COA - Art lesson - Expressionism

This lesson was inspired by the New Zealand artist Sheila Brown. Students in my class were learning about expressionism. Through this lesson students learnt how artists express themselves. They understood that colours chosen by the artist have a story to tell and that artists tell their story through the selection of their subject and shades of different colours.

I enjoyed teaching this lesson. The part of the lesson that excited me the most was when students related themselves to the subject they had chosen. Their writings were a reflection of their thinking and connections to the subject of their artwork. They could describe why their subject inspired them. They thoughtfully chose the background colours to express their feelings. There was a lot of critical thinking involved in the lesson. They not only learnt about the techniques that were used by the New Zealand artist Sheila brown but also made excellent connections with their own lives and express their stories. I am very happy with the outcome.

A complete lesson can be viewed by clicking the link below.

https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/onair/sharma-15

Class OnAir - Lesson 11

For the last two weeks I have been teaching Narrative writing to my students. To begin with I gave
my students a picture prompt to write on. They were very familiar with narrative writing and so I expected to see some good writing. At the end of the writing session I realised that most of the students wrote scantily and did not have detail, describing words, extended punctuation or paragraphs in their narrative. So this prompted me to plan my lessons again...

I use the TOPS model for narrative

T- Title
O- Orientation
P- Problem
S- Solution

So I started by teaching how to write a good setting for narratives. First I used an exemplar from a Junior journal that they analysed. We focussed on sense words like what can we see, hear, smell or feel. Then students used pictures to write a setting for the different scenes.
Sequence of this lesson can be viewed on Manaiakalani Class OnAir



                                           Task 1 - Analysing a passage from a book

Reflection
I need to teach every little step of narrative writing in detail. My students would benefit from modelling, learning, creating, sharing, analysing and being able to give feedback to one another on their work. I need to keep revisiting what student learn during their writing sessions so that do not forget what they learn. I also need to provide them with a good bank of words so that they feel comfortable expressing themselves when writing.

Scaffolding Language Learning into content areas

Prior experience becomes a context for interpreting 
the new experience ...prior experience serves as the contexts 
within which the language being used is to be understood.
Lily Wong- Fillmore

Before I began teaching this year, I set certain rules for classroom talk. One of the most important rule is to listen to everyone's ideas respectfully because everyone perceives things differently and  everyone's opinion is important.

To clarify this idea a bit more I started with one of the lessons from Jo Boaler's week of inspirational Maths. In this lesson the teacher shows a pattern ( as given below) for a few seconds and then questions students on how many dots they could see in the pattern. 

All students gave me the same answer. There are seven dots in the pattern. Then I asked them how they saw it and below is a picture of the different ways they saw the dots. The discussion became very interesting when they realised that everyone's answer was the same though each one saw the dots differently. 

This mini lesson engaged students in lots of talk and confirmed the idea that people see things differently and so it is important to respect everyone's ideas. I noticed that some of the students were struggling to explain their thinking so the more proficient ones encouraged, helped and supported them. 

The above lesson served as an awesome warm up activity for my next lesson where I introduced the tens frames. When I showed the Tens frames, most students made connections with their previous lesson and said that they were dots. I acknowledged what they knew and what they had recently learnt... and then moved them on to simple problems. It was interesting to hear them say things like -

  " There are only 10 dots on it, five on one side and five on the other... This one has just two dots..." The foundation work that had led to this lesson paid off. Students were able to make quick connections and this helped them to learn their basic facts. They quickly translated their mathematical thinking into equations. The golden moment was when they tried to form equations for both addition and subtraction problems.

We kept practicing till we became fluent!

By this time my students were completely drowned in their study of exploring patterns around them. They showed me patterns everywhere they found in their environment. I encouraged them to take pictures of patterns and they saw symmetrical patterns, stripes, crisscross patterns and many more...

When I asked them to explain their pattern, it became very challenging for them as they did not have the specific vocabulary. So we explored words like alternate, overlapping, symmetrical etc. below is a presentation made by one of the students in which he uses the new words learnt to explain the patterns in his environment.

Integrating with Language

Integrating with Maths Strand - Geometry

During their exploration of patterns some students clicked pictures of geometrical shapes and so this was a great opportunity to learn about 2D and 3D shapes. We talked about the differences between the two also identified the characteristics of various shapes. Students learnt the vocabulary related to shapes e.g. what corners, edges, faces and sides were? How a side was different to an edge and what was a difference between a surface and a face?

 As a follow up they had to make a presentation on shapes.




Some of my students struggled to verbalise their thinking, I made a barrier game for shapes and gave them sentence structures to talk about their shape.

