Digital Fluency Intensive session 1

8 March 2019

Attending the Digital Fluency Intensive is a must for all teachers using a digital platform for teaching and learning. I learnt lots of new 'tricks' and ideas that will make learning and communicating easier with the learners and wider school community.
Having been in the cluster since 2007, it was great to be reminded of the journey thus far. It was also great to hear the ideas and pedagogy shared at Learning through Play reiterated today when Dorothy stated that:
" Deliberate acts of teaching is the fundamental element in the LEARN part of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa."

Learnings/ AHA moments

I was able to take all my learning from today and compile it into an info graphic which we also learnt how to do.
Implementation with New Entrants? ....YES!
My New Entrants could use voice typing to work on pronunciation and punctuation.
Info Graphics to share learning.

I can also see the ease of using google groups and headings and table of contents to share with my colleagues and management. Life has suddenly become a little easier.

Ramblings/ Rumblings
* Is it possible to have EE and Docs work together to help improve and accelerate my learners?
* Is their a possibility to include play based learning using some of the ideas and tricks....

Learning through play

4 March 2019Learning through Play

On Saturday I had the opportunity to attend the Learning through play Foundation Workshop presented by Longworth Education. It was an incredibly motivating day allowing me time for reflection and giving me a deeper understanding of the importance of play for our learners.

In response to the need for social skills and oral language learning needs, Panmure Bridge has been on this journey for a few years now. The workshop helped affirm what we have already been doing at school through our purposefully designated play classroom,  Flying Fives.  The next step on our journey was to implement play throughout the junior school classrooms while still ensuring a balance of direct intentional instruction and self directed exploration.

 

As I am taking the New Entrant class this year, I was questioning whether my current practise of pulling learners for guided sessions and doing whole class structured activities in the morning was the correct path to take. Doing play based learning in the classroom and visiting Flying Fives twice a week afforded me the opportunity to have guided explicit teaching as well as a chance to interact with the learners uninterrupted. It felt fantastic hearing them actually recommend a similar manner of running learning through play every day whole day.

Learnings/ AHA moments.
* Do away with topic and or themes...provide provocations instead.
* Authentic play develops higher cognitive and socio skills i.e. cannot be teacher driven.
* Learners are dominating the talk in play based learning and this provides lots of opportunity for vocabulary enrichment and gifting of language.


Ramblings / Rumblings:
* How can I enhance the learning through play with the use of iPads?
* Am I to focussed on the product and not focussing enough on the process (level learners are at vs learning achieved)?

Creativity vs Artistic

Another successful Teacher only day. I love how Richard is able to seamlessly transition us from relaxed holiday mode to a genuine interest into a topic that will be our focus for the year. I once again came away having not only enjoyed the day but also with some retrospection and reflection about my current practise, how I would like to continue this year and some real practical knowledge on playing with clay.

This year we got to make clay birds with Barbara. The entire staff had fun and learnt so much in the process. We were gifted words that helped us describe and talk to our peers about our birds such as smooth, grog, texture etc. It made me think more about play based learning, rich math tasks and hands on, fun activities that I could do with New Entrants and encourage throughout the junior school.

Richard also showed us how to we could get creative digitally by using www. remove.bg. I am not sure whether this would work on our iPads but I definitely can see how we could do this using Explain Everything.

Learnings/ AHA moments:
* creativity is applied imagination with innovation.
* I am not hopeless at art.
*Encourage creativity and learner outcomes may change.

Ramblings/ Rumblings:
* How much time am I allowing for creativity?
* Am I using creativity, rich tasks, hands on activities to their full potential?

Yolanda Soryl Phonics

Yesterday we attended the Yolanda Soryl Phonics PD at the Kohia Center. The focus was around how phonics was 1 searchlight learners could use to help them in Reading and Writing.  I particularly like the quote: 

The most effective early reading programmes...

...have these characteristics:

- systematic explicit phonics instruction

- large amounts of oral reading with quality feedback

- word level practice to develop fluency

"Taken overall the research on reading suggest that what is required during the first three years is a balanced reading programme in which some time each day is spent on grapheme/word level analysis, word meanings (vocabulary building), prose reading and fluency building."

Church, J. (2005)Accelerating Reading development in Low Achieving children:

A Review of Research.Christchurch:University of Canterbury, p22

What I have learnt form yesterday: 

That phonics is a one way I can explicitly help learners make a connection to literacy. 

Assist with the transfer of knowledge by clearly and often showing and talking about the links between phonics and reading and writing and how we make them.

Spiral of Inquiry

Professional development with Nadine Sorenson focussed on Teacher agency and its link to the Teacher Spiral of Inquiry.

Some thought provoking questions were asked i.e.

Do I know how to get my learners to the expectation?

Where I would like them by the end of the year.? Start (Using the Data) with the end in mind …..

Am I using the expertise within the school ? (Team meetings as well as across syndicates to help with ideas i.e collaboration.)

What tools am I using to monitor and track the learning?  

Do I have a sense of urgency? - we make a judgement early in T4.

If we stagger the learning across the terms will I achieve the results I want?

Teacher Agency   

What am I doing and what was the impact?

Did I notice, recognise, and respond.  (I notice something, I recognise it as…. My response based on learner response.)

Have I allowed for multiple opportunities to practice in differentiated ways?

So much to consider and think about. On reflection I think it is imperative to have someone who has started this journey and who has the insight to come and share with myself and the junior team. I realise that if I find this to be a daunting task, our 2 new beginning teachers will as well if not more so. I do think that I consider these things all the time because that is what we do as teachers but, writing about it and unpacking it so that others understand will definitely be new learning. The next step would be to invite Robyn Anderson to a team meeting to help us gain even more clarification and help us get started.