Digital Immersion: Critical Thinking, Sites 101 & Multi-Modal Learning

Critical Thinking with Caleb Allison

Today during Digital Immersion we were fortunate to have a visit from MDTA Alumni and Tamaki College teacher Caleb Allison.  He spoke about building critical thinking in our learners within the context of Current Events.  It has been noted that teachers are not making the most of their teaching time to challenge students to think more critically.  Critical thinking involves challenging students to think beyond themselves.  Caleb uses SOLO Taxonomy in his Current Events lessons to encourage critical thinking.  Caleb's Current Events programme got me thinking about how I could implement something similar into my reading programme.  I am looking forward to giving it a go.

Here is an infographic I created which shows the progression from surface to critical thinking about Current Events, using SOLO Taxonomy.

Sites 101

The digital component of the day was about learning the basics of creating and designing a Google Site.  We each created a 'sandpit' site, where we created different pages, played with the layout and adjusted the settings for our site.  It was a great opportunity to develop our understandings of Google Sites.

Multi-Modal Learning

In the afternoon we had to create a multi-modal learning site, which would help learners to explore and develop their understandings of a fairy-tale. Multi-modal learning is related to Gardener's theory of 'Multiple Intelligences'.  I chose Three Little Pigs and set out to find resources which would cater to all student's needs and learning preferences. I found a YouTube clip, a story that had a 'read aloud' function, a YouTube clip featuring a student's summary, a text version and a short summary of Three Little Pigs.  Here is a screenshot of my site:

Here is a screenshot of my multi-modal site for the fairytale Three Little Pigs.

 I am looking forward to implementing what I have learnt today into my classroom.

SOLO PD with Pam Hook

Friday marked my first Professional Development course as a BT in the MDTA.  All I can say was WOW!  Pam Hook took us on an interesting learning journey through SOLO Taxonomy.  With Pam's analogies, simple explanations and wicked sense of humour I was hooked the entire time!  It was great that we took part in hands-on activities as it allowed us to see how we can use SOLO in our lessons.  Using SOLO will help our learners make deeper connections to their learning.  

SOLO is an extremely useful taxonomy to implement in Learning Space Two as it scaffolds learners from thinking at a surface level to a deeper level.  This is what Pam calls 'constructive alignment'.   Another benefit to SOLO is that it does not label our learners, as the focus is on the learning outcomes and objectives, rather than the students themselves.  Thus children's mindset of learning will shift from a 'fixed' mindset, to 'I can achieve when I combine strategy, effort and persistence'.

Robyn and I had a fabulous time with Pam Hook and have already planned to use some of her ideas next week.

Here is a link to my notes from the PD session.