Thursday, December 18, 2014

Response to a comment on my edtalk



Hi Justin,
Thank you so much for watching this clip and taking the time to comment.  I would love to share a deeper glimpse of how things looked in my daily class programme. 
A great place to start would be looking at our class blog.  A range of our learning was accessed and shared through our blog. 
A day in class was generally broken into three chunks: literacy, numeracy and inquiry learning, but learning happened across the day and week when leaners chose. The timetable for the day was set the previous day by us all, and learners would add in how that learning would look on their devices.  We had a full BYOB – bring your own browser programme, where learners could bring any internet capable device to school.  We operated a ‘high-trust’ model, where learners used Andrew Churchs’ model ‘respect and protect’. 
Although my literacy and numeracy workshops ran at set times, learners had choice over what they were working on during the day with their own record of must dos and can dos.  They opted into workshops that were on according to their needs, and some were opting in according to my request.  I used a Daily Five approach to my literacy programme and learners were given choice over their reading materials.  We buddied with a number of classes and used peer tutoring approaches to support our learners.
Learners were also a huge part of planning the sessions for learning.  They were empowered to look at what they already knew, and challenged and supported to move into the unknown.  A lot of our learning was passion based with learners having great choice.  Our sessions on identifying our own Personal Learning Environments and Networks were a great opportunity for personalisation.

I have recently found this photo from a presentation which shows some of the recording of the learning wall, so all learners were a part of setting and meeting expectations. (Both teacher and self imposed expectations.) Slide five shares some of the links that informed my thinking at the time. 



As you have seen in the video we used spaces to meet needs.  In the blog there are interesting clips of the learners sharing why certain learning spaces work better for certain tasks.  2012 was an incredible learning journey with a wonderfully reflective, engaged learning group.  I think the power of the journey was the ownership by the learners of their journey.  This extended to their families, as they were hugely involved in the journey throughout.  Families were involved in setting goals and working to achieve these.
Flexible learning spaces suit any learning style and are particularly well suited to learning on portable devices. 
It was an incredible privilege for me, to celebrate a year of learning, really exploring the potential of digital devices, with personalised learning for students.  I think it was essential for us to have the students lead the journey and be such an incredible part of the way things evolved. 
Since the beginning of 2013 I have been working as a facilitator with CORE Education, with the Learning with Digital Technologies team.  We work in schools to maximize opportunities for learning with digital technologies, especially for priority learners.  It is an incredible privilege to a part of the transformative journey of education in New Zealand.  We are increasingly moving to Modern Learning Practice with Ubiquity, Agency and Connectedness.  I do miss the class, but thoroughly enjoy the role of supporting others on their journey.
Resources that support and shape our Modern Learning Practice journey that might be useful to you are:

I would love to hear more about your journey.
You are very welcome to contact me on anne.kenneally@core-ed.org, or a skype session or Google hangout would be great to discuss this further.



Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Update 15 December 2014 - The year in Review

Update 15 December 2014 - The year in Review


Kia ora,


Well here we are in the closing days of 2015 and my last literacy update for the year.  A HUGE thank you to everyone who has read updates and posts, contributed to discussions, shared resources, asked questions and added to the richness that is the Literacy Online Mailing List.  This year we have passed 1,000 subscribers which is a wonderful achievement  Thank you all.  Remember if you wish to change your details, please do so to continue receiving updates and newsletters. You can unsubscribe your old email address and re-subscribe with your new email. The community mailing lists will remain open this week and throughout the holidays, however the facilitators are on leave from 19th December until the 19th of January and posts will be moderated on our return.

Updates this term have covered:

Literacy PLD - highlights from NZLA conference in Tauranga - Ewan Macintosh
Literacy PLD continued - more highlight from NZLA conference - Nadine Sorrensen’s workshop
Literacy apps - apps to support with literacy, particularly oral language
Building a PLN for literacy - with webinar link and notes
It’s not either/or, it’s both - The debate is not “will we use technology or not?” but rather “what is the focus of the learning we want to see happen?”
New Resources on Assessment Online - links to updates and new resources
Guest Blog post by Tom O’Halloran - reading to and with a class
Guest Blog post by Bridget Compton-Moen - the power of the global read aloud

Children’s authors around New Zealand:

The purpose of this resource is to find out from professional authors what their tips are for writing and growing writers. These tips could be helpful for your planning in the new school year. This week we are showcasing Adele Broadbent, a self-confessed Bookaholic, she is a Children’s Author, a Children’s Bookseller during the week and a Children’s Librarian on her weekends.

