Rich Discussions ... gifting oral language

Today we had another great session with Dr Jannie van Hees, focusing on oral language and the need for rich discussions, particularly with our learners who often enter school without the benefit of rich experiences.

This constraint, often bought about through not enough mileage in multiple contexts can inhibit their learning.  As Jannie reminded us today, we need to provide experiences which are engaging for our learners and expand on their existing bank of oral language through gifting.

Some main points that I took away from today's session include:

• All children have a need for language encounters

• Focus on retell - lots & lots - vary the text being used

• Stories are more likely to end up with language acquisition than songs - recycling is extremely important

• To be great writers, learners need to be more fluent in what they can say - if you don't push for fullness, demonstrate, model, the oral language won't improve

• An inhibitor to discussion (and writing) can be what is known by the learner about the topic & what they can bring to the text

• Our learners need us to "bombard" them with oral language and rich pickings

• Language is only a tool for making meaning

So, with the above in mind, what can I do differently in the classroom to enhance the oral language for my learners?  

• Use pictures and have a conversation about it - share ideas orally - we have to make it noticeable and retrievable - need to trigger their knowns 
• As the teacher, I need to make it noticeable - repeat it - highlight it - reword it and most of all repeat it

In our digital environment I have the opportunity to make this very rewindable for the learners - by using the iPad to record our conversation as well as creating opportunities for the learners to revisit the ideas we had.   With this in mind, my intention is to use our Inquiry topic (around the zoo animals) as a starting point to trigger these conversations.  Using this sequence of pictures (one per day) will hopefully enable the learners to relate (as we have just been to the zoo) to the animal, recycle the language because the same animal is featuring while also enabling me to gift vocabulary throughout the week.

In order to make the information retrievable, we'll create a small book to document their ideas - using Book Creator, which allows for audio as well as the written, learners will be able to revisit the ideas we've discussed as a whole class.  I'm excited to increase the rich discussions in the classroom and see how this increased rich oral language assists my learners with their writing - as always, watch this space!

ULearn Magic ... Day 2 and 3

Day 2 began with another thought provoking Keynote delivered by Ann Lieberman entitled "What do we know about Teaching Leadership, and what's to gain?"  Ann told us that "we are great storytellers in teaching" and her story described the National Writing project she was involved in (in the United States).  Ann described teaching leadership as:

• A way of organising learning
• A way of understanding connections between knowledge and practice
• A way of learning skills and abilities to nurture a community among peers
• A way of negotiating the tensions between privacy and community

For me this keynote highlighted the 'community of sharing' practices which already occur in the Manaiakalani Cluster through toolkits, the MIT (Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme) and the natural sharing that occurs in each school.  I found it particularly interesting that Ann unpacked the conflicts that naturally occur with change with her focus on it not becoming destructive to the change process.

My second session today was Karen Boyes' "Enhancing Thoughtful Classroom Dialogue".  This was a packed session and I could see why when Karen started sharing her ideas based around six main themes:

• Classroom environment
• Teacher technique
• Listening skills
• The Power of Language
• Thinking
• Questioning 

I came away from Karen's session with pages of notes and a head brimming with ideas to try in the classroom to encourage discussion in an environment which turns the fear of talking into fun.  This quote which Karen used was particularly inspiring:

"Children who laugh more ... learn more."  - Dr David Sousa

After lunch I attended Paula Jamieson's 1:1 iPads with New Entrants, looking for ideas that I could use to enhance what we are already using in Room 19.  While not specifically looking for any apps (I still firmly believe that just the use of Explain Everything is working really well), its always good to listen to how others are using apps and how I could possibly adapt these.  Paula delivered her address using a Multi Touch Book which immediately had me intrigued.  She is in the process of creating several books, all of which are available from the iTunes store.

I particularly liked the way that Paula referred to camera angles with her class - snails view, possum view, birds view etc and intend to create visuals to support this with next years class.  As Paula stated, having learners know how to take really good photos to document their learning early on, sets them up for success throughout their learning journey.

