Cybersmart Challenge #1

 Hi readers!

How are you doing today?

Today, I am doing my first Cybersmart challenge! Here are three posters that I have completed that show I know how to care for my chromebook. This challenge was set by Mr Matt Goodwin who i met in Auckland last year.

Here are my posters. Check them out!

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

What a year it has been! 

A year of learning, confusion, change, challenge and hope.

A year of new ideas, adapted ideas and creativity.

Welcome back to another blog post catching up with the 'Learning Through Listening' project that has stimulated so much of the learning and ideas for this year. 

This year I have had the opportunity to work with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom... and now we are coming to the end of this journey.

Today we are meeting for the last time as a team for this year but this is not the end.

In a teaching environment children explore literacy especially through so many contexts. Children explore and learn interaction, social skills and oral language everyday through the natural management and context of the class. It is hard to genuinely differentiate how much progress has been made because of the effect of the listening skills taught. I say this to acknowledge the children themselves, their effort and learning, ideas and the implementation of DMIC maths which heavily supports  conversation and discussion in mathematics.

In saying this since the beginning of the year the children have grown in their confidence in speaking, listening and engaging with each other. When I started in term 1 I was looking a head to the skills that I hoped children would be learning by term 4. It is now encouraging to be looking further ahead to the skills that I have not year listed on the rubric that would be beneficial to their talking and engagement with each other.

So what is the difference I have seen in my children?

The norm in my reading groups in term 1 was most of the children would look at the floor. They waited until they were asked a question and then answered the question by speaking to me( the teacher). I struggled with this a lot. But started the journey with the goal being simply to look at each other and greet each other by name when we arrived in our group.

The contrast in term 4 is wonderful. The children in the groups come ready to share and look at each other while they are sharing. I start with a key question sometimes find myself needing to interrupt and ask for a pause in the conversation to redirect or bring the focus to evidence or the original question. Often in reading or maths I now ask a child to summarise and redirect back to what the question was. Often children who are asked to summarise will ask for the original question to be repeated. Children are also challenging each other regularly and are happy to challenge myself as the teacher using phrase like, "I disagree with that because..." or  "Mrs T, I would like to challenge that because before you said... " 

These conversations fill me with delight as it is clear evidence that a child has heard and processed an idea shared by someone else and has  the confidence to voice what they have processed and heard. They are giving feedback on what another child has said.

This is the positive. 

In reflection, there is still so much to do. The educational world is constantly updating and I need to as well. As a team we took some time to share what we would have done at the beginning of the year if we knew what we knew now, what we could have done had lockdown not struck, and what we should have done. 

Woulda

If I could go back to the beginning of the year I would have connected sooner with more experts that I had identified at the first hui. The value in having experts and feedback from the early stages of this journey would have been invaluable. 

Secondly, seeing the world through a different digital lense after distance learning has been implemented has changed the way we connect and added an online aspect I would have liked to have this foresight and understanding to consider how we listen and connect online.

Coulda 

There is always the excuse that I could have done it except that COVID...

so I should leave this space blank. However,  Level 4 Lockdown was both exciting, stressful and stimulating. Designing and updating digital distance learning took most of my attention and passion. This diverted my energy and enthusiasm for developing my Listening Skills Project into a new digital educational age.

Shoulda

There are a million things that I should have done... if only I could boil the ocean and have more time. 

I should have made more videos of our group learning especially during maths and reading to show the progress and group listening skills which the children were practicing in these contexts.

 I should have taught more of these skills during lockdown when we were online and adapted them to an online context. I should have created an online listening page of the site.

So now...

All of those things I should have done, these are now my next steps. Please keep following me and if you haven't already click on the link below to take you to my 'Listening Through Learning Site'.

I would love your feedback and comments so please feel free to comment below or take 10 seconds to click on the feedback form linked to the site.

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea

Presentation

Welcome back to another MIT (Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) blog post. 

Thank you so much for being here and joining this journey.

This post is the culmination of a year's thoughts in action aided by the amazing team and lead by Dorothy Burt. 

Earlier this term in October, I had the privilege of joining the team in Auckland for the Principal's Wananga. This was what we were all waiting for as it was here we would be sharing our inquiry.

Everything we had learnt and processed had to be honed and refined into 6 minutes or twenty 20second slides.

Here is the presentation recorded as presented at the conference:

Slide Link

Please feel free to comment or request any further information. 

I would love to receive feedback and comments from you! 

Nga mihi nui, 

Alethea

Learning Through Listening

Do your students look at you blankly?
Do they speak to you during group sessions and not to each other?
Are they in tune with what you say and don't take each other's ideas seriously? 

These are some of the challenges that I believed needed addressing in the classroom and wanted to create something that would teach children how to engage with each others ideas.

What skills do we expect children to do naturally that could be explicitly taught?

I have created a site that breaks down the individual skills to listening and engagement. This includes the resources and assessments I am developing along with some modelling videos.

You can access the site through the link below:

Learning Through Listening

I would very much appreciate your feedback using the link found at the bottom of each page as I am still developing this resource and would like to make it as helpful and applicable to your classrooms as possible.

Nga mihi nui!

Next Steps

Kia ora readers and colleagues,

I am writing to you from the seat of AirNZ A320 happily masked up and brain buzzing with next steps for my MIT 2020 project. 

I was happy enough to hop on a plane for the first time since our Level 4 lockdown and head over to Auckland for an elongated weekend. 

