Online Teaching and Learning #5: Week 4, Term 2: 9AK Project Based Group work online

Today I wanted to get my year 9's into their project groups.  I wanted them to try and remember some of the capabilities they'd learnt when they were fully engaged in the groups during term one.  I knew it would be a challenge as it would mean having 5 different hangouts for the 5 different groups and I could see that trying to get to each group could be hard. 

Preparation:

I created a google hangout for each group on my calendar.  I just put a two-hour block in it just to keep it consistent even though they would not be on for the entire time.

I then shared a 'Project Groups checklist' that had each of the hangout links on them.  

I knew it would be messy to send the kids individual calendar links and for me, it would be easy to pop into each group when the hangouts were next to each other.    

Each student had editing rights and their task was to go into their group hangouts, collaborate and discuss the questions and come up with a common answer that they'd all agreed on.  As soon as I'd sent out the document, I joined each of the hangouts but kept my mike off until I asked the group a question.  I began the lesson in the main group giving the instructions class.

Group Hangouts:

This is what my computer screen looked like with my main google hangout open plus 5 smaller group hangouts.  There was one hangout with 3 students in it and the other four hangouts had 4 students in each.  

Four of the five groups used the chat feature and one group, Island Skittles, discussed their tasks out loud.  I went into their hangout and asked them if I could record their discussions to help me understand how they collaborated. 

My Observations:

One of the things that I noticed is that if a group was involved in discussions where they're mikes were on, it would interrupt another group if I was visiting their hangout and I wanted to verbally check in on them and I needed to turn my mike on as well.  So I have figure that one out. 

Another thing I noticed is when I did pop into a hangout, students were chatting like they were talking to each face to face.  Team Poly had students with their camera's on and they seemed to be enjoying the interactions in the smaller groups.

Student voice:  

I gave the students 20 minutes in their group hangouts before asking them to return back to the main group.  I then asked them for chat feedback on whether they liked being in the smaller groups and most said yes.  I sent them a short survey with just 2 questions on it to gage whether being in the smaller groups was a good way to work and why.

80% of students said they found it was a good way to work and when asked why, some of their responses were as follows:

Reflections:

I definitely want to have the students work in their groups and perhaps think about presenting to each other what they’d learnt.  On our next lesson, I will explain to the students the results of their survey and have them think about how we can utilise the fact that they enjoy the smaller hangout groups better.  

Online Teaching and Learning #4: Week 3, Term 2: Keeping up with the K.C's

This week we moved into lockdown 3.  We had a number of staff return to school and take care of the few students who went back.  Although it was an anxious time, our SLT made sure that every health and safety measure were taken to ensure that all were safe when they went in.  I continued to work from home and help take care of my grandkids.

After the long weekend we were right back into it.  A focus for my year 9’s has been looking at how they can learn and understand the key competencies.  In preparation for their learning, our A.K (Akomanga Kaihanga) team of dedicated staff have been working on ways to teach the K.C’s which could eventually be applied across curriculum areas.  On Wednesday, we took our first combined lesson with Kirsty Dowding from the M.O.E.  

The lesson: 

We started by sharing a video called ‘Student Entrepreneurs are Empowered to Change their Community’.  It was about a group of students involved in projects within their community.  It went through the planning and processing stage all the way to presenting and evaluating.  The next step was to ask the kids what capabilities they saw on the video.  Their brainstorm started slow but picked up momentum when they heard each other sharing.

We then asked them they’d to think about and share capabilities they'd seen or used whilst in their project groups during term 1. I had created a snippet video to share with them to help them remember here.  We then asked the students to define capabilities then share the kinds of capabilities they saw in the video.  Kirsty described that groups of connected capabilities were called competencies.  Students then attempted to put capabilities under the relevant competencies.

Reflection:

For the 15 students who attended, the lesson was a good way to introduce the language of the competencies through relating them to the skills and capabilities students had learnt.  I enjoyed the way that Kirsty was able to scaffold the learning and allowed the kids the opportunity

TAI2020 WFRC #4: Collecting evidence and data

Inquiry task #4: 

My task is to begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidencexpert observations.

DATA: I have looked and attempted to analyse PAT and e-asttle writing data to see what the gaps and strengths were of the learners in the class.  This will help me identifying who the students and what strategies I need to support their learning.

