Across schools Col teacher Role

What do people want?

Supporting with Cybersmart Kawa of care 

I have worked with a number of teachers and classes using iPads for the first time. This has involved modelling lesson or supporting lesson around the the skills they will use everyday in explain everything. 

In one lesson we used the skills of taking a photo, cropping, duplicating, moving and locking to to build a Castle. 

 

See this blog post for more.  

Support with creation of class sites

I am privileged to work with Dorothy Burt, Fiona Grant and many others over my time teaching. Due to this I have a good understanding of the elements of class sites and how to make them appealing for learners. I have worked with a number of teachers to help them develop their class site and discuss the content they create for their learners. 

Creating with iPads

Getting started with animating 
This animation was created by a child in my class. I have used examples from the children in my class and modelled in classroom and supported teachers in 1-1 iPad classrooms. I this has helped to to enhance their use of iPads for creation.

Getting started with coding
I have also worked with teachers to impanelment the digital technologies curriculum. This has focused on using Scratch junior and the directions used.
I also have this Manaiakalani Google Class Onair lesson to support others wanting to use scratch junior. 

Blogging App

Many people have come together to create the Manaiakalani Blogging App. This App makes sharing simple and straight forward for our year 1-3 learners working on iPads. See this blog post for how to use the App. See Fiona's Blog for the journey of the blogger app. 

Inquiry Conversations
I have worked with a number of the CoL within school teachers and other teachers having discussions about their inquiries. I have also visited classes to see their inquiries in actions and provide questions, ideas and support wherever I can to help them.

Opening up my classroom to others
I have also welcomed many people into my classroom both physically and digital through (Manaiakalani Google Class Onair) to share my practice and discuss what I do in my classroom.

I'm here to help please book me using this form, leave a comment or email: ccarruthers@ptengland.school.nz

What works? (for me in my context)

We have been thinking a lot about what works and how we can make accelerated shift the way we do in writing in all three subjects.

Reading 

Over past two years teaching I have seen some good shift in reading. 

What have I done to make this shift:

Milage: Children had 3+ book a week which they were expected to reread multiple times to get millage. 

Fluency: Children were prompted and provided time while working on millage to build fluency. During guided reading fluency was an expectation. See 2016-2017 inquiry for why this help and was important. 

Carefully planned follow up: Children engaged in level and interest specific follow up activities. Activities prompt rereading, personal reflection, finding of specific information from the text. Here are a few examples:

This activity focused on finding key ideas in the text. Students had to make choices about sports that they wanted to learn more about: Level 26           

Focus on prepositions and using them in sentences. This was a huge part of the text and then students had to apply their knowledge: Level 17          

Focus on retelling, finding answers in the text: Level 10        

Maths 

What has worked for me in Maths:

Purposeful use of mathematical vocabulary, in the writing of problems, in the discussion with children, in the activities and around the classroom. See 2018 inquiry. 

Inquiry Update term 3

10: Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently)

11: Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way

When I started my inquiry my question was will the use of more rewindable teacher and learning in literacy lift student achievement and support improved teacher practice? What I have come to realise is that this question is huge and that perhaps rewindable is not the biggest change I need to make in my teaching. I realised this as the students became reliant on the rewindable resources. As such I have adjusted my inquiry question will gifting language and targeting specific area lift achievement student achievement in literacy.

What am I doing differently in my classroom?

-I have had focus blocks on setting and characters
-Used gifting EE to support writing

What new changes I am going to start
-Building sight word automaticity through writing warm up
-A focus on modelling, guided and shared writing.

How will I measure and monitored changes in my teaching?

I have begun pull a group of learner to do a writing sample, dictation and automaticity test. I will do this very 5 weeks and monitor changes. I will also ask learners about their feelings towards writing and monitor changes in this.