I'm Chelsea Donaldson and I am a fifth-year teacher. I teach in a digital 1:1 learning environment and am passionate about using technology to engage and extend my learners. I'm all about making my lessons
engaging and fun, and creating a safe, inclusive and happy
classroom. This year I am teaching an awesome class of year 5 & 6 learners at Glen Innes School, and documenting my learning along the way.
I've previously taught year 7 & 8 students.
Two crazy years of being a beginning teacher, MDTA teacher and part time student has paid off! Last week I was ecstatic to open an email informing me that I am officially a registered teacher! If that wasn't enough great news in one week, I also received an A- for my dissertation on integrated reading and writing instruction. I am super stoked with this result, as I put a lot of effort into setting up the intervention in my classroom, gathering data and drawing conclusions.
I am looking forward to continuing to challenge myself by sharing my practise through Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir. The site is going live tomorrow and I am really looking forward to putting myself out there and sharing what I do. Here is a sneak peak at my little introduction video which will be on my Class OnAir page. Sorry it is not the best quality and location for filming, I had to film on my laptop and it was too rainy to shoot outside! I hope my video will help viewers get an idea of my personality and beliefs about teaching, as I feel that they heavily influence the way I teach and the lessons I create for my learners.
I am glad to have my beginning teacher years behind me. Now it is time to refine my teaching and ensure I am doing the best for my learners. I think that Class OnAir will help motivate me to continue to push myself and get my learners to think critically.
It is crazy to think that I have almost completed my first year as a beginning teacher in the MDTA. I have learnt heaps and grown a lot. Here is my doco where I talk about my beliefs, the MDTA programme and how I use Manaiakalani's 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. Thanks to Dorothy Burt, Anne Sinclair, Fiona Grant, the MDTA BTs and the team at Glen Innes Primary who have helped me on my journey! I am looking forward putting my learning into practice into my own class next year.
Today was the 9th annual Manaiakalani Film Festival. Instead of our usual digital immersion days, the MDTA spent the day at Hoyts helping out and enjoying the awesome films our learners have created.
It was a pretty awesome feeling to see my film on the big screen! I am so proud of my learners and the effort they put into the making of our film. All the actors did an excellent job and helped come up with some awesome shots. I was also lucky to have an awesome director (Lauren) who took charge of the filming.
Here is my first Manaiakalani Film Festival film, enjoy!
Let us know what you think! Feel free to leave a comment on our class blog. You can also check out the films from all schools in the cluster by clicking here.
Here is my first Class OnAir episode! Last week we learnt about Haiku poems. On Tuesday, we learnt about the structure and features used in Haiku's. Following this, the students found their own examples of a summer, autumn, winter and spring haiku. Next, the students annotated the features they liked about the Haiku poems they had selected. On Wednesday the class worked collaboratively to use what they had learnt about the structure and features of a Haiku, to create a class Haiku. This is what I chose to film. Something to note is that we had an ERO visitor in the classroom during filming. This is why they were much more quiet than what they usually are. There is also a lot more teacher talk than what would usually happen during our lessons, as I needed to give the learners extra support and prompts to encourage them to share. I think my learners did a great job under the unusual circumstances. Overall I was pleased with how the lesson went. The learners were engaged and it was a great oportunity to use a new digital tool - padlet. I like to use clips from YouTube during my writing lesson as the learners can draw on what they see and hear to create descriptive pieces of writing. This is particularly beneficial for our struggling writers. Click on the screenshot to have a look at my Class OnAir site. It is quite daunting putting myself out there and it feels a little odd to watch myself teach, but I can use this to figure out what I can do to improve my teaching.
Today for Digital Immersion we were lucky enough to have Point England teacher and GarageBand guru Rob Wiseman join us to take us through GarageBand. We went through all the basics of GarageBand like cutting and editing audio recordings, GarageBand shortcuts and creating our own music. I wrote some notes of the tidbits I found useful, which you can find here.
Creating in GarageBand
Our challenge was to create some music to use with a video we had captured during the week. I chose to use a video I took of the Zirka Circus performers that came to GIS on Monday. The quality of the video is a little poor and the music is a little odd, but I felt it matched with the performers actions and their costumes. I might refine it a little more by using iMovie to cut and match the song to the movements of the performers, but for now this will do!
Unfortunately I was absent during last Friday's Digital Immersion day, recovering from a procedure on my jaw. After looking at Dorothy's presentation and blog post, and the blog posts from the rest of the MDTA team, I knew I missed out on an awesome learning opportunity!
