TAI during Lockdown - Supporting other Teachers - #18

I was impressed with how our teachers took on board the latest PLDs and conversations about Maths in our classes and continued to improve their practice during the lockdown.

To support other teachers, I compiled and shared a number of digital resources. I keep getting positive feedback about this collection as it's easy to use for online learning at all levels. I hope you might find it useful too. 

Below is a number of great resources and online tools for teaching Maths in-class and especially online. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need support.

Steve Wyborney's Blog - Numerous pptx like Splat, Subitising, Estimations, Cube conversations, Hundred Board etc

Learning at Home - weekly plans 

Place Value 3 digit number representation - interactive

Problem Solving - all levels and strands

Problems and solutions for students

Picture books with mathematical content - all NZC levels with activities. Most of the picture books can be found on youtube.

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day Presentation

At the end of Term 1, Ko te Kāhui Ako o Manaiakalani had a Teacher Only Day with a focus on effective pedagogy in Reading. We had a fantastic presentation by Dr Rae Si'ilata who briefly reminded us about the High-leverage practices.  Then she talked about culturally responsive pedagogy, her own experiences as a learner, and focused on effective bilingual/biliteracy practice for Pasifika learners in our schools.

During the day, teachers attended three other workshops to learn from our Manaiakalani colleagues - educators that know our tamariki, know our community, know our successes and challenges.  

I was privileged to present and share some aspects of my practice around Shared Reading and Integrated Learning. The feedback that I got from my colleagues and their enthusiasm during the workshop was very rewarding; Some of my colleagues said that I gave them ideas and strategies that they would like to implement into their practice in Term 2. 

The two workshops that I attended were full of practical ideas and resources. I look forward to using my new learning in Term 2. 

I think it was a great day to learn from each other, give and receive feedback and reflect on my own practice! 

Manaiakalani TOD website

CyberSmart and the Purposeful Use of Google Meet Chat for Distance Learning

In this post, I'd like to focus on the purposeful use of Google Meet Chat and being Cybersmart during online meets. 

My students felt confident and comfortable during our online meets and, and at some stage, I noticed that my students started to take initiative in our online learning by sharing their ideas and experiences and inspiring each other to try new activities. I was very proud of my learners but also realised that talking ONE-At-A- TIME was a challenge for my young learners. It looks and feels different in class as I always use Think-Pair-Share and other strategies for my students to talk and share. During our 2 x 45 minutes long daily online sessions, it was a bit challenging for my young learners to stay muted. Soon, we decided to use the Google Meet CHAT! 

It became our new opportunity to cooperate and communicate with each other simultaneously. For example, when we solved each other's riddles, brainstormed rhyming words or answered Maths questions, all student could text their answers/ guesses to our Meet Chat and we all could see and respond to individual ideas, discuss, talk, give reasons and explain our thoughts. 

For me, it was a great opportunity to monitor my students' knowledge, skills, progress and gaps and then address their learning needs by assigning individualized tasks and/or giving timely feedback.

Maths:                                                                                               Rhymes:

Answering our Riddles:

From time to time, I had to remind my students to be Cybersmart. Reflecting on some of their comments (digital footprints), we also went over our School Values: Fun, Integrity, Respect and Excellence to support our Cybersmart learning and smart relationships.

Post-lockdown reflection:

When we finally returned back to school, I shared some of our Meet chat comments with my learners on a big screen and asked them to reflect on their online behaviours and digital footprints. It was a huge surprise for some of my learners who had obviously thought that their chat comments would have disappeared after we finished our calls. 

I hope this will have a big impact on their future online behaviours because I have provided my learners with real evidence and proof that everything that they send online stays there forever! 

It was a great CyberSmart life lesson!

2019 Inquiry Stocktake

During my last year inquiry about students' intellectual and cognitive engagement, I focused on providing real opportunities for my students to become interested in their learning. I believe that my cross-curricular approach led to their increased motivation, genuine cognitive engagement and the rewarding achievement data at the end of 2019.

I’ve used the ‘Inquiry Stocktake’ doc to reflect on my TAI 2019 and think about how I can improve my teaching practice this year.

What worked well in 2019: 

cross-curricular teaching, collecting student voice and building on their interest and prior knowledge, being observed by my COL colleagues and ALiM facilitators and receiving their feedback, working with data

Last year, I used a cross-curricular approach trying to extend our inquiry learning through various reading, writing and math activities and show my students a real purpose of each part of the Learn-Create-Share process.