Integrating with Reading

Now was the time to know that it is important to learn about patterns because they help us in our daily lives. So I gave them a text on Braille. This developed heaps of discussion - Students said that patterns are important to build something... like a house... or a table... they were important for blind people... Important to them to learn their basic facts...etc. I was very excited to see how my students could make these connections readily and could talk about the topic without being shy.

Integrating with Art

Lastly, Students made a shape collage. They chose the shapes and used their imagination to design a cat or a dinosaur or a mouse. They further explained their what shapes they had used to make their art. Most exciting bit during this lesson was when a one student who is usually not so social, showed most of the students how to put commas when listing things in writing. Students wrote stories like " I have used 3 triangles, 4 squares, 5 rectangles and 2 semi-circles in my picture.
It was just Perfect!

At the end of this whole week long lesson I felt very satisfied as I had been able to engage my students meaningfully into different tasks. Language learning is not a simple linear process. It involves and revolves around the content - in this case patterns and basic facts. By focussing on ways to scaffold my students could not only attain the subject knowledge but also learnt the language. 

Reflection It was delightful to see how the sequence of lessons rolled on from one learning to another. By linking tasks to other curriculum areas, it was easier for students to make connections to what they already knew and hang on their new learning to their previous knowledge. During the course of task designing, I have deliberately created tasks where students would get the opportunity to formulate ideas, set and evaluate and reach tentative decisions in a set up that is informal. The aim is to to develop an interactive classroom where students are proficient in explaining their ideas and their thinking. I want them to face challenges, make mistakes and then learn from them so that each student in my class grabs learning opportunities to improve their learning. My next step would be to continue to link my topics to other curriculum areas so that students have lots of before hand experience to think deeply and critically about the topic of their study. This is just the beginning...

Multimodal Literacy - Manaiakalani Leaders PLG

Last week I attended the Manaiakalani Lead Teacher's PLG.  Dr. Aaron Wilson is one of the researchers at the University of Auckland and he was sharing his views about the importance of multimodal reading. It is different to reading a story in a journal over the week. Multimodal texts show the interrelationship between reading and writing and develop deeper understanding of the texts by making meaning of different modes of communication. 

We talked about

• Why it is important to talk about the text and how it benefits children's learning?
• What are some of the key indicators of quality talk about texts?

We shared our ideas on a padlet. Click on the link below to view the ideas.

Share your ideas - Padlet

Aaron emphasised and we all agreed that IRE ( Initiation, response and evaluation) way of teaching can be useful if it helps the teacher to check understanding of students. But it has it's limitations. It is one sided as it is teacher centred. Students do not get involved into deeper understanding of the topic as they do not get a chance to explore about the topic.

Texts should be talked about and students should be given opportunities to share their opinions about the ideas in the text. This would enhance deeper understanding of the text. Ideas in the text develop into rich discussions between the teacher and the students and within groups as everyone questions, agrees and disagrees. Most discussions are supported by reasons and so everyone contributes to the learning.

Teachers need to very careful about the level of the students and multimodal reading can become very disengaging if texts are not chosen strategically. Click the link below to see what Aaron had to say about what makes rich talks harder and easier.

What factors make rich talk about text in classrooms harder and easier

Aaron has been working with teachers at Tamaki College and showed us how there was a change between the teacher and student utterances as teachers shifted form IRE to more meaningful and authentic discussions.

Observations in the beginning of the year

Observations - mid year

Observations towards the End of the year

Aaron discussed that it could be valuable to re- negotiate the norms in the class about talk. I personally believe that it is very important to keep visiting the norms in the class as they develop a culture where everyone feels supported and comfortable to participate in discussions.

Our class treaty is all about class norms and has worked well for me and my students. It is not just a poster that hangs on the walls. It is very much a living document that is referred by students and teachers regularly so that our class remains a healthy place to discuss, ask, inquire, justify, agreeing and disagreeing. This is what our class treaty looks like-

I have not changed this treaty for the last two years because it works for me. What changed is just the koru patterns.
To involve students in discussions we also practice talk moves. Both me and my co- teacher Ashley use talk moves in all areas of the curriculum.

In the end Aaron left us with some question to ponder over?

• Are we on board with a shared focus on deep and wide learning using text sets and talk about text approaches?
• How many times should we engage students in multimodal literacy?

In my opinion, this is a great way to develop critical thinking amongst students. I have tried this in my class and the results were very satisfying for me as well as for the students. They felt like they had a voice and that their ideas and opinions were valued. 

