The power of Explain Everything

Its hard to believe this is the third week of school and my New Entrants class has doubled from the 5 learners that started on the first day to 10 learners.  Over the past two weeks I've scaffolded the use of the iPads with all the learners and we've focused on taking photos to celebrate our learning and the 'kawa of care' that Pt England embraces around the use of digital devices.  

As with last year, Explain Everything will be the app of choice and this year I am wanting the Explain Everything activities to extend beyond a cut up sentence or practicing of high frequency words.  I would like purposeful activities and tasks which are rewindable and recordable, and encourage higher order thinking, which in turn will help with engagement.  Having said that, my learners are only five years old and I understand the need for careful scaffolding to ensure they understand the activities and how to use Explain Everything correctly to get the maximum learning benefits.

Earlier this week I used Explain Everything for the first time during our reading lessons with the learners who had been at school since the beginning of the year.  The activity follows on from the guided reading session, and each group was carefully scaffolded at teaching table.  We completed the activity first as a group and then once independently at the teaching table, before they took their iPads and books to another table and did the activity for a third time independently.  It was amazing to see the engagement and willingness to complete the activity again and again.  Even learners who are harder to behaviourally engage in the classroom were motivated and completed the project with minimal assistance from their teacher aide.

An example of an Explain Everything project from this week.
Learners use their book to help them put the sentence together.

What the completed project looks like.  Learners then record and read the
sentence so I can hear how they are doing away from the teaching table.

Additionally, one of the great things about Explain Everything, is it links to the learners individual Google Drive and using Hapara Teacher Dashboard I'm able to review their work later in the day and see how they went about completing the activity.

A screenshot of my Teacher Dashboard from last year.

This post appears as my contribution to the Auckland University's Top of the Class blog this week.

My First Year in Review

As part of our final weeks of our MDTA PLG we were asked to create a video as a summary of our year.  I found it difficult to condense what I wanted to share into just five minutes and when I look back over my year am amazed at what I've packed into such a relatively short time.

I feel I have grown as a teacher and am definitely looking forward to the challenge of my own class next year.  I will definitely enjoy my last few weeks with Class 20 of 2014, and look forward to being able to watch these lovely young learners grow as they move into 2015 and beyond.

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:

Maths with Explain Everything

After completing JAM tests with our learners just prior to the holidays, Michelle and I decided that two of our groups needed to work on "Adding on from the largest number".  Having time to play for this learning I decided to create some Explain Everything projects to scaffold this learning.  After spending time at the teaching table using equipment to model the concept, we moved onto my first Explain Everything project.  This project, made up of 25 slides with an equation on each, was highly scaffolded at the beginning, leading to just the equation towards the final slides.  In the first slides, the largest number was circled and dots were placed under the smaller number, allowing the learners to count the dots, starting from the circled larger number.

As the learners worked through the slides, they had to identify the largest number and circle this, before completing the equation.  Later, they had to place the dots under the smaller number to assist them in their addition.  

One of the features of using Explain Everything is that learners are able to revisit this project.  After completing it on Thursday at the teaching table, I was able to watch what learners were doing and provide further assistance as required.  The next step will be for these learners to complete the project independently, and record as they are working so we can review and check the understanding of all learners and see what they are able to achieve independently.

This video of the completed slides shows the end result of one learners work.  There is no voice with this recording as this movie was created as just a summation of all slides the first time the learner completed it.  Learners will now record, with voice, when the work with this project.  We have a master copy of the project and this will enable learners to revisit it as many times as necessary to assist in reinforcing the concept.

Adding on project 16.10.14 from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Once learners have mastered this project, I have created a new project, again working with adding on from the largest number, this time scaffolded with a numberline.

Once again, the power of Explain Everything, combined with Teacher Dashboard to share the project to each individual learners iPads, has helped make this lesson so successful.  Learners will upload the project to their Google Drive when they complete it independently, so we are able to view these via Teacher Dashboard and check their understanding.

The year is half over ....

