PLG - Sketchnoting

Today's PLG had us looking at sketchnoting.  For anyone like myself who is hearing this term for the first time, sketchnoting is a process when you create a personal visual story as you either listen to a speaker or read a text.

There are a number of apps that can help you with this process such as flipink (free), Paper by 53 (free) or if you feel like an expert, you can try Procreate  ($8.99 for the purchase of the app).  The cohort spent time looking into this after Dorothy shared her own experience with the process.

The implications for using this process in the design of learning are many - to begin with, this may be a great strategy for learners who process information visually to make meaning of the learning they are engaging with.  Sketchnoting also has a great connection with literacy and how learners can use visualising strategies to help them build confidence in that skill.

As always, the cohort were charged with giving sketchnoting a go with a lot of us downloading the apps and quickly getting into the process.  I have kept it old school with drawing it in a notebook but I will see if I can replicate some of my learning over onto one of the apps.  I chose to articulate my current professional goal for Term 3 so would be keen to see if people who follow this blog are able to decipher this - please feel free to comment below!

I am the first who would not call myself an artist so am keen to try this process further to help build my confidence in my art skills and I feel that it will help me with my university readings.

For those who are keen to try this out, I feel Georgia has summed it up perfectly with her sketchnote below!

PLG - Reflection and Looking Ahead

Today we were given the opportunity to look back at our first six months and reflect on the time. The task was to look at where had I come from, where am I currently sitting and where am I looking ahead for the remainder of the year.

To begin with, I thought about where I was at the end of last year:

• I was very aware of my pedagogical content knowledge (or self-perceived lack of) and was conscious to ask questions whenever possible.
• I had little exposure to a MLE/ILE - I spent some time in Term 4 observing at Stonefields but still did not understand the principles of how the hub actually worked.
• What worked in my favour was that I did understand the principles of collaboration (from work experience) and felt confident enough to discuss and adopt into my teaching practice.
• The use of the technology - I was amazed by how adept the learners were with their progressions and how they used the tools to support their learning - a lot of my questions were about how we as teachers were able to create and nurture this awareness.
• An assumption that teaching is more on the learning in a high decile school rather than behaviour management.

Where am I currently?

I am reminding myself that this is my first year and that the management of my energy is key to maintaining elements such as passion and resilience in my teaching practice.  I am consistently being mindful of this.

I need to stop myself sometimes and reassess - I am my own worst critic so I was saying things like “I don’t feel that I have done much” however when I stopped to take stock - I have actually achieved a lot.  Another thing that I have stopped doing is comparing my experience to that of other beginning teachers.  The jumps I have made with both the use of the school systems and learning process has really helped me to develop strong relationships with both my learners and colleagues and I feel more confident coming into the back half of the year to take risks with the design of learning.

I have developed a strong relationship with my mentor teacher especially with the team teaching now and feel more confident discussing my practice with her as she can see it in action more when we are teaching.

We were asked to share a highlight of the term with our cohort - for me, I shared a couple of different areas which I had worked hard on developing. The work I am doing with my top reading group in evaluating texts with the use of Google Forms is really helping me map progress and shift in their critical thinking skills and giving more insight into other aspects of their literacy abilities. I also shared some of my own creative aspects in teaching numeracy through art.

What are the next steps for me?

• Energy management - it is going to be a busy term with everything so making sure I am looking after myself first.
• To get out into the other parts of the school to observe - majority of my observations have been in our cross hub team.
• Continue to work on the consistent firm but fair mantra - the kids have such keen senses of justice and this often can be the tipping point in relationships.
• There are relationships with some families that need to be built up for the last half of the year - again the constant and consistent messaging needs to be applied here.
• Dial up the active reflection while in practice - I am doing this however not documenting as much and am conscious that this are key nuggets that I need to take into my future practice. Is there a way I can adopt some of the digital affordances in my own practice?
• Continue to challenge and find the “why” in everything I design and engage with my learners.

PLG - Visit to Point England School

Today Juliana and I went to Pt England School as part of our PLG focus.  As we both teach Years 2/3, we went with the focuses on seeing the following:

• Year 1s - seeing the level of ability our learners are coming from and how the design of learning is set at that level.
• Year 4s - we wanted to see how the design of learning was set at this level and how we can prepare our Year 3 learners for the transition.

We were greeted by one of the most impressive assemblies that I have attended - the air of celebration was present as we watched learners get their sport awards.  We also saw a new house captain being elected which was announced with such mana!

Shortly after, we went into two Year 1 classes - these learners are adept in using Explain Everything (the app that we use in our hub) and were very keen to show us their learning.  The learners that I spent time with showed me how they use the sound bytes which their teachers record with their explanations or instructions to assist them.

After morning tea, we moved into the pavilion where we visited a Year 4 learning space - this was two classes that were merged into one with two teachers.  The learners were working through a list of activities from the week in the block called "Finishing Friday" - I helped some learners with an activity that they were working through with geometry and I got a fair few "presents" with them all keen to show me their proficiency with symmetry.  I got this awesome example from a learner who understood the concept and explained it to me very efficiently.

Both experiences have made me consider the following with my own practice:

• How can I use digital affordances (such as the sound bytes in Explain Everything) to allow my learners more opportunities for rewindable learning?
• Am I generating enough choice for my learners in regard to their learning?
• How can we incorporate more opportunities to celebrate our successes in our learning?  I was blown away by the attitude of the learners at their assembly!

Such a humbling experience being welcomed into other schools in our area - I am grateful to part of a community of learning!  Thank you to all the teachers that let us come into their spaces and observe!

