Creating a Collaborative Classroom: Team Building

This week I have focussed on creating a safe, inclusive and happy classroom environment.  One of my favourite tasks so far would have to be the one we completed on Friday.

Can You Draw It?

I'm not sure of this games exact name, but it is a variation of this team building exercise, found on Pinterest. This is what you need:

• Groups of four - five is ok too, if one student is the instructor.
• A felt tip pen with two strings tied to it, creating four pieces of string.
• A2 or A3 paper for each group
• A print out of a simple drawing

All you need: A felt-tip pen with two strings tied, a simple drawing and some A2 newsprint paper

Instructions

1.  Each group member holds a piece of string.  They each have a piece of A2 paper and a print out of a simple drawing.
2. The group has to work together to replicate the simple drawing.
3. Students must be holding onto the string, they cannot touch the pen.

The group with the best drawing wins!

The finished product. Click here to see a larger version of their drawings

This activity was lots of fun and pretty hilarious.  There was laughter and a bit of frustration, as teams worked together to draw the image.

Although this activity was meant to be fun, there were some more serious lessons which underpinned the students success.  The students had to work together. Everyone had to help out and take part.  If one group member decided not to try, then the pen would not stay upright and the team would struggle.

Moral of the lesson

Everyone must work together, if one person doesn't then it won't work.  This is the case for collaborative work.  It is crucial that everybody pitches in and helps out. In order to succeed, everyone needs to play a role and contribute to the group.

Once students had calmed down from the excitement, we had a discussion about what the point of this task was.  I was happy that they could relay that it was about the importance teamwork and everyone doing their bit.

Next week...

Next week I am planning to continue setting team building challenges for my classroom.  This is helping my learners to feel safe and confident in my classroom.  It is also building a collaborative environment - which is what my learners asked for. I am looking forward to watching my learners progress from shy to confident classmates.

Creating a Collaborative Classroom: Day One & Two

It is always hard starting the new year with a new teacher and new classmates.  So this week I have focussed on creating a collaborative and inclusive classroom environment.  Whilst it started off a little slowly (with technical road bumps and very shy students), I am starting to see and hear collaboration happening in my classroom - and only on day two!

Key Competencies - TRUMP

My first day was focussed on learning more about the Key Competencies.  The NZ Curriculum says it is important, and our learners are even graded on the KC's in their report.  Despite this, students generally do not know what they are and what they mean.  Today we focussed on unpacking each of the Key Competencies: Thinking, Relating to Others, Using Language, Symbols and Text, Managing Self and Participating and Contributing.

Finding out their PK

To start with, I wanted to get the students Prior Knowledge, so they participated in a quick bus stop rotation.  This was when they shared what they thought each word meant.  This was supposed to be done on Google Docs, but we had no internet at the time.  It was great to see that my learners already knew quite a lot!

Students PK from the Bus Stop rotation

Unpacking as a Class

After this, we unpacked each one as a class. We drew on their ideas from the bus stop activity, and think-pair-shared our ideas of what each KC meant.  After this, we discussed how we could show each KC.  I helped them think about this by asking them "If the Principal walked into our classroom, what would he see if you were ___".  Asking what people would see helped my learners to understand what each KC means and 'looks like'.  To start with my learners were hesitant to share, but after lots of encouragement and positivity, there was a lot more talking happening amongst the table groups.

Time to get Creative!

Student's photographs of them showing the Key Competencies

After sharing our ideas and recording them on the board (there was no internet, so no LinoIt! 😞 ), my learners were given the challenge of taking photographs of them showing each of the 5 KC's.  They seemed to enjoy this part.  The boys and girls worked together to take photographs.  They were sharing their ideas and starting to relax with each other. 

I created a wall display which used their definitions and ideas, as well as their photographs. This will serve as a visual reminder of the ways my learners are expected to behave. Because it is their ideas and their photographs on the wall, there is more accountability for them to stick to rules and show the KCs.

Our wall display with the students own definitions, ideas and photographs

Class Contract

The next day we created our class contract.  I started the lesson off by revisiting the KC's and asking why it is important to know and use them.  For the class contract, I decided to use AnswerGarden. The question on the first AnswerGarden was "What helps you learn?".  AnswerGarden was a great tool to use because the ideas that were repeated would grow bigger.  This was a great way to see at a glance what was important to my classroom.  Learners also collaborated on an AnswerGarden asking "What DOESN'T help you learn?".  Both questions were incredibly insightful and gave us lots of things to draw on for our discussion. 

AnswerGarden for "What helps you learn?" click here access the AnswerGarden

AnswerGarden for "What DOESN'T help you learn?" click here access the AnswerGarden

AnswerGarden was a great tool to use to get students to share their ideas.  It was an easy way to see what was important to my learners.  I also think that it helped the students to share their ideas because their names were not attached to the ideas they posted.  It was also reassuring for them to notice that many others had said the same thing (when their ideas grew bigger, or from noticing someone had said something similar).  I would definitely use this tool again with my classroom.

