Getting kids hyped about blogging: an update

A few weeks ago we looked at our blog stats and our global audiences.  Since then, my learners have become more interested in sharing their learning on their blogs. I really wanted to capture and keep their enthusiasm, so I have made a display for the room. 

1000 club

My kids were really excited to see their blog views as well as the countries. I decided to encourage this attitude, as well as a little competition.  I started off with just the '1000 club' - for students who have 1000 blog views or more. Since some of my students have only just got blogs, I decided to also include a '500 club'. I want my learners to feel proud of their blog views and celebrate their global audience.  

Top bloggers

I also wanted to encourage my learners to regularly post high quality blog posts.  I decided to run a weekly competition, using a tally system.  Every time a student posts a high quality blog post, they get one point.  The top blogger of the week gets a prize.  I have enlisted the help of 3 students to check the blog posts and record the points. My helpers check that the blog post clearly explains their learning, how they went and what they can do to improve. My helpers also check that the blog posts make sense. It has also been helpful to have helpers, as it can be hard to check every blog post before it is posted.

Infographics

At the bottom of the display I have included the students infographics about their global audience.

How it's going

Even though I have just started using this blog display, my learners are already so keen to get sharing their learning. In fact, after explaining how the top bloggers competition works, something crazy happened.  The bell went for morning tea, and no one moved.  Every student stayed and completed their blog posts. And it kept happening throughout the week.  Personally, I think a little extrinsic motivation can work wonders. When students write a blog post they are summarising, evaluating and reflecting on their learning. Even if they are motivated by the idea of a prize, they are still summarising, evaluating and reflecting on their learning, which I think is awesome. 

Next steps

I am hoping that my students enthusiasm towards blogging will continue.  It is important that I continue to stress the importance of quality blog posts, where students summarise, evaluate and reflect. I would like my learners to write more detail in their blog posts that is more than "I need to try harder".   I would like my learners to be more specific as this will help them to understand their next steps in learning.

Reflection: Current Events

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.

Elements of an Engaging Lesson

On  Wednesday I observed my Mentor take a 'statistical inquiry' lesson. I wanted to observe and record how Robyn creates an engaging lesson on statistics.  What I witnessed was inspiring!  Robyn places great importance on creating student 'buy in', as it leads to engagement in learning.  She achieves this through:

• Sparking student interest
• Promoting student agency
• Making connections between the learning and the learners

How it was done

In the statistical inquiry, students were given the open task of 'finding out about LS2'.  Robyn encouraged the students to think outside the box, and away from typical questions such as 'what is your favourite colour?' and come up with something they wanted to know about their classmates. Getting our learners to form their own questions sparked a lot of enthusiasm and engagement, which draws attention to the importance of student agency in the classroom.  It was apparent that learners were eager to begin their statistical inquiry as they were following their own lines of interest. It is also important to note that our learners were engaged during the entire lesson.  I feel that if our learners had been given a set question the level of enthusiasm and engagement would not have been the same.  


What I also noticed during the lesson was how seamlessly academic language was woven into what the students were learning.  Robyn made sure to make connections between the academic language and the learners, by unpacking the terms in 'learner speak'. Repetition was also key here.  After each step in the statical inquiry, Robyn went back over the inquiry process, reminding the learners what they had been doing -  in both academic language and learner speak.  

What I will take from this

• Student agency + effective teaching = engaged learners.
• Giving learners freedom of choice is an effective way to generate student interest/enthusiasm towards tasks.
• Unpacking academic language into 'learner speak' allows for learners to make connections to the learning, thus deepening their understandings of tasks.
• Repetition, repetition, repetition!