Great Resource - Research Northwest Tree Dwelling Octopus

This website is a spoof site which teaches the importance of checking the veracity of information online - it's brilliant. Suitable for older than about year 4

https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Great Resource - If Punctuation had Sounds

Click here

TBCS - Craig - Reflection - Start of Day 2 PLD

Yesterday

Yesterday went well. I got to try lots of things and feel more comfortable with the Blogg reflection process.

It was great spending time together and to encourage each other in our skills and thinking.

I was inspired to use pictures and captions to help get reluctant writers to get started using complete sentences as captions...

Knowing how to move files is really helpful.

Creating the Google form for using with the learning register was fantastic and will help us and especially Judy-Anne.

The talk and presentations around Learner Agency were helpful and it was great to be able to turn that into a blogg.

I was also helpful to know how to put a slide show onto blogger.

Where to today?

I want to know how to set up a class drive and individual drives when the letter to parents takes effect.

I want to know how to use Google Docs more effectively with my students to raise their Writing outcomes
including auto corrections etc.

Also how to know when using technology is making a true difference in my teaching.

Reflection - Rob

What's on top for me...
I thought you all did really well yesterday - it was a day of lots of new skills, quite 'heady thinking' around learner agency and looking at school systems. The biggest areas of progress from my perspective related to:

1. Learner Agency - you are doing some great work on deepening this.
2. Digital Skills - Google Forms, Sheets, Team Drives, Document formatting, Blogger (labelling, 
3. Introduction to the SAMR model - to help you decide the quality/depth of the learning outcomes students are producing.

I have a couple of questions in my head today:

1. How might you use the rubric for Learner Agency with your classes so they can delve into what it is, how to grow it, etc.?
2. How do you know the outcomes your students are producing are quality? 
3. How might you unpack what inquiry into practice is so that it is useful, relevant, manageable for your school?

Reflection Day One PLD - Steve - 17 April 2018

Hi points - interaction and sharing of ideas, processes , presentations and seeing how we all have different ways of achieving the same goal.
Functions I can use. Potential for using the blog, also tidied up labels to be clearer. Learner agency update as to not just students but our impact.
Positive way of including photos.
The Blog has way more impact by the simple adding of a picture. Keep this in mind for recording.
Teaching Standards: what works.
Teacher reflection

Reflection on Day 1 PLD April 17 - Judy-Anne

Felt as though my brain was mush by the end of yesterday. It was quite difficult to compartmentalise and things were going on with my family so I was also distracted. We covered a lot and I found that I had forgotten how to do some things that I used to know how to do.

It was good to be able to find my google photos on the laptop later in the day. I couldn't find them in the morning but discovered that putting a search in eg "April" brought them up. The blog looks so much better with photos!

I think we had some good discussions about stream lining some of our work. Teacher Meetings will hopefully be shorter with the new agenda we have and a system for all putting in our comments before we have our meeting.

Next steps:
I need to ensure I am scheduling time to practise skills.

It is wise for us to share our planning, good apps etc. Rob suggested having places named "Great Resources" and "Great Strategies" and has put those labels on the blog.

Ideas to motivate boys or reluctant writers

Here are some ideas from another one of my clients about motivating reluctant writers that might resonate with you ;-)

If you want to take these ideas and edit them as text, you can import this image into Keep and then convert the text.

 

Keeping Your Children Safe Online - John Parsons

Check out this great book by my friend and colleague John Parsons - would be great for your parent library.

Reflection - Learner Agency Room 1 - Judy-Anne

I set an activity for writing on seesaw, giving the children options of how they could tell me about their perfect day. Most chose to write about it, some chose to make a video and one drew and then put a caption on her drawing. They also chose to work in different places and no-one sat in a student chair at a desk, some were kneeling, some stood, some sat in comfortable chairs and swivelled.

One of the writers discovered the emoji button and they all discovered that spelling options came up underneath what they were writing so they didn't have to type every word. Most used lots of emojis, particularly when the appropriate picture came up with their word eg pizza, tv.


The writers spent about twice as much time as usual engaged in their writing and only stopped because it was break time.

Learner Agency was shown in the choices that they had available and also discovering learning for themselves. I had no idea that would happen with emojis so it was exciting learning for all of us.


Next steps: Use more activities on Seesaw rather than just posting to the journal each time.

