At Liberton Christian School Alan is working on an Action Research project with students during writing. He has selected some students to use audio recording during the composition of their story. The students will record their stories orally and then play these back while they write this message down. This supports students to be independent writers, separating the tasks of content generation and remembering their message from actually transcribing their story. We also discussed other strategies that effective writers use particularly self-talk. Alan will make up a self-talk sheet to prompt these students to try to scaffold themselves through challenges before appealing to peers or the teacher.
Hermione the Year 3 and 4 teacher is also using audio recording in her action research. She will be recording herself and some selected students reading text and will put these onto her class wiki. The students will be able to listen to these at school and home to become familiar with the text and to independently manage their learning when they are not with the teacher.
Showing posts with label Liberton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberton. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Today I worked with Alan at Liberton Christian School. He originally started his wiki for his action research on basic facts. He told me he just wanted it to organise his maths games for his groups. It seems to have got a bit bigger than that as Alan has seen the possibilities avaliable to his class and the community.
Today we had a bit of a tidy up, as you tend to do as you go. As you become more familiar with the ICT tools and refine what you are doing with them you do have to move and shift things around. Alan and I talked about how this is really the process of Action Research and that it is a way of seeing or tracking how your thinking is changing. Alan said the coming to the last Virtual Syndicate meeting help clarify the action research process to him. He said listening to lead teachers share the process and comparing that to what he has done so far he can see the relevance of the process and that it really isn't meant to be a difficult task.
Alan has been using Comic Life in his classroom to make some road safety posters. He was really impressed how easily the students were able to create such effect posters. He said he could see the problem solving, collaboration and how different his role was during the comic life tasks he set the class. We discussed the opportunities for deeper learning and conversations between students and teachers when the smaller task related questions are solved by students supporting one another and problem solving together. He commented that the process was very real for students and that they were able to reflect on what they had learnt easily.
Alan and I went through the steps to export a comic life project as an image or movie and uploaded these to his class wiki to display these and allow students to share their work and the messages in their posters with their families.
Today we had a bit of a tidy up, as you tend to do as you go. As you become more familiar with the ICT tools and refine what you are doing with them you do have to move and shift things around. Alan and I talked about how this is really the process of Action Research and that it is a way of seeing or tracking how your thinking is changing. Alan said the coming to the last Virtual Syndicate meeting help clarify the action research process to him. He said listening to lead teachers share the process and comparing that to what he has done so far he can see the relevance of the process and that it really isn't meant to be a difficult task.
Alan has been using Comic Life in his classroom to make some road safety posters. He was really impressed how easily the students were able to create such effect posters. He said he could see the problem solving, collaboration and how different his role was during the comic life tasks he set the class. We discussed the opportunities for deeper learning and conversations between students and teachers when the smaller task related questions are solved by students supporting one another and problem solving together. He commented that the process was very real for students and that they were able to reflect on what they had learnt easily.
Alan and I went through the steps to export a comic life project as an image or movie and uploaded these to his class wiki to display these and allow students to share their work and the messages in their posters with their families.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
It actually has been a Wonderful Wednesday at Liberton
I set up this blog thinking that Wednesday would be the day I worked with classroom teachers. In reality it sort of happens when it fits in but anytime is still wonderful.
I worked with Alan Robertson and Hermione Barnett at Liberton Christian School today. They both had me very busy, they both have their action research ideas well developed and plans underway. We discussed the evidence they will gather now, of what is currently happening in the classroom in their area of focus and how this can be repeated at the end of the year to measure change.
Alan will be looking at basic fact learning in Maths and has lots of sites organized and now has a wikispace with links to various sites and games. He will be having the students learn their basic facts doing different activities, some computer and some with traditional materials such as flash cards.
Chantal (the Lead Teacher at Liberton) had told Alan about similar research that Brian at Sacred Heart School had done last year so he will be looking at this.
Alan will also be using some reflection time in the class for the students to think about their learning preferences and which methods best suit their needs. He will be using the sentence threads (starters) from the NZ Maths site which he heard about at the ‘Self Regulated Learning’ workshop at George Street Normal School last year. A lot of teachers use these to provide students with a starter for reflection.
Hermione has a topic which is really exciting for me, apart from ICT my other curriculum interest is Mãori. Hermione wants to see if she can use her wiki to enhance her Mãori programme as one of her other professional development areas is Mãori Education this year. It’s a great idea to combine both. I introduced Hermione to several online resources for Mãori Education.
TKI has a great list of these in the Mãori Community Kete.
Hermione hadn’t heard of Teacher Tube which is like Utube but has a bank of videos which are suitable for schools and teaching. I also showed her Mãoritube which is a resource of videos on everything Mãori. All of these videos are emeddable, which means you can copy the Html code (that crazy looking writing you see underneath them) and paste this into your wiki widget option. Once you save this your wiki will have the video you have chosen embedded (stuck on) your screen.
We looked at the online dictionary which translates Mãori to English and vice versa through a search box. It also will accept words with and without macrons and then corrects you in the results. This is a quick way to check if your not quite sure.
Hermione is really excited about all of the possibilities she can see for her teaching especially as she teaches juniors, the videos are perfect for accessing information if your not a fluent reader and pronunciation is not such an issue if you can find a video that demonstrates good pronunciation, examples of mispronunciation are good also so children can hear and correct this without offending someone in the room. Sometimes it is difficult for children to hear their own mistake but they can hear it is not correct when others mispronounce words.
Hermione will be doing lots with her wiki (I can see an addiction beginning already) but she is interested in measuring children’s feelings and confidence levels about accessing Mãori content and information in the classroom. We discussed interviewing a few children now and then at the end of her research. She might video or record their voices for this interview rather than writing everything they say- Now she can even upload this to her wiki.
The greatest thing again about working with two people at once is the help they can provide one another to fine tune their research. After I have left they can support each other with any new techie skills we covered. They are both well organized for some interesting and thought provoking findings.
I worked with Alan Robertson and Hermione Barnett at Liberton Christian School today. They both had me very busy, they both have their action research ideas well developed and plans underway. We discussed the evidence they will gather now, of what is currently happening in the classroom in their area of focus and how this can be repeated at the end of the year to measure change.
Alan will be looking at basic fact learning in Maths and has lots of sites organized and now has a wikispace with links to various sites and games. He will be having the students learn their basic facts doing different activities, some computer and some with traditional materials such as flash cards.
Chantal (the Lead Teacher at Liberton) had told Alan about similar research that Brian at Sacred Heart School had done last year so he will be looking at this.
Alan will also be using some reflection time in the class for the students to think about their learning preferences and which methods best suit their needs. He will be using the sentence threads (starters) from the NZ Maths site which he heard about at the ‘Self Regulated Learning’ workshop at George Street Normal School last year. A lot of teachers use these to provide students with a starter for reflection.
Hermione has a topic which is really exciting for me, apart from ICT my other curriculum interest is Mãori. Hermione wants to see if she can use her wiki to enhance her Mãori programme as one of her other professional development areas is Mãori Education this year. It’s a great idea to combine both. I introduced Hermione to several online resources for Mãori Education.
TKI has a great list of these in the Mãori Community Kete.
Hermione hadn’t heard of Teacher Tube which is like Utube but has a bank of videos which are suitable for schools and teaching. I also showed her Mãoritube which is a resource of videos on everything Mãori. All of these videos are emeddable, which means you can copy the Html code (that crazy looking writing you see underneath them) and paste this into your wiki widget option. Once you save this your wiki will have the video you have chosen embedded (stuck on) your screen.
We looked at the online dictionary which translates Mãori to English and vice versa through a search box. It also will accept words with and without macrons and then corrects you in the results. This is a quick way to check if your not quite sure.
Hermione is really excited about all of the possibilities she can see for her teaching especially as she teaches juniors, the videos are perfect for accessing information if your not a fluent reader and pronunciation is not such an issue if you can find a video that demonstrates good pronunciation, examples of mispronunciation are good also so children can hear and correct this without offending someone in the room. Sometimes it is difficult for children to hear their own mistake but they can hear it is not correct when others mispronounce words.
Hermione will be doing lots with her wiki (I can see an addiction beginning already) but she is interested in measuring children’s feelings and confidence levels about accessing Mãori content and information in the classroom. We discussed interviewing a few children now and then at the end of her research. She might video or record their voices for this interview rather than writing everything they say- Now she can even upload this to her wiki.
The greatest thing again about working with two people at once is the help they can provide one another to fine tune their research. After I have left they can support each other with any new techie skills we covered. They are both well organized for some interesting and thought provoking findings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