Creating to share with infographics
The create aspect of the day was about creating to share using infographics. Infographics are a visual and fun way to present statistics. It goes without saying that people respond better to visuals than a lengthy piece of writing. The average human attention span is only 8 seconds, and our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. This makes me question who wouldn't want to use infographics to show data!
Having a go
I created an infographic to display the data from my professional blog. There were so many infographic creator sites online, but I chose to use Canva. Instead of using a template I decided to create mine from scratch as I had an idea of how I wanted to lay out my infographic. There were lots of icons, images, charts and shapes to choose from, but the only thing that bothered me was that the charts were not editable, I had wanted to use a Pie Graph to display the countries of my visitors, however I discovered it was a set image that could not be edited. I had heard that Piktochart allows you to edit your charts, which I will keep in mind for the future.
Why use it in the classroom?
Fun way to display information which would normally be in the form of lengthy sentences.
Infographics grabs readers attention through its use of images and colour and short pieces of writing.
You don't have to be an artist or very creative to feel successful in your creation.
You can choose from a wide variety of templates to get you going and get some inspiration.
Student's perspective
I actually finished creating this infographic whilst supervising a group of GIS students at a chess tournament. When they saw what I was creating they were all really interested in what I was creating. They liked the way it looked and had said they would like to do something like this in their learning. One of the students said an infographic about their blog posts would be a cool thing to create and have on their blogs and classroom. Such an activity could empower, excite and motivate my learners to continue to share their learning on their blog. I am looking forward to finding more ways to use infographics in the classroom.
Sketchnoting is a way of recording information using images, diagrams, connectors and text. An amazing sketchnoter to look at is Sylvia Duckworth. There are three important components of sketchnoting: text, images and structure. When using text, it is important to consider the hierarchy of your ideas and highlight the most important aspects. This can be done through using a different font, size or boldness. It is said that pictures are worth a thousand words, and this is definitely believed by sketchnotes. You can use images and symbols to visualise important and complex ideas. Lastly, to help make the structure clear you should use containers and arrows. These help organise the flow of your sketchnote. If you want to learn more, Dorothy's post about sketchnoting is where you need to go.
Why sketchnote?
Instead of me writing about the benefits, have a look at this sketchnote!
Sylvia Duckworth's presentation helped me a lot when creating my sketchnote. This presentation could also be adapted and used to help your students begin to sketchnote.
I found it fun but also infuriating at the same time. As someone who thinks creatively but does not have nice handwriting or drawing skills, I found it hard to transfer my ideas onto paper. Another challenge was figuring out where to start drawing/writing, as I wanted to space out my text and images evenly. Sketchnoting takes a lot of time, but I found that as I was doing it, my understanding of what I was sketchnoting was reinforced. I had to think carefully about how I could summarise and synthesize what I wanted to say, which helped my understanding and memory.
This is the third of my attempts at sketchnoting my thoughts on why learners should share their learning online:
My advice...
Do a rough pencil sketch to map out the structure of your ideas (size and style of font, words/phrases, symbols etc) and then do your sketchnote free hand. Using pencil is too tempting to erase your work, and you could also leave smudges and holes in your paper.
Using sketchnotes in the classroom
I can see the benefits of sketchnoting, although it would need to be taught in some detail before trying to use it in the classroom. You could use sketchnoting in reading as a way to summarize the story, or write character profiles. You could use it as a way to show your understanding of a concept in social studies, or a strategy in mathematics. Another way you could use sketchnotes is for your wall displays. You could create sketchnote information posters, class treaties, class rules and quotes... the possibilities are endless.
This week in mathematics I am have been teaching algebraic patterns and rules to the the higher level students in my classroom. Figuring out patterns and rules can be quite tricky. Even I am not the most confident when it comes to upper primary mathematics, especially algebra. Therefore I decided to make my lessons hands-on, so the learners could physically make the patterns. It was my hope that by making the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th phase of a pattern, they would begin to notice patterns and make connections to algebraic thinking.
We started off with determining the number of sticks used in a phase of a pattern. We began with a triangle pattern. The students quickly noticed that the number of sticks were increasing by 2, however this was not enough to create the 'rule'. After the students tested out their theories, I illustrated that the triangles could be split into groups of two, with one extra stick left over. Seeing the connection between the broken up sticks and the number of triangles helped them to notice the rule, n= (nx2) +1. After identifying the rule the learners were able to predict the number of sticks needed for the 8th, 27 and 38th pattern.
