I’m so excited that the Learning Initiatives team has agreed to let me borrow 10 iPads for this week, as well as for a few weeks in February! The Learning Initiatives team is a group of enthusiastic teachers/ mentors who support professional development and collaboration within the Greater Victoria School District. I have been working with them on the provincial initiative, Changing Results 4 Young Readers, for almost three years now. I am a proponent of using technology in the classroom when, and if, it is purposeful, meaningful and enhances student thinking and engagement. This week I used the iPads as a way of documenting learning in our Geometry unit. We used the free app, Skitch, to snap pictures and label components. To introduce the students to the app, I snapped the picture above during centre time then demonstrated the app features with the whole group. The kids brainstormed what they saw occurring in the picture and I added arrows and words. I demonstrated how to change colour, increase text size and move elements around.
Next it was time for the kids to try it out with a partner. Some students built towers using geometric solids, took a picture, then labeled the picture with the names of the shapes. Other students sorted the shapes into groups and labeled their sorting rule. Check out the results here. An Update (September 2021): When you know better, you do better! When I look at this post I cringe and am tempted to remove it but I am also amazed by how much we now know about the science behind learning to read. Although Mrs. Beckner and I gained a great deal from taking part in this project, we now know children do not learn to read by using compensation strategies and guessing at words. If you are an educator reading this post, please do not look to this as an example of how to teach reading! Original post: This past week Mrs. Beckner and I continued our inquiry into reading development by co-teaching for two full mornings in my class. It is always a pleasure to work collaboratively with a colleague but it is an additional treat when the colleague is as positive and passionate about teaching as Mrs. Beckner is. We couldn’t be more pleased by the student learning that occurred this week and look forward to building upon our many successes as the year progresses. Our goal was for each student to reflect on his or her individual reading process, identify reading strategies frequently relied on and set a goal for incorporating a new or underused strategy. To accomplish this we modeled the use of the strategies, used visuals to monitor strategy use and demonstrated how to reflect on personal reading processes. From here students worked in pairs to identify the strategies they consciously and unconsciously use to figure out unfamiliar words and identified a goal. We then talked about the goals as a whole group, in small adult lead groups and in pairs. Students also wrote about their goal in order to solidify not just what the goal is but how it can be applied. Next we introduced the iPads as a way of recording the students expressing their goals verbally (pictures of the students can be viewed in the previous post). On our first day using the iPads the students were simply asked to learn about the technology by filming each other state their goal and then read aloud from a familiar text. The students quickly learned to use the video app as well as the importance of holding the iPad steady when recording and to be aware of their speaking volume. On the second day, the students recorded each other reading from text and demonstrated the application of a reading strategy. The added layer of technology enhanced student engagement, gave a sense of purpose and established accountability when working in pairs. Upon reflecting on the multiple videos each student recorded we were delighted, impressed, surprised, and on a few occasions, in tears from laughing so hard. The videos provided an astonishing window into student thinking and a rich glimpse of how student personalities emerge when not directly observed by an adult. It was an added bonus to watch the videos and see what amazing reading coaches the students were! It was clear to us that the students took ownership of their reading process and cooperatively shared their emerging knowledge with their peers. Having the students act as a teacher to verbalize and reinforce their own learning was a powerful component of this week’s lessons. The completed videos are posted here. In the coming weeks we intend to watch the videos in class as a way of reviewing strategies and keeping the reading process as a significant focus. We also plan to add more videos to the collection so that each student will have at least one video to share. Reflecting on our week we have identified the following as keys to our successes:
This week, Mrs. Beckner and I intensified our focus on reading strategies and goal setting with the class. We kicked things off today by having the student's reflect on their individual reading process and identify the strategies they rely on the most and the ones they need more practise with. Each student wrote about his or her reading strategy goal and talked about it with a partner. To enhance what we had planned for the week, Mrs. Beckner and I borrowed 10 iPads from Learning Initiatives and taught the students to record video. The purpose was have the students talk about their reading goal, explain it and record a sample of their reading. The results were impressive! We will be continuing with this project tomorrow morning and I can't wait to see the results!
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Ms. Shawna WoodPassionate about teaching, learning, inclusion and kindness. Archives
August 2019
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