Graduations - MDTA and PRT

November and December have been busy months with loads of deadlines looming for both study and school assessment however it was great to stop and celebrate some of the milestones at the end of this year.

We were fortunate to have our MDTA graduation at the Google HQ in the CBD where we all came together to celebrate.  The support for the group was oozing out of the room and it was great to hear everyones mentors and principals speak highly of our journeys.  While I already considered myself fortunate to be a part of the MDTA, it wasn't until I reflected on the great opportunities I had since joining the programme.  I now feel more confident within my teaching practice and the skills that I have gathered since starting will allow me to continue to grow as a teacher.

What made me more humble about the experience was the support we have had from the start, both Dorothy and Anne have added so much to my kete and I look forward to connecting with me in 2018.  I was also fortunate to have Latai at school with me and this shared experience has allowed me to see all opportunities for collaboration.  What I am most grateful for is the support of my mentor teacher who exemplifies what it means to mentor and has inspired me to become an AUT mentor in 2018.

Today I was also fortunate to have a graduation ceremony at school for the end of my provisional registeration.  Through an administrative error, this meant that Stonefields graciously held a ceremony for myself, Latai and Sammy and looking back, I would have not had it any other way.  To celebrate with the kids meant the world to me!

So while this brings me to the end of my journey as both a MDTA and a PRT, this is not the end of my blog.  I am moving into a new year level in 2018 and intend to continue blogging not only to help me with reflecting but also help me develop further as a writer and connect with others as I move onto the next stage of my teaching practice.  For all those who have supported me so far, thank you very much.

2017 Reflection on my Impact

With the end of the year drawing to a close and assessments finished, I thought it would be timely to reflect on what impact I had this year and how I would use any learning from this year to help form next steps for 2018.

I did some data analysis on the shift of my learners this year. I measured those who had had the expected 12 months gain (i.e. maintaining their National Standard curriculum level between their 2016 and 2017 EOY results.) and those who had accelerated their learning and had 18 month or greater gain (i.e. shifting from Below Standard in 2016 to At Standard in 2017, or shifting from At to Above Standard).

Numeracy:

The majority of the learners that I taught for numeracy maintained their progress and will be moving into next year with a strong foundation for the continuation of their maths knowledge.  Looking at this data, my numeracy practice is something that I want to continue to evolve as I feel that I can improve in this space.  During the middle of this year, I moved away from the digital aspect of my instruction based on feedback from my principal when I went to her to ask for help to see how far I could challenge some of my groups.  Learning became hands on and we did tangible examples using pen and paper during instruction, allowing learners have gain success with new strategies and having these to refer to as they moved through their follow up activities.  This is something that I intend to continue moving into 2018.

Reading:

While this data looks very similar to my numeracy groups, this set shows that I have continued to push learners who are currently at 'Above Standard' for them to maintain this shift.  The reading groups I worked with were all very enthusiastic readers and now all reading at Level 2 of the NZ Curriculum.  I have really enjoyed my time with these learners as they have allowed me to blend other areas of the curriculum into my reading practice.  Using tools like GetEpic! has allowed me not only to offer more opportunities for students to access multimodal texts, but also allowed me to teach skills like research and inquiry which is something that I am going to continue into next year.  

Writing:

This has been my biggest impact and something that I am most proud of as we now have a gang of writers who are enthusiastic about writing and want to continue this journey.  For some learners, this has meant that they have made considerate progress however the attitude they know have for writing is what inspires me the most!  As a writer myself, I need to ensure that I am continuing to build my craft and practice to continue to develop and challenge others to write.  Knowing myself as a writer will allow me to see opportunities to engage with my students and colleagues as well as continue to challenge my mindset as both writer and educator.

So what's next?

I am moving into a new year level in 2018 teaching Years 4/5/6 with three other teachers.  I am excited for this challenge as it not only means that I am moving with some of my learners that I have been teaching this year, but also reconnect with learners that I taught in 2016 who will now be in Year 5.  I am also excited for the opportunity to teach at some different curriculum levels as well as working alongside some other teachers whose practices I am interested to tap into and see what impact we can grow for our 2018 cohort!