Following this, we moved on to a square pattern. I prompted the learners to think back to how we split up the triangles, and think about how they could split up the squares in a similar way. Some of the learners instantly 'saw' how they could split up the squares, whilst some tried other ways. This prompted discussions on why the learners chose to break the squares the way they did, and whether it would give us a rule for the number of sticks. This lead them to discover that the sticks should be split into groups of 3, with 1 left over; giving the rule n = (nx3) +1. Discussion was an important element of the lesson as it allowed learners to share their thoughts and justify their answers
I was surprised with how fast my learners were identifying the sequences and rules of the patterns, so I posed one more pattern to my learners. It was in the shape of a house, with 6 sticks. Most of the learners quickly figured out a rule to count the number of sticks in the sequence. Following this my learners created a DLO that teaches someone else about calculating rules for triangle and square path patterns. It was the first time that they had created a DLO in maths, but they did very well. Here are two examples of the DLOs created after this lesson. You can visit their blog posts by clicking on the images
My learners grasped the concept of finding a rule really well. I am looking forward to challenging my learners with some more complex patterns and rules.Next I will move onto more complex patterns and get them to create their own patterns that follow an algebraic rule.
Today was quite possibly the best Digital Immersion day I have had to date. We were set with the task of creating a stop motion movie to teach our learners an idea or concept. I chose to create a stop motion based on beach safety and rips, as it will fit into our aquatics inquiry.
Whilst the movie doesn't look like much, it took a lot of planning, creating and editing! An important lesson I learnt is if you are using a newer model iPhone, take the 'live photo' capability off before you start taking pictures. I got a big shock when I uploaded my photos onto my mac and discovered every image was a 3 second clip! But with some playing around I found a way to turn the live photo off and upload it using iPhoto Library (instead of the Photos app that pops up automatically).
Creating my backdrop
To create this stop motion I first created my beach scene by taking photographs of my 'waves' crashing onto the shore. After uploading the images to iMovie, I changed the duration of each image and saved it as a file. I then created a new iMovie and imported the clip of my waves crashing. Next, I copied the clip, and changed the second one to 'reverse', as I wanted the waves to roll in and out. Then I copied the two parts and pasted it numerous times so that the waves would be continuously rolling in and out throughout my clip. Then I saved this as Beach Scene.
So. Many. Photos!
Next came the task of taking photographs of my characters with speech bubbles. This took a lot of time. I first created my 'green screen' background and foreground. Next I wrote out all the speech bubbles. Following that, I began taking photographs of my characters and the speech bubbles. I took over 200 photos, making slight movements of my characters and the speech bubbles. After this I uploaded my images from my phone onto my computer, and then onto iMovie.
I then had to adjust the speed of some of my photographs. This took a lot of time because some of my speech bubbles had a lot in them, so I needed to make sure my learners would have enough time to read them. After this, I saved the iMovie and labelled it 'Green screen'.
Next I had to put it all together. I created another iMovie and imported the Green Screen and Beach Scene files. I placed the Green Screen file on top of the Beach Scene, and changed the overlay to 'Green/Blue Screen'. At times you could see the creases in the paper of my background/foreground and stick I used for the speech bubble, so I had to fix this using the eraser tool. Lastly, I added a sound clip.
And it's finished!
There are a few things I am unhappy with (like the occasional finger and watch strap making an appearance on screen and that I didn't quite place the green screen and characters in the perfect place), but overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. It was lots of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenges that arose when creating a stop motion movie.
Today in digital immersion the MDTA learnt all about iMovie. Our task was to create an iMovie about our learners. I chose to focus on how my learners use Manaiakalani's 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy in their learning process. I didn't have a lot of video footage so I created my own screencasts and included a DLO from one of the groups in my classroom. Enjoy my movie!
Our focus for our Digital Immersion day last week was 'Create to Learn'. We were tasked with creating an 'explainer' video to show our inquiry focus. I chose to create something similar to RSA Animate, but I was cheeky and found images online as I cannot draw to save myself. It is not perfect and I have noticed that I need a question mark on the first slide, oops! However I really enjoyed this task. It was quite time consuming! I saved a ridiculous amount Google Draws as JPEGS and imported them all onto iMovie. Then I had to decrease the time for each frame and change the cropping from 'ken burns' to 'fit'. Following that, I recorded the voice over. After a few touch ups of the timing of the frames (so they matched the audio) I was finished!
Today we learnt how to take still images like a pro! We learnt about the rule of thirds, lighting and composition. With our newly acquired knowledge we set off for a little field trip. I had a look around Glenn Innes and got inspired to take photographs of street art in the community.
Next we uploaded them to our Google Drive. I had always thought that uploading photos was a hassle as I didn't know of a quick way to transfer them my phone, to my computer and to my site. Using the Google Photos app on your phone is a super quick way to transfer photographs. We also discussed how to embed folders on Google Sites, which got me thinking about how I could use this in my class. During mathematics I take lots of photographs of the learners. I had intended to create a digital modelling book to keep a record of what we were learning, but I had completely forgotten to do this. Now I know of a fast way to get my photographs onto my computer I will add a modelling book onto my mathematics page.
