Term 4 Reflection - How did we go?

This term has been an amazing term. What I have loved has been to see the huge difference that I have been able to make in my student's learning. Since being able to analyse my student's data I have been able to find a number of interesting things:

• 23 students who made 1 year or more progress
• 12 students from my target group made more than 1 years progress
• 5 students made 1.5 years or more!
• 5 students who made no improvement at all (4 high needs kids)
• Only 1 student from my target group of 13 didn’t move
• PAT has aligned very closely to our other data and eventual OTJs
• Some huge shifts across PAT scale scores. However, these are very sporadic.

I am looking forward to the challenge that my next year's class will bring. I can't wait to continue with the things that I have learnt from this year and take it even further.

Term 3 Reflection

During term 3 I have been working on integrating a lot of what I had been working on with iPads into the netbook world. The key thing that I have continued with when creating greater scaffolded reading followup activities have been the use of audio instructions and queues.

One interesting thing that I have found out when creating audio instructions and queues is the more natural they are the more powerful they are to the students. When I had created more of a scripted instruction I found that the students weren't getting the most out of it. I realised that the true power of these instructions was when I was recreating myself - more natural and conversational. This way it is like I am answering a question that the student has asked rather than just telling them what to do.

Examples of Recent Explain Everything Projects

I have noticed that my recent Explain Everything project design has developed after working with Michelle George here at school. Her idea was to use our school wide progressions as a tool/ filter to base our projects on. For example, see the Red progression.

When using these I have been able to identify student's current and next learning steps. I have also been able to evaluate the quality of the learning that my students will undertake when completing my projects. In this way I have seen the learning and engagement increase.

Here are two examples of my Explain Everything projects (thanks to Emma Berry for the compare and contrast template!):

Term 2 Presentation/ Reflection

The direction of my inquiry this term has definitely been defined by the development of templates that provide quality scaffolding. I realised through professional conversations and reflections that I was under scaffolding... by quite some way! So I decided to up my game and provide better temples and scaffolds.

Below is my presentation to the staff that outlines these changes:

Creating Explain Everything Templates

While creating a number of Explain Everything projects every week, I have found that there are some activities/ pages that I repeat from week to week. I was starting to get annoyed with re-creating these over and over again. Then it struck me... screenshots!

So in EE and in my photo reel on my iPad I have created a template folder with my most used or recent activity pages. This has sped up the EE project creation hugely as all I have to do is import the photo, crop it and adjust for that book. Easy!

Here are a few examples:

Reflection Presentation

This term has been a good start to reaching my long term goal. I have enjoyed finding solutions to problems with the students. For example, how my students access their work, how they share their explain everything projects, etc. I have been impressed with their increase of confidence and self management and really looking forward to how this might develop further throughout the year.

Where I want to head next is:
- How might I make connections from my use of explain everything with my students to the use of Movenote?
- How am I going to use SOLO in my project design?
- I want to explore the use of that Fast Forward series of books for my lower kids.

Student Blogs - William & Desmond

Below are a couple of links to examples of students sharing their work on their blogs. It has been interesting to me to see how they are managing to do this independently. When they are just posting a screenshot to their blogs they are able to do this easily. When they try to post a movie they need much more help from me. I am hoping that this will change with time as they get used to the process.

I have also enjoyed reading about their understanding of their learning. For William his enjoyment is very high but he doesn't really understand what he has learnt. My next step is to make his learning more explicit so he is able to reflect on his improvements and his next learning steps.

           

Teacher Inquiry 2015

How can Year 5 and 6 students use iPads for higher order thinking in creating tasks?

This year I am teaching in a year 5 and 6 modern learning environment with 1-to-1 devices. When reflecting on my practice from last year I want to increase the cognitive value that my students gain from their independent creative tasks. I found that last year more emphasis was put on 'how to create the digital learning object' rather than showcasing the learning in the digital learning object. 

So, this year the focus for my inquiry is setting a range of digital creation tasks to facilitate higher order thinking. I have decided to start with reading tasks and look at using the app Explain Everything. I am keen to find out:

• What kinds of tasks facilitates higher order thinking?
• How might these tasks differ from lower achieving students through to higher achieving students?
• Can I use SOLO and Explain Everything together to ensure that the tasks I set are in fact higher order thinking?