I set up a series of challenges that increased in difficulty from simply moving a pen holding turtle forward to creating a smiley face on a blue background. See the challenges below.
Everyone was focussed and worked hard on their challenges.
Tuesday 6 August 2019
Pencil Code teacher PD
Coding and the learning of other digital and online skills have recently been formalised in the New Zealand curriculum. I facilitated an in-house coding/machine thinking professional development session using pencilcode.net.
I set up a series of challenges that increased in difficulty from simply moving a pen holding turtle forward to creating a smiley face on a blue background. See the challenges below.
Everyone was focussed and worked hard on their challenges.
I set up a series of challenges that increased in difficulty from simply moving a pen holding turtle forward to creating a smiley face on a blue background. See the challenges below.
Everyone was focussed and worked hard on their challenges.
Wednesday 5 June 2019
Vocabulary and non-fiction texts
As a part of trying to increase reading comprehension, I am exposing my students to more non-fiction texts and explicitly teaching the vocabulary from those texts.
Tuesday 4 June 2019
Monday 3 June 2019
Unpacking Tapasa #1
Reposted with permission from Robyn Anderson.
Unpacking Tapasa #1
Last night our staff worked with Jeremiah Tauti to unpack the aims of the Tapasa Cultural Competencies Framework. Unpacking a document together means we gain a shared understanding as we implement the best practise suggestions. Enhancing teacher perspectives so that students of all cultures feel recognised and valued in their learning environment will help us to avoid the cultural dissonance many Pasifika students may have experienced, regardless of where they are in their learning journey. Strengthening connections with families through Talanoa will help us to be culturally responsive practitioners.
Our homework is to reflect on our own understandings of the following questions
1. How does your classroom reflect your student body?
2. How do you involve family?
3. How do you create space for difficult conversations about current events and culture?
4 . How do you help students develop a positive cultural identity?
5. Where are the gaps in my knowledge and practise in terms of cultural responsiveness?
Our homework is to reflect on our own understandings of the following questions
1. How does your classroom reflect your student body?
2. How do you involve family?
3. How do you create space for difficult conversations about current events and culture?
4 . How do you help students develop a positive cultural identity?
5. Where are the gaps in my knowledge and practise in terms of cultural responsiveness?
Saturday 1 June 2019
Learning vs Retention
This is just a not-yet-investigated observation. Throughout my teacher training and additional post graduate study, the focus was always on learning. How do we get kids to learn more efficiently? Out of this research, education researchers have learned many ways on how to possibly increase the uptake of knowledge and skill. I say "possible" because ultimately any study that is limited to not allowing a negative control, as many education studies are (it is unethical to withhold a possible boon to one group of people), is flawed.
One of the issues I have with the children at my current school is that while they learn well enough, they don't retain anything beyond the day, week, or fortnight from learning. One of the core understandings from neuroscience is that repetition strengthens newly formed pathways, leading to long term memorisation. So have education researchers been so focussed on trying to learn new things faster that they've neglected to look into the retention of information?
When I first heard that homework had been deemed an ineffective learning tool during teacher training, alarm bells went off in my head. They still do when people say this. I understand that "homework" consisting of learning new academic ideas without the teacher or an expert present is a poor way to learn new things. However if no one did homework, then when are children supposed to practise the skills and knowledge they've learned to become proficient at the new skill? I also hear a lot about the adults of tomorrow needing to be more creative. Where is the working memory to be creative going to come from if it's being used to handle the cognitive load from an unpractised skill?
It seems to me that many education researchers and teachers are aiming for the stars and forgetting that a tried and tested rocket is needed to get out there first.
One of the issues I have with the children at my current school is that while they learn well enough, they don't retain anything beyond the day, week, or fortnight from learning. One of the core understandings from neuroscience is that repetition strengthens newly formed pathways, leading to long term memorisation. So have education researchers been so focussed on trying to learn new things faster that they've neglected to look into the retention of information?
When I first heard that homework had been deemed an ineffective learning tool during teacher training, alarm bells went off in my head. They still do when people say this. I understand that "homework" consisting of learning new academic ideas without the teacher or an expert present is a poor way to learn new things. However if no one did homework, then when are children supposed to practise the skills and knowledge they've learned to become proficient at the new skill? I also hear a lot about the adults of tomorrow needing to be more creative. Where is the working memory to be creative going to come from if it's being used to handle the cognitive load from an unpractised skill?
It seems to me that many education researchers and teachers are aiming for the stars and forgetting that a tried and tested rocket is needed to get out there first.
Back to phonics for me
Phonics, decoding, and spelling; a brief overview of our programme being instituted in the class.
Place Value rears its ugly head again.
See this blog post on me having to teach Place Value again, this time successfully.
Saturday 6 April 2019
Difficult kids/kids with difficulties
I managed to catch an actual disorder that was preventing a student from reading properly. I got some help from Robyn Anderson, who has much greater knowledge than I, and she managed to find an initial problem and quick fix. From here I go to our SENCO (Special Education Needs Co ordinator) to try and get some more appropriate support for him.
