Planting Seeds (part 2)

Kia ora bloggers,

This post is number two in a duo of blog posts. If you'd like to read part one you won't have to scroll too far to find it!

Let's get back into Planting Seeds by Susan Sandretto. One small note, these are not the official names of the chapters (I've now returned the library book so can not check), more a summary of what I learnt from them...

Chapter 4 - Making Critical Literacy Visible

Text selection...

The example Susan used was really interesting: the back of a box of pain killers. It was discussed who is excluded from this text. Anyone who is not confident with English is more than likely to struggle with the scientific and technical language. This just goes to show that you can teach critical literacy with almost any text.

Starting with a slightly simpler text was also recommended so that students aren't bogged down with decoding. This goes really well with the idea of scaffold texts that we use in our T-shaped literacy units. Another idea is to use a text that has already been used with students. So that they don't become bored with it, you can explain that this second reading has a different focus.

Role of the teacher...

Critical literacy and quality discussion can only happen when the teacher  has set up a caring environment for students where they respect each others' opinions. Teachers should also model having a questioning stance and support students to make connections, both between different texts and between texts and their own lives.

Role of the student...

It was interesting to read about literacy circles, with students having time to read a text, then prepare to take part in a dialogue (which may be written or verbal). It made me reflect on how often I expected students to have an opinion or to take part in a discussion immediately after reading a text and how unrealistic this is an an expectation.

Image by Wokandapix @ Pixabay

Reciprocal teaching was also mentioned at length, something I know a lot of Ako Hiko schools use or are experimenting with. What stood out for me here was how important it is for the teacher to model the roles of predictor, clarifier, questioner and summariser before expecting students to be able to do them independently.

Chapter 5 - Assessment

I learnt that assessment comes from the word assidere which translates as 'to sit beside or with.' This made me realise how much we have deviated from this original definition with so many of our current assessments, with the teacher being a long way from the student's side (literally and metaphorically).

Summative (assessment of learning) and formative assessment (assessment for learning) have obviously been discussed a lot but I loved the analogy used in this book. It said that summative assessment is equivalent to when the customer tastes the soup whereas formative assessment is when the chef tastes the soup. It's pretty obvious to see which is the more useful if the goal is to make the soup taste as good as possible!

It also highlighted the importance of assessment AS learning or in other words students being actively involved in self-assessment.

Chapter 6 - Student Voice and Feedback

Again, the importance of self and peer assessment was highlighted here. This time peer assessment was suggested as a scaffold to allow students to move towards self assessment. Other benefits of peer assessment include:

- Students often use language that is easier to understand

- The teacher is freed up to have other discussions (which reminds me of our 'powerful teaching conversations' High Leverage Practice)

This whole chapter reinforced for me how powerful blogging can be as a way for students to post published work but also to reflect on their growth, skills and progress towards goals.

This term we have a big focus on Smart Relationships which spends a lot of time on Quality Blog Comments. For the first time I started to think of blog commenting with a critical literacy lens. I'm not sure how or where to work this into lessons but I'm interested to explore ideas around:

- How am I making the blogger feel with this comment? Am I making them feel like they are an expert? Or that they are deficient?

- How will they consume this feedback?

I'm now rethinking how I get feedback from students on my sessions. In the past I've got some classes to fill in a Google Form. This was a bit time consuming and ate into the already busy sessions. I also realised (after reading this chapter) that I was excluding some people's voices from this feedback. For example, it was typically the more fluent and settled classes that got round to filling in the feedback. This probably gave a skewed view of how successful the lessons were. The voice of those students in classes who didn't get round to finishing the lesson was probably more valuable but was missing.

Image by Gerd Altmann @ Pixabay

Moving forward I might experiment with ending sessions with questions like:

- What did you learn about _____?

- What did your teacher do to help you learn 

about ______ today?

- If you were the teacher, how would you teach ______?

Chapter 7

My notes on this chapter were brief but pretty important I think:

"It doesn't count as critical literacy unless there is social action."

The book suggested a continuum which might be useful as Ako Hiko schools develop on their T-shaped literacy journey.

1. Shift thinking about texts

                2. Reconstruction of texts (writing our own)

                                3. Localised action (the example in the book was a group of students                                                         choosing to stop using the word gay in a negative context)

                                                        4. Global action

This continuum really resonated with me as someone who is passionate about the environment and does a fair bit locally. It was also a timely reminder at the end of the book that learning all of this content and reflecting on these ideas from a text is great, but it's pointless unless you act on it. This reminds me of a quote I heard this week....

"Knowledge without action is like a bird without wings."