Class Discussion

Following the AnswerGarden, the class choose the most important words/phrases relating to what helps them learn or not learn.  Using Think Pair Share, we discussed the importance of each of the ideas as a class.  I choose to keep relating their rules back to the idea of us wanting to create a safe, inclusive and happy environment.  Next, I got the students to form small groups and write 6 rules for the classroom.  

Lastly, we shared our rules, mixed them together and adapted them to create a set of rules that we were all happy with. It was great to see my students gaining more confidence, with some of my shyest students sharing their rules.

Wall Display of Class Contract

I created the class contract on Canva. In hindsight, I could have gotten the learners to help choose the template, colours and fonts (this would have given them more ownership of their contract).  

Instead of getting the students signatures or hand prints, I chose to use puzzle pieces.  Before getting the students to make their puzzle piece, we discussed the importance of the contract and adding their puzzle piece.

Where to next...

Overall I am pretty pleased with how the first two days have gone.  I will need to keep going over/referring to our class contract and our KC wall to reinforce our class expectations.  Despite their shyness, the majority of students (17/19) said they preferred working with others in groups.  So I need to continue to encourage learners to work together and share their ideas. One thing I noticed was the reluctance to work with the opposite gender.  This is something I need to keep in mind.  I will continue to encourage my learners to collaborate and celebrate when they do so.  They have already showed me that they can do so much more when they work together. I was also really happy with the way they have grasped using digital tools like AnswerGarden. I need to continue to find new and engaging tools that will allow my learners to feel confident to share their ideas with one another.  

My Takeaways from Manaiakalani's Annual Hui

On Friday the MDTA were very lucky to attend Manaiakalani's 5th annual Hui - a place where teachers and learners across Manaiakalani celebrate and share their accomplishments.  

This has ended up being a rather lengthy post, as I gained many new insights from the teachers, researchers and learners at the hui.

In the morning

First up we heard our Manaiakalani student ambassadors share their learning.  It was really interesting to hear from students how they learnt in their school.  What I like about Manaiakalani is that every school is different.  Although we are all following Manaiakalani's 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy, each school is able to put their own spin on it to reflect the community they are in.  There were plenty of ideas that I will borrow and repurpose in my classroom, like the use of a 'Goal Wall' to make goals visible to learners.  

Following this, the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher's shared their inquiries with the insights they gained along the way. I came away feeling inspired to give my own teaching programme a shake up to ensure my lessons are engaging, motivating and using digital technologies as much as possible.  Whilst I do believe I use technology a lot in the classroom, these teachers had come up with ideas that I had not thought of before.  Check out my infographic to see my main takeaways from the MIT.

Next up

After morning tea we heard from Rachel Williams about her holiday intervention programmes 'Summer Learning Journey' and 'Winter Learning Journey'.  Rachel's aim is to help lesson the 'summer drop off', where learners achievement declines between T4 and T1 after the school holidays. Her results show that students who participated in the 'Summer Learning Journey' had less of a drop compared to students who did not participate in the intervention.  Rachel's data was very compelling and I am excited to encourage my learners to participate in 'Summer Learning Journey 2.0'.

Next Woolf Fisher researchers, Rebecca Jesson, Stuart McNaughton and Aaron Wilson shared their insights gathered from observing teachers, and challenged us to consider what we are doing to accelerate our learners achievement.

Lastly

Dorothy, Russell and Pat Snedden spoke about where we are now and where to next for Manaiakalani.  Although we are doing a great job accelerating our student's achievement, we need to continue to reflect, refine and improve our teaching. We have a series of outreach clusters which are looking at us and using what we are doing to accelerate their learners achievement too.  Therefore, we need to be at the forefront of change and be constantly seeking ways to help our learners achieve.  Pat Snedden's talk was the most inspiring of the day.  He is so passionate about lifting our learners out of subsistence to capital builders.  I think Pat Snedden gave me the kick I needed to ensure that I am constantly doing my best and seeking ways to improve my teaching, because it is what my learners deserve.

I also used Twitter when I heard something which resonated with me.  Here is a collation of my tweets from the Hui.

MDTA 6 Month Reflection

And here it is!

 This is my reflection of my experiences as a BT in the MDTA so far. I had wanted to create a reflection which portrayed my personality and experiences honestly and accurately. I had decided to not use a script when filming, as I wanted it to appear genuine and more conversational rather than interview-like. However I had forgotten to mention a lot of things, so I had to film some more this weekend (which explains the change in camera angle and different background).  A big thanks to Juliana who helped me film.