After a great "On the High Seas" ULearn dinner it was back for the final day of learning.  Today's first session for me was the joint presentation by the "Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers (MIT)" allowing a small peak into the great innovations they've been developing this year.  The inquiries of all the MIT teachers can be explored here.

Following the presentation of my second session, the final Keynote was Pat Sneddon, chairman of the Manaiakalani Trust.  No matter how many times I hear Pat speak he's always totally inspiring and the entire audience was spellbound by his story.  For those unfamiliar with the Manaiakalani story, this video, created by some Pt England learners was shown during Pat's keynote.  This website also documents the Manaiakalani story.

Outta this World from Team 5 PES on Vimeo.

Edit:  Pat's full presentation is available to view here

Reflecting on Writing

Today was our last session with Dr Jannie van Hees for the year, as part of our school wide professional development on increasing dialogic conversations and improving writing.  As we reflected on the learning to date this year as a whole staff, Jannie asked us to pay close attention to the choices that a learner needs to make in text construction, these being:

TOPIC  - what are we writing about?
PURPOSE - why are we writing about this?
AUDIENCE - who is the intended audience of our writing?

I think this is an important take-away message and while many of my learners are at the beginning stage of learning to write, it is never too early to ensure they are aware of these three important factors as they make a difference in what we are crafting!  

As with all our Jannie sessions, they are informative and thought provoking and make me think about my practice and how I can improve or change things to better scaffold and assist my learners.  Some of the most important ideas that I took away from today are:

• Think and planning before writing and during writing matters!  Explicit attention to this is important - this might look different in my class than say a Year 5/6 class, but that doesn't deter from its importance!
• Can my learners identify the topic, purpose and audience?  Have we made it clear so they know what they are writing about, why they are writing about it and who will read it?  
• If time is limited, discuss rather than actually "do" the writing. Professional writers plan all the time - they think about, plan and imagine, sometimes for hours, days or weeks before they do the actual writing. Modelling and doing this as a whole class helps to set up my learners for working independently and scaffolds them into their own planning.
• What does co-editing do? How might this look? There is an assumption with co-editing that there is an informed mediator (someone with more knowledge to scaffold and assist the learner). Co-editing is extremely important as without it, how can we lift the level of the learner. In a busy classroom it can be easy to overlook the importance of this activity.
• Is it written like talk? In a junior classroom, often the learner will write in the same way they talk as this is the start of their writing journey. However, we have the opportunity to model writing to the whole class and need to think about this aspect when we do.

As Jannie completed her session, she reminded us that writing is a complex act!  In order to maximise writing lessons for my learners, I need to constantly reflect on my teaching pedagogy and practice, with the assistance of professional development and discussions with others!

GEG NZ Presentation

It was a pleasure (and yes slightly nerve-wracking) to join my mentor Michelle George in presenting at tonight's GEG NZ hangout on air, showcasing the 1:1 iPad pilot we're undertaking in our Year 1 classroom.

I've had an amazing year to date and the privilege to work with such a great teacher and mentor on this incredible journey.

Check out our presentation here or watch the recording of the hangout:

Dialogic Conversations

As part of our ongoing staff professional development we had another session today with Dr. Jannie van Hees around building a dialogic classroom.  As a way of unpacking todays valuable session and reflecting on the information Jannie provided us, I've created a word cloud with the main vocabulary from the session.  We explored word clouds in more detail at our MDTA digital immersion session last Wednesday and I've again used my favourite, Tagxedo!  

