My End of Term Inquiry Presentation

I have been reflecting on the very pleasing progress my class has made this term in both their basic facts knowledge and attitudes to Mathematics. I prepared the following presentation to share my findings with my Inquiry group today:

Jo Knox and the Maths Wall

We were fortunate enough to have Jo Knox spend some time with our team this week, explaining and modelling the teaching of fractions. Particularly in moving Stage 2-4 kids on to Stage 5.

I have been struggling to find a specific enough inquiry to focus on this term, instead I have been feeling overwhelmed with ideas and pulled in all sorts of directions as to what I want to work on first, or problems that I am currently facing.

As I covered fractions earlier this year, and intend to revisit them more in depth next term, I instead want to focus on another point that Jo made in our session. She showed us an impressive video of a teacher's Maths Wall, and how that teacher uses the wall on a daily basis, over a short space of time to revisit and cement learning across a wide range of Maths learning areas.

This got me thinking about the value in daily rituals, where learning is taking place in a brief but meaningful way. I want to explore how I can develop this idea in my own classroom. I like the idea of sneaking more learning in throughout the day, in fun and engaging ways.

My Inquiry: Planning for Maths

Ahead of meeting in our Inquiry groups for the end of term, I was reflecting on how much I have learned at the Digital Fluency Intensive, and also the amount of time this has taken me out of the classroom for. I am really looking forward to having my Fridays back in class so that we can finish all our learning for the week off properly together!

I have learned a lot about working smarter, not harder, when it comes to using digital devices and want to bring this over to my planning process for Maths. I have found planning for Maths to be more time consuming and laborious than planning for Reading or Writing. Here are some challenges I have identified and my presentation on what I could do to address these.

• Planning for Maths seems to take so long!
• NZ Maths - teacher instructional lesson
• Explain Everythings to follow-up
• 4 x groups, and the varying confidence and abilities within those groups across different contexts
• Can I make a resource to cut this planning time down and streamline my thinking?

Google Certified Educator Level 1

I passed the Google Certified Educator Level 1 exam!

This morning we were challenged to put our knowledge to the test. After 2 hours of hard work and confusion I submitted my exam and was relieved to discover I had passed. Thank you Dorothy and James for all the knowledge and wisdom you have imparted over the last term. 

I have also received my Digital Fluency Intensive badge which I am proudly displaying on my blog.

Our Penultimate Digital Immersion Intensive Session

We are almost done with our Digital Immersion course for this term. Next week we will be sitting the test to become Google Certified Educators - Level 1. I am almost feeling ready!

Today Dorothy started our day with a session on Empowerment. We discussed how students need to be empowered in their learning, and this can't happen without the other 3 words in the Manaiakalani ring: Ubiquitous, Connected and Visible. I found it interesting to think of how many members of our local community feels disempowered by so many facets of their lives not really being under their control, and therefore how important empowerment really is to our students.

We moved on to the NEW Google Sites. It was so easy to play around with and create a pretty page in no time. It did however feel limiting in how much of a personal touch you could add to it.

I spent some time training up on my Fundamentals in preparation for next week's test. Hopefully I'll finish the remaining units by next Friday.

Finally, after all that, there was more to learn! Dorothy has been showing us how to green screen in preparation for next term's Manaiakalani film festival. I am nervous but also really looking forward to making my first film for this. I had a little practice removing the background from a student's photo - of course his curly hair presented some challenges.

Sites, sites, sites: connecting with the world.

We have been exploring sites at today's Digital Intensive session. It has been great to see how different teachers at different schools present their lessons to their students.

Dorothy began the day by reminding us of the importance and power that comes from the connections we make, be it through blogging, our public sites, our Google+ community or professional development days like today.

I have really enjoyed having the time to fix up the little things that have been bugging me about my own site. Here is the criteria we came up with for what makes an effective site:

Visual	User Experience
Exciting Engaging Using space effectively Keep it looking basic not busy Following conventional layout rules eg white spaces Commonality- Reading/Writing/Maths Themed?	Logical Interconnected pages Engaging (resources) Learning is easy to find Main elements are obvious- landing page has important info Consistency Visibility

Do you think my site reflects these?

In my own practice I have definitely been improving my visibility and connectivity with the world through my class blog, and encouraging the children to blog on a much more regular basis.
Please feel free to check them out here and leave your comments.

HTML fun!

Today I felt a little out of my depth at Digital Intensive, but also really enjoyed building a site using HTML. We were fortunate to have Matt Goodwin in to assist us with this.

Dorothy started the day by reminding us of the importance of Visible teaching and learning, and the role sites play in this. We also looked over the draft version of the new Professional Standards for the Teaching Profession.

This all came together in today's task, to build a site to showcase how these new standards are evident in my own teaching. Take a look!

I really enjoyed picking up some skills to improve my site layout, keeping it clean and organised. I now feel confident to go back to my existing class site and see what I can improve and tidy up. Maybe I'll even attempt Image Mapping again!