What is a square to you? Have you ever really looked at squared numbers?
The students got this concept and were able to give examples. Next, I would like to see it in a more challenging text with speech, as this is written in the first person even if the story is not.
Celebrating How Far Have We Come
With Phil moving on, we looked at what the Cluster has been doing and achieved over the last 3 years.
We started by giving ourselves a superhero. I gave myself courage. Then we gave one to a colleague. Which would you pick for yourself?
There are many things Ako Hiko Cluster, do that my previous Cluster doesn't, and many that the Manaiakalani Cluster do.
A tricky skill for everyone is to reflect on what they have read. I read a lot for enjoyment and to escape, but I have never honestly reflected on the novels I read. Except to say I wish I could be more like that or they are so lucky, I hope to find a Happy Ever After or HEA.
So how do we get students to reflect on what they have read and learnt from the particular reading they have been given?
Check out my Class onAir - Where we talk about the changes characters go through during a story and how that affects the novel and the events that change the characters.
Sam Hunt's Poem - School Policy on Stickmen - read the poem and draw what it tells you using orange and brown. In small groups discuss why they may have banned stick figures.
Who might have banned stick figures and why?
Why the exclamation mark?
And yet ... suggests that Sam Hunt doesn't think much of this policy. What words does he use to show a positive image of the picture?
What about Sam Hunt's description of colour?
Introduce terms: Subversion: Sub - under, version to turn about
Complementary Text - Comic Man
How could we show these similarities in a table?
Cartoon proper images, books Stick images
frowned upon, but do it
drawing from a young age
every possible school project
determination, positive, happy place
Year 7 and 8 Students should be developing their own framework/templates/graphic organisers - ways to present their work. Make sure they have been exposed to them and had them explained the purpose
This Term's challenge was to investigate a Character in a Novel. Students choose from a range of Novels, and they picked;
Hatchet - is about a boy trying to survive in the Wilderness after the small plane he was in crashed.
Refugee - is about 3 young people from different countries and time periods, fighting to stay alive and find their way to a safe place to make a new life for themselves and their families.
Counting 7's - is about a young girl with autism who loses her adopted family and her growth to finding stability in a new family.
This Class on Air Lesson shows the discussion I have with students about how Brian from Hatchet grows from a boy who knows nothing about survival in the Canadian Wilderness to surviving.
Last Year I came across a digital Siapo and with Tongan Language Week I thought a focus on Art would be a neat way to celebrate the Week. here is my Class on Air Video showing how this can be done.
I have enjoyed setting out to find new ways to inspire students in Maths. After seeing tape and student writing on tables, I want to have a go in my class. Using Masking tape I taped a range of angles across the student tables (grateful I teach math first thing in the morning). They were all very intrigued to find out what we would be learning about that week.
A quick summary, students investigated complementary angles, how angles around a point add up to 360 and could make their own assessments and justify their thinking.
Through a research programme with Manaiakalani Year 7 and 8 classes, I am developing my understanding of teaching critical literacy skills for reading that can be used in writing. In this episode of Class OnAir, I am looking at how students can identify the mood in a story through inferring. As adults, we know we use clues from images, words and how people and situations are portrayed to us.
Just before this lesson, I was teaching students how to identify mood in their reading, using nouns and verbs to make connections. I was reminded this is called inference. When I mentioned inferring and guessing using keywords from the text, the light bulbs exploded. Check out the link to Inferring the Mood through Class onAir.
These 2 episodes for Class OnAir are a series. Not something I usually do, but when I figured out both steps are vital for the piece of Art I wanted to share onAir.
Even Year 7 and 8 students need time to practise and design. So that is the first episode encouraging students to practise. We don't get better at riding a bike by giving up. The same goes for all aspects of life, including art. So to get our best koru patterns, everyone had to practise.
The second episode is taking our design to the finished product. Some spectacular pieces made a great display for our community evening. In this episode, the students used a 'cool' colour starting with the dark shade, e.g. dark green, to outline their design (which is in a 2D shape that makes the border) and then the light shade to colour inside. Students were encouraged to overlap, have a piece missing from the border and if possible have relief or black koru (that worked its way into the colour pattern).
We joined Wesley Primary and May Road School to investigate the Create part of the Manaiakalani Pedagogy LEARN CREATE SHARE.
I found this session informative and something I could take back to class and use. As we are constantly trying to get student to create their own way of sharing their learning, but are focussed on the get it done. This chart gives students and teachers alike the chance to pick how they present their learning.
Welcome back,
Student Dashboard is our focus this week with Hapara Champions, something I have never used before, so for me, there was lots of learning and adjusting to make it work for me and my students.
It is a platform to share tasks, resources, expectations and more with students. Similar to how I share learning through my class site. The one huge advantage I can see is that students can modify and adjust work before clicking submit. Once submitted or a task is closed off they can no longer submit their work, but they know it is handed in to be marked. Giving them a sense of accomplishment.
This is a new feature in Hapara for me. It was an interesting learning curve. But once I got the basics it seemed easy.
It is set up like a task board and you can create 4 heading
e.g. 1. Learning Intentions
2. Readings
3. Tasks, To Do
4. Expectations Rubric
When sharing with staff, or other teachers there are many ways to support them. Here are a few.
After using rich maths activities and starting the talk, now we need to learn to dig deeper and get students to say what they see. As
Malo le lei
This week my focus for Class on Air was getting students to share their learning on their new blog in Edublog. Although this was done earlier in the term we revisited it due to students returning after covid isolation periods. Click on the images to learn more.
Talofa
This week's session for Class on Air was in Maths, one of my favourite subjects. The fact we can give students real-world problems and then dive into the patterns and understanding behind in through maths is inspiring and a lot of fun. Click on either image to find out more.
This week in Hapara Champion we are learning about the Teacher Dashboard.
I find the Teacher Dashboard really helpful and have for a few years. Your administrator creates folders for students to file and keep work is extremely useful. At Wesley Intermediate students have a folder for each core curriculum subject, PB4L, Cybersmart and Other.
From Teacher Dashboard the teacher can see if students have created and named the task and added it to the correct folder. The teacher can hover over a student's work and then open it to add feedback instantly.
Teachers can group students for core subjects helping them to view a particular selection of work at a time.
Okay, so I have decided to try adding more to my list of things to achieve this year (not like teachers don't have enough).
I have used Hapara for around 5 years. It is interesting how it has grown, and I didn't really notice all the new developments as they came about. Doing this course, Hapara Champion has drawn my attention to them.
After completing the Digital Fluency Intensive course (DFI) in 2018, I knew more about Hapara. However, I didn't understand that Hapara was created in New Zealand, with New Zealand schools in mind.
Welcome,
My second session with Class on Air for Term 1 is about using dialogue in writing to help students grab the reader's attention. What I like about using dialogue is that we need to create paragraphs each time a new person speaks and we can use a range of punctuation. Click on either image to learn more.
What I like about using these slides is that students can see dialogue broken down and have the opportunity to create dialogue multiple times.
Hello,
This year I am part of the Class on Air Team for Manaiakalani.
My first Session is on Reciprocal Reading. I enjoy using this process for reading as students learn to dig deeper themselves regardless of what type of text they are reading. Click on an image to learn more.
In Reflection: I would like to have students taking more initiative to help drive the discussion about the learning. It was great to hear students reading aloud fluently. I can see I need to give more opportunities for students to run the reciprocal reading process.
To help grow our brains, we need to be asking questions and use productive struggle.
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Green is a strength, so they obviously stayed the same. Blue was teaching practice to strengthen and integrate. Orange is now more confiden...