Links to check out from 2014:

Crowd Sourced Documents to Check out:

Reading through summer - ideas to reduce the summer slide
Books to read in my holidays - a teacher list of books to read personally and professionally
Literacy Online Book recommendations - a collaborative list of recommendations shared to the list.


Anne’s Literacy Links and Look ups…


Dates for 2015


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Thanks again for a wonderful year.


Have a well earned rest and enjoy the festive season.


Ngā mihi nui


Anne Kenneally
Literacy Online Facilitator
CORE Education
@LiteracyOnline2
To post to the list email: literacy@lists.tki.org.nz

Update 11 December 2014 - Reading through Summer

Update 11 December 2014 - Reading through Summer

Kia ora,
Here we are in the penultimate week of the 2014 school year. Now is the time for us to focus on ways of reducing the summer reading drop off!  We have started a Crowded Sourced Doc - Reading through summer to gather together ideas to support, inspire and encourage our learners to read through summer, and this week’s update shares a selection of links to previous posts and articles.

Reading through summer links:

Reading through summer - crowd sourced doc
27 results in total to be found on the National Library Site - check them out and see what you can try with your learners and families

This week posts on the mailing list have been on:

Resources:

Connected 2014 The focus of the Connected 2014 series is on the Nature of Science strand and the science capability: Use evidence to support ideas.

Children’s authors around New Zealand:

The purpose of this resource is to find out from professional authors what their tips are for writing and growing writers. These tips could be helpful for planning your new year. This week we are showcasing Juliette MacIver, who writes picture books and early readers for young children that are full of frolic and delight.

From the VLN:

Anne’s Literacy Links and Look ups…

  • Reading Doctor: prescription #11 New Zealand Book Council resident Reading Doctor Kate De Goldi recommends a rich and broad range of YA books for eager 12-year-olds who want to keep expanding their book selections, minus the really scary reads. And if the children in your life have a reading ailment, ask the Reading Doctor now: readingdoctor@bookcouncil.org.nz

Have a fabulous week!

Ngā mihi nui
Anne Kenneally
Literacy Online Facilitator
CORE Education
@LiteracyOnline2

To post to the list email: literacy@lists.tki.org.nz

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Update 3 December 2014 - Guest blog Post by Bridget Compton-Moen - The Power of the Global Read Aloud

Kia ora,
Here we are in December already.  What have you got planned for the remaining days with your class?  There are some great crowd sourced ideas on the collaborative resource Finish the year with a bang! Can you add to this with your ideas?


Next week we will be focusing on supporting learners to read through summer and we would really appreciate any ideas you have.  Please add your ideas to this Crowded Sourced Doc - Reading through summer.

This week posts on the mailing list have been on


This week I am delighted to share a guest blog post by Bridget Compton-Moen from Selwyn House, An Independent School for Girls, in Christchurch.  You can read some more of Bridget’s wonderings at Bridge to the future.


The Power of the Global Read Aloud


For the past couple of years, I have watched the Global Read Aloud unfold with great longing! This is a global project where classes read together, build connections and form friendships over the same shared book. It was started by the amazing Pernille Ripp (and if you are not following her go and do so right this minute! She is amazing!) I’ve desperately wanted my learners to be a part of the GRA but the timing is horrendous, falling over the New Zealand Term 3 holidays. This year, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up, I’d address the scheduling issues later.  


First my class and I needed to select one of the novels on offer. These four titles had been selected via a social media campaign and the selections ensured there was something for everyone.


The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane- Kate di Camillo
The Fourteenth Goldfish- Jennifer L. Holm
One for the Murphy’s- Lynda Mullaly Hunt
The Fault in our Stars- John Green
My class selected “One for the Murphys” by Lynda Mullaly Hunt which thankfully only five had read and all five were very keen to read it again. The Global Read Aloud is very well supported by the authors of the selected titles and we were fortunate to be able to watch Lynda Mullaly Hunt herself read the first chapter via a youtube clip.  This was a great experience. She also held frequent open question sessions via google hangout which were able to be watched later on youtube.