Manaiakalani Film Festival 2017

This year's Manaiakalani Film Festival was an absolute blast - it was such a great occasion to take the hub along to see both their entry as well as other schools from around the cluster.

This year I gave the control of the film over to a group of learners who crafted an idea to highlight one of the 'issues' that happens in the playground.  Having a goal and a vision really helped the kids storyboard out the different elements of their narrative and allowed them to direct me as to what types of effects or shots they required.  I was merely the cameraman for the day!

I enjoyed the fact that our vision principles came through in the story without me prompting these and the fact that the stars wanted to ensure that the entire hub were in the film.

Here is 'Thunder' which was proudly presented three times at the film festival by two learners.  Please check out the film on our hub blog and if you get an opportunity, please leave a comment on there for the kids.  They really love to read and respond to these.

Amazing Writers

My inquiry this year has morphed since the last time that I wrote about it.  I was first looking at the connection between both engagement and achievement in writing with the use of non-cognitive skills, last term as I was analysing the data that came from my sample, it was clear that I needed to examine how students were interpreting the role of these skills within the context of their writing.

This realisation brought both joy as non-cognitive skills have become somewhat of a passion of mine to explore within my practice, but also fear as this meant that I would have to rewrite a large portion of my dissertation.  This fear also showed me that I had forgotten about myself as a learner of writing.  This year the academic writing has not come easy to me and it is something that I have had to persevere at and build my confidence in.  I have drawn on the elements of writing that I have been teaching this year - using the conferencing time with my supervisor to discuss openly how I am feeling about my writing, reflecting on feedback and seeing it as a prompt to practice more but most importantly continue to believe in my skills as a writer.

Looking back at where this low opinion of myself of a writer comes from, I can only pinpoint some report comments that stuck with me from when I was a similar age as the kids I now teach.  This is where the passion for developing non-cognitive skills in my students comes from, I do not want to have kids say that they aren't 'good' at something.  I would rather have them reflect on how we can work together to overcome learning that they are finding challenging in the moment and equip them with strategies to help look at problems from different perspectives.

So yesterday I decided to be open with the kids and tell them about an upcoming piece of assessment that was happening this week.  We spoke about who our audience would be for this writing to give them a chance to think about the reason behind this assessment.  Responses I got (unprompted) were like the following:

"So you can see how I am going with my writing."

"So you can talk with me about how I am making progress in my writing."

"So I can see my progress in my writing."

This was a pretty awesome moment to have in Day One, Term Four.  I decided to ask the following question to the group: "How do I show that I am an amazing writer?"  The amazing writer is an in joke with me and the kids as earlier this year, I had over-indexed in using the word amazing to describe progress and the kids picked up on it.  So now it has become the norm to describe ourselves as amazing writers.  The kids rushed to write on these pages and again the responses were amazing for kids who did not enjoy writing in Term One.

All the responses resonated that these kids have become more self aware of their writing abilities and are determined to give any writing challenge a go.  So I am looking forward to reading through their samples this week as they have inspired me to continue developing my craft as a writer to help become a stronger teacher of writing.

Perceptions of Progress

In order to prepare for Term Four, I got learners to do a reflection on how they enjoyed their learning this term as well as ask some other questions to get insight into how they were finding my planning and instruction.  As these learners have been with me for the majority of the year now, I chose to add in a question about had they felt that they had made progress in their learning as I was interested to see what voice came back from them in this regard.  Having used Google Forms to capture this information, I have been able to analyse and graph their responses.

NUMERACY:

All these learners are now moving from Early Stage 5 to Stage 5 so it was great to see from their responses reflect some of the different areas that we were learning about this term.  I chose to explore a more hands of approach with these learners where we problem solved together and share our ideas on a group modelling book which the learners enjoyed judging by this graph.

