Observation Holy Cross #4

Sarah is finding that her students are more independent now and don't rely on her to tell them what to do next. They are experimenting with devices and are now thinking about what they need to use for the purpose of their learning. I have observed in both classes how fast they are at using the iPads, their fingers fly moving from app to app.
Sarah is finding that students' work is of a much higher standard, the content is a lot better. Parents have told her that their children talk about what they do at school more than what they have ever before. She has noticed that there is a lot of discussion and sharing amongst the students as they talk about how they going to approach their work.
In reflecting on where the students were at the beginning of the year she said that students found it hard to have choices as they were used to being told what to do, now they know how to cope. I saw that with the task Sarah set today...students were given a time limit, expectations and from that they chose how they were going figure out how they were going define, find and present. Every group of 2 or 3 worked in a different way. Their task was to present what they knew about the '12 stations of the cross' and what was the meaning of each station to them.
Examples of what the students came up with are

• rewrote the words to Impossible by Shontelle and made their own lyric video by recording themselves playing the soundtrack, using the piano on Garageband, and writing the lyrics on Keynote to play at the same time

• one group made a PowerPoint where they found the information on the internet they needed, I got them to put the information into the 'Finding Relevant Text' Graphic Organiser, highlight the keywords and then write the text in their own words using the keywords

• some did a TV news report where they recorded themselves reading the news using the iPads and did further editing in Moviemaker

• one group did a front page for a newspaper

• a couple of groups made a movie acting out the the different parts of 12 stations
• several groups used Inspiration maps for recording their ideas

Diane's room layout is working well and she now has a couch that is hugely popular with the
students. She has been allowing students to have choice over what activities they want to do during Reading and Maths.

Because it 'Holy Week' for the Catholic church, students do a lot of work around the '12 Stations of the cross' so Diane had set the same task Sarah had. We had been talking about statistics and Diane was talking about how students could present their knowledge. I saw a great opportunity to talk about infographics. Diane could see how that could fit in with what she wanted students to do that afternoon. I shared with the students what infographics needed and we looked at the structure slideshow example. The students got a lot of good ideas of how to use symbols and different ways to show timelines.

Structural elements of an infographic from Jacqui Sharp

I suggested to Diane that she made it a regular thing during the week to look at different infographics and analyse them using the examples I have curated on scoop.it

Observation at Holy Cross #3

Diane has changed her classroom around and it looks great. The students took part in the redesigning of it. One of my suggestions was to move the shelving away from the wall and point it into the classroom, take everything off the top of it and students can use it as a place to work. It looked like it was working pretty well to me.








Students are still using the Pic Collage app and have become rather adept at using it for lots of different reasons. One of the tasks today was to retell the story of the Prodigal son and then publish it so it looks like a board game. A couple of boys did a lot of problem solving, made their own squares and came up with this result.

I showed some students how they could put down their ideas quickly into a Graphic Organiser. I made it in Inspiration 9.1 on the computer and then exported to Inspiration Maps, I added it as a download to my recount page on my Graphic Organiser wiki, so the students went to that page in Safari, clicked the download and then tapped on 'Open in Inspiration'. There are still a couple bugs in Inspiration Maps (which are going to be addressed in the next update). When you download a map from a website or Dropbox, make sure once it is open that you tap the Home button before making any changes to it. Then re-open it from the home page. If you don't when you have added all your thoughts and tap the home button, the map will completely disappear. Also you can't make the boxes bigger, so if they are going to write a lot they may need to insert a new symbol and reconnect it. But as I said before, these issues are going to be fixed. The students did enjoy writing up their ideas like this and the scaffolding they got from the hints at the side.











Sarah has started her management system for writing, where she has set her expectations, students have a timeline and they have to show where they are on the timeline by moving their name.

Oberservation Week 4 Holy Cross

Looking around the whole Year 5/6 class I could not see one single child who was not engaged. They were working in pairs using iPads and the PuppetPals app or computers. One child used her initiative and used the notes app to record her thoughts as she was creating in PuppetPal.





Later in the day they were making choices about how they were going to record their information. I introduced one child to Pic Collage, who then started teaching another.
I loved seeing the individual creativity that was coming out, they were choosing the digital tools they wanted to use.

 Sarah had extra students in her class today (40 in total). But still everybody worked well, with students moving between iPads and computers.
 These students were writing up important events that happened in the years since they were born. I told them about 'This day in history' and they were able to track events and complete their tasks.

Students were mindmapping their ideas so I introduced one group to Popplet. The teacher set up a class account. Students can do 5 different mindmaps before they need to delete them to make room for more. So another tool was added to their digital toolkit today 'Popplet'.

Developing Self Management

What has happened since last week?
Diane's class has been trying out some of the ideas from last week and the students have particularly liked the different ways of mindmapping.



Here is an example of their 'Writing on the Window'


And an example using Post-it Notes.




What did I notice today?

Students working on nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs using
Popplet on
 the computer (Individuals)
Writing on the IWB (Group)
Using Notes on the iPad (individuals and pairs)
Writing in Books.

 Comfortable Learning Zones with couches and comfy chairs.

Self managing and organising where we need to be by moving name labels to the device we are going to be using.


Sarah has the Year 7 & 8 students. She has noticed how quickly they learn new skills and then adapt them to their learning. She wants to try a flexible timetable with them where they have to self manage themselves. I noticed with their work throughout the day that some could get distracted, so we need to set up a self management continuum where students move their avatars to whichever expectation they are working at. These would be aligned to their learning goals and intentions and whatever expectations that have been set up  for the students to work from.

In my travels through lots of schools, I have noticed in classrooms when students get involved in a task, that they take no notice of time unless the teacher is prompting them '10 minutes to go!' etc. In longer tasks where they may have several days, students are used to being told by teachers where they should be up to. Recently, Sarah has been saying to the students when she has set a new task to be completed in one session, "You have 'x' amount of time, it is up to you to manage this time." She is finding that most students are improving their time management as they don't want to run out of time to finish their work.
It will be interesting to see how the 'Self management Continuum' will work, particularly as I think it will encourage students to revisit what they should be achieving in their tasks.

Choices and Options

Today I was at Holy Cross School in Papatoetoe. They have  2 e-Learning classrooms.
Diane has a year 5/6 classroom with 8 standalone Windows computers and she can book 15 iPads. Sarah has a Year 7/8 class with 12 standalones and 8 iPads. We spent a day in the holidays talking about what e-Learning could look like in their classrooms.
As with everything at the beginning of a new school year there are still a few problems that need to fixed.

• wireless issues in one class
• iPad apps that were recommended still need to be downloaded

Diane was going to teach her whole class how to make an Inspiration mindmap; they had to find dictionary meanings to some words and then explain how that related to the topic they had been talking about. First thing we discovered was that Inspiration was not on all of the iPads. So I suggested taking a small group and using my 2 extra iPads. I demonstrated how I teach students Inspiration which takes less than 5 minutes. Soon the students were all buzzing away and I moved amongst them showing one student how to change shape and colour and suggested they group their ideas. This travelled like osmosis, and soon all of the students were expertly moving between 2 apps, finding meanings and then adding how that meaning related to their topic. They then went on to teach other students in the class how to do it. Once I saw that those students were independently working away, I noticed that other children were on computers typing up information. I suggested to them that they might try SmartArt on Word or PowerPoint...once again in less than 5 minutes those students were independently creating Mindmaps. After a few minutes I showed one student how you could change colours, look or diagram, and before you knew it each child had a different look to their diagrams.
This lead to a discussion on different options for mindmapping

• Inspiration on iPad
• Word or PowerPoint using SmartArt on computer
• large piece of paper with vivid feltips using colour to organise ideas
• coloured post it notes on the window or on a large piece of paper
• window writing pens

So rather than having all the students doing the same thing, give them the choices of how they might like to record their learning.

The students had been working on Narratives and the teacher wanted them to make a short Puppet Pals movie that showed a problem, solution and consequence, all based on their R.E (Religious Education) topic. The students already knew PuppetPals quite well and of course wanted to get straight into it. They were encouraged to storyboard their ideas onto paper and then they proceeded to make their movies.






One boy who is a reluctant writer quickly completed his storyboard, explained it to me and then created his PuppetPal movie (with a friend). About 5 minutes later they came over to show me very proudly. I said how well they had worked and asked them, after watching it a couple of times, was there anything else they could do to it...he replied 'Improve it!' So off they went together and they found themselves a quiet space and worked on it again. Diane said this boy would normally never say that and would pass the work in finished.

Another boy who stood out when using SmartArt for the mindmapping (his mindmap was very creative and showed off the extent of his learning) didn't want to make puppets from photos of other students, he decided he wanted to draw his main character with coloured pencils on paper, photograph it and remove the background. This whole morning session was the most engaged she had ever seen him. He was making his choices using what tools he had available to him.



Sarah's year 7/8 were doing a variety of activities. Some were working on magazine covers for their fortnightly magazine, others were making PowerPoint presentations about what they had learned in Health.
I moved over to one group who were doing the usual PowerPoint one picture and text box to a slide. I suggested they try out using Inspiration Maps as part of their presentation, again in just a few minutes I showed them how to use it. They made all of their slides using Inspiration. The students aren't setup with emails yet so they couldn't email the maps to the computer and insert into their PowerPoint, so in less than 2 minutes I showed them the basics of Book Creator, they made their book in just a few minutes, shared it to iBooks and then they were able to show it as a book at presentation time.

Another group of girls were working on the IWB in Word. They had put their Weemee picture in the middle of the page and were making textboxes all around the image. I showed them how they could put that information into SmartArt and they came up with this.









What I particularly liked about Sarah's room was how there was no 'front of the room' and no teaching station. Sarah moved around the room and sat down in lots of different areas to work with the students.
Some of the pointers I gave her were

• self managing tip...tell students they have X amount of time to do______. They have to work out their time management and manage it themselves. (Sarah did this with the students and it was interesting to see how conscientious they became once they knew they had only a limited time and that they were not going to get any reminders.)
• try not to be so explicit in what you want them to 'produce', let them know what tools are available and let them choose. Set up a rubric with expectations.
• add Inspiration Maps, Smart Art in Word/PowerPoint and Book Creator to your Student Digital Toolkit. Sarah is going to create a Visual Digital Toolkit that will remind students what tools they have available to them for their learning.

Sarah's final comments for the day was that it was cool to see all the kids engaged and doing different things. 

She came up with this statement that she is going to use with her students
' What could you use? rather than 'This is what you have to use!'