Fifteen days later!

I did have grand designs for blogging weekly, possibly even twice weekly - but it turns out that things get prioritised, and this being an extra bonus activity for me personally (as opposed to something I have to check off for others) has taken a tumble to the bottom of the pile.

Source

It isn't quite so bad that I'm crying out for help -  but it has taken a good week of prioritising and self-managing to ensure that all the commitments I've made are honoured.  I started thinking about our students - they too have life commitments, family commitments, seniors often also have work commitments.  Into that mix we add deadlines, assessments schedules and generally scary concepts such as exams.

This week I am going to stop and get my students to do some self-reflection and some planning.   We aim to teach the competencies of self-management; but if as an adult it is easy to get snowed under how much more as a young teen.  We're going to add in a few more checkpoints for our work and just make sure that everyone who needs extra support is getting it.

Note taking

Note taking is a skill that is starting to be required more and more.  In both my senior classes this term, the skills of skimming and scanning for information are something we are learning.  The students are working on a personal research project, which will be linked to a speech in front of their peers.  I too, am having to develop my skimming and scanning as I am taking part in a PD research project run by Otago University.  

The project is looking at ideas and concepts surrounding future focused literacy.  This week we were exploring the way students are both 'text users' and 'text analysts.'  It has been great for me to be able to step back into 'student' mode as the delivery method has required me to step up and take notes to ensure I can refer back to them when contributing to the written work.

Some of my notes from my PD #edsketch15

I have enjoyed playing around with some different note taking strategies, sketching, arrows, tables and just plain key words.  It has been a real eye-opener to remember exactly how much concentration it takes to listen and take notes for a length of time.  I need to remember this with my own students - limit the up-front talk time.  I need to investigate the concept of 'flipped classroom' more - but that also makes me wonder, if they students weren't actively engaging/notetaking - would it be useful? Would I end up with half a class who have and half a class of 'have not had time.'?

Board Work

Often as teacher's we put up the Lesson Objective for the day.  These lesson objectives may come in the form of "Today I will be able to ..." or "Today we will learn about ... " or "I can ... "  I am going to try a different system after seeing a photo on Twitter.  We often put them up on the left or right hand side of the  board and get students to copy them into their notes or exercise books.  The goal of this is to make sure we and the students know what the purpose of the lesson is, the reason we are doing things and for them to have a reference point for achievement for that particular day or lesson.

One of my students painted the SOLO images (second image) during our Burger activity (first image) and they were too large for the burger.  Not wanting to waste them, I thought they would be the perfect fit for my board and my goal to change the way I use learning intentions.

Burger Activity - breaking down our knowledge of essays/language techniques/word classes and SOLO - love our school, we were nearly out of time, so I asked the next teacher if I could keep them as I had a non-contact ... no problems!!!

SOLO board - will aim to scaffold learning activities through this.  I will still have some more standard learning intentions that link specifically to curriculum context where applicable.

The SOLO learning intention board is a work in progress for me.  I will use it where I can, and hopefully students will find it clear to see what to aim for and for their own self-assessment of their learning.  Today it was as simple as the Extended Abstract image had "Apply and Understand Activities" beside it, so students could aim to get to those activities on their Google Doc, and if they could complete those (with showed understanding through individual conferences with me) then they knew they were at that level.  

It's all about learning - and I'm still excited I get to learn alongside my class!

May Challenge

I'm not a huge sketch person, but am going to take up the "Sketch a Day in May" challenge from Steve Mouldey.  If I'm honest, it won't be every day (I'm already a day late) and it will be a mix of what I own sketches and the sort of sketching is happening in my classroom.

I am lucky that I have a couple of whiteboard tables in my room.  These arrived in week 4 Term One, and it took about six weeks before the novelty for some of drawing crazy body parts the minute they had a pen to wear off.  It has been great to see that some students will now grab a whiteboard pen if they are sitting there and want to  brainstorm.

The sketch on the left was from a student who had read through an article and did this as her interpretation of the instructions I had given (skim/scan/notes)  I was so excited!  It was amazing to see that she was putting down the ideas in a way that  best suited her and seeing where they led.  The image on the right was from a whole class activity where they had written down their own ideas,  ideas from the article and some facts/opinions they knew that related to our topic.  We then the ideas down around our discussion topic and each student explained their hexagon(s) to the class.  

I am loving using the hexagon template.  This is based on Pam Hook's SOLO work and I am currently using it for note taking and idea gathering.  While I might not use it perfectly or in the way intended perfectly yet, it is proving a great thing to have.  For my slower and more kinaesthetic learners, it is something they can cut out and is proving to keep them focused for that bit longer.  I look forward to using this more in this research/report unit.