Kia ora and welcome to my professional blog!
My name is Clarelle Carruthers. I am a 3/4 teacher at Pt England school in Tamaki, Auckland. Thank you for following my journey.
John Meng- Works at Rooty Hill High School. He supports teachers to step up their practice. He also teaches Maths and Languages. He leads teams in these areas.
This workshop looked at the pedagogy behind formative assessment. This will centre around his experiences.
We started by talking about our own experiences of formative assessment.
-Someone shared their use of Google forms as a way of doing formative assessment.
-Bump it up wall, students compare their work to the wall. They also get feedback throughout the process. This allowsto peer support a critique.
What is formative assessment: This is assessment that happens within the process of learning.
One way of thinking about assessment is... When a chief tastes a soup, they can change it to salty, they can change it, That is formative. When a Chief serves the soup to the customer, That is summative.
We see that feedback has a huge impact for learners. We need to identify the gap from what we know to what we ned to know.
However....
Feedback alone is not enough, it has to be coupled with motivation and we want this motivations to be internal. John suggested that Doug Fisher's model is a positive model for formative assessment.
Here is the video he shared
We learn language by producing language, if we are using academic language student's should be using this language as this is home we learn it.
He talked a lot about the use of interaction on Google slides. Powtoon could be good for instruction and modelling.
In this session Kimberly Hall helped us to explore project based learning and different digital tools that could be used to help with different elements of the inquiry or project based learning.
Developing the question
The first tool we looked at was Answer Garden. This tool is ideal for seeing prior knowledge. It is good as it has a live nature kids can contribute multiple responses however you can only write the same thing once.
Kimberly talked about the the classroom mode being the best. Make sure you turn on the spam filter and you may want to change the settings to hidden.
We all use Google search all the time. This site Google Inside Search When we search a person, place or thing a knowledge card comes up on the right hand side which provides details about it and related things which can extend understanding.
Padlet has some great updates that you may not be aware of, you can add images, videos, voices, memos. It is not as usable as you only get three boards.
Canva is something I have used as a professional to create infographics. It can also be used to make certificates etc. Another place for creating infographics is Piktochart.
Accessibility tools
Rewordify- You can put in a lump of text and it literally rewords it. Changing the language for kids who struggle to read at that level. You can get it to highlight parts of speech. You can get it to make activities that could provide some opportunities to dive into the language.
Read&write-This tool is an equaliser for for kids. It has a tool bar that does text to speech, it highlights the sentence. You can highlight text and it will read that specific section. It has highlighting tool so kids can highlight key information that they identify in their research. It will create a Google doc with the things that are highlighted text and it links back to the source. You can simplify the content.
This is definitely a tool that I will be exploring some more in the future.
Thanks Kimberly for sharing. I really enjoyed these tools and believe many can be used across the curriculum.
Yesterday I presented two sessions on making and using Google Sites. I really enjoyed these sessions and want to thank Jackie who stepped up to help me today with my lovely friend Dani Stone being sick.
During these session I had great attendance and met some lovely people who learnt along side me. The biggest challenge for me in these sessions way the variety of people who were all at different stages in their sites learning. It was also interesting presenting at this amazing Sydney summit as NSW has a different curriculum then us.
We need to remember there are two types of assessment:
Why:
Assessment FOR Learning- Here we can give feedback on the process and praise failure.
&
Assessment OF Learning
We want to shift the focus from feedback for a grade to feedback to add to our learning and improve.
Who:
The power of multiple people building on their ideas and providing feedback is amazing. The way kids give feedback is different from the way we do and can be very important for our learners.
What:
You can used revision history and get students to name their process.
When and where:
You could use growth language messages in our Google forms confirmation messages.
If we want to create a growth mindset in your classroom, we need to make it our culture.
When we are giving feedback we often use statements, can we flip these and use questions that make our students think.
What are we praising?
-Effort
-Strategy
-Result (Growth)
The problem is we have all of these fraises that actually cultivate a fixed mindset.
This year has all been about language for me. We as a school are focusing on what language we use and the way we teach language. The words that we use in our classroom make the culture of the classroom.
Maybe the language we start with is the word YET.
We need to be building the language of positivity and growth in our classrooms.
We are teachers are the chief of mindset in our classroom.
I am excited to be at another one of Lindsay Wesner wonderful sessions. I really enjoyed her session and Keynote at the Auckland Summit. I love her positive attitude and think it is just want I need to help get rid of my half way through the year vibe.
So what is growth mindset: As a group we created a share understanding of what growth mindset is.
Here is Lindsays redesigned graphic that shows these ideas beautifully:
We need to remember the power of "yet". I have not got this 'YET!'
As teachers we all design tasks. Is there something we can do to make sure the task itself is cultivating growth mindset. We talked about this and played Bingo. Here is how we went:
How do we provide multiple choices within our learning tasks. How do we provide scaffolding in a discreet why.
We can create a multiple pathway learning journey that supports students learning. This is done using move to section based on answer. We can use choice boards to allow students to demonstrate their understanding in non-traditional ways.
I am very excited to by at the GAFE conference in Sydney. The room is buzzing as we wait for the opening Keynote. All the MIT teachers are double checking resources and excite to share their experiences with a whole new Audience.
Our opening Keynote speaker is Jesse Lubinsky he comes to us today from New Zealand, America were he is an innovator and technology leader.
Jesse talked about how he spent his childhood growing up in Brooklyn, in an apartment and Wednesday is new comic book day. He talk about how Superheroes are relatable for children and adults. He believes that every kids is a superhero but they don't have capes. Often as we go into teaching we think about this saying:
But what if your role as teacher is not to be the hero but to bring out the hero in our learners.
So what is our role in the heroes story? We would like to say that we are the mentor but sometimes the system or us can but barriers in the way for our heroes (students) that make them feel incapable.
We should consider the habits of mind.
What can we do as educators to bring out the hero in our kids:
Encourage their passions
One students passions was encourage was Jordan, who is a foodie and she has her own food blog. Jordan's lunchbox. What gave her this change is the support she got from her teacher and many people in her school who encouraged her.
Provide Opportunities
Students can be very passionate but this does not get fostered at school and this creates a disconnect for learners and as a result they don't feel that school supports them.
One way Jesse suggested we do this could be through 20% time or Genius Hour.
What if?
-What if we are missing something? What if we are not listening enough to the people who this impacts most the kids. Jesse talked about how they change their school innovation fund so that kids could directly apply for funding for projects that will support their local community.
At lot of the projects were around supporting younger students in communities.
Celebrate their Scars
Daniel Kish is blind and yes he found that hard but he way lucky because he was supported people didn't over over protect him. He used this freed to learn to echolocate. Now he teaches over people how to see without seeing just like him.
There can be enjoy in failure. The things we hold the most dear are the things we struggle to get over and over until we finally get it. This is the same for our kids.
Honour Individuality
All of our students have challenges. Some of these challenges are physical but others are on the inside. Jordan Reeves age 10 has only one arm. Her is her story. Hilde is a reporter, she has her own news site. She covers things in her life. She has parents who are journalist. At 9 years of age there was a murder in her block. That wasn't received well by all. Here is her news site. To Honour their individuality we must know our learners.
So is it true what Syndrom said "When everyone is super, no one is" No I don't think so we can all be super because with great power comes great possibility.
One of the big language wins for me in my inquiry this year has been the establishment of a shared language of maths norms that we revisit regularly. This allows us to really unpack the language and have a shared understand that we continue to build on each day as we develop our shared maths community.
As a class we have an understand that being an active listener means, listening to what others share and being able to ask questions or repeat what they have said in our own words.
