Inferring Mood in Reading

 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.

Sketching Koru Patterns to Pastel Koru Patterns

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).

Enrich Math - Capacity

 Popcorn Capacity

What a great way to start a maths lesson. The students talked about capacity and predicted, guessing which container would hold more. They got to make the containers to verify their thinking. The best part according to the students was when I brought out the POPCORN! Check out this episode of Class onAir to see what happened.

What I like about using these tasks is I can engage a range of students with maths and then teach them the relevant skills they need to move to the next step, such as using formulas to work out the capacity on a container.

Create - Staff Meeting

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.

Many of these activities student can do, and we can always give them the links and mini lessons to work out how to create it. 

As we had been doing mood in class I tried the incredibox, I do remember looking at this once before but could figure it out. Today I did it. 

I can't wait to encourage students to create a piece of writing and then setting the mood with incredibox.

Hapara Champ - Student Dashboard

 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. 

The menu of the left again helps students find the tasks they need to start and do to the files link that shows students tasks they have started and need to finish.

PB4L - Following Up

 Giving Feedback, Feedforward and FeedUp

Circle Time - Setting aside a time daily, weekly to check in with students

SHARE

• Something positive/fun from your weekend, the learning today
• Something you found challenging

Working up to -

• Safe place where students can share problems, issues they would like help with.

To help develop PB4L we need to give students feed to improve learning and behaviour. We can feed them with food about how they did with their behaviour, what hey can do better and how we can help them.

When modelling for students ensure there is an example for students to refer back too. (Although this is something I usually do, we are in the process of moving and the class tv had been moved, so didn't have this option. But I didn't even use paper duh.

Hapara Champ - Workspace

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

The menu of the left indicate where the workspace comes from, just like other google apps. Owned by me, shared with me, My labels and the last one is for your professional learning. The last one is where you go to do the Hapara Course.

The more I use it the easier it seems to get.

Running a Training Course

 When sharing with staff, or other teachers there are many ways to support them. Here are a few.

PLD can be done in so many ways we often forget about the inconsequential meetings and quick tips we pass on. They all count. This year we had an acting principal for a term before our new principal started and both had questions that needed answering even though they are on very different ends of the digital fluency scale. 

There is no one size fits all, and now I go in prepared to help the person take notes checking over them ( as the order could be very different and then they give up, don't ask for help as they believe you didn't tell them. if they don't need the notes version all good.

Even seasoned professionals need reminders now and again. I often hear what do you mean I can unsend...

Talk Moves -

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 

Having looked at a couple of my Class OnAir Videos, I realise that the more talk the students do the more they learn. So to me this is very important part of the lesson.

This is an important idea to grasp, as we want students to learn and remember new concepts so we need to give them opportunities to discuss, experience and teach others.

To Help Students with discussions here are some easy phrases to encourage more talk include:

• "What else?"
• "Tell me more..."
• "And.."

I look forward to working out more phrases to encourage discussion and to encourage to student to think deeper.

Although this was brought to my attention again through Math PD it is true in all areas of learning.

Blogging for Students

 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.

We talked about the purpose of sharing our work, who wants to see it and why.

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.