I've been a teacher for six months!  WOW!  Sometimes I still find it hard to believe I'm living my dream!  I was walking through school the other day when one of my colleagues said "have you really only been here six months ... it seems like forever!"  What an amazing compliment that is!

As I sit down and reflect on my first six months teaching and in particular the last term .. I think about the progress the learners in my class have made and also think about all the learning I've done so far this year. There IS a difference between the "theory" of learning while at University (and even to a degree on placement) and the "doing" of being in your own classroom.  Some things can be taught, others you need to find out through experience!

I remember vividly the first day Michelle was not in the class at all (due to a Manaiakalani meeting off site) and feeling really nervous.  I compare that with how I'm feeling now (just a few months later) when she's off site due to illness or meetings and how much confidence I now have - what a difference a few months make!

Sharing a classroom continues to be an amazing experience - Michelle is supportive of me trying new things even if she has had limited success with them herself in the past and I can't thank her enough for that!  Having an "expert" to ask advice of and learn from is SO beneficial and I feel I'm growing as a teacher so much faster as a result.

We recently had parent interviews and this was an amazing experience.  We were able to share samples of the work learners have been doing in the classroom as well as introduce the Parent Portal (a feature of Hapara Teacher Dashboard)!

I can't say I feel "in control" of my University study - I am definitely struggling to find a balance with working in the classroom as well as finding time for readings and assignments, but I am definitely learning, which has to be a good thing.  The Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA) sessions continue to be amazing!  Sharing experiences and learning with this great cohort of teachers is so worthwhile, as are the digital immersion sessions we complete together - I totally LOVE iMovie, on which our learning has been focused for the last few weeks (and am actually enjoying putting together our Team 1 movie for Day 1 assembly next term!)

As I head into the holidays I have a few things on my "to do list", including something exciting to try with the class next term (watch this space!) but it is also a time to reflect on what has worked well, and not so well in my first six months of teaching.  In random order .....

1. Don't be scared to try things ... and have them fail ... you can learn from things even if they don't work the first time! 
2. Scaffold new activities really well - if possible create visuals to support the scaffolding.
3. Set routines and be consistent - ensure new students understand the routines!  
4. Reinforce the positive - an oldie but a goody - it REALLY works!
5. Relationships are key - know your students and their whanau.
6. Explain Everything IS amazing ... and limited only by your imagination!

I am enjoying the break and a chance to recharge my batteries, but I also can't wait to get back to, what for me is, the best job in the world!

Sharing my journey with others

Yesterday I had the opportunity to join Dorothy in facilitating a professional development day for the teachers at Omokoroa School in Tauranga, centred on the use of Google Apps in Education.

It was amazing to see such enthusiasm for the ideas we shared and assist these teachers in up-skilling in the use of Google Apps including Docs, Drive, Spreadsheets, Forms and Sites and share my amazing journey to date.

After lunch we split into two, with Dorothy conducting a session specific to Chromebooks and I facilitated a session on the use of iPads and shared how we used Google Drive, Teacher Dashboard and Explain Everything in our day to day program.

I feel extremely privileged to be part of the MDTA program, working in a school that is proud to be a digital learning environment, and having opportunities such as today to share my successes so that others can benefit.  As a result of some of the questions that I was asked today, I plan to create further screen casts to continue to showcase the systems and learning that happens in Class 20 - watch this space!! Today really emphasised that others want to share in the learning that I'm doing, which in itself is a further motivation for me on this amazing journey!

The power of 'the voice' with Explain Everything

The learners being able to record their voice is a very powerful feature of Explain Everything.  As a teacher we can 'replay' their learning through Teacher Dashboard, and this can assist with identifying any gaps in their learning.

Yesterday for writing, a group of learners used Explain Everything to write their story.  They used their stylus and started with a lined page - I created the lines and set it as the background on a blank Explain Everything page, using Teacher Dashboard to share this with all learners.   The focus was on crafting their own story, based on what they did over the long weekend - we shared our weekend activities first with our peers and then as a whole class.  On the whiteboard, we documented just some key words from their ideas next to each child's photo.  At the teaching table, the learners came up with their own sentences and we worked on identifying high frequency words and sounds within a word.  

