Week 29 – Professional Online Social Networking

What?

Social media is constantly part of our daily lives these days, and there aren’t many people who don’t know about Facebook, Snapchat, twitter, Linkin, and Pinterest to name only a few. Since the advent of the NZ Teacher’s Page on Facebook, I have used Facebook more to gain knowledge professionally and to contribute and collaborate around points of view and even to be in ‘touch’ with what is happening as far as professional readings. I am one to use and collect professional readings sourced by others to share with colleagues as part of their upskilling in my role as a Team Leader.

So What?

Being time short in our role as teachers, we tend to rely on what we know and this is where we become attached to what we know. I know that I am no exception to this rule as I find Facebook to be easily accessible and both socially and professionally I am able to be connected. Often in these forums, like minds will comment, collaborate and sometimes there is even a question or point of view that may ruffle feathers. As part of the online participation for Mindlab, the comments have been of a similar style mainly due to the facts we are all madly trying to finish the course and gain some time back to do the usual. Being connected is is grow as indivials we will grow and maintain our professional learning network. With Mindlab completed, will this still happen?

Now what?

I need to invest time and effort into continuing being connected to other professional educators through a personal and professional learning network. By making this commitment I am serving a greater cause than myself (Whitaker, T., Zoul, J., & Casas, J., 2015) and I can bring the best of what is ‘out there’ into to my classroom, and grow my practice as well as other educators. As a profession, we are being constantly bombared that teaching is too hard and curently there is a lack on people wanting to become teachers, which is all the more reason to share the knowledge and support one another. I need to be mindful that what I share is backed up by research and evidence, and is ‘do-able’ and not a fad, as teachers are already full.

References

Siemens, G. (2014). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.

Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Solis, B. (2018). The Conversation Prism. Retrieved from: https://conversationprism.com/

 Whitaker, T., Zoul, J., & Casas, J. (2015). What connected educators do differently. New York, NY: Routledge.

Tips for Autism

Tip course for Autism in Taupo with colleagues for child in my class.

What did I learn?
This is a course designed with the child in mind and how the people who are involved in their every day lives - teacher, teacher aide, specialist teacher, MOE advisor and parent can work together to create aids to help that child learn, being socially acceptable and happy in their environment. Day 1 - we have learnt about what we are going to learn about Autism, similarities and differences of our children, what and how visuals can help to keep them on track. I had already had thoughts about this as I wanted to change what the daily timetable looks like. This course has reaffirmed my ideas and that I have been on the right track.

Where to next?
I now have a list of TO DO jobs in order for these ideas to come to fruition.

• Make some visual clock faces with our class times on, analogue and digital ( a couple of sets)
• Make a video with turn taking on it - marimba and gym
• Make a video on the "Tunnel of Change" game using an oil timer to indicate a new turn and choice
• Order a new clock - even 2, one for Teacher Aide  room and classroom

What am I uneasy about?
 I will need to get some of these done before the holidays, or do I leave it until after the holidays, or will that be too much change for the child of concern.

I am already looking forward to the next day of learning even though I have already previously done this course.


“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.” 
― Michel Legrand

Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

(What): The dilemma: Blurred personal and professional boundaries in electronic communication

In the past, I have been able to keep my school life apart from my home life but this year, with the use of Seesaw as a platform for sharing the learning in the class and the messaging ability within this app, I have found that I’m dealing with issues that would be better dealt with face to face. Often these messages are sent at times convient for parents but often when I am in bed, late at night. I am happy to be in communication with my family and whanau but I feel that the lines are blurred and I am being taken advantage of and that the use of messager crosses the personal/professional communications boundary.

 (So What): What framework will help me solve my dilemma?

Ehrich et al. (2011) states that with advances in modern technology and with greater access to social media, educators now face and are answerable to new challenges and stakeholders. I believe as there is many facets to my dilemma, I will use  Ehrich’s et al. (2011) ethical decision-making process model to resolve this dilemma. Being a classroom teacher, I make every effort to deal with family and whanau as professionally as I can, with efficiency and withiout bias.

Our school’s policy on Communication with Parents (2018) states that teachers should remain polite, supportive and professional when speaking/ comunicating with parents at all times. An “offhand” or “patronising” tone is never acceptable.