I also chose to dedicate one of our weekly sessions to building their confidence with strand maths as most of our learning had centred around either number knowledge or strategy.  By making these lessons more hands on, the learners have been able to make progress in areas that historically I have left to the end of the term to go through and they have been able to make connections to other parts of their numeracy learning.  However how did they rate their own progress?

Reading through the responses, the majority of them talk about being able to work through 'harder' or 'bigger' strategies which rings true to how I introduced the bulk of the Stage 5 strategies to the groups.  We would start with Stage 4 or Early Stage 5 strategy first and unpack that before making connections to the Stage 5 strategy.  The one learner who felt that they did not make any progress is one that I have been tracking for confidence and their response reflects this.  What was more awesome to read however was that they wanted to continue their learning and wanted more assistance (a 'workshop') to help them with this.

READING:

We have had a busy term with literacy and these learners have been able to move into more complex texts based on the learning that we had done the previous two terms.  We have also looked at building our inquiry skills with information literacy.  As I have mentioned earlier, this group are very engaged and their reflections about the term mirror my observations:

The two learners that said 'no' are ones that have recently moved to new reading levels and I have been working with them to manage any anxiety over the shift in focus.  

I also asked all the groups about what they thought their reading focus was for this term (please note, it was a bit of a trick question as all answers they could choose from were focuses but I was more interested in seeing how they responded):

Gold 21 and 22 Groups:

Silver 23 and 24 Groups:

Having asked about their focuses for the term, it was great to see how some of these had come into their responses about making progress.

I am currently looking at how learners self-report as part of my dissertation so am aware of any bias that may come from these responses however I am more happy to see that the learners are seeing themselves making progress.

Google Forms are Choice!

I am a big fan of using Google Forms in my practice.  It is a great way to capture voice, check for understanding and gain feedback on lessons.

However when I did my Level 2, I learned about how you can maximise the element of choice in your forms.  Prior to this, I had created forms that took learners through a series of questions from start to finish.  However now I can add sections to a form and have learners go to different parts based on responses that they give.

This has helped me support learners who may struggle with a concept so rather than just have them answer "no" or "I don't know" to a question, I can now take them to a different part of the form where I can ask specific questions to help me gain further understanding of what I might need to assist them in their learning.  I also learned how to add videos to help learners build their knowledge of concepts before answering questions.

I have updated a lot of the current Google Forms that I use with my groups and now really enjoy seeing how learners are making choices and decisions and then justifying these decisions.  Here are some examples of how I have updated these forms.

Reading:

I have been getting the groups to evaluate their texts this year by rating it on a likert scale, however this term I chose to change it up and allow learners the chance to give a more definitive answer which is closely followed by the chance for them to justify their decision based on their response.

Numeracy:

I am revisiting a lot of the Early Stage Five Addition and Subtraction strategies with my groups so have been giving them some activities and videos to help me gauge their understanding before moving onto the Stage Five equivalent strategy.  This helps me to structure the learning based on which learners are feeling about the current learning.

Writing:

Similar with my numeracy groups, I am trying to do some refresher workshops with my writers on how we refine (edit) our writing.  This also gives me the chance to see what learners need assistance with their current skill sets or spot opportunities for future workshops or sessions.

To sum it up, I think my title of the blog post hits home - I do find using Google Forms a key part of my practice and am looking how I can continue to challenge my skills in this area.  Stay tuned for future updates!

Impact Stories 2.0

This morning I, along with the rest of the Stonefields staff, presented our impact stories to each other.  These presentations are an update on our teaching as inquiries, however as a PRT, I had to present one of my term goals towards registration.

I chose to use Powtoon to make an animation detailing my inquiry - this goal links in with my dissertation focus with my group of writers.

While it was great to trial a new app for learning, I probably over invested time in getting this done.  Check it out and let me know if you have any thoughts on my progress so far!