So what next? (not a chapter anymore - just my thoughts)

Something I'll do straight away:

In my sessions on quality blog comments I'll make sure there is discussion on thinking about how people will consume our feedback. How will it make them feel?

Something I'll do soon:

Our Ako Hiko ambassadors are already creating podcasts. I'm now wondering if these could be used as shared books/texts in classes.

Could critical literacy be used as the focus for shared books for one day of the week? e.g. Monday = new vocabulary, Tue = punctuation, Wed = critical literacy?

A slow burner:

After reading Planting Seeds I feel like I'm in a far stronger position to support teachers or schools who want to dig deeper into critical literacy. I also feel more confident to offer PLG workshops or toolkits on critical literacy using many of the ideas I've discussed here.

Thank you for reading this far. I'd love to hear where you, your class or your school are at on their critical literacy journey. What have you tried? What's worked? What are your challenges? Let me know in the comments...

Manaiakalani TOD - Term 1 2021

Kia ora koutou,

I hope everyone is enjoying their non-contact time. In the last week of Term 1 I was fortunate enough to attend an end of term hui with other facilitators from around the country. I always find these meetings inspiring and motivating. This year we ended the four day hui by joining the Manaiakalani teacher only day. I felt extremely privileged to be able to hear so many amazing educators share their effective practice. So I thought I'd pass on some of my learnings.

The TOD was kicked off by a key note by Dr. Rae Siʻilata and Kyla Hansell. This was truly inspiring but also humbling as it challenged some aspects of my practice that I hadn't considered before. A few simple take aways from this session were:

- Don't call them ESOL students! ESOL is a programme not a student.

- Privilege the people in the room e.g. next time I'm starting a staff hui with our karakia I will offer any Te Reo Māori speakers the chance to lead us.

Photo by Fiona Grant

Digging a bit deeper into the keynote (the full presentation can be found here), another message that resonated with me was that we do not have to be bilingual ourselves in order to allow students to use and utilise their first (or second or third...) language. 

There are lots of resources out there including dual language books and websites like The Coconet that could be extremely valuable. We can also give students opportunities to output (speaking, writing, presenting) in their first languages. It's about showing that their language has value and realising that getting stronger in a first language also helps develop the second language.

The input and output approach got me thinking about our pedagogy of learn, create, share and then this slide appeared:

While planning Cybersmart sessions I'm always thinking about the balance between the learn, create and share parts of the lesson. This got me thinking about giving students more opportunities to their thinking, creating and sharing in other languages.

In our Inquiry PLGs in Term 1 we looked at creating texts sets using authentic texts. My plan at this stage is to move onto other HLPs this term, in particular discussion and critical thinking. Unpacking students' prior knowledge will fit really nicely with this. It was interesting to hear the discussion about the following book cover and how students predicted that the text was going to be about praising the lord! It shows that students' prior knowledge comes mostly from the language and culture most familiar to them.

If I had to summarise my takeaway from the keynote in one question or provocation I guess it would be:

"Whose knowledge are we valuing in the classroom?"

Workshop One:

For the first session I had a refresher on Explain Everything from Clarelle and Khismira. It's always good to have a play on Explain Everything and see what ideas other people have when creating projects.

Workshop Two:

It was a pleasure to work with Cam Cameron from Kootuitui ki Papakura to present our workshop based on the MIT project of Sarah Daly: Accelerating Reading Comprehension Through Questioning.

Workshop Three:

For the final session I attended T shaped literacy skills for juniors by Rebecca Jesson. It was a real pleasure to see how seamlessly Rebecca connected texts to pick up the big ideas and themes. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the junior teachers in Ako Hiko.

Photo by Fiona Grant

2021 DFI - Day 8 - A Coach's Perspective

Computational thinking day! Always one of my favourites. This blog post is mainly about sharing some resources that I explored today that people might be unaware of.

I love Compute It. I stayed away form it today because I end up doing it for hours! This introduces programming language and is great for students to work away at independently. Super engaging!

Hello Ruby was a new one for me today. This has some great offline activities for juniors. It reinforces the fact that younger students already do a lot of activities that involve computational thinking.

I'm still exploring Raranga Matihiko but I'm enjoying the links to other apps like ClapMotion and Gamefroot. I'd be keen to hear from anyone who has used these in class. I'll also be having a watch of the Raranga Matihiko TV home learning videos.

Let me know if you are aware of any other awesome resources that might be useful.

And good luck to all the teachers in my bubble (and all the other DFI participants) who are taking the Google Level 1 exam next week!

Ngā mihi

2021 DFI - Week 7 - A Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Today was an extremely busy day on DFI (but then again when isn't it?) so I didn't have too many notes to convert into my blog post.