Once the writing was completed, learners read their story and recorded this using the iPad.  While this session was guided with the learners, it opens the way for the learners to create a story independently, recording high frequency words and known sounds in a word before reading and recording their story so we are able to hear and compare their oral language with their writing - powerful!

How we share our Explain Everything projects

As part of our MDTA digital immersion session yesterday, we explored the use of Screen Recording to create tutorials.  My recording captures how I share Explain Everything projects via Teacher Dashboard to all my reading groups each week.

Hapara Teacher Dashboard makes it so easy!  We share upwards of 30 projects per week and it takes about 15 minutes to do them all!

How we use Explain Everything for Reading follow up

Often we have visitors into our classroom observing how we use Explain Everything on our 1:1 iPad devices in the classroom and asking questions about how we manage this process and if it is time consuming to create each project.

One of our biggest uses of this App, is for reading.  Michelle and I create the purposeful activities as a follow up to the guided reading session, on an iPad and upload the Explain Everything as a project to a Google folder in our Google Drive.  While initially these projects were time consuming to create as we came to grips with the use of Explain Everything, we are now much faster at creating these, and have found the projects evolve as we try new things.  Also, as our students progress with their reading we are able to reuse projects with new groups and we find ourselves only needing to create new projects for our top groups.

Every child has their own Google account.  We then use Teacher Dashboard to share a weeks worth of reading projects to each group.  Our reading groups are assigned within Teacher Dashboard and as our groups are always changing and evolving it is easy to switch a child out of a group and into a new group on the Teacher Dashboard to ensure they receive the correct project.  As the projects are shared to each child's account, Teacher Dashboard automatically adds the child's name to the end of the project to prevent children accidentally saving over our master (or someone else's work!)

We scaffold the activity with the students each day at the end of their guided reading session and they work independently on the project after this session.  Students know how to save the projects back to their Google Drive as a movie file and we have the Explain Everything viewer app on our teacher laptops to assist in viewing projects that have been saved as an Explain Everything file rather than the movie.  We encourage the use of the recording feature so we can hear what the students are doing and thinking and we can look at filling any gaps in future lessons.

As our children are young, once a week we file the previous weeks reading activities into a reading folder and download the new weeks activities from their Google Drive so they are loaded and ready to go - we would hope that students will be able to complete this process themselves as the year develops.

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:

Constant reflecting and adapting ....

As part of the 1:1 trial of iPads in the classroom we're constantly reflecting and adapting to try new things and improve the way we are doing things! In the last week we've discovered the many advantages of Teacher Dashboard and scoping projects to individual students - one of the great things is it automatically files it with the students name as part of the file which prevents our 5 year olds saving their work in the wrong place or overwriting "master files!" Today as an extension to writing, I suggested that we have the students write their names, using Explain Everything when they have finished their story. This gives them a purposeful activity to complete, which is one of their writing goals and keeps them engaged while we have small groups at the teaching table. We saw so much engagement with this today that we're going to continue and make it a routine in the classroom! One of the questions Michelle and I discussed in depth last week was students writing using pen and paper, rather than going straight to the iPad, which is one of our long term goals. While we can see the benefit of writing directly on the iPad, we both feel in these early stages we need to scaffold the process using pen and paper where the students are not able to "quickly erase" their work before we can see it (which many of them have already seen they can do on the iPad). The other drawback of the iPad is the size of the screen - already we are seeing with students writing their name that they use most of the available space for just a couple of words - this will of course change in time and with scaffolding and modelling! Once again we continue to use Explain Everything as our app of choice - today Michelle took a session where students did a self portrait! The computers in the classroom are no longer the "drawcard" - our students just love their iPads! (Luisa gets the credit for this artwork!)

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.