VIDEO evidence of groups collaborating: Before the lockdown, I had gathered lots of video observations and made teacher observations of students as they planned and worked in their project groups.

As I get to the know the students, I am able to identify what capabilities they have and those they lack.  I am also able to link their capabilities to the data I have collected.  

Teacher discussions and observations of the students in our classroom by an expert:  I have had a number of meetings with Dr Jannie about her observations of the dynamics of the class and she has provided me with some good next steps as to where to next with my inquiry.

Still to add to this blogpost are the following pieces of evidence: 

Baseline writing data:  I will be sharing blog posts that the students' have written as an initial writing task as the first time point and will discuss with Dr Jannie how to analyse the information well.

Student voice (survey and focus groups):  I have sent out a survey recently that will provide feedback as to their thoughts of collaborative learning.

Online Teaching and Learning #3a: Week 2, Term 2: Making the new 'normal'

This week has been the first full week of online teaching for our us and looking back, I've found it's been easier and easier to get used.  Going into a hangout has been a joy and when students join in, I get a buzz and feel excited to connect with them.

On Monday, I had my year 9’s.  I decided to have a break from project work until I could sort out how to do group work online properly.  We started with a Kahoot to warm the class up and it was awesome to see one of our mums jump on and give it a go!

Mum joins in and even wins a round or two!

During a double period with my year 12’s I could see that I wasn’t getting the same consistent kids as last week so I decided to record myself going through the internal assessment with the help of the kids who did come to class as a live audience.  It was helpful to have a few kids on so they could let me know if I was going to fast or if there was something they need clarification on.  I could see this being useful in the long run for those kids who weren’t able to get online at it during lockdown.  

Week 2 was a good week to get settled and into some sort of routine. I enjoyed catching up with my department both in our own meetings and in their classes.  It’s nice to know that we are sharing this new journey together.  Bring on week 3!

Online Teaching and Learning #3b: Week 2, Term 2: Lockdown lol

Lockdown makes you do some silly things sometimes.  Just ask my seniors.  Enough said.

Online Teaching and Learning #2: Week 1, Term 2: New term, new learnings

I’ve had a really chilled 2 week holiday and although I have enjoyed the time with my bubble, I was really looking forward to reconnecting with my students.

My First Department meeting

Our holiday was cut a little short when we had a department meeting Easter Tuesday to help us prepare for the term.  After a productive start, I thought it would be cool to record a short fun video for our students from us.  Of course we didn’t take into account turning mikes off and the video lagging and as it was still a new thing to do, we ended up making a classic bloopers video to show our grandkids!

Teaching online highlights

Wednesday the 15th April was our first official day back and I started the day periods 1 & 2 with my 9’s in a double period, 9KMe.  We had 20 students on at one stage which was great.  My non-contact periods 3 & 4 were spent supporting a member of my team in sorting out his calendar issues and then I popped into 4 other classes who were all in a hangout with at least one student.  It was really cool to see my team interacting with their kids.  Period 5, I had year 13’s and 17 students showed up in the hangout which was awesome.  I finished the day checking in on a year 10 class Sos which had about 4 students in it.  We talked about how the'd been whilst on holiday in their bubbles.  They were excited to be talking to their classmates in the hangout.

Thursday saw more meetings and my double year 13’s.  I actually bought a whiteboard before the lockdown and used it to keep our learning goals in view behind me for kids to refer to when needed.  Because the 13's were working independently on a number of different social issues, we decided to stagger when they would attend class to 20 minute slots.  I put it into the chat and allowed students to jump in and out of the hangout when they needed to.  Friday was much the same.  It was a full on week and by the end of it, I was really happy with how much our kids and staff had connected with each other.  I felt really positive and pretty exhausted!

TAI2020 Analysing Data #1: PAT and E-asttle

One of the important tools that I will use to show progress for my year 9 Inquiry group will be an analysis of their PAT reading comprehension data and their e-asttle data.  There are 27 students in the class, 11 male and 15 female.
The results are shown in the graphs below.

On analysis, it shows that in reading, the girls are slightly higher then the boys where as for writing, the boys are at the lower end compared to the girls.  I want to explore more evidence as to why this could be through the other tools I have previously written about.