Lastly we used Pic Monkey to create a collage, and YouTube to create a collage to share our photographs. Some of my photographs needed cropping, so I used iPhoto to do this. It was fun playing around with the slideshow options on YouTube. I like how you can choose from a wide range of royalty-free songs and change the transitions to suit the style of the photographs.
On Tuesday this week my mentor and I taught the Current Events lesson that I had created during my MDTA Digital Immersion days. With the Current Events page up and running I was ready to go. After discussing my lesson, Robyn and I made some tweaks. We also decided that I would take the lead the first part of the lesson, we would team teach the next, and Robyn would lead the last part of our lesson. Here is a link to my multi-modal page that I created using HTML. Attached to the page is my teaching DLO and teacher notes.
Learning intentions
To identify the 5Ws of a current event
To identify and explain the point of views of groups involved in a current event
To understand there are two sides to a provocation
Connecting to the learners
Perhaps the most important part of my lesson was one of the first things I did - connecting to the learners. In order to be fully engaged and immersed in a lesson, I believe learners need to understand why they are learning something and have some form of connection to the learning. I had to come up with a way to connect the bus strikes to my learners lives. I knew that every Friday LS2 hops on a bus and travels to Technology at Tamaki College. In my lesson I asked my learners to think-pair-share what would happen if their bus driver didn't turn up to take them to tech. The classroom erupted with discussion.From this question, the learners understood that the Auckland bus strikes was something that could have been affected by and were interested in the current event.
The provocation
Learning Space 2 is very passionate about what is fair and right. I used this knowledge to form my provocation questions.
Is it fair for bus drivers to go on strike?
Is it fair to make bus drivers work longer hours but get less pay?
I encouraged the class to consider how they would feel if their bus driver didn't pick them up, and how would feel if their family members were made to work longer hours for less money. This again helped connect the learners to the current event as they were able to consider how they would have felt if they were involved in the Auckland Bus strikes.
Introducing the Auckland bus strikes
Instead of making my learners read an article or listen to myself explain the current event, I chose to use a recording from a radio news bulletin. Here is the link. Whilst the learners were engaged and listening to the recording, I could have directed their focus and gave them a purpose when listening to the recording. Next time I would display a question on the Apple TV whilst playing the recording, as it would have given them a specific focus when listening to the news bulletin.
Exploring the multi-modal site
The learners were set with the task of exploring the current events page and collaboratively filling out the 5Ws and H of the Auckland bus strike task. Robyn suggested that we use an existing task that is in our reading rotations, and add in 'point of view' section. This was effective as the learners already were familiar with the 5Ws of a current event. The learners filled in the 5Ws and H section and left the point of view part for after our class discussion. I did hint for the learners to look at what 'point of view' means by looking at the Current Events page. The multi-modal site was a site which catered to all learners and their abilities. The site consisted of audio clips, images, short sentences, extended paragraphs and video clips. This meant that all learners could get an understanding of the current events issue. Students who struggle with reading could listen to the audio clip, look at the images and watch the audio clip and gain an understanding of the Auckland bus strikes. This was a crucial element of my current events lesson. All learners were able to take part in the lesson and make meaning of the current events issue. I also spoke about the affordances of a multi-modal site here.
Dialogic discussion
After collaboratively filling out the 5W and H sections of their task, the class came together to share their ideas. The students led this part of the lesson as they shared their ideas with the class. My role was to get them to explain their responses and encourage further discussion of the ideas learners shared.
Exploring Bias
There is always two sides to every story...
Robyn and I team-taught this part of the lesson, which was an effective way to introduce the idea of bias. We unpacked the meaning of bias and explained it in the context of the Three Little Pigs. Robyn and I modelled the different points of view in the Three Little Pigs. I took the point of view of the three little pigs, and Robyn took the point of view of the mother. I explained that my point of view was that the wolf was the 'bad guy' because he destroyed their homes. Robyn responded to by saying that as the wolf's mother, she believed the pigs were the bad guys because the pigs had murdered her son.
Point of view
We got our learners had to consider the people and groups involved in the Auckland bus strike. We unpacked the meaning of point of view and asked the class to think-pair-share the point of views of the public and the bus drivers. We recorded the responses and encouraged the learners to use full sentences and justify their ideas by saying because... Getting our learners to explain their thinking by using because made them think more critically about their ideas, as they had to draw on evidence and their own opinion to justify their ideas.