PLG - MDTA Interview Video - Part 2

Today we had the goal of finishing our interview video that outlines our first six months in the MDTA programme.  I was amazed that a lot of the skills I had learned previously in regards to iMovie stayed with me and I was able to able to get this version of the video finished.

Upon watching it back, I started to notice things that I had missed and began to critique the video.  We shared our videos with each other to get some feedback and I was ready to restart the project.  It was not until I was driving home that I realised that like my learners, I needed to give projects a go and be determined to learn from this process so I have made the decision to show the first cut of the video here.

Things I learned while undergoing the process:

The Power of Preparation - I do not feel the quality of my speaking reflects my passion for my position (I blame part of this to doing this at 11pm at night) so will do an updated version towards the end of the term.  I tried to go off a script and this is why at times the speech does not sound very nature.

Video as a form of Reflection - It can be daunting recording yourself however I do see the benefit of using this as a form of reflection.  I can only get better with practice.

My Passion for Collaboration - This was the first thing I started to note down when brainstorming and it got me thinking about one of my placements last year where I was able to collaborate with two of my fellow student teachers on the design and of execution of a joint weekly block.  I really enjoyed the sharing of ideas and how we used our different perspectives to design outcomes suitable not only for our different teaching practices but the needs of our learners.  Like I mention in the video, I am fortunate that in my current role, I get to do this on a daily basis and I am really enjoying the dialogues and outcomes our team are creating on a daily basis.

I need to update my camera or stick to one filming device - It was not until I uploaded the video onto Youtube and played it that I realised that I could see the difference between footage that I shot on my camera to the footage that I shot on either my phone or iPad.  Consistency is key with filming especially as I do not want the quality of the film to detract from the message from the video.

I hope you enjoy this video and I would love to hear any thoughts or feedback on it if you have the time!

PLG - MDTA Interview Video - Part 1

Our next task is to create an interview with ourselves on our MDTA journey so far.  We have been given some prompts to help create a video which can be shared with others.  The first MDTA cohort did their own videos and we were shown these as a guide on how to structure our own.

I decided to head down to school to get some video of the school itself as I did not have much footage of that so far and it was a great day outside.  I even went up Mount Wellington to get some footage and this step of the process really helped me jumpstart the thinking behind how I wanted to create this video.

Getting out of the lecture room really helped put into perspective why I chose to go into teaching and why I chose to take part in the MDTA so I went back to university all keen to begin to storyboard and plan out the rest of the video.  The day was full of some insightful dialogue with everyone but I wanted to especially thank Latai, Danni and Clarelle as our conversations helped me better articulate what I was thinking and what the next steps are going to look like.

I now have the next week to map out the rest of my video, take any remainder footage and edit and prepare the video to share with the rest of the MDTA cohort next week.  It is going to be a very busy week!

Assessment Reflections

With mid year reporting approaching, I have spent a lot of time with my learners one-to-one with testing in order to gather evidence to make mid year judgements.  This has been a great learning opportunity for myself with me having to learn and incorporate the forms of literacy and numeracy testing methods into my practice.

A wondering I had how we use this data from testing to inform a decision and it was not until we had a PD session where I was introduced to the following image:

This really helped me identify that while it is important to test against National Standards, this is only a part of my overall judgement and I should value the relationships and interactions I have with my learners equally if not more so.  A test can capture a snap shot of a learner's ability however that is a snap shot at a particular time or place and I need to be reflecting more on the daily encounters that I am having with my learners.  Otherwise I may miss opportunities such as:

• A learner beaming with a huge smile as they can understand and utilise a specific strategy for adding two double digit numbers - something that they did not feel comfortable with at the beginning of the year.

• A learner seeing the output of their determination to become a more confident reader and rushing out the door at home time to tell their parents that they have moved two reading levels.

• A learner who told me at the beginning of the year that "they hated planning" but can now have conversations with other children about the importance of planning in their writing process.

The past few weeks I have learned a lot about my capability as a teacher however I think it has given me far more insight into my learners and how to plan for the remainder of the year.  Some of the conversations I have had with them while testing has opened up different ways of thinking for how to design this learning and with the skills I am building each week, I am now looking for ways in which to support them to their next goal and/or challenge.

PLG - Screen Casting with Quicktime Player

I found out a new word today - glossophobia.  This is the fear of public speaking and quite relevant for today's post.

For our PLG today, we were introduced to screen casting via Quicktime Player and given the task to use the tool to share an element of our learning.  Screen casting is a great way to demonstrate to learners the steps required for learning as you can walk and talk them through the process.

Storyboarding is key to screen casting success I discovered as I found myself tripping over my words and I had to do several takes.  It was also here where I started to analyse (more OVERanalyse) my words and became very self-conscious of how I was using the tool.  I spent about two hours practicing with the tool to get the "perfect" shot and then came to the realisation that I needed to include authenticity in this presentation.  I feel my learners would make a stronger connection with this tool if I could show them how I struggled with elements of the task and how I was able to overcome it.

An obstacle I had to overcome was finding a space that was quiet enough for me to record - here is where I ended up!

Having done this exercise, this made me reflect on how well the teachers in the Google on Air programme are using tools like screen casting to demonstrate their practice!  This made me reflect on not only my practice but the way in which I am communicating and how I can make improvements.  While I do have a slight fear of public speaking, I know that I can using tools like screen casting as a way to reflect and improve.

Screen casting is a fantastic tool to activate rewindable learning with learners.  They can use these resources as references or prompts to help support their learning and will empower them to stretch themselves further.  I already have plans to use screen casting with some elements of my teaching in the couple of weeks so look forward to practice these skills more!