I did learn a few super valuable lessons though. One for Chromebooks and one for iPads

1. Screencastify shortcuts. These will be so useful and I can't wait to try them out. I think they will really help students too, allowing them to focus on delivering their content rather than worrying about clicking in different places.

Screencastify Shortcuts

2. Screen recording on iPads. I've already made a video about this and shared it with some teachers who might find it useful. I can't believe I didn't know this was a thing!

I'm also super proud of my wonderful bubble. They created some awesome resources in Explain Everything and Workspaces today. They have come so far in the seven weeks we have been working together!

2021 DFI - Day 6 - A Coach's Perspective

DFI day six already! Another great day focusing on the kaupapa of connected and on Class Sites...

Connected:

Dorothy's presentation reminded me of the need to encourage participation in the Ako Hiko Google Currents community. I think there is still a lot of apprehension when it comes to sharing our practice but there is so much potential for us to learn from and support each other that I think it is essential.

Dorothy's toolkit about attracting an audience to your blogs was very useful. I will use some of these ideas while planning Cybersmart sessions in future terms and will also unpack them further with our Ako Hiko ambassadors who are starting their roles in Term 2. 

Class Sites:

Having time to view some sites from other clusters was extremely valuable. I found some great examples where the teaching and learning is visible on the reading or maths group pages. In many cases the learning was also fully rewindable and had links to T-shaped literacy. These will be good exemplars to use with teachers I work with this year.

In the afternoon our bubbles had time to work on their own class sites. It was a good opportunity for me to reflect on my recently built Poetry Slam site (our Poetry Slam is next week and all online if you are interested in joining us).

Ngā mihi

Phil

2021 DFI - Day 4 - Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Day 4 of DFI already! Today we heard Dorothy talk about tohatoha or share. I really like the definition of an authentic audience...

 "people who choose to view your learning"

i.e. they have other options of what they could be viewing. This will be useful to explain to learners, especially when I could be reading and commenting on hundreds of different blogs in the Ako Hiko cluster.

Also a good reminder about why we use Blogger as a platform for sharing...

MyMaps

I had the idea to use MyMaps for story writing. Here's a story I created today which will require the audience to read each section carefully and do some research to find out where to go next on the map. I'd be really keen to hear any feedback you have on it.

ps. I realise I got way to deep into this so it's a bit over the top...

Sheets

I don't think I'll ever stop learning new tips and tricks about Google Sheets. Today I learnt a new way to split data into two or more columns:

data - split text to columns - then choose your separator (usually a space)

My bubble also had great fun learning how to move charts onto separate tabs and then exploring the best way to embed sheets onto our blogs. Here's what it looks like when you move a chart to its own sheet and then embed it:

2021 DFI - Day 3 - A Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Thanks for stopping by. Just clocking off from another awesome day of DFI.

Create

In terms of the Manaiakalani pedagogy, today we focused on hanga (create). Even though I've sat through this presentation (or something very similar) numerous times I'm always inspired by it and new ideas always jump out at me.

This video got me thinking about how we can make sure students want to be at school. As one person said while discussing his school experience, "I just wanted to be there." I'll definitely be watching to full version when I get the chance.

 

I'm also going to be digging into this blog post in the future. I was scanning it and the following paragraph jumped off the page and gave me a slap in the face. This pretty much summed up my current thinking about my role as a facilitator.

For all this what has been forgotten that it is the quality of the teacher that ensure such modern environments are conducive to learning; it’s the pedagogy, or teaching beliefs, that teachers hold is all important.

Media

Media is very much at the front of my brain at the moment after Term 4's Cybersmart focus on Smart Media. There were lots of good reminders in Dorothy's session about how how powerful it is to consume and create media.

I started thinking about what media I can create (or encourage other teachers to create) that will engage learners and help them make emotional connections. For example, this video made me feel quite emotional. It could be a good inspirational resource for our film festival this year, especially when students are thinking about who their audience is and what their main messages are...

Slides

The one post it note rule was a great reminder. If you're take home message doesn't fit on a post it note then you've got no chance. I think I've also fallen into the trap of reading my slides to people a few times lately so that was a timely nudge.

My new learning for today was adding GIFs to Google Slides after a good question for one teacher. This one is from Giphy.com.

I really enjoyed the create session I ran on pick-a-path slides. It was also a good chance to share the awesome work that Charlotte, Rita and Isabella did last week. You can check out their blog post here.

Bring on Week 4!

Ngā hihi

DFI 2021 - Day 1 - A coach's perspective

Kia ora koutou,

This time last year I was starting the DFI as a participant. One DFI badge, two lockdowns, a switch to full time Education Programme Leader and a lot of Google Meets later I'm back as one of the coaches.