I am thoroughly enjoying being in the MDTA and have learnt so many new things which I have been applying in my teaching.   I'm looking forward to continuing to learn how to use digital technologies to accelerate my learners and get them excited about learning.

What I learnt at Tamaki College

Today the MDTA visited and observed each other's schools.  As an intermediate teacher, the wonder/concern of whether my learners will be prepared enough for college regularly plays in the back of my mind.  Therefore I thought observing a year nine english class would help answer my questions. I wanted to gain insight into what students do in year nine english, and to also see and hear first hand of the gaps the year nines have in their learning as they come into college.

Here are some of my thoughts...

Use of Kahoot!

Although I am familiar with Kahoot! and have used it and Socrative in my classroom, I have only used it as a form of summative assessment at the end of units. English teacher Vaughan Spurdle uses it in a variety of ways. Instead of merely playing the online quiz, Vaughan uses Kahoot! as a reference to further discuss and clarify their understandings. He makes the subsequent questions display time the maximum time and poses a question that asks whether the students understand what had been discussed.  Vaughan was constantly questioning his students and their responses, and guiding and supporting the learners in their understandings of punctuation. This was a really cool way to use Kahoot! that I hadn't thought of, so I will definitely be doing this in my classroom next .  He also spoke about using it at the beginning of a unit to identify prior knowledge and gaps in their learning.

Gaps in learners

Whilst in Vaughan's classroom I spoke to another teacher about the gaps that the learners come to college with.  The response I got was honest and quite worrying. A lot of students are coming into year nine English classes with little or no understanding of:

• Structure of genres
• Punctuation
• Sentence types
• Paragraphing  

This was alarming as these are the foundations of writing.  It really made me reflect on what I am doing in my classroom, and question whether I am doing enough to ensure my learners are understanding the basics of writing. 

Accelerated Reader

This is a program that has been recently implemented with year nine and ten learners at Tamaki College.  Learners choose a book, read it for 20 minutes each day, and take a quiz once they have completed the book. There is a wide selection of books, ranging from picture books to lengthy novels, and they are all levelled.  If a student gets more than 80% on their quiz, they are able to move up a level and read a more challenging text.  The Accelerated Reading programme has been very successful with the students. The kids now have a real interest and enthusiasm for learning.  Vaughan spoke about learners literally running to the library to get a new book after discovering they had moved up a level. Being able to move up levels has been really motivating for the learners who are both struggling and proficient readers.  The vast majority of learners are continuing to move up the levels, which indicates that the learners are becoming better readers and comprehenders.  Another point of difference of the program is the selection of books.  Instead of reading low interest texts, there is such a wide variety and they are books that teenagers typically enjoy reading anyway.  I saw the Harry Potter series, Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, graphic novels and many more high-interest texts.

Whilst I may not be able to implement this programme in my own class and school (it does come with a price tag), I can definitely take some aspects of it.  It is quite obvious that the learners love seeing themselves improve their reading and move onto more challenging texts.  If such a program is so highly motivational, perhaps I could create a similar program to run in my classroom. I could also use a range high interest texts like wide selection of texts within the Accelerated Reader program, as it is apparent that these texts actually hook the students in.

My visit to Tamaki College was very insightful and I am hoping that what I have learnt will enable me to better prepare my learners for college.

A new chapter

Monday marked the beginning of a new chapter of my teaching career, as I started in a new school.  Leading up to this day I had so many wonderings whizzing through my mind. So many new experiences and faces were approaching.  A new school, new class, new students, new colleagues and new mentor.  However I have quickly adjusted to my new school and am loving it!  The learners are fantastic and the staff are very supportive.

Glen Innes School is a decile 1A school situated in the heart of Glen Innes.  The schools roll is just over 200, and caters to learners from years 1 - 8. As with other Manaiakalani schools, GIS uses digital tools to accelerate their learners achievement.  The juniors use iPads and the seniors use netbooks. I will be co-teaching in a year 7 & 8 class with my mentor teacher, Manor Ramkolowan.  

Today a pōwhiri was held to welcome me to the school.  A pōwhiri is a Māori welcoming ceremony involving speeches, dancing, singing and the hongi.  Previously I have only attended one pōwhiri before, so it was quite the experience having pōwhiri to welcome me.  Glen Innes School has held 4 pōwhiri's during the past year to welcome new staff members and organisations to the school.  Jono Hendricks, the principal at GIS, had decided to do this in response to the community we are situated in.  It is a great opportunity for learners and teachers to demonstrate their responsiveness and respect towards Maori culture and protocols.  The students involved did an amazing job. They were strong and confident in their roles, which made the ceremony powerful.  

I am looking forward to continuing to immerse myself in Glen Innes School and its wider community.