Clemency at Outram School

Yesterday I visited Outram School to see how they were going with their Action Research ideas. First up I worked with two teachers but will separate their blog posts as they were both doing different things.
Clemency teaches a year 2 and 3 class at Outram and blew me away with her enthusiasm for the blog that she has made for her class last year. She has independently completed her own Action Research last year and has already learnt so much.
She showed me a really neat post on her blog of a little girl in her class in a 30 second video clip swimming. She said for the parents to be able to see this was a real moment when she realized how powerful the blog was as the girl had been terrified of the water previously and her parents at work would have missed this significant moment where she had achieved.

This year Clemency plans to take her blog further by involving the children in making the blog posts, and reporting on the news in their class. She has assigned roles for the children, three children will complete a blog post each week. She is going to train the children and provide some pictorial instructions on how to do a blog post.

An idea I heard Jane Nicholls talk about once was to use a lanyard or some type of identification tag to give the job some status, such as this picture with the title reporter or official photographer for Room 8. I thought this was a simple and effective idea, for a bit of fun.

We also discussed podcasting. As Clemency's class are younger children for some the writing of comments and captions may be difficult, for Clemency it means she will have to edit and proof read much of what they have written. This year Clemency will trial the students using voice to report their blog comments. I left her the link from the podcasting information on the wiki and a link to Point England School in Auckland who are serious about podcasting. They have really gone to town with it.

Clemency's enthusiasm has made a real impression on me. She has been keeping a diary of new ideas and steps she has been taking during the process. I told her about how some teachers thought of keeping a parallel blog of their own about their action research, there are no rules about how you present you action research. Finding an easy way to keep track of the learning and changes that happen along the way in the early stages will mean there is no pressure at the end of the year to remember what you have done. It may seem silly now but by the end of the action research it might be really difficult to remember where you started.