SAMR Reflection

This learning fits in the Modification section of the SAMR model. The children were given what would normally be a 'writing' task and given the choice of how to tell about Their Perfect Day. This was then shared on Seesaw with their parents. Some parts would almost fit under Redefinition because we would not have had the ability to share videos with parents previously. (Could have shared the writing and drawing.)

Taking it further:
. Some of the children discovered the emojis and what they could do with those so it would be good for them to teach the others about them.
.  We could go further with learning about making quality videos
. One child already went further with putting captions on her drawing when a drawing was enough. We could also talk about the value of doing more than just the minimum required.
. Look into more of the Activities pre loaded on Seesaw
. Make more Activities for Room 1 on Seesaw
. Consider the success criteria for the learning- eg communicating clearly, using full sentences??

Tie-dyeing in Room 1, Judy-Anne

We took photos of our tie dyeing to send on seesaw. It was quite challenging to think about lighting, focus and framing. We explored good places to position ourselves and our tie-dyed product.

TBCS - Craig - Learner Agency Examples Room 3

These were my examples of learner agency in Room 3 

They showed students going beyond what was expected, students helping one another, Students teaching each other aspects about devotions using the whiteboard (at break time), setting a goals and choosing to do it while everyone enjoyed Sumdog.

Where to next...

Put it up on Seesaw to share with parents.

There are other things on the rubric which can be added.

Share it with the rest of the class.

Loop it on T.V as an example.

Add video and get students to articulate what they are doing and learning, and where they are going.

• 6  Using appropriate pedagogies to accelerate progress of ākonga who are achieving below national expectations.
• 6  Having high expectations for all ākonga and sharing these expectations with ākonga and whānau.
• 6  Undertaking a detailed evaluation of learning programmes and their impact on all ākonga, that takes into account ākonga feedback.
• 5  Structuring learning tasks so that all ākonga experience a degree of success, but also ensuring that they are required to stretch themselves to fully succeed.
• 4  Discussing my practice with colleagues and being open to new ideas.
• 3  Participating fully in school/syndicate/faculty/department meetings and be an active member of the team. Share ideas with others.
• 3  Participation in professional development (PLD), both in school and through outside agencies. Working with colleagues to enact the new learning. 

Reflection - Steve - Plans

PLANS

I had a process in mind after our pld and teacher meetings.
So much I wanted to achieve. So little accomplished.
Not actually true but seems like it.
Things I wanted, not yet achieved.
1. ERO reading for meeting, prep for student achievement.
2. Observe Reliever to get a feel for application for position.
3. Appraisal system we are starting to share with staff not just teachers.
4. Ensure communication options are taken up by parents.
5. Go through procedures from the Student Achievement Policy from School Docs.
6. Writing Plan consistency.

Achieved
It was good to spend time not just observing the reliever but getting to 'pop' in to the classrooms, getting a feel for the atmosphere, attitudes etc.
Have a BOT member contacted all families to help them have Seesaw and School Loop.
Procedures checked.
Very 'pleasing' to see the outcomes of JA & C working together to have a confident approach to problems solutions, working together and being comfortable with where they are going (reading), and to see it in action in the classroom, great.

 Outcome: a realisation that my staff are competent, working towards the same outcomes I am. We are a better team than I had thought. My need to achieve/accomplish PLD, procedures, appraisals is more collaboration than me doing. I am not indispensable. Hope I can keep to this.

End of Term 1 Reflection - Judy-Anne

This term seems to have flown by which is quite amazing since in reality it was a long term. I found running Preschool Play dates to be quite challenging as being on show to large groups is outside my comfort zone. It is one of our ways to promote the school though so needs to be done. They seem to have gone well and I think we have a relatively easy 'formula' programme to follow now.

We have used see-saw quite a lot. The children were initially reluctant to post their work without me checking it but are generally happy to do so now. We have good buy in from the parents and often the feedback is really fast. I have made one activity for them to follow and that was really successful. A number of the girls spent about 40 minutes writing that day - they found that they got words underneath their writing so they didn't need to know how to spell everything plus they got pictures to add as well. Some of the boys chose to record their work and made a great job of coming up with good sentence structure and relatively good sound quality.

My big challenge is figuring out how to make ICT an integrated part rather than an end in itself.

Next steps:We need to look at improving the quality of our audio in videos so need to look at what better quality means and then find a way to be recording for our subjects- maybe it will be writing.