I have also sourced other points of view from other colleagues, who maybe experiencing the same ‘bombardment’ of parent messages. My main discovery, is that they have turned off the app from their phones and only deal with messages through their laptop. This makes sense as the app also sends alerts to your email. I have made some efforts to disregard messages, when I receive them, but as my phone is constantly on for my ‘own’ family reasons, I have found that ignoring not always the best response.

(Now What): How can the Code assist me to solve my dilemma?

By being accessible to family and whanau at all times with reason, stiil allows me to fullfil my commitment and still engage in professional and respectful relationships. I will answer emails when working on my computer and this is often after school and even before 9pm at night. For my own family and whanau, I need to be more available and tend to their needs as well, to ensure a ‘good’ work/life balance.

References

Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794

Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved from:  https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files

Lynmore Primary School – Polcies and Procedures Manual (updated March 2018)

Writing circles

PART 1:
As part of my writing I tried out using some of the writing ideas that we gained from Friday’s writing PD with our in-school experts. Both these teachers are passionate about teaching writing and you can see that they enjoy teaching writing and want writing in our school to improve. We were given some scaffolding on what is needed for the children (aims and goals), a breakdown on the steps within a good writing lesson and we experienced a lesson from Gail Loane. During the session I could see how I could make this work for my class, especially giving the children the exemplar beforehand and unpacking this with them, getting them to notice and think and then write. The point they both made was around the use of writing and helping circles with a whole class approach.

I gave this a try. I provided the children with a description of a place/setting. We worked as a whole class (8 children were out of the class), They read the piece, I asked questions about their understanding of any tricky words, as a group we discovered the meanings, we looked at the language features such as wow words, words that sounded human (personification), and some of the surface features like colons and hyphens. The children highlighted these and we thought of different places that we could describe. I gave the children time to discuss this with a buddy and then we watched a YouTube clip on personification and then we tried the visualisation technique that we were shown on Friday. My ideas for success criteria were wow words, using personification and write sentences using full stops and capital letters. The children were then asked to write for ten minutes about the place they had described to their buddy.

As part of my CRT time, I watched another teacher work through this same lesson scaffold. Her class sat in a circle, she gave them an exemplar, as a class they discussed it. She make connections for the children with the text by using a piece of writing about the Cross Country, she also reminded them of the skills they had been using and could they find these in the exemplar. She reminded them of the purpose and what they need to have. She asked for them to dictate the visual success criteria, although she already had a copy already printed that she gave out after their sharing. She also asked for vocabulary ideas, which could help those struggling with spelling. She then set them off to write 5 minutes to plan, then 10 mins to write.

What did I learnt.

• I need to explicitly teach the skill first so the children can practise this without creating a piece of writing out of the blue
• I need to make closer connections to their lives
• I need to draw the success criteria and use a trophy word as I have done for quick writes.
• It will take time.

Where to next?

• Bring more ideas to the writing circle
• Encourage the children to help each other in the buddy chat
• Give more examples.

What am I uneasy about?

• That my passion for writing isn’t there
• I myself struggle with content and contexts that engage me as a writer, how do I get over this so that my children can fly in writing as well?

PART 2:

For my next session, I wanted to improve on and add to where I was and what I needed to bring to the lesson so that my children would get the idea I was trying to teach. I reviewed the Youtube clip once more, as I had loaded this into Google classroom some children had reviewed the clip themselves in their own time (flipped learning). I had also added a old Powerpoint that I had downloaded some years ago on figurative language and I know there was within this step by step lot of examples that my children would engage in.

The children sat in a circle and buddy talked to and created a sentence using personification together, only one sentence but the powerpoint had pictures and possible words that they could use. The children wrote one sentence then using the 'pop sticks' I chose random children to share their sentence
"The washing machine ate my clothes."
"My alarm clock screamed in my ear to wake me."
"The sun glared in my face as I rode down the hill on my bike."
All of these examples were written in a minute (I used a timer)and possibly lacked substance but the children were all very willing even those reluctant writers.