This year we had a new boy (pseudonym, Bruce Wayne) join our school and class. Bruce came with low capabilities in literacy and numeracy. As the term progressed, Mr Wayne presented with common behaviours that cause problems in the class. There were no records of extra learning needs from his previous school.
During running records, I decided to ask whether the letters on the page seem to jump and move around as I'd noticed Bruce blinking and changing his eye position a lot during reading. He said there were issues, so I got help from Robyn. Robyn figured out that Mr Wayne has a much easier time reading with a green overlay. Bruce's reaction to being able to read letters and words that stayed still was great, and I hope can take advantage of this new development.
Read about Irlen Syndrome here. I'm not sure if it is Irlen Syndrome, but the initial behaviours and checks point towards it.
This year we had a new boy (pseudonym, Bruce Wayne) join our school and class. Bruce came with low capabilities in literacy and numeracy. As the term progressed, Mr Wayne presented with common behaviours that cause problems in the class. There were no records of extra learning needs from his previous school.
During running records, I decided to ask whether the letters on the page seem to jump and move around as I'd noticed Bruce blinking and changing his eye position a lot during reading. He said there were issues, so I got help from Robyn. Robyn figured out that Mr Wayne has a much easier time reading with a green overlay. Bruce's reaction to being able to read letters and words that stayed still was great, and I hope can take advantage of this new development.
Read about Irlen Syndrome here. I'm not sure if it is Irlen Syndrome, but the initial behaviours and checks point towards it.
Teacher Inquiry 2019: Maths ability and Reading comprehension; what's the link?
Nearing the end of Term 1 for 2019, I finally have some time to blog about my teacher inquiry for 2019. This year, Grant and I have decided to do a joint inquiry into poor maths performance and reading comprehension; more on this below. Since we are doing a joint inquiry, most of the posts for this inquiry will be posted on a separate blog with a feed to those posts underneath the header of The Wong Teacher.
The inquiry Grant and I are looking into comes from noticing that some of our students with poor performance in maths have skills and knowledge that are not presented in the standardised tests to evaluate mathematical understanding. There are other factors that contributed to deciding to look into the effects of reading comprehension on maths ability as well. Read about these and further posts to do with the inquiry on the LS1 Teacher Inquiry blog.
The inquiry Grant and I are looking into comes from noticing that some of our students with poor performance in maths have skills and knowledge that are not presented in the standardised tests to evaluate mathematical understanding. There are other factors that contributed to deciding to look into the effects of reading comprehension on maths ability as well. Read about these and further posts to do with the inquiry on the LS1 Teacher Inquiry blog.
Tuesday 5 February 2019
Class learning sites
Happy New Year.
Winding up into 2019, I have put together a new website for this year's class. It is a new look and different way of thinking for a class site from what I have done in the past. Removing or ignoring the header section of a website in favour of a large icon or linked image has allowed me to reduce clutter on the landing page while keeping it functional. What follows is how I came to that realisation.
One of the aspects learning websites need to consider is how quickly children can access their learning tasks and/or the information they need. Back in 2014, when I was part of the first Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA), a "3 click site" was suggested as a rule of thumb. This means a site that takes three clicks from the landing page to any piece of information that is needed. The reason for this being that the longer it takes for people to get the information they need, the less likely they are to engage with it... to make a long story short. An example might be if a child needed to do reading, they might start at the landing page, click on a reading button, click on their group button, then click on the link for the week's work.
I have always tried to reduce the number of steps for anyone to get to the information they need while keeping with trends in website design...or at least the trends that work with children's thought processes. In 2018 I developed a "1 click site", thanks to advances in Google Sites. I was able to quickly make a clone for my 2019 site. It wasn't till Robyn Anderson asked for help developing her comic theme idea for a class site (splash below) that I realised I wasn't happy with my own site.
Winding up into 2019, I have put together a new website for this year's class. It is a new look and different way of thinking for a class site from what I have done in the past. Removing or ignoring the header section of a website in favour of a large icon or linked image has allowed me to reduce clutter on the landing page while keeping it functional. What follows is how I came to that realisation.
One of the aspects learning websites need to consider is how quickly children can access their learning tasks and/or the information they need. Back in 2014, when I was part of the first Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA), a "3 click site" was suggested as a rule of thumb. This means a site that takes three clicks from the landing page to any piece of information that is needed. The reason for this being that the longer it takes for people to get the information they need, the less likely they are to engage with it... to make a long story short. An example might be if a child needed to do reading, they might start at the landing page, click on a reading button, click on their group button, then click on the link for the week's work.
I have always tried to reduce the number of steps for anyone to get to the information they need while keeping with trends in website design...or at least the trends that work with children's thought processes. In 2018 I developed a "1 click site", thanks to advances in Google Sites. I was able to quickly make a clone for my 2019 site. It wasn't till Robyn Anderson asked for help developing her comic theme idea for a class site (splash below) that I realised I wasn't happy with my own site.
Robyn's site combines the landing page splash with the menu system to cut down the scrolling caused by a site header. Another colleague asked to hep create her website for which I developed an icon to represent her class. The icon's shape allowed me to remove the header from her site as well, which lead me to how to make a landing page I was happy with.
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