Some of the highlights from todays session for me were:

• The importance of giving learners quality prepare and thinking time - I know I'm guilty on some occasions of expecting instant answers. 
• Lead the thinking without dominating the thinking - through questioning and providing opportunities for sharing
• Have a way for students to indicate their readiness - this allows them to show they are ready and minimises the chance of interrupting their thoughts as often learners won't remember what they were going to say
• Increase pair-share opportunities which asks learners to think about what we're asking them as well as a voice to share 
• Collaborative gathering - opportunities for students to stretch their ideas through hearing the responses of others, make meaning of what is being discussed and hear the ideas expressed in a slightly different way
• Elaborate on responses - enables the gifting of additional language (so important in a Year 0/1 classroom) which will ensure the continual growth of the language of all learners
• Listen to your learners - ensure you are 'hearing' what they are wanting to convey
• A picture often tells a better story - unpack vocabulary with visual stimuli - provide multiple pictures to unpack a word

Many of the messages and information received today reinforce for me the pedagogy that was introduced throughout my university study and is reflected extremely well in the practice that Michelle demonstrates on a daily basis in our classroom.  So much of it is what I've taken on board and am also using daily - but - I also think its important to reconsider and reflect on our practice constantly.  For me, part of this reflection is to revisit professional development sessions, and think about what I'm currently doing in my teaching practice and what I could improve on as a result of this new learning.  After all, its not just the learners in my classroom who should be constantly learning!

Bringing together experiences

As we begin to explore our "Move it, Move it" topic for the term we are thinking about technology that we see that makes our life easier.  Over the past week we have seen the use of a pulley in two different instances - at the Zoo to raise the bird feeding station off the ground so the pests can not get the food, and at assembly when Mr J demonstrated using a pulley to life a very heavy item.

Today as a motivation for our writing we borrowed Mr J's pulley and had a photo of the pulley from the Zoo.  Students took turns using the pulley in our classroom to lift our bucket of fruit before sharing with their pair their ideas on how the pulley worked.

As these ideas were shared back with the whole class we recorded these ideas on the whiteboard with Michelle repeating and clarifying each idea for understanding.  This also introduced vocabulary words associated with the pulley system.  Finally we finished our session today with a small sentence about the use of the pulley in the zoo which we will expand on tomorrow.

Drawing and Talking .... take two :)

After the success of our session last week, we were keen to use the same technique with the students again before the holidays.  This time we took notice of the noise created by many students recording all at the same time, and spread them out among the classroom with some of the more able students working outside or in the corridor so the videos had less background noise.

We used the experiences of the weekend for today's session and again scaffolded the activity by demonstrating with the students what they had to do.  Michelle did this, drawing on an experience from her weekend cooking dinner.  We started with a pair-share activity so students could share with a friend what they had done in the weekend and then many were able to complete this task independently and add detail to their story.  It was extremely interesting to note that some students copied what Michelle had done rather than drawing about their own weekend (despite us specifically telling them to draw about their own weekends) - some managed to try again and successfully produce a story about their own weekend on the second attempt.

This is something we will continue to use as an activity into the new term as we can see huge improvements in the oral language.

Here is a sample from the stories created today:

Further extending Oral Language with EE

After an amazing Fia Fia performance last night we decided we wanted to use that as a writing motivation for today.  After discussing what we wanted to do we decided to start with a pair-share of our experiences from the night followed by the students using Explain Everything to make a drawing of their performance and us capturing their thoughts by typing up individual stories.

Michelle suggested that instead of us typing up the stories, we used Explain Everything to capture their stories by each student talking about their picture as they completed the drawing - this is the first time we have done this, and we would need to demonstrate the activity to the class.  Using the Airplay function we were able to do this and I drew a picture of me on stage, talking about my drawing as I did it and adding detail.  I modelled turning the recording off while I thought about what I was going to draw next.  When I had completed the picture we were able to replay the recording and the students could see the picture being drawn with the voice-over explaining what I was drawing.

The students then went to their own individual iPads and began the activity.  I noticed a few things:

• Many of the students copied what I had drawn (eg the stage, lights, costume) and used similar language to what I had used - I'm sure as we do this activity more often they will begin to experiment with their own thoughts and language
• Some students didn't record as they did their drawing, however, with teacher prompting they were happy to record a story to go with their picture.
• Many students were extremely keen to use the AirPlay and watch their work on the big TV
• Teacher Dashboard is great to review the students videos later and assess what each child has done

As this was the first time we've attempted this activity I was extremely pleased with the results and would like to follow up with another session of doing the same thing before the holidays in order for this learning to be embedded.

