Grabbing the moment

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

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!'

Beginning the e-Learning Classroom

This term I am mentoring 4 teachers in 2 different schools who have started e-Learning Classrooms.
It has been interesting to see in my first 2 classrooms what the issues and successes are so far.
In setting up an e-Learning class after all the class rules, routines have been covered there has to be a fair bit  of time spent learning about the digital tools. Students need to know the  safety and care rules and be exposed to Digital Citizenship. Digital Toolkits will start being organised and alongside this is how to deal with troubleshooting.
Clevedon School has 2 e-Learning classrooms

• Year 5/6
• iPad each (BYOD)
• 1 iMac
• 2 Windows computers
• 6 laptops
• projector
• apple TV
• Large screen tv

Some of the Issues were

• Apps crashing (this is a help diagram that I have made in Inspiration, it can be printed out and put on the wall and/or screen captured and put on a wiki or a blog as a reference) Download as a PDF or Inspiration 9 file

•  children wanting to listen to music (which the teacher was able to fix by giving the group a splitter and they plugged in their headphones and listened while they worked)

• Wireless dropping off or defaulting to another network that will not work which leads to students constantly telling the teacher that something isn't working. To help students become more independent they need procedures that they can follow for when 'Things just don't work'! I suggested a flow diagram that students could refer to when they lose wireless.

Successes

• Students getting excited when they find something that is cool (and it is actually helping their learning) 
• Rachael and I trying out how Notability could be used for Spelling and then Rachael coming up with the idea of using Notability as her modelling book for writing and sharing as a PDF to Dropbox everyday as it gets updated. Students can look up what were the teaching points for that day
• Students smiling while they are listening to music and working on their writing at the same time
• Students asking questions about how they want to do something that looks like this, and how could they do it?
• Students sharing when they find out something new. (I suggested to the teachers that they show one child first how to do something then that child will have have to go and pass it on to another)
• Me sharing tips and tricks to one child and then telling them to pass it on 

Rebecca has been talking about Digital Citizenship and students have mindmapped, made lists, discussed and now they are going to  make Cybersafety posters. They were given a choice of tools that they could use

• any of the apps on the iPad
• Standalone computers using Paint and/or Word
• Laptops using Kerpoof or City Lego Comic
• Paper, pencils, felt tips

 At the end of the day Rebecca summed it up, 'Well that went better than what I thought!'
We as teachers have to let go of the traditional way of thinking that all students have to produce the same product. Let them have the choice of how they want to present their findings, they will find it more engaging and interesting. The atmosphere in the classroom was great that afternoon, everybody was busy, working on their own individual task but there was a collaborative buzz as they talked about what they were doing and asked for help from their peers and teachers.