Enrich Maths - Decimals

 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.

Hapara Champ - Teacher Dashboard

 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. 

On the left, you can see the work a student is working on and by hovering the pop up opens to see how they are going. You can click here or on the name of the work to open it. 

The top right is the group's tab (on the right of the screen in Hapara. by selecting a box that will be the students you will be able to view. If you wish to change the order of students the Sort tab gives you options.

However, if students forget to file work you can still access through the sharing tab on the left and pick all documents or unshared.

Teacher Dashboard has other great features too, such as the ability to send messages to students individually or collectively.  And you have the ability to share resources or work and put it in student files.

Hapara Champ - Highlights

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. 

This week is about getting started in Hapara. 

Highlights

As part of the Hapara platform, I have enjoyed using it for checking in on students and ensuring they are doing the right thing at the right time. This can be done through Highlights.

Through highlights teachers can:

• Browser Tabs - this shows the pages students have open and what they are working on
• Current Screen - shows an image of the screen students are working on (slightly delayed)
• Snaps - takes a photo of what students are doing (evidence of being in right place and at the right time)
• Schedule - you can schedule times when students have access to particular sites or not

These 4 are all located on the left of the screen in highlights.

On the right of the screen, there are more useful tools which include:

• Groups - this is great for sorting students, whether it be for a subject or table groups
• Sort - this lets the teacher sort the tiles of students; by first name or last name and A to Z
• 5 items - this allows you to change the number of items you are viewing

The part in Highlights I have learnt about doing this course is Activity Viewer. There are 3 sections in the Activity View; Class Activity, Unique Activity and Collaboration. You can view who has been on which google app or which sites, indicating who is on task and who may need more assistance and who has been working together. 

My favourite feature is the message button. You can send a message to a particular student, group of students or an individual student. This way we can encourage them, redirect them to a specific site or send them a reminder to return to the task.

Through Highlights, you can share links to help students get started on a new piece of learning. Use Guide Browsing to help direct students to specific sites (focus session) or filter out sites (filter session). You can use these functions to include up to 10 different links.

I am going to try to use the Activity view more to see who needs help more quickly.

PB4L - Expectations

 Positive Behaviour for Learning

This year we have been revisiting PB4L. Which is great as even though I have completed the 10 week course Incredible Years (IY). I know we need to teach student how to behave in order to learn, I have never been coached in this aspect using this specific pedagogy. 

We have looked at the data where interventions have had to come into play through the week and Monday is our worst day. There are many positive reasons for this but if we have a relationship with the students and their whanau we have a chance to help direct students to be ready for learning.

So the first thing we created with the class was a rubric on class expectations. Which we broke down with the school expectation Respect Yourself, Respect Others, and Respect the Environment and then into section of when expected behaviours were expected. This is co-constructed with the students.

But it is important that expectations are kept high.

3P's: Prompt, Pause and Praise are 3 ways I reinforce expectations and learning regularly. 

But there are others to build relationship I want to consider 

• 10x2 - 10 opportunities for 2 minutes to sit with a student and talk with them to get to know them more in-depth.
• Making Connections - using different greetings with (poster)
• Referring back to the Class Expectations regularly to reinforce what I want to see and to happen
• Build in more fun activities - that will energise not just the students but you too.

 

Things I do and will continue to do:

• Ring parents for positive things, not just behaviour. And start this early in the year, making an effort to find the positive during the honeymoon period each term.

Using Dialogue

 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.