Exploring New Ways for Publishing

This term, we have been exploring how to write information reports that links in our learning about the forest.  Most of the writers I work with have not had much exposure to report writing so I thought if we started with looking at the structure of a paragraph would be a great start.

An opportunity that I wanted to explore with the group was thinking about both the purpose of their writing as well as their audience.  We decided that we wanted to create information for visitors to our school and this got me thinking, how would we be able to share these with others as well as demonstrate our skill in writing paragraphs.

Looking at some of the senior hubs blogs, I noticed that they had been using an app called Thinglink that allows you to turn images into interactive graphics.  With this in mind, I chose to model an example first to see what the response from the kids were:

There was a buzz of excitement when I showed the kids this and lots of questions about where I had
chosen to place my paragraphs and then I noticed, that they were reading the paragraphs and giving me feedback.  With this goal in mind, everyone set off to create a Thinglink of their own.

When it came time to take their photos, I saw a great deal of care from the kids to make sure that the image not only suited their writing but also demonstrated empathy for their audience by considering what message they wanted to portray.  These are kids who normally can't wait to be finished with a piece of writing however they were analysing their photos and retaking after having conversations with one another.

Check out their finished pieces on our hub blog:

The Power of Padlet!

I have used Padlet as an information collection tool in my practice - mainly for me to capture voice from the learners and use it as a visual brainstorm.

This week I went and observed one of my colleagues, Mel, who teaches in one of our Year 4/5/6 hubs. My observation focus was how she teaches Year 4 literacy as I now have learners who are accessing this area of the curriculum.  One thing I noticed and liked was how Mel used her modelling books as an interactive tool with her learners, enabling two way communication between herself and her learners.

Reflecting on this, I really wanted to see how I could try something similar with my literacy groups so I thought about how Padlet may allow now only me to see how the kids are engaging with their learning but also with each other.

This week, I reintroduced the idea of quad blogging to my reading groups as they seem now more interested in engaging with other blogs.  We discussed why we had a hub blog and I let the kids write their thoughts down on this padlet.

There was an instant buzz in the air as everyone started to write their ideas down however the really cool thing was when they noticed that they could read each others ideas.  Questions sprung up straight away to one another about why they would write that or noticed similarities or differences in their comments.

With this initial excitement, I have decided to incorporate Padlet into the Build Knowledge element of my reading programme where learners can write their predictions down in a Padlet and we will use this as the springboard into our guided reading sessions.  I was conscious that I may need to give the groups time to experiment more with Padlet so was glad to read this blog post from Troy on allowing sandpit time with new apps, with a focus on Padlet.

Looking forward to seeing how this encourages collaboration between learners!

How to teach spelling like a pirate?

Roll on Term 3 and Hub Whenua are already into assessments with our mid year snapshot of learners spelling ability.

The learners who I am supporting with their writing have come such a long way with their spelling as detailed in this graph where I compared their result at the beginning of the year to what they were able to achieve this week.

This success has come from the learners being determined, fantastic support from whanau and the inclusion of spelling into my practice each week.  However while these results are fantastic, I am not seeing the transition of this confidence with vocabulary when the learners are crafting their writing.

This has got me thinking about how I can redefine the spelling component of my practice.  How can I turn something that has the potential to become 'boring' and 'repetitive' into something that learners want to engage with and can make links with while writing.

I am currently reading "Teach Like A Pirate" by Dave Burgess and one of the first areas of passion that he writes about is content.  While I consider myself to be a confident speller, I really need to up my game with knowledge to be able to confidently pass these skills onto learners.  I am fortunate to have worked with our PE specialist Rachel and she has introduced me to activities to help develop confidence with spelling but I feel that I need to continue to explore this area too so I have a kete of resources to use.

Stay tuned - this pirates spelling ship is just setting sail!  Always grateful for ideas or insight into others spelling programmes.

Term Two Reflection and Next Steps for Term Three

As I have already reflected on my practice in relation to the learning areas of reading, writing and numeracy - this reflection will look more at how I have been building relationships with the learners this term and outlining some small personal goals I have for the next term.

