DFI Day 3 - Media

If you can't travel, why not create a scene and imagine you're there!

Today our focus for the Digital Fluency Intensive was Media. 

When Dorothy was speaking about the 'Create' part of the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy, I was reminded of how important it is to get creative with my planning and provide students with the opportunity to either create with physical materials or with digital technology. In my year 3 and 4 class, my students all use iPads and I want to get better at making use of this technology to make learning more fun.

Today I learnt how to create a 'scene' (seen above) using Google Slides and Remove.bg. I already have experience using Google Slides, however found it useful learning extra tricks and enjoyed practicing how to arrange images on the slide. I am really enjoying learning how to use Remove.bg. I would have never thought of creating an animation on Slides using an image of myself because the thought of getting rid of a background seemed too difficult, but Remove.bg is super easy! 

This term, Pt England School is learning all about the world - my class is specifically learning about famous landmarks. Since my year 3/4 class is using iPads, I am going to work out how to do the above activity on Slides on iPads or adapt it to be done on Explain Everything. Either way, I'm excited for my class to use Remove.bg and create a scene of themselves at landmark that we learn about this week!

Today we also learnt about how to use a YouTube account and how to use Google Drawings. I have had experience using Google Drawings, however it is useful learning more tricks on it so that I can become more confident to create good buttons for my class site. It was also great learning that I can use Remove.bg paired with the shaped cropping tool to create a profile picture on Drawings. 

I will share a students blogpost of their own 'scene' once completed - fingers crossed it is successful!

DFI Day 3 - Google Drawings

Today we have been learning how to use Google Drawings as part of the Media segment of DFI. Here is a profile of myself that I created on Google Draw. I will add this to the 'About Me' pane on my blog.

Day 2 DFI - Workflow

Today was the second day of the Digital Fluency Intensive.
We began by learning more about Manaiakalani Kaupapa and Pedagogy. Dorothy explained to us how digital technology accelerates learning through the acronym RATE (recognise, amplify, turbocharge: effective practice). Recognise - meaning that teachers recognise effective practice and teacher actions promote student learning. Amplify - meaning that technology amplifies teaching and learning opportunities by making it connected, visible, ubiquitous and empowering. Turbocharge - meaning that technology transforms the way we teach and learn by making experiences more creative.

Today I learnt how to organise my Gmail better as well as my tabs. I'm not an overly organised person so this was very useful. I have now pinned a lot of my important tabs and have some useful tab tips up my sleeve to make my workflow smoother. I now have a list of the chrome extensions for tab organisation and will try these out over the week to see which one works best for me.
I also found it useful learning how to use Google Keep more effectively - for example how to use the recording tool and the location tool. The location tool will definitely come in handy as I am a forgetful person! Google Keep will be useful in my own every day life.

The main Google Suite tools that we learnt about today were Google Meet and Calendars. I learnt how to create a Google event or Meet and how to invite students/colleagues to it. I also learnt how to RSVP with a note. We had plenty of hands on time learning how to present our screen on Meet and record the meet whilst discussing a student's blog post. During lockdown, I had Google Meet videos with my class every day so already had practice doing this but it was still useful having more time to play around with it to be 100% confident in case we need to do distance learning again!

Below is a video of today's task:

Day 1 DFI - Core Business

Today was our first day of the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive. We are doing this online using Google Meet over the next 9 weeks.

Today we learned about the origins of the Manaiakalani story and how the use of technology in Manaiakalani schools has benefited our children. I enjoyed learning new the tips and tricks that help us to be more efficient on Google Suites for example keyboard shortcuts, how to pin a tab and how to use Google Groups. These tricks are going to improve my workflow a lot. We were also reminded to organise our Google Drive - which is what I need to do!

Today we spent a lot of time learning how to use Google Docs more efficiently. As I am teaching with iPads this year, I found it a bit tricky at first to think of how to apply what we learnt to my own teaching (I mostly use Explain Everything on the iPads as it is easier for the year 3's to navigate). However I thought that the 'Eyes On Text' activity was a great idea and I am going to adapt it a bit so that it can be used on Explain Everything. This will be an awesome independent reading task to increase mileage and I'm looking forward to starting this with my class. 