First things first, every member of my bubble was absolutely fantastic today and I'm so proud of them already. Lot's of great questions to keep me on my toes and some wonderful creations using Google Docs.

What stood out for me today is that you can never know everything. Even having done the DFI last year I still picked up lots of new tips and ideas today. Everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner.

For example Dorothy's session on Google Groups made me think about how I use them with different people, especially when it comes to people replying to messages. Do they realise the messages have come through the Google Group and that everyone can see their replies? A conversation worth having.

Google Docs continues to impress and surprise. I'd never thought of sending a link to a specific heading in a Google Doc and I didn't realise that you could increase or decrease text size using command-shift-< or >

I think I'll try using Google Docs when I'm advertising the 2021 Ako Hiko Student Led Toolkits (check out last year's toolkits here #shamelessplug).

Can't wait for session two!

Cybersmart at level 2.5

Kia ora koutou,

I simply had to post today as yesterday I had two of my most successful and inspiring Cybersmart sessions ever.

The success of these sessions is a tip of the cap to the huge amount of hard work that teachers, leaders and principals have put in over the last few months. And let's not forgot the students and the epic stint they have put in!

I've been facilitating from home this week due to the current situation in Auckland. Around two thirds of the classes I was working with were in class and socially distanced. There were also some learners who were at home but joined via Google Meet.

 

 The biggest bonus for me was being able to facilitate lessons as I did during distance learning but having the teacher in the classroom to roam and trouble shoot any problems that arose. I think this was also good learning for the teachers as they could see what the learning looks like from a student's perspective.

I realise there are still huge challenges around equitable access but yesterday gave me so much hope with teachers and learners showing they are flexible, resilient and willing to learn. It also reinforced what I already knew about the technology we use empowering learners and making the learning visible and ubiquitous.

The lessons were around quality blog commenting. Once students had learnt what quality blog comments look like and demonstrated their confidence they moved onto creating DLOs to teach others. The choices included Scratch, Canva and Screencastify. Here is an example of each:

Screencastify - Asfan 

Canva - Mehmet 

Scratch - me (no one chose to do Scratch so I did one)

                             

If anyone is interested here is the link to the lesson on the Ako Hiko Cybersmart site. On reflection there is a lot in this lesson and I might split the create part into two and move the actual commenting half into the learn section and scrap what's there already.

And if you're looking for a chance to practise your quality blog commenting yourself, why not leave me a comment or check out the Ako Hiko bloggers of the week and give them some well deserved feedback.

Ngā mihi

Distance Learning Week One

Well, what a week! I feel exhausted from just a couple of days of distance learning and I don't even have my own class to teach! But my overwhelming feeling is of pride in the wonderful teachers and leaders in the Ako Hiko cluster (and all over the country) for the amazing effort they have put into making the transition to distance learning as smooth as possible.

I'm extremely grateful for the collaboration and support the lead teachers of schools have been giving each other, the enthusiasm with which teachers with differing levels of experience have adapted their sites and set up Google Meets with their classes and with the gusto with with students have been posting on their blogs. This post is really to share and celebrate the awesome successes I have seen already.

I've been really impressed with the class sites I've seen with teachers considering how to make them visually appealing to students while keeping them simple and easy to navigate. This is true from new entrant classes up to Year 7 and 8 and also from beginning teachers through to more experienced staff. Here are a few examples:

I've also been inspired and enthused by students posting on their blogs and seeing teachers and support staff leaving positive, thoughtful and helpful comments.

Zara @ Waikowhai Primary

Gaylene @ Hay Park School

Floyd @ Owairaka District School

And I also need to acknowledge the vast raft of support that has come from the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme and from facilitators around the country. I couldn't imagine being in the role I am in without the advice and expertise that is oozing from such an amazing group of professionals. Thanks team!

Moving forward my efforts with the cluster will channelled into blogging and engagement. I'm asking myself (and others) how we can best support students to blog independently and effectively, especially those who haven't had any practice at this (check out some 'how to' videos o the Ako Hiko Cybersmart site). In terms of of engagement, students seemed engaged by the Google Meet sessions. Our challenge may be how to keep the enthusiasm and engagement up as the days and Meets go on.

Ngā mihi.

Collaboration Rubric

I was given a great reading around collaboration. Using the rubric on this site made me realise I was controlling too much of the planning when my students were collaborating. We carried out a science investigation and I encouraged groups to visualise the experiment and plan for the different jobs that would need to be completed. Here is the doc...



We also happened to have our assembly in the same week so I threw all of the planning and organising to the class and they collaborated to complete five different (but cohesive) items with minimal planning from me. Here are our slides...