Our Term Two concept was "Being My Best Self" that linked with our schools vision for wellbeing but we also chose to expose learners to the concept of hauora where we explored and investigated the different realms of wellbeing.  This term I felt that we had more learners open up and discuss who they were as a whole person because we gave them the opportunity to both explore and express these facts.  Another great initiative we created in the hub is the daily affirmations at the end of the day where learners were able to share when they noticed someone else in the hub being their best self.  This experience showed me that this concept learning had heightened everyone's knowledge about one another so it was great to hear when a learner who historically may have been distracted in numeracy learning be nominated for being extra determined with their learning for the day.  We found that learners were not nominating their friends and the sheer look of joy or surprise when someone heard their name being called out meant that we were all leaving the day on a positive note.

I asked my Guardian Group for some feedback at the end of the term about how they had been enjoying our time as a group and here are the responses.  The fact that the majority of the group put down that they enjoy "Fun Day Friday" means that the time that we are spending as a group is well worth it - this is where the group have the challenge on Friday to make me laugh when we are doing the roll.  These are moments where I see learners that are usually reserved really open up and I have a few masters of the worm who like to bust it out.  While it was nice to get some affirmations in the "What would I like Mr Lewzey to know about me?" section, my eyes went more to the responses like "nothing" and I have massive respect for the learner who called me out on not pronoucing their name correct all the time.  So I still have a long way to go with some of my group, however while this survey was anonymous, I have a good idea about which ones I need to continue to build relationships with.

Here is when my Star Wars fanatics wanted to do the roll on May 4th:

However that is only 22 of the 70 learners in our hub that I interact with and there are still learners in the hub that while I feel I have a good understanding of, I need to keep on trying.  We have done some regrouping for Term Three so this means that I will be working with some learners that I have not had the opportunity to work with this year so far so I am looking forward to building those relationships.

In regards to relationships with all hub learners, we check in with the learners each term to see if they have a significant adult at school and more so in the hub.  Here are the results from when we asked the learners this term:

My eyes go direct to the nine learners who do not feel confident to talk to any of the teachers in the space, whether they have a problem or would like to share something.  Learners have the chance to acknowledge other teachers within the school, however looking at the data, these learners have indicated that they do not have anyone and coming into half way through the school year, this is something that we as a hub team need to address quickly so we have tagged ourselves to particular learners and will discuss with their families next term to see if we can get some more insight into this.

I still watch this video when I am feeling a bit down about my practice as it helps me remember a key component of my beliefs as a teacher: everyone needs somebody who believes in them.

Google Certified Educator - Level 2

Having done the Google Certified Educator - Level 1 last year, I had always thought about doing the second level.  I decided that I would try for it these holidays and I was able to pass.

I went into the experience, thinking that it was going to be about developing further skills in a number of the Google Apps for Education that I was already using, however I found that while doing this, the experience made me reflect on things that I was already doing in my practice as well as challenge my thinking in how to engage with the learners in different ways.

The training takes you through the following three sections:

1. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership;
2. Increase Efficiency and Save Time; and
3. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

One of the great things I found out to maximise time is to create 'canned responses' in Gmail where you can build emails and have them be available as templates for you to populate rather than typing or copying and pasting previous emails.  

Another aspect that I wish to explore more is the 'HyperDoc' - this is something that we spent time exploring last year as part of the MDTA programme however this process made me reflect on how I could leverage this more in my practice to help learners both learn at their own pace but also encourage them to keep challenging themselves in their learning.

Mid Year Reflection: My Practice in Writing

As with reflecting on reading and numeracy, I also reflected on my writing practice this term and gathered voice from the learners.  I was a bit nervous to see what these learners would feel about my instruction as they had both been a focus for our Term 1 inquiry as well as the focus for my dissertation this year.

Looking at the above chart, I am not surprised by these results.  Some of the learners (18.2%) have been vocal about not enjoying writing hence the reason why I have tried to keep my practice fluid and find ways to engage with them based on their interests.  

The tension I have had this term has been balancing the need for aspects like handwriting and spelling and finding ways to get technology to aid us in the writing process.  From the feedback, it looks like I have had some success with using Explain Everything to help us with our planning and crafting sessions.  Learners have been able to use the voice recording aspect to capture their ideas and plan on their device to help them then go onto craft, refine and publish.  While I had intended to have the group create a full narrative on an animation we had watched, I found that we needed to spend more time on the first part of a narrative where critical elements such as characters and setting are introduced.  The group have achieved some amazing results this term where we were able to share and celebrate via our hub blog (please leave a comment if you can):

I also chose to ask them about an element of my dissertation inquiry where the group reflected on their writing progress each week.

I do wish to carry on with a scaled down version of this reflection process for next term so will gather some more information from the group on how I can make this less of an event and more a natural part of the process.  Over the term break, I will start to analyse the data collected from this term so hopefully some other insights will spring from that.

I feel that I have grown the most in my practice in relation to teaching writing.  While I enjoy writing, I need to realise that it can be a difficult process to others and feedback from both the learners and their families is that they are unable to see progress in their writing (in contrast to both reading and writing).  This has made me think about how I can use the tools available to help learners see their own progress but also celebrate shift more.

Another takeout I have taken from gathering this feedback is that I am working with a group who may not enjoy writing and how can I make this more enjoyable or the learning not as teacher directed as it may have been in the past.  I was fortunate to go and observe a colleague as she used stations to keep the energy high when teaching phonics so I will look into how I can incorporate movement and rotations into teaching aspects such as handwriting and spelling more. 

Mid Year Reflection: My Practice in Numeracy

Similar to the learners I work with in reading, I collected voice from my numeracy groups to analyse both engagement and shift.

In relation to results, all the groups have maintained their 'At' call in National Standards as they are all now working towards operating at early Level 2 of the NZ Curriculum.

Term One was about consolidating all the learners knowledge and strategies at Stage 4 as I had learners working at all different parts of this so this term has been developing and building their confidence in Stage 5 Number Knowledge and introducing them to a number of the strategies for both Addition/Subtraction and Multiplication/Division.  As you can see in some of their responses, some of these strategies have really stuck with them.

One of the main differences that I did this term was to create four sub groups within the group so I could differentiate learning to the level appropriate for the learners.  This helped me challenge particular learners as well as support and develop confidence in others.  Here is the snapshot at where the current engagement levels are at:

This goes with my gut on how I felt learners were feeling about their numeracy learners.  The four learners (21.1%) are learners who have developed the confidence to tell me when they are stuck in their learning and this has taken a couple of terms to build this ability.  

The biggest learning curve this year in numeracy has been my own PCK - last year I was working more with our Year 2 learners in Stages 3 and 4 so moving into Early Stage 5 has been both exciting and challenging as I think of ways to engage with learners.

Using the kids love of Pokemon to teach place value was something that I thought was a bit random at first however the kids loved it and I managed to help some learners overcome the obstacle of regrouping with this activity.

That is the key to keeping thing fresh - teaching numeracy can be black or white.  Either you know the strategy and get the answer correct or you don't.  So my personal challenge is to look to develop my creative skills in teaching numeracy to continue the engagement for both the learners and myself!

Mid Year Reflection: My Practice in Reading

Following on from last term's reflection, I reached out to my learners in order to gauge their voice in my teaching and to analyse the shift.

I chose to add one question to the ones I asked last term, this being:

• What are some things that you have learned this term?  This was more out of interest to see what learners could remember from this term.

The first question I ask of the learners is how much they have enjoyed the learning this term, with them being able to rate it on a likert scale from 1 ("I haven't enjoyed it!") to 3 ("I have enjoyed it a lot!").  

