Sound of the Week - Te Kāhui Ako o te Kauaeranga

Jayne Bolsover is the Across Schools Teacher - Te Kāhui Ako o te Kauaeranga. Fom term 3 2022 she has been working with our learning centre to improve early literacy outcomes for preschoolers with a focus on phonemic awareness.

Digital Fluency Intensive DFI #4 - Collaborate / Sites

Modes of engagement

• Multi modal Sites - have a range of media / activities to cater for learning styles or what will attract a variety of learners.
• Multi textual

Websites with links to a variety of sites that students can use to explore further.

Wonderopolis May be at a better level and more engaging for my learners than Kiwi Kids News.

Great safe way for them to practise writing search questions.

Link watch later - movie reviews

Multi Textual Reading 

• Provide "Main" text
• Add complimentary text - to build up knowledge (go wide)
• Scaffolding text - glossaries or Junior Journal, unpack etc
• Extension - in-depth text focussed on one element 
• Student choice - pick a text (boxes of books provided or websites)
• Additional texts - videos/images "multi modal"

Plan and create a multi-textual / multi-modal reading lesson.   

BFG - Multi-textual Lesson Plan Link

Really excited about using the Mutli-textual model to extend and scaffold my readers. Really relevant as we have just started reading The BFG and I was wanting ideas on engaging my learners and helping them access and understand the text more. Some need basic comprehension skills and some are ready for extension and exploring concepts and themes with more depth

Using Digital Prompts and Rewindable Learning - Literacy

Students have digital prompts in front of them when writing. They can see and listen to the vocabulary again from our class discussions - Ako ano / rewindable learning.  This is increasing their use of descriptive verbs and topic words. They have been sharing their writing in a sharing circle and then after I have helped them to edit they are publishing their writing as an animation to share on their blog. As mentioned in previous post, publishing/recording edited work helps reinforce correct tense. A greater number of students are using the gifted vocabulary when it is accessible digitally - right in front of them as apposed to a word poster on wall or on the whiteboard.

Example of students' work published on individual blogs

Link student blog

Observation - Literacy / Rewindable Learning Focus

Observation with Clarelle and her year 3 class at Point England School.

I wanted to focus on Literacy and rewindable learning to increase my own abilities in providing rewindable learning.

Notes from observation:

• New writing topic / WALT up on her writing site
• Theme - Beach/sea, language discussion: What do you see, hear, feel, taste?
• Turn to person next to you what do you see?
• Digital prompt Explain Everything - beach image with playback audio.
• Teacher has gifted great figurative language.
• Timers: 20mins, 5minutes check-ins hold fingers up how many sentences. Next checkin how many more sentences can you write.
• Verbal prompt: You need a Topic Sentence that tells where you are.
• Students using the digital prompt and playback on their individual ipads. Learning is well scaffolded as digital prompt and gifted language is right in front of students. Her class were all very engaged and forming sentences easily. She mention wanting to increase the speed in which they write.
• Sharing circle / buddied up - Speed Stories. If you’re on the outside you read your story. Fast. Then move along. How many times can we read in 5mins?
• Teacher marks work after school and students publish it to blog on the following day. 
• Students are publishing to their blogs quite independently.

My thoughts:

• Great use of rewindable learning, I love how students have the writing prompts/gifted language right there in front of them. Very engaging with image/audio and easy to use.
• Her students are publishing work to blog more independently than my students, this motivation to finish work and publish each week is something I want to enable my students to do more independently.
• I can see potential in creating digital writing experiences that increase my students vocabulary. This with have benefits across the curriculum.
• I'd like to add student voice/contributions when making these digital prompts for our writing lesson.

Digital Tools - Using EE to Animate Student Writing

Here are some examples from our first attempt. It was quite a process for students to follow through with. I observed some great perseverance and focus. It was powerful to show students how their writing can come to life and be entertaining for an audience. It also really fitted with our learning intention: Write one idea with lots of information; as the students had to stick to their original writing as they animated, and not go off topic.

I anticipate it will encourage students to add entertaining details to their future writing. They may write with the animation process in mind, helping them to visualise their story sequence. Publishing/reading their edited stories reinforces correct tense.

The Windy Day - Mercy Link

The Windy Day - Aliyan A Link

The Windy Day - Lisea link

Creating Animations with Explain Everything - Tool Kit

link to presentation

PD with Year 3 teacher at Point England School. She has been using the animations with her class for retelling stories, animating students own text, and reflections, e.g. What have I learned in this topic?

Notes: Add to your colour plette by holding on a colour. There is a dropper also for skin colours.

Use fill-in bucket or characters will be transparent. Use lock tool to lock scale.

Video projects can be uploaded straight to new Manaiakalani blog, no need for encryption. 

Great to add to the techniques I've already been using with my class such as animating retells. Ready to take it further and get more videos to the students blog.

Essential Spelling List Tracking 2019

Above is whole class Essential Spelling List results from the beginning of Term 1.  I've created this tracking graph/chart to monitor shift in literacy. Excited to see the bars shirt to the right as the year progresses. 

Different style graphs can be created using: google sheets - insert - chart.