Check out some of the samples from today's session:

A "veiled" idea for writing ...

Today Ms George bought out a huge piece of tulle fabric as a motivation for writing.  The students thought it was great to hide under this fabric and move around the room.

Our next step was to gather ideas of what it felt like being under the fabric.  This is some of the rich ideas that we crafted as a class, building on the ideas from the students and gifting them additional vocabulary.

Then as a class we took a vote about which idea we wanted to write about.  A huge group of boys liking the plane idea, had the class writing this story by the end of the session:

 How can we add to this story?  Watch this space!

Oral Language .... to the fore!

Earlier this week I participated in a school wide Professional Development session led by Dr Jannie van Hees, around creating a Conversational Classroom - something Michelle and I are focused on doing with our 1:1 iPad trial.

Today we had two instances where this conversation was extremely rich, and to me it showed how far the students have already come!  Firstly, we have having some major school building developments occurring around the school and as part of these developments two of our classrooms are being lifted, and moved to another section of the school.  This process enthralled the students when we took them out to see a classroom up on hydraulics, waiting to be moved via truck later tonight.  Using a photographic lead in to encourage students to think about what was happening, we used the pair/share technique to have all students actively thinking and sharing their ideas before taking the students (with their iPads of course, so they could take their own photographs!) out to view the building site!

On returning to our classroom, the following class story was constructed:
The hydraulics pushed the classroom up!  Now the trailer can fit underneath.

Later in the day, during a maths session learning the number "after", students were extremely keen to use video (rather than a photo) to document their learning, particularly when they were encouraged to use their oral language skills to explain what they were doing.  This sample from Phoenix, is one of her first attempts at using video to document her learning, and shows how comfortable the students are becoming with Oral Language and their iPads.

Today during reading, two students were reading our horse story from a few weeks ago (which is displayed in the classroom).  This was independent of the teacher, after they had finished their assigned activity.  They recorded each other and Nature had the forethought to swap iPads with Deborah so that her video was on her own iPad!  It was great to see them independently thinking about recording what they were doing and they were so keen to share with both Michelle and I as soon as they had finished and have it displayed on the Apple TV for the rest of the class to see.  We made sure we viewed it and were extremely keen to demonstrate to the students that we really liked what they had done!  

This instance really shows how confident the students are getting with the iPads and how they have an expectation of recording all their learning, all the time!  We also had a new child enter the class today (Phoenix) and she was extremely keen to use an iPad - we need to try and have these ready if we know new students are coming!

Progress already ...

Today we again discussed our weekends with Michelle and I modelling the conversation that we wanted the students to have with peers about what they did.  This was much more successful today with most students sharing with their partner and all students able to tell the whole class what they did on the weekend - woohoo for progress!  Then we recorded the students stories in their writing book and each student copied this text underneath before videoing their story.  All students were able to recite at least one sentence of their story to the video including students who had previously refused to be videoed).  Its great to be able to see progress so quickly with students now more willing to not only share orally but also be recorded!

  

Focusing on Oral Language

Once again today we cemented the writing that we co-constructed with the class by using Oral Language.  In order to help the students remember a more complex sentence, Michelle introduced actions this week to supplement the singing.  Our motivation was the horse which students had photographed last week.  After writing our story on Tuesday, today the students practised and we videoed them singing the story and doing the actions.  This medium also gave us the opportunity to see which students were contributing to the singing and which were not as we could study individual students on the video.  We are also able to get students really used to being videoed, particularly as new students enter the classroom.

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.

Taking Samples to Gauge Progress Later

Today was our first round of taking samples of the students' oral language and we did this as they read a sentence we had constructed as a class throughout the week.  We added to this sentence over a number of days and then turned it into a “song” so the students could easily remember it.  When it came to sampling the class, some students were very keen to have a go, while others were very shy and not prepared to even try.  We will need to get samples from these students next week.  

The following are two examples of the samples recorded today: