Scaffolding reading activities

The importance of scaffolding activities in small groups has been confirmed after reviewing the work students completed on reading Explain Everything (EE) projects over the last week. While students are completing the activity, we want to encourage them to talk about what they are doing and their learning as they work on the activities. The recording function within this app allows for this and records not only their voice but what they are doing within the app. Today at the teaching table, following a guided reading session I was able to work through a project with Atlanta and Ilaisaane and give them guidance as they completed the project. This will set them up for tomorrow when they will be asked to repeat this activity independently.
 

Also today we made another discovery with this app - with the students being logged into their own Google accounts we are able to export their EE movies directly to their Google Drive - this will then show in our Teacher Dashboard and is a much more direct way of capturing students work than what we have been using! Michelle and I are always learning and trying new things, seeing what is possible and arriving at what we find to be the most time efficient (and user friendly for 5 year olds) way to do things.

Week 2 .. confidence is growing!

Today we videoed some of our class reading their stories about their weekend - we had previously discussed these in a half circle and introduced pair share for the first time. 

We wrote the story for each child and had them copy the text underneath and then illustrate their story with a picture.  After a few practices we used the iPad video feature for some students to share their stories and we have put these on our class blog.  Through the students sharing their stories orally, we were able to see that Ilaisaane is “shadow copying” and we have combined some of the videos to illustrate this for future reference (Ilaisaane is on the right of the video).  We want to continue to use the iPads to record (particularly oral language) as this gives us the opportunity to revisit the learning and adjust learning intentions and teaching methods as required.