Wednesday 26 October 2016

Parent Engagement Teacher Inquiry using Class Dojo

This year I worked collaboratively on my Teaching Inquiry for 2016 with another teacher, and we were also accepted to follow this inquiry under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education's Digital Era Learning Teaching & Assessment (DELTA) Programme - Grassroots Ideas, which has a focus on 'Investigating and sharing ideas to help schools around New Zealand to effectively use digital technologies for teaching and learning.'

Last year, we identified parent engagement in student learning (particularly digital based learning) as a concern that needed to be addressed. We wanted to target three areas of parent engagement that are an integral part of student learning: (Engagement in the school - knowing what is happening and being involved, engagement in the class of their child/children, and engagement in their child's learning).

Our Inquiry will focused on the use of the app Class Dojo to connect with parents and whānau. We will focused specifically on the use of Class Story (a quick and easy to use and access page), where 'snack bite' posts with or without pictures are sent instantly to invited members. We also investigated the use of another Class Dojo feature; Messaging, to send notices, general information and individualised information whenever necessary. 
Our inquiry was a huge success with 94% of whānau accessing Class Dojo at least once a week. Parents felt they were more engaged with the class learning and able to have focused discussions with their child about their learning, as parents knew what was happening in class. As teachers we felt our relationships with parents were more solid with almost no parent issues; we believe this is because parents felt they had a more personal connection with us.


Our inquiry is available to view on our website: http://otongagrassrootsproject.weebly.com

Now in Term 4 we are sharing this initiative with our staff, with the vision that they will begin to use it themselves to build parent engagement in their classrooms. In order to spread the benefit of our inquiry into our community of schools, we will share our inquiry with other educators at various local events. I have already started this at Educamp Rotovegus 2016. See our staff presentation below.

If you have had any experiences that would add to our learning, I would welcome your thoughts.

Saturday 22 October 2016

Collaborative Teachers

This year I have been collaborating with Jemma, the teacher next door. I have planned and taught collaboratively with two other teachers at a previous school. You can read my blog from then entitled: Collaborative Teaching; my research, experiences and reflections

Jemma and I begun at the end of term 4, 2015 planning a shared topic on Vikings for 2016. We enjoyed working together and decided to continue to work together for the rest of the year. We met once a week spending lunchtime and after school for the rest of the year. I felt confident that we both had the same work ethic, but had separate strengths from which both would benefit and grow.

Jemma based her 2016 Teacher Inquiry on our collaboration and how if affected her students learning. With permission I have included a few of her reflections below that show how she felt about our collaboration.
Reflection: I am feeling totally inspired by today’s meeting with SHAUN. It is clear just from one meeting that we have a common agenda this year. I am exciting to take all my planning from paper to online, where it can be shared and worked on at any time.

Reflection: I cannot believe I have been planning on paper for so long. All the hyperlinks make so much sense. I feel a sense of relief knowing that I can’t loose anything and that it is all one click away. The benefits of working collaboratively are already clear. I am learning how to use ICT to make my planning more efficient and better organised. SHAUN has been amazing at showing me how to use Wiki and I think my structured thinking around planning has helped us to organise our term ahead.

Reflection: I couldn't believe how quickly we managed to get all the resources we needed for our students organised. When I do this task on my own I can spend a whole day hunting around. It literally took ¼ of the time.

Reflection: I have admired SHAUN and his involvement in the online teaching community. Taking inspiration from him I discovered Chapter Chat this year an online community that read the same book to their students all throughout New Zealand and then once a week answer questions and share tasks on Twitter. This community has changed the way in which SHAUN and I do shared book and has really showcased how learning can be done online to our students and to ourselves.Reflection: We also had a moment in term 2 when we were planning and unfortunately SHAUN was unwell, but because our “online community” was so well established we were able to continue planning for term 3 without being face to face. We took full advantage of google and were communicating with one another via messages as we planned. It was a real ah ha moment in the way in which technology can give teachers many advantages.


Student Voice 

“I think it is cool because it is like having Two teacher” 

“Because we get to work with different people other than our class”
“Because I don't like how noisy they are and I don't know them that well”

Observation

Observer: Lynne                      Date:22.09.16
Relevant goals: To get feedback on our collaborative planning practise
Focus students: Reflection on student needs and how we will cater for this.
Teaching focus: LTP, weekly planning and assessment

Jemma and SHAUN have been working collaboratively for this year as a way of trying to manage large classes and increasing workloads of planning, assessment, evaluation and digital learning. They were concerned that the time they were spending planning and organising on their own single cell classes was having an adverse effect on their actual teaching time and therefore wondered if ‘sharing the load’ through collaboration would enable them to work smarter whilst also giving their students the teacher time they need.

I have enjoyed watching the growth in their collaborative effort. They interact well and constantly share ideas. They meet regularly to plan and review their lessons. Through working together and sharing they have become more aware of the strengths they have as teachers and this has had positive spin-offs for their classes. For example; the Te Reo programme is running very well, the ICT progression in the students is noticeable and the coverage of the future focus themes is well developed.

This collaborative approach has been discussed with me on a regular basis and as a result has led to more collaboration between Sonja and myself.

Working with Jemma has improved my confidence in my planning, increased my lesson engagement, deepen the focus and range of learning for students, gave me a greater understanding of my students needs and the curriculum, lowered stress because two heads and four hands are better than . . .  However know we had such good success for ourselves and our students because we have a good relationship, we communicate openly, we respect each other and we know that we both put in equal effort.


Wednesday 12 October 2016

Ulearn 2016


uLearn16 took place in my hometown at Rotorua’s Energy Events Centre on 5 -7 October 2016. uLearn is an annual conference for educators in New Zealand that provides inspiration and professional development through three days of keynote speakers and breakout workshops. The conference also provides an ideal opportunity to network and connect with educational learners, to share ideas and grown as teachers.

Presenter: Jacqui Sharp @sharpjacqui
Jacqui took us through her own teaching style; from resources, planning and assessment, with a focus on student agency.

Key idea: Maths Student Agency = multiple learning opportunities for all learner types who can self-manage their learning and goals + MANY focused resources:

Planning game design with students using narrative structure as a scaffold.  Game design is a good collaborative project that can be used to allow students create something based on their own knowledge and research. It is easy to integrate this across the curriculum and have some fun.

Key idea: games and storytelling are engaging and allowing students to design their own games within this scaffolded structure can build collaboration and student agency.


Coding in the classroom with Swift
Swift is the OS programing language for coding apps. Apple have create Swift Playground to teach this language. However Swift Playground only works on iPads and Macs. Although an exciting coding workshop, I don’t believe it’s right for primary age. Better choices would be Scratch and HTML coding.

Key idea: anyone can learn to code apps.


This is a card game using teams who have to put together cards with clues and guess who or what it represents, then trade cards with other teams: basically a grouping game. However the card clues were difficult even for us, perhaps if we used the framework to create cards based on curriculum areas, but teamwork and trading would have to be scaffolded and taught. Seems very time consuming for little reward.

Key idea: a grouping game.


The concept is that teams must find clues to break into a locked box to solve a puzzle or mystery. Clues can be in almost any form, but the locks provide some interesting math problem solving.

Key idea: a collaborative puzzle challenge encourages communication and critical thinking; plus it’s fun.


Overall it was a fun learning and networking experience that has inspired me once again. Lastly a huge thank you to Otonga Primary School for encouraging and supporting teachers to extend their learning at @ulearn16.