Task two
Robyn took the lead in this aspect of the lesson. The learners had work with a partner and choose a group involved in the Auckland bus strikes. The class decided that the main groups involved were bus drivers, the public, bus drivers' bosses and the police. Their task was to use ifaketext to have a 'polite argument' between two different groups. Both groups had to share their point of view and make sure they explained why they held their point of view. Robyn revised the meaning of provocation, bias and point of view. The challenge of the task was to provide a clear explanation of the meaning of provocation, bias and point of view.
Student's work
Here are some screenshots of my learners completed tasks. If you click on the image you will be taken to their individual blog post. Sorry the quality isn't the best
Overall I was very pleased with how the current events lesson went. The learners were hooked into the lesson and engaged in all aspects of the task. I will definitely be doing another current events lesson like this in the near future.
Today we consolidated our learning and understanding of Google Sites, HTML and critical thinking in current events through the creation of a current events page. The 2016 MDTA cohort was set with the challenge of each creating a multi-modal page on Google Sites about a current event. In previous weeks we discussed critical thinking in social studies and reading, and chose current event topics. We then had a week to come up with the content of the lesson.
I found creating my change challenging but very addicting! After plenty of trials and errors, it was a great feeling to correctly fix something using HTML. A challenge I had was that I wanted to unmerge cells that had previously been merged together. This was tricky as when you merge cells you need to delete another. Merging cells shifts the one cell to take up the space of two cells, therefore you are left with an odd cell that is to the right of your table.
Merging Cells using HTML
Merge rows by adding the code rowspan="(number)" inside the <tb> code of the cell you want to merge
This shifts the cell to the right of the table. You then need to delete that entire cell.
Unmerging and Adding Cells
When you want to unmerge and add a row back in again you are left with a gap where it should have been. After some thinking and reading of the HTML I had, I figured how to add a cell back in by writing the codes <td> and </td> below the code for the previous cell.
You can unmerge cells by changing the rowspan code to rowspan"1". However this leaves you with a blank space where the previous cell was deleted.
Place some x's in the column next to the blank space. This shows where you want to create a new column.
Find the x's to locate where you need to add in a column. Insert <td> and </td> underneath the previous </td> for the xxxx column
Whilst this may have been very simple problem to solve for HTML savvy people, it was quite the accomplishment for someone who had no idea about HTML two weeks ago!
My Current Events Page
Here is the page I created using HTML. Please note that it is not entirely finished. I would like to increase the white cell padding and change the vertical alignment within each cell to be centered. I am still on my HTML learning journey and will fix it when I figure out how to. Click on the screenshot below to explore my page :) .
I will be using my multi-modal current events page with my learners next week.
Our second Digital Immersion day started with a little learning about the origins of Manaiakalani. Dorothy talked us through Manaiakalani's conception, beginning days and where the cluster is at now. Once again I was reminded of how lucky I am to be a part of an innovative cluster that is making a real difference to the lives of our learners. Today's digital learning was about Google Forms and Google Sheets. Again this week I was surprised at how little I knew about these apps. Dorothy talked us through the Self-Paced Check with Dave Winter. Dave's Google Sheet was really useful as we could go through the YouTube clips at our own pace (as the name suggests) and fill in any knowledge gaps we had about Google Spreadsheets. Next up we learnt about Google Forms. We learnt by doing as Dorothy guided us through the process of creating our own Google Form. I created mine on Sentence Structures, as this is a lesson which I enjoy and am passionate about teaching. We also learnt about the Google Sheet's add-on Flubaroo. This add-on enables you to transfer your responses from your Google Form onto a Google Spreadsheet. You can then grade your responses. Here is a Google Draw I created about my learning:
Today marked the beginning of my MDTA Digital Immersion days in the MDTA. These professional meetings are a chance for the MDTA BTs to share their experiences, as well as immerse ourselves in the digital world so we can use technology effectively in the classroom.
The day started off with a discussion on how the MDTA BTs are settling into our classrooms. It is very reassuring to know that the MDTA BTs and Leaders are all in this journey together. I feel very lucky to be a part of a Professional Learning Group (PLG) that shares their experiences, as it allows us to learn with and from each other.
Our digital learning of today was about Google Docs. One thing I learnt was to use the 'Styles' section to create headings and subheadings. Gone are the days of creating headings by changing the font! This is very useful as you can then create a Table of Contents so you can click on a heading and find it instantly. We also explored Add-ons for Google Docs and shared them in a Google Presentation. I chose to share Lucidchart, as it is a great way to organise your thinking in a visual form.
Our last task was to create a Digital Learning Object (DLO) to show what has resonated with us today. Here is my Google Draw:
I am looking forward to continuing to learn, create and share my learning on this blog.