I believe that I developed a range of teaching strategies and created tasks, follow-up and independent activities that supported my students not to just stay engaged and motivated during our projects but retain their new knowledge and skills and be able to apply them in real life for a real purpose.
Learning from observations: It was good to have a COL observation and numerous ALIM observations followed by discussions and feedback from my COL colleagues and the AliM facilitator.
Collecting my colleagues' voice was an interesting experience as I'd never done this before. It helped me to critically reflect on my practice, feel appreciated but also plan my next steps for improvement.
Collecting student voice in T2 about relationships and in T3 about communication helped me to identify the areas to pay more attention to. I'm glad that the students were feeling safe, happy and learnt a lot in my class (according to what they said:-)
Analyzing data and effectively using it for my planning. As a result, all of my students showed great progress in all areas of learning.

Challenges that I had in 2019: 

having a Y2/3 composite class and time challenge 

Having Year 2 and 3 students in a class was a bit challenging due to their age-specific differences (same as this year). Reflecting on my 2019 TAI, I need to better control myself in order to slow down as I don't want my students to rush through their activities as it will affect their learning outcomes and experiences. On the other hand, my advanced learners also have to be continuously challenged and engaged. It requires a lot of planning and preparations. I have to remind myself that although I have high expectations for all of my students, I must keep it less challenging for my younger students to make sure they are feeling successful and motivated.

As a professional, I am constantly learning. Whether we (teachers) are learning through PD reading or during internal or external PLD sessions, we are being exposed to a lot of new and important information that is supposed to enhance our skills and knowledge. However, there's a big difference between absorbing information and putting it into practice. Without applying newly gained knowledge, the training people have received will go to waste. It's important to have a strategy and time for implementing new learning.

The support I need in 2020

I am going to reach out to other teachers who proved to be effective practitioners, members of the Woolf Fisher research team and the Manaiakalani team to help me connect with other teachers who are passionate about the integrated curriculum.
Currently, I am meeting with GTS Principal and DP fortnightly to discuss what I’m doing to support other teachers and plan the next steps.

Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Reading: Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Blumenfeld, P. C., Kempler, T. M., & Krajcik, J. S. (2006). Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of: The learning sciences (pp. 475-488). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University

Press.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232418824_Motivation_and_Cognitive_Engagement_in_Learning_Environments 

Synopsis

In this reading, the authors briefly review the literature on motivation and cognitive engagement and discuss how the key features of learning environments are likely to influence them. They indicate some challenges for students and for teachers, which may have negative effects on motivation and describe strategies for meeting these challenges.

Motivation

When we think of student engagement in learning activities, it is often convenient to understand engagement with an activity as being represented by good behaviour (i.e. behavioural engagement), positive feelings (i.e. emotional engagement), and, above all, student thinking (i.e. cognitive engagement) (Fredricks, 2014).

I'm constantly trying to target all three types of engagement. I clearly see that project-based learning fosters student motivation and, as a result, student engagement. Reflecting on my practice, I see a big shift in my understanding of how to motivate and get my students intellectually, emotionally and cognitively engaged. However, I believe that personal and professional learning never stops, so I like to read more about this aspect of pedagogy and implement successfully-proven practices in my classroom.

How will it help me? How has it helped me?

Interestingly, the authors identified the same challenges that I face and have to meet in my daily work. They talk about using students' interests and the importance of incorporating topics that students find interesting (dinosaurs, space, etc). The challenge for the teacher is to make sure that while students are working on these topics, they focus not only on seductive details but the new and essential learning is happening. My role as a teacher is to guide my students and create meaningful and purposeful learning experiences that have value and cater to my students' interests and their needs at the same time. Relatedness is another aspect that contributes to student engagement. Our school values of FIRE (Fun, Integrity< Respect and Excellence) are extremely important as they allow my students to feel safe and appreciated during their learning experiences. This promotes collaboration, which in turn results in a higher level of cognitive and emotional engagement. Another challenge for keeping students cognitively and intellectually engaged is a lack of skills and knowledge.

So What?

To overcome these challenges, I will continue to create a positive learning environment, use a cross-curricular approach and some of the ALL/ALiM strategies e.g:

• Plan for teaching/learning
• Frontload topic-related knowledge
• Ensure that the learning environment is safe for sharing ideas.
• Develop students' confidence to present their ideas, knowing that they will be listened to and valued.
• Have a shared understanding that mistakes are an important part of learning.
• Building up their topic-related vocabulary
• Support students to communicate their ideas. (Maths talk strategies e.g. revoicing, wait time, etc) 
• Use of technology to enhance their learning 
• Foster and maintain students' interests