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Next, I registered to make connections with other classes who had also selected “One for the Murphys”. It was easy to find classes who were very keen to connect with a school at the bottom of the earth in little old Christchurch, New Zealand! I was inundated with tweets and emails, people inviting 8C to connect. I formed a connection with the first class who approached us, a class in Oshawa, Canada. Their teacher and I hit it off right away and started planning fun and meaningful ways to connect our classes. I created a quiz for our buddy class to complete which would eventually result in them establishing that we were in Christchurch, New Zealand and we did a similar thing in 8C, completing quiz questions that eventually led us to their map coordinates. We would have loved to have done this via Mystery Skype but the timezones were completely incompatible. We each created a movie introducing ourselves which highlighted the many differences between us but perhaps more importantly the many similarities we share.




We each created challenges and reflective tasks based on “One for the Murphys” which we shared between our classes.  We collaborated via padlet, our 8C blog and their individual kidblog accounts.


The greatest challenge we faced was timezones. Without organising an out of school event, connecting synchronously was very difficult. Also, 8C uses Twitter a lot for slowchat- type questions but in our buddy class’s district, Twitter is blocked and they were not a google apps school. So there were some initial challenges to work through none of which was insurmountable.


About halfway through the novel, we discovered a fantastic site called Flipgrid. This is a paid website but offers a 21 day trial. I used my flipgrid account incessantly during this 21 days and will absolutely be buying a paid account in 2015. I can see so many possibilities for this amazing tool.


Flipgrid enables educators to make grids of questions. The students film themselves responding to the questions and the responses form a grid. We posed questions such as “Be someone’s hero” is an underlying theme in One for the Murphys. Who is your hero in life? Share reasons why.


It was fantastic to see our students from opposite corners of the globe lined up side by side, sharing their reflections on the novel. Their responses were often very personal and the students have requested that I don’t embed the grid into this post. However, here is a screenshot for those of you who are curious to see how Flipgrid might look.


Screen Shot 2014-12-01 at 5.41.23 pm.png  
“One for the Murphys” is a compelling and emotional story which touched all of us very deeply- it is so moving that I often had to give the book to one of my students to read as I experienced “sweaty eye syndrome”. Having another class with a different perspective and set of life experiences to discuss the book with was a very special experience and one I would love to repeat. There were challenges along the way and things I will do differently next time but despite this, the collaboration between us has been powerful and made our experience of an amazing class novel significantly richer.


Bridget Compton-Moen
Y8 teacher, Selwyn House School
Christchurch  


A HUGE thank you to Bridget for sharing this story.  We would love to hear from you if you are taking part in Global Read Aloud.
Check links below to sign up for Global Read Aloud for 2015.  
How can you engage with others to deepen the reading experience?  
Can you connect with classes around New Zealand to discuss texts?
Could you use your existing quad blog relationships to set up a book chat or national read aloud?


Resources:

Children’s authors around New Zealand:

The purpose of this resource is to find out from professional authors what their tips are for writing and growing writers. These tips could be helpful for planning your new year. This week are showcasing Peter Millett.


From the VLN:

Anne’s Literacy Links and Look ups…

  • Flipgrid Teachers create grids of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Flipgrid boosts community and social presence in face-to-face, hybrid, and online classrooms, as well as enterprise organizations around the world.
  • Global Read Aloud Sign up for 2015 - Global collaboration is necessary to show students that they are part of something bigger than them. That the world needs to be protected and that we need to care for all people. You can show them pictures of kids in other countries but why not have them speak to each other? Then the caring can begin.
  • 21st Century Literacies - The 21st Century Fluencies are not about hardware, they are about headware and heartware.
  • Seven ‘great’ teaching methods not backed up by evidence - What makes “great teaching”? It’s a complicated question, made more difficult by trying to measure how teachers make decisions in the classroom and what impact those decisions have on what pupils learn.
  • 10 Best TED Talks of 2014 for Educators - TED Talks are a major source of inspiration for educators who need a morale boost, a discussion starter, or a new perspective. The year 2014 brought some of the best TED Talks for educators, but there are some not-to-be-missed talks from 2013 that still are highly relevant for educators today. Their messages are invaluable for educators who work tirelessly to inspire creativity, motivation, and determination in their students.
  • Blogging for Learning: Mulling it Over - Documenting, Reflecting, Sharing, Connecting.


Have a fabulous week!

Ngā mihi nui
Anne Kenneally
Literacy Online Facilitator
CORE Education
@LiteracyOnline2

To post to the list email: literacy@lists.tki.org.nz