We also learnt how to create an infographic using Google Docs. I usually use Google Slides or Canva to create posters as I don't find Google Docs as appealing on the eye when doing this but we learnt some great tips that made them look better than I expected. I especially enjoyed learning how to use remove.bg to remove the background from an image because I've tried other websites and photoshop to do this before but remove.bg was so easy to use. Our facilitators recommended that we create an infographic that we can use in class. My students have been learning a new morning routine and this visual is going to help them a lot. I will stick it to the front door for when they arrive at class in the morning.

My Inquiry for 2020

This year I am teaching in an ILE which we have named 'The Block' alongside two other teachers. We have 76 children in our space.

My inquiry question this year is:

How can play based maths increase maths knowledge and understanding of mathematical concepts?

Here are some of the strategies that I will try:

-DMIC style lessons with half the class at a time, working in groups with materials like toys and fun maths resources. I will question them and we will have discussions which will give them time to show their thinking by moving materials and talking about them.
-Free play with maths games like snakes and ladders, dice games, cards, mathematical card games.
-Planned play with lego, toys etc in small groups to teach strategy and concepts - eg multiplication ‘show me 5 groups of dinosaurs… how many in each group?’
-I want to get creative and make new maths games so that I have a large range of resources.

I am excited to see what happens when I teach children how to use materials when solving problems and my goal for them by the end of 2020 is that they can get to the point where they will know when to use materials and where to get them from without my prompting.

I am also excited to use games and create a lot of fun, hands on resources for my class to use this year. I believe that a lot of learning happens when playing games and I haven't done enough of this in previous years! As amazing as digital technology is, I believe hands on learning activities/games are also crucial for children to engage in maths.

Maths has already been such a positive experience for the children and I'm having a lot more fun teaching it this way! They have been having a lot of fun and haven't realised that they are actually learning through the games. They're playing games that relate to the area of learning that I am currently teaching them as well as games that give them time to practice basic maths knowledge like bonds to 10 and counting on. I will keep creating new games and resources as the year goes on.

It has been awesome to hear the conversations and see how children are helping each other in their learning. They have been playing games in mixed ability grouping and naturally those that are challenged are being helped by their friends! It's also great to hear them practice counting aloud whist playing together and learn how to use materials to problem solve.


Here are some photos of what we have been doing so far.

Experiencing Success!

A quick recap on what we have been working on..

This year, my goal has been to lift the achievement in comprehension during reading. Last term, I realised that having a focus on vocabulary was the solution. After reading testing earlier this year, I noticed a pattern in my focus group's results. All 8 students failed comprehension because they could not understand the vocabulary in the text.

Therefore, this term we worked extremely hard on vocabulary! The students in my focus group worked on follow up tasks that were vocabulary rich, we did a huge focus on synonyms and had in depth discussions during reading about the new vocab in the stories. We worked on strategies for solving unfamiliar vocabulary as well. I stuck new vocab from our stories on the windows and hung colourful synonyms in places where my focus group could refer back to them at any time. I also did a big push on the use of new and exciting vocabulary during writing time for my focus group.

The Success!

At the end of this term, I did running records on my focus group. It was a success! As you can see in the table, anywhere that is coloured green, shows improvement (whether that be improvement in decoding or comprehension). 6/8 of the focus group made an improvement in comprehension and 4/8 of the group passed the test. One student actually passed comprehension but didn't pass the test as she is working on decoding strategies.

Where to next?

The problem now is retaining the vocabulary. I keep reminding myself that 'if you don't use it, you lose it'. I've noticed that my students are quickly forgetting the new vocabulary that they have been learning. My question now is, how can they retain it? 

My other challenge is, there are 2 students in the focus group that made no improvement in their comprehension between the May and September running records. They both really struggle to understand the stories that they are reading. I will be working very hard with these two this term in the hopes of helping them to make progress in their reading by the end of the year.

New data = A new focus group and a new focus question

As seen in the slide deck above, I have recently completed reading testing with my class. Upon analysing data, I realised that I needed to change my inquiry focus as well as my focus group. The paragraph in the slide deck explains the reason behind these changes.

My new question for this term is 'how do I lift achievement in comprehension for students reading above ten years?'

During our collaborative inquiry meeting, my inquiry group gave me some suggestions. A couple of people said that I should focus on teaching my Hulk and Wonderwoman reading groups new vocabulary. The more vocabulary that students have, the more that they will understand difficult texts. I looked at the reading tests again, and I saw that the comprehension questions that students struggled with were mostly the ones that included difficult vocabulary. So, this term, I will be focussing on gifting and discussing new vocabulary with these two groups.