The next part of the slideshow was the writing task which discussed the place of a setting - which is where I wanted total my children in the previous lesson. The picture was of an old wooden galleon being tossed in the sea by the waves with vocabulary all around it. The children gasped and were in awe of the "pirate' ship. After watching my colleagues lesson, I decided to get the children to close their eyes and image a ship being tossed by the waves - I used the prompts from the slideshow but didn't share these with the children.

After the visualisation, the children told what features and visual icons they wanted to use for their story, for the success criteria. I encouraged the children to share with a partner and gave them 3 mins to plan their ideas, using a brainstorm. I had also write words that they wanted to have on the whiteboard.

I worked with my boys who were recording their stories using Google docs, and I used the visual icons on their plan before they wrote.

Using the timer, the children then wrote for 10mins and the children were very engaged, they knew what to write, they wanted to write and the scaffolding supported them to write. After the timer went off, children were encouraged to finish their last sentence and using the 'pop sticks', certain children were able to share the sentence that used either/or 2A sentence, personification, action words and the trophy word.

Next we need to work on improving their writing and being more concise and not to waffle on.

What did I learnt.

• That the children need to have something that they can make connections to
• I need to encourage the planning stage and the brainstorm bubble.
• Teach the skills first then work on the NOTICE/THINK of the exemplar
• Only look for 1 or 2 features within the exemplar

Where to next?

• Find images, stories, music that they can connect to.
• Use the visual icons when unpacking the features in the exemplar
• Use an exemplar that builds on what they know and add one new idea.

What am I uneasy about?

• The speed that it takes for less able writers to actually write more than one sentence even though they were very happy about their efforts.
• That the children are still working on knowing where to next.

Part 3 - Late August

Writing, this week was all about using 5 senses to show the reader not tell them what was happening. Hide and Seek was an exemplar given to the children to discover what good writers do to create picture in the reader’s mind. One child was able to ‘get’ this. 

Hidden
I see nothing but darkness.
The grass crumples under my feet.
The air is damp.
I can hear the wind whistling.
I have been hiding for 10 minutes.
“Are they coming?” I wonder.
I stumble.
The taste of grass fills my mouth.
They’re coming, I hold my breath.
I feel the the wet grass under my feet.
Phew, they leave.
I hear the hedge moving.
I wonder what time it is?
A torch flashes in my eye.
They’re here!
I duck as they search.
They found me!
The sound of whispering fills my ear;
I freeze.
It’s all over!

Year 4 Child

There were a few others who were successful but all in all, not what I was hoping for. To assist the children with this more I ran a workshop where we worked on creating sentences that showed the audience such as, “His eyes grew wide as he heard the teacher coming towards the class.” The children worked really well on this and there were many fantastic sentences to show how the character was acting. 

My next step was to incorporate the learning from the exemplar and the workshop and for the children to write a piece with more independence. We use a picture prompt for 365 Pobble called ‘Under the Bed’, the children had some brilliant ideas, there were even applications of AAAWWUBBIS and creative dialogue but not ‘Show not Tell’. Thursday was back to the drawing board, we worked together on a shared piece to write 2 paragraphs on what was under the bed. The children were amazing how easy it was to use good describing language, use what they could see, feel, hear and even smell to create a picture in the reader’s mind. So it will be more writing to see if we can do this ‘Show not Tell’.

After reading Gail Loane - I've got something to say - the part on guiding the children on writing character descriptions, she discusses the bit by bit approach of using a smaller part of the exemplar and teasing it out so the children are working in bite size pieces. These parts are physical description, actions revealing personality and behaviour, monologue and dialogue and how the character affects others. I think this will work for my slower writers as they can see that it will come together as one piece at the end.

What did I learn?

• Bite sized chunks will help with engagement
• There needs to be a connection for all
• Loads of practice on one topic will help cement the learning

Where to next?

• Keep working on using exemplars - good examples of good writing
• Make the lessons sharp and snappy
• Encourage them to help each other
• Use Success criteria in the form of visual check list.
• Use the 5 senses to achieve SHOW NOT TELL

What am I uneasy about?

• The lack of enthusiasm - do the topics work for all
• Is this taking too long to 'get it'?

Refererences

Loane, G., & Muir, S. A. (2010). I've got something to say: leading young writers to authorship. Aries Publishing Company.