  

Our small collection of teachers which had been restricted to meeting via google since the beginning of the year were delighted to reunite on the Auckland waterfront. We enjoyed a day of sharing and feedback along with wonderful hospitality from the team at KPMG.

This was just the incentive and reboost that I needed and am very grateful for the ideas and feedback shared by the team.

Learning Through Listening: A Website for Teachers

So I have some next steps which I am currently working through to achieve.:

Create Google Forms for Assessment and Feedback

Sonali shared an assessment which she had transferred into google form. This was a brilliant idea from a teacher perspective because it would be easy to replicate. I or any other teacher could fill it in quite simply once it was created. This could also be easily duplicated and adapted as a student self- assessment. So I am currently creating two google forms using the criteria from the orginal rubric which I designed earlier.

I have also created a feedback form for the site which is accessible at the bottom of each page of the site and can be filled in here.

Set up Google Analytics and Video Group Sessions

I have yet to set up google analytics on the site and video group sessions during reading and maths. These are the current top priorities.

Get the Site out there!

The second major priorty is to promote the site and get it out to teachers in order to gain feedback and to see if it is something that others find useful.

Data and Evidence

Data will be very important for backing this idea. Once the forms are created I need to get the students to self assess. I will also need to scale them on the rubric and compare the data to term 2s data from this year. Data from listening PATs is unlikely to be available until term 4.

 

Keep your eyes peeled for the next post promoting the new site! It may even pop up on your facebook feed! I look forward to your comments and feedback! 

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea

MIT2020: Mission in the Making

What a mission.

Lately, I have been thinking about the missions I have been tasked with or tasked myself with. And missions that others have been tasked with too.

On the weekend, my partner, his brother and I tasked ourselves with the mission of tackling a ridge for the sunrise, up a valley on the West Coast of the South Island.

There are so many parts to a mission, from waking up early, braving pre-dawn swamp darkness, to navigating rain slicked boulder fields and false summits.

I think about Dorothy Burt, the instigator to this MIT journey and her mission to achieve equity for students through connection, devices and ubiquitous learning.

And I think about the mission I chose: to teach listening. 

Kia ora and welcome to my blog where I am journeying through the design process to develop a project on a challenge based idea.  I am one of a team of MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog.

It's great to have you here!

Since the last post, my next steps were to record some student voice, create video models of each listening skill ( broken down) and pull all this information together onto a site for teachers to access.

I was grateful for two days of release time to connect with a great bunch of students who gave of their time and energy to help record and share their ideas.

This was the first time I had deliberately recorded students for a teaching video.

It was a pleasure to work with them and to figure out what it really was that I wanted to capture.

Some of the learning gleaned:

• Multiple camera angles make a difference.
• Many takes are required.
• Scripting is important.
• Always plan for more time than required.

This is what I have managed to create so far:

These are the skills that the children and I put together. 

What I need to accomplish for my next steps:

First I need to gather evidence for Analysing and Identifying behaviours.

I plan to video reading sessions and maths session. Then choose a target group of children, take a sample of each video and analyse it to identify when positive listening behaviours occurs. This should complete

the resource in the following section by providing a rubric and data to show trends and hopefully, improvement.

What I need now is to organise my time and prioritise teaching these skills specifically.

I look forward to having some data to share with you soon.

Prototyping #1

Hola y comostas!

Thank you for popping in and being here with me today!
For this post I need you! Yes, you my dear reader...

In the past months I have been working through a project with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom. 

This first starts with data. 

To begin my prototype and understand the data I needed to gather I started to break down what listening looked like for me. What had I seen others do? What did people do when they showed they were listening? What did the research have to say?

I categorised the physical 'symptoms' of listening into three categories, physical, verbal and social and emotional.

When considering the minute interactions of a listener and a speaker, I observed that the listener.  If the listener was fully engaged in the idea presented by the speaker, he/she would initiate a continued interaction.

This lead to grouping all the symptoms into responses ( of acknowledgement) and responses that involved an initiation of extending an idea or conversation further.

Here are the 'symptoms' which I gleaned:

Responses of Acknowledgement

Physical

• Looks at person who is speaking.

• Follows different speakers with eyes.

• Facial response present.

• Leans forward or moves to attend.

Verbal

• Responds with talking stems

• Repeats ideas spoken by someone else

• Asks for clarification

• Extends someones idea

• Questions someones idea

Responses with Initiation

Physical

• Uses facial expression to indicate a response or statement.

• Uses a hand or body motion to indicate an idea.

• Follows different speakers and waits for a pause before motioning to speak.

• Pauses after presenting an idea in order for others to respond.

• Pauses when other speakers initiate simultaneously.

• Uses body language or manners to encourage others to speak first.

• Notices when others initiate a response or initiation with body language.

Verbal

• Responds to questions with a full sentence answers.

• Uses talking stems to present an idea or response to a question.

• Speaks in full sentences presenting one idea at a time.

• Speaks to the group.

• Responds to a current idea before presenting a new idea.

• Extends own and others ideas with justification.

• Invites others to respond to the idea they have presented.

Social and Emotional

• Shows patience, includes and recognises those who haven't presented and makes space for them to participate.

The rubric prototype is HERE and is the basis on which I hope to gather data along with using the FORM from the previous post to gather student and teacher voice.

And yes, this is where you come in!
Your experiences and understanding are valuable. Are these symptoms correct? Is this what you notice in conversations? Is this a fair assessment of behaviours? If you were using this as a teacher, colleague or researcher, what would you question or change?

I look forward to your feedback and the exciting challenge of adapting this prototype to your responses.

I hope to see you here again soon!