Who Are We?

This past fortnight our text focussed on 'Who are we? What makes us who we are? This led to fascinating discussions as to who or what we identify as and what makes us who we are'. Are you still Samoan if your parents are Samoan, but you were born in New Zealand and never been to Samoa?

It was great to debate topics in a respectful way (speaking frames were put up as a scaffold/ support for some learners).

One of the tasks students had to complete was to create a family tree and to go back as far as possible. It was lovely to hear how students had to ask their grandparents for some details and the incidental family stories that were shared. Students had to publish their Family Tree on their blogs. Here is an example from Deborah (Y8 student): 

              

DFI - Week 6: Enabling Access Sites

 This week we continued looking at sites. We learned how to create them and how to use them to hook the attention of our students. 

We also learned a few more 'Hapara Hot Tips'. 

Key benefits of using Hapara include:

Easy access and visibility to learner work:

View a quick summary of learner progress across OneNote organised by classes and subjects

Improve skills development:

Organise learners into groups and provide individual feedback and support to improve skills and mastery of topics

Quickly share documents with learners:

Share documents, assignments and resources quickly with individual learners, groups and the whole class

Individualise learning by differentiating assignments:

Track progress and submissions, provide feedback and guidance

Promote student agency and responsibility:

Give learners an easy interface to manage their assignments, customise their submissions and participate in learning and collaboration.

Activity visibility tools:

Allow teachers to see learner screens and class browsing activity.

DFI - Week 5: Sites

 This week we focussed on creating sites. This was a great opportunity to refresh some really rusty skills. Because most of us only create one site per year, you tend to forget how to use certain functions and also because Google constantly upgrades features, things change. 

One of the most important takeaways from today's session was the power of multi-modal sites.

The Benefits of Multimodal Sites

• Promotes more interactivity.
• Portrays information in multiple ways.
• Adapts projects to befit different audiences.
• Keeps focus better since more senses are being used to process information.
• Allows for more flexibility and creativity to present information.

                                                          

                                                      

We learnt the importance of using a photo on your site, rather than a Bitmoji, (cause let's face it - no one actually looks like their Bitmoji!) so that your audience can connect with you

DFI - Week 4: Dealing with Data

 Another fabulous Friday filled with lots of new learning. 

Some of the things we covered today were:

* Google Forms - Although I had created forms before, I never realised there was an option to create pathways for your answers e.g. a yes or no answer can lead you on to another section depending on your answer. Also, the creator of the Form could allow images to be uploaded as part of the answer. This is really cool when requiring students to take the photos and then upload them to the Google Form.  

I also learned that I couldn't embed my Google form into my blog as it made use of file upload questions, so I was only able to use the link. 

* We also dealt quite extensively with Google sheets. I was amazed to learn that I could alternate the colours of the horizontal rows. This was super helpful as I find that the data often merges into one and I sometimes hold a sheet of paper under the data or manually change the colour of each row. To alternate colours of the rows is as easy as:- 

1. select all your data CTRL+A

2. clicking on the paint bucket

3. scrolling down to 'alternating colours'

4. choose your colour from the panel on your right

5. Done

* We also learned how to view students blog activity on Hapara. This included their comments and posts. We also discussed the importance of sharing the blog stats with our students as they aren't privy to that information. 

Dame Cindy Kiro

 This week I chose our reading text from the NZ Herald. We were reading about Dame Cindy Kiro, the next governor-general of NZ.  

I thought it would be great to do a story about an important woman of colour. I remember as a child never having dolls that looked like me, never seeing people that looked like me on television (except on the Police Wanted program) and never seeing people that looked like me in positions of authority. 

This text generated heaps of conversation. Students had no knowledge of what a governor-general was or the amount of authority they actually have. We discussed stereotypes in society and the expectations of our whanau.

In this lesson, I found it was important to get students to justify/ explain their answers and this led to a higher quality  of discussion. Students were encouraged to use respectful language and tone even when they disagreed with others. The engagement and banter contributed to a successful lesson. 

DFI - Week 3: Media

Another Friday, another day of amazing learning with the DFI facilitators! Today we learned how to set up a Youtube channel and add playlists- remember students are not to set up Youtube channels. it's just for educators! We also had a korero about media and ways we could implement it in our classrooms or in the Manaiakalani Film Festival. Movie submissions for the Film Festival are normally due at the end of term 3, so get your students thinking of some fabulous ideas! We also went over Google slides, drawings and my favourite for today - animations!Animations are created using a series of slides, just like an old-fashioned flip-book!

Cultural Capital and Vocabulary

 Term 2 is off to a great start! This term I made a conscious effort to choose text that will allow students to share their expertise and prior knowledge. The text we started this term with was Rongoā for the Land. This was a good choice because it tied in with our topic of plants and it allowed students to showcase their cultural capital.

Before reading we completed a pre and post vocabulary grid to deal with unfamiliar vocabulary. The benefit of using a pre and post vocabulary guide is that it causes students to look for and notice unfamiliar vocabulary.

We know that students are reluctant to use words that they cannot pronounce so whether a student is six or 16, they must be given the opportunity to repeat the word after the teacher has said it. This can be done as simply as saying, ‘I say the word … now you (the student) say the word’. If the word is difficult to pronounce then do this a couple of times.

Some incorrect word pronunciation has crept into our language. For example, many people pronounce ‘pronunciation’ as ‘pronounciation’ and ‘advertisement’ not as ‘advertisment’ but as it is spelt ‘advertisement’. Another common mispronunciation I hear is ‘liberry’ for ‘library’. Correct pronunciation makes a speaker more confident and assists with spelling. Other commonly mispronounced words are 'somefink' instead of something, 'aks' instead of ask and generally pronouncing the 'th' sound as an 'f'.