or above the majority.

A great result!

I must say I do like the new marking rubric - I think it is practical, has diverse application and provides a more accurate rating of students work.
it is also not to hard to adapt for student consumption.

On a side note - it is stressful for us to attend these things during school time as it means we are all out of our class because we are such a small staff!

Monday 12 May 2014

Sign Language Week!

This week is NZSL Week!











We have a special guest in class on Tuesday morning, first thing.
Our sign language guru!

I have sprung it on the class rather suddenly, even though I have organised this a long time ago.
I did tell them on Friday, but they sometimes need a few tellings!

I put up a display over the weekend and prompted them to learn to finger spell their names.
One of them found my NZSL book which is old now (! from when I did the course at university!) and has blackened white photos (LOTS) which show a large number and variety of signs.

I have told them she is likely profoundly deaf.
D and Q think they know who it will be - someone they saw at Birchwood. They mentioned high heels and seemed less than positive - but mostly that is just their protective reaction to anything new.

I am looking forward to being a confident role model in this new and unknown (to them) situation!


Sunday 11 May 2014

Places for Mihi!

Useful places name resource  - I am thinking for mihi.

It includes pronunciation and translation.
Need to get this on the blog so students can use it for their mini this term.