Sketchnoting!

Today we had a look at Sketchnoting and how we can use it in the classroom to support our learners. Sketchnoting is a form of note-taking where you summarise the main points of a topic, lesson, lecture etc. It is a way in which learners can consolidate new learning and put it into a form in which they understand and remember it best. Throughout university and school I often created diagrams and images to cram for exams, so I definitely believe it is a valuable tool to summarise. Taking the time to teach students to take notes by Sketchnoting is an extremely valuable skill and requires careful scaffolding of lessons. Showing students who are not as confident in art that Sketchnoting can be stick figures, lines and basic shapes can reassure them that it is more about summarising the ideas in a more creative way than just making a list of notes and does not require in-depth detailed drawings.

For my Sketchnoting example I looked at the idea of an "Authentic Audience" as we had discussed this in the morning in our MDTA group. Dorothy Burt explained to us that an authentic audience is people who choose to listen. When people visit blogs, YouTube videos, Twitter, sports events or read a school newspaper, they have made the choice to do so. Children sitting in a class being spoken to or university students in lectures have not had the choice - it is a compulsory part of the day or course. When we share to an authentic audience it provides us with a feeling of satisfaction and realisation that others want to see and hear what we have to say - creating this authentic audience for our students is an important part of the Manaiakalani vision.

Here is my summary of an "Authentic Audience":

I then also created a Sketchnote of what I learnt about Sketchnoting:

Creating an Olympics page for our site - Term 3

Today I created a slide with links to Olympics videos of different sports. Next term we will be learning all about the Rio Olympics and this page will provide students with an opportunity to see what it looks like in action. We will also be able to use the videos to support writing and look at maths concepts (placing, timing etc). Michelle linked this page to our Inquiry link on the class site, so both students and parents can access the links at any time!

A good read...

Recently, I celebrated my birthday and was gifted the book Through the lives of a foster child  by Daryl Brougham. It shares an authentic insight into the story of his (Daryl's) experience as a foster child in our New Zealand society. As I read the story, I realised how one can never truly understand what it is like to be in someone else's shoes, however it is important to gain an insight into others lives so that we can understand the obstacles they have been faced with in their life so far. I know I will never be able to say, "I know what you are going through!" to my learners (I have not had the same experiences in the same context - in fact no two people have!), yet I hope that when they tell me their stories I can empathise with them in a way in which they know I am there for support. As the first half year of my teaching career ends, I feel very fortunate for all my learners and colleagues whom have shared with me my journey so far. Thank you to you all and I look forward to the next half!

Inquiry - Developing more Word Worm activities

In order to give the students the opportunity to locate the high frequency words in a sentence I have decided to add this slide into the activity. Although I was focusing on teaching individual words in isolation in order to repeat the students to the same individual word, I do believe it will be beneficial for them to find the word hidden among other words. I am hoping by doing this students will be able to more easily translate their new learning of a word into locating it in their readers. (They have been able to read these words in their stories a majority of the time, however sometimes they still require prompting to focus on what they can see and to not get confused about the words around the word they are trying to read) I will be implementing this new slide in Term 2 so will keep you updated on whether or not it has been beneficial to add it in!

Visiting local schools!

Today, I had the opportunity to visit Glenbrae School and Tamaki Primary. It was great to see other New Entrant/Year 1 classes in action and I have come away with my mind full of new ideas to bring back into my class - especially for creating activities on Explain Everything for reading. So that these ideas are not forgotten and lost over the weekend I noted these ideas down on a slide on Explain Everything.

In one of the classes there was a major focus on the students retelling and sharing what they had read. The teacher explained that this was to get the students to talk and also to share their ideas using correct English - many of the students were bilingual and English was their second language. In my class I have often wondered how I can get my students to share their ideas more and this was a real "light bulb" moment. I will definitely be taking the opportunity in reading for students to get talking and sharing. Hopefully over the next 6 months I can increase my students confidence to share their ideas, beliefs and new learning!