Inquiry

 My Inquiry is looking into a group of readers who lack confidence and motivation to read. I started with spending time with them going over and over their blends, word endings. I made a set of blend cards for them to have at home each. We also go over them each before we start reading. Practicing chunking out a word. Trying to build their confidence. To know it is fine to make mistakes as that is how we learn. Some days we just focus on two pages of text and "reading like talking" on those pages so that they sound super awesome and confident. I recorded this "target" group at the beginning of my inquiry to see what they wanted to get better at in reading. They said to sound better and know more words.

I was really keen to use Explain Everything app for them to cut out characters and retell a story using the app, as well as break up words using the app. Sometimes technology does not behave and as this app is off shore there has been a significant delay. So I have had to have a think and come up with some alternative ideas.

Reading Eggs, is a programme my school uses. I have had a few lessons from a colleague and have signed up to a Reading Eggs webinar later this month to get some teacher tips in Reading. I have managed to assign some blend work to my target group and they have been working on these during reading time.

I have also started trying to allocate time to listen to the children just read one or two pages on their own. Have them read it a couple of times. Then I record them so that they can listen to themselves read.

I am hoping hearing themselves, will also be a good motivator in their "reading like talking"

Time will tell.

Michelle

Lucky last!!

Well, that is DFI done and dusted! And yes I am very happy to say that I just passed the exam!! It was very stressful, but thank goodness with all the learning that we have completed over the last 9 weeks was clearly the winner on the day. From when lock down started I had a very, very basic class site. I was brand new to a Manaiakalani School and DFI had not started, with the help of Venessa my class site improved over time and google hangouts became a daily occurrence.  I made lots of mistakes, learnt from them and improved as I went. Even so far as this week my class all have their oen individual blogs live and their first posts completed with feedback given to each other. I am really proud of them and myself for achieving that. Also thanks to Donna Yates for her in class support to make this happen. I spent that evening emailing every parent a email with the link to their child's blog, that was a good feeling. I also updated our class site so that on the blog page if you click on a child's photo that then links you straight to their blog. So reflecting, I have come a very, very long way since before lock down and if none of the above proves it, then you simply need to take a look at my very tidy and organised drive. I would not have survived without Venessa's very helpful, empathetic and oh so knowledgeable self. So a big thanks to you Venessa, I truly appreciate all the mahi and time you put into our group. 

DFI Week 8

Today was all about computational thinking. A whole new world for me. I found the links Venessa shared re a school in Auckland were quite helpful. We had some exam prep for next week and then went into groups to try something new. I went into scratch, I found it the most tricky thing so far during DFI and I think I will be heading to scratch junior for a play around.  There were some good tips for Google keep and I have saved A lot of the resources I use for my reading planning into Google keep so I do not have to keep driving my paper work to school and home each day. It really is awesome. I am going to work on my Blogger check list, which I think I have completed most of them. Something awesome during the week. We had our class Manaiakalani session with Donna Yates. My class is year 2 and 3. We managed to get the class to complete a digital footprint using Google draw and got 3 children posted to their very own blogs for the first time ever!!! There was lots of clapping as I loaded onto our big screen. So my mission is by the end of week 12 to have all 23 children have their first blog post completed. I made sure to email the blog link to the 3 parents of those children yesterday so they could share in the excitement. I had one parent who was quite excited but his comments were not working. A few handy dandy tips from Venessa who is also known as my technical adviser, I am now happy to say his comment is live. I used some bubble time this morning to set up filters, with my technical advisers help to collate all the blogger comment notifications into one folder, as not to fill up my in box.

1 more week to go!
Thanks
 As you can see I have a lot to learn in Scratch, meow

DFI Week 7

 Another busy day at DFI!!!
We spent most of today looking at devices such as Chrome books and on Ipads using Explain Everything App. It was great to learn lots of chrome book shortcuts as I am new to chrome books this year and my class are like how do I this? And I am like hmmmm. So that was great learning for me. Also being able to have some time to have a play with Explain Everything. Above I attempted to make these slides on EE to demonstrate that you can not believe everything you see on the internet. Was Humarie as school? Or the zoo, or the beach? There is still plenty to learn on EE,  but it is a great app and can not wait to have it loaded on my class set of 4 Ipads. So I am hoping the children will be able to make their own and teach someone they know, not to believe everything they see.
Until next week.
Michelle :)

DFI Week 6

Today was all about sites. We had lots of time to try things out on our sites. I am very happy to say I have buttons on my site. With lots of assistance from Venessa and plenty of screen sharing my buttons are almost aligned. Using Google drawing and changing shape and searching for my pictures was great fun.

I have also changed my colours to make it more uniform and easier on the eye. It was great getting to see my bubbles sites as well. Although that did give me site envy I plodded along and I think mine is looking much easier on the eye.

So here is link to my site

Te Tinana Class site

Thanks and have a great weekend!

DFI Week 5

Yet another day of full on learning. We had some learning on visible learning and multi modal. Behavioural engagement as well as cognitive. We then went into Google sites and created a new site from scratch. I made mine on Earthquakes as this is what I am focusing on with my class. We learnt about colour picker eye dropper which is pretty cool . And learnt about the sharing settings.

We then went into smaller groups to learn about T shaped literacy. Kerry was very helpful and got us all working away. And more tips on Blogger to finish off our day. I think I will try emailing this post to myself!

Something I learnt in DFI and put into place last week was my class being able to upload their blurb about themselves onto their own blogger. They are not live yet as we are still preparing. But I managed to send out through Hapara a google draw document each and photo of themselves. They changed the shape of photo, added a coloured background and wrote a brief introduction about themselves. It was really a team effort and as I had 7 children away that day it did make it a little easier. Once a couple had the instructions under their belt, I got them to share their new knowledge with a couple more and by the end everyone had completed their blurb. One mistake i learnt from was the google drawing was not saved as a png which it needed to be. So when the children opened the spanner on their Blogger and tried to replace image the file they needed was grayed out. So we changed that and it was all go.

So I am happy it all worked out and hopefully I can report soon on how my classes Bloggers are looking.

Here is the link to the site I made today.
https://sites.google.com/paparore.school.nz/earthquakes/home

Until next week :)
Michelle

DFI Week 4

Today started with some tips in Hapara, that was great to be able to make groups within my class.
We then went into making forms. Let's see if I can get that in here.


We then went into Maps, and that was quite overwhelming with many cool tips to try.
I located four places I had lived and inserted a couple of photos in.

Google sheets, wow a lot of information! I got to go off into a beginners bubble for this which was great to navigate the basics of sheets. I think I can now load my class and get the average of scores and even add a graph! There is a lot deeper you can go in sheets, I think I will stick with the basic for the mean time and master them first.

We went into Blogger to be able to look at stats behind our blog. Like how many visitors, what countries they are from. Even what device they are using. The most popular post. My blog is pretty much brand new and does not have very much data. But it shows me I need to blog more. This should change soon as Donna has set up my class with their own blogs and they are getting introduced to them next week. We have a class blog that has a few posts and we were blogging quite often but then lock down happened and it came to a stop and we moved to class site.

So I have added in the form I made and a map I made. That was a little tricky, but I am confident that next week embedding into my Blog will be much easier.

I can't wait to use forms with my class. I will try this one as a test dummy and see how we go.