Great to see that 4 learners (16.7%) are sitting between the two choices, this means that I still have a bit of work to build engagement with reading.  This group of learners are very engaged with their reading to the point where they are planning their own time when it comes to reading.  Here is a slide that I add to each groups modelling books to help them do so.

It was great to read what learners had both enjoyed reading and learned this term.  I had worked to have learners make connections through different texts, using both readers and journals alongside using apps like GetEpic!.  The learners have really enjoyed using this as an additional resource for books and I have used it to build collections on similar topics so they can analyse and decided whether texts are appropriate for their use.

It is also great to see that some of the additional writing activities made the lists like our alliteration activity and you might notice that a lot of the group mentioned learning about Haikus which was a follow activity where we looked at syllables and how we can use this knowledge to help us when we need to chunk new words we encounter in our reading.  Check out the groups great poems below (note two links due to labels):

Reading through the challenging comments from the learners, great to see that learners had reflected on some of the learning that I chose to focus on this term.  We spent a lot of time working on the differences between retelling and summarising as a lot of the group found it difficult being able to identify and utilise these skills.  We also spent time developing our word attack skills so activities like the ones above helped learners build their confidence in these strategies.

Looking at shift, the majority of the group have maintained their skills and I have mapped out their shift based on a resource our SLT helped created for us and reflecting on this, some of the comments about how I can help learners progress stand out for me.

A few of the learners mentioned about how they would like me to help them further understand their follow up activities so I will reassess how I am creating modelling books and ask my mentor to come observe me in relation to instruction with these groups.  Great to see the honesty with some learners requiring further assistance with summarising - this was a note that I communicated to whānau these holidays along with the links to the resources to help learners practice over the holidays if they wanted to.

In summary, I am very fortunate to working alongside this group of learners as they are so engaged with their readers.  Stay tuned for an update on what Term 3 is going to look like for my reading practice!

Co-constructing Success Criteria for Blog Posts

As part of the Cybersmart learning this term, our hub have tried a two prong approach to building learners' capacity in using the digital aspects of their learning.  These were:

• Working with our Year 2 learners and some learners that identified that they needed to consolidate their knowledge of Explain Everything.  This is something that we will need to return to for all learners as Explain Everything has had an update recently - check out Karen Belt's blog post that explains some of the upgrades.
• The remainder of our Year 3 learners have been learning more about creating a smart footprint in preparation for next term's focus on building smart relationships in Term 3.

We introduced the learners to how they could email a blog post to the blog and had some great discussions about what we would need to consider before we upload a draft post to our hub blog.  As a result, the learners asked if we could build some success criteria to help them remember what is important before uploading blog posts.  Here is what we came up with:

I am looking forward to seeing learners take advantage of the email to blog function next term!  Stay tuned to see how this takes off.

Noticing Shifts in Writing

Today I ran a second writing sample as part of my data collection for my dissertation focus.  I was quite nervous about this as it meant asking these learners to sit and write for 45 minutes.  I chose to give these learners a visual prompt along with some of our guidelines that we have used for our narrative writing throughout this term.

When I spoke to the group about doing a writing sample, I was met with excitement and questions. The prompt seemed to excite everyone in the group and the questions ranged from surface features to wonderings about how they could link the various parts of the picture to their narratives.

During their planning, I noticed that a lot of the learners were discussing their ideas.  While not an official e-assTTle writing sample, I intended to run the session as similar to the first writing sample as possible, however seeing the excitement and enjoyment that the kids were getting out of sharing their ideas, I chose to following some of the advice from the passage below from TKI:

When the planning time was over, I again thought it would be difficult for the learners to move into their independent writing but I was greeted with sights below.  These photos are not staged, in fact, no one noticed me taking these.  They were so engaged with getting their pens to paper.

The only protests I got through this session is when I told the group that the time was up due to us moving into reading.  What the learners do not know is that as a 'reward', I am planning to publish these and gift them to them in our end of term writing ceremony so they can go home to celebrate with their whanaus for the upcoming holidays.