The topic of my multimodal literacy was Theme parks. Please view the presentation below to check what year 3 and 4 students did for their reading last week.

Values in the classroom

We at Tamaki have five values. They are Whanaungatanga, Manakitanga, Rangimarie, Tukumarie and Ako. These are very important to us as they reflect who we are. They provide a vehicle to talk about student behaviour and learning. It is important that students connect to the values and so were carefully chosen in consultation with the community.

Until two years ago we had four school values and decided to add 'Ako' as our fifth value. This was done because Students could make connections to the values only when they were outside in the playgrounds. We wanted our students to live and breathe these values everywhere, in the classroom..., in the playgrounds... at all times... and hence there was an addition of another value 'Ako'. So our values evolved over time.

Our school values are culturally responsive. These values are held very closely by our demographically dominant Maori and Pacific families. They were purposely chosen to be in Te Reo so that our community could make connections with our values.

It is important that we teachers in the school are role models of our values. Last term we had one of the schools who needed to evacuate because they had found asbestos in their building and it needed to be fixed before kids could be let into the building. Our principal welcomed this school and we all looked after our guests. Our principal demonstrated our school values.

Reflection - Though we have a very robust selection of values for our school I want to see these being lived and thrived in all corners. I would like to see the values being the vehicle to talk around achievement and behaviour. I want to see these values being walked in our school. So I started the Term by revisiting school values and the task for the students was to brainstorm what they meant by these values.
I felt quiet proud of them when some students said that they used it all the time in school as well as at home.

To take this a little further I framed three questions for my students:

• Did you get a chance to use your school values today? What were they?
• How did you use your school values during learning time today?
• How did you use your school values in the playground today?

I asked them to reflect on these questions during the day. At the end of the day, they had heaps to share. Have a look...

Celebrating Eid - Knowing our learner

We always celebrate all language weeks at our school. We are a school that cherishes and values all cultures and ethnicities. It is so much in grained into the system that I take pride when visitors at our school say that there is a great feel about coming into our school.

We have a Afghani family at our school. We had searched high and low and had not found any afghani language week. So we (Ashley my co-teacher and myself) started to look for Afghani festivals that we could celebrate. I met my students' mum at patrols and quickly grabbed the opportunity to and ask about festivals they celebrate. She said that Eid was round the corner and that it is a huge celebration in their culture. I quickly took the notes and asked her to give me a recepie of a traditional dish.
Next day Mojtaba (our student) came with a recipe. I must say that this was a big effort on the part of Mojtaba's mum because she does not know English very well. So I had this recipe, though not in correct English but made perfect sense as everything was written in steps. I was so delighted to get the recipe and more so being able to bring this mum in who is otherwise so shy to communicate with us.
Finally we started with the celebrations. We invited Mojtaba's little brothers to celebrate with us. Ashley found a song on Eid and we all learnt the song. We made Greeting cards on Eid with a moon and a star on it. Ashley had baked cookies in the shape of star and we all took turns to decorate them.
I made the traditional dish 'sevaiyaan' and we went to each class to say 'Eid Mubarak'

It was great way to build bonds and to know about our Afghani learner. Our afghani students were delighted. Their faces were glowing and they were not tired talking about their festival.

One of the principles of TESSOL is the to Know your learners - their language background, their language proficiency, their experiential background. 

 Visit this website  for more ideas on how to build a cultural village in your classroom.

Manaikalani school leader's PLG - Accelerating Reading

Today I went to the Manaiakalani school leaders PLG.
One of the sessions was by Aaron Wilson on how to accelerate Reading among students.
Some of the ideas that will help were-

• Reading should make meaning. Students should understand how writers construct text to achieve particular purposes and audiences. Reading strategies are not a goal but a vehicle to achieve meaning from texts. 
• Very commonly,  teach students how to describe characters but we need to move on further from this. Students should be taught to deliberately make an effort to analyse relationship between characters and conflict of characters. This will help them to be better readers and writers.
• Analysing patterns of figurative speech like metaphors, similes and how a writer creates mood through emotive language will enhance the understanding of language.
• Choice of the text - Teachers should use engaging texts to get an enjoyable effort from the students.
• Students should get a number of opportunities to read. They should get repeated opportunities to learn to read and read to learn.
• Teachers need to provide opportunities that will allow students to critically analyse texts they read.  A critically literate person is able to examine the power relationships inherent in language use, to recognise that language is not neutral.
• Vocabulary is another barrier in comprehending texts.  Building vocabulary is important, so students should have rich exposure to language. They should be aware of connotations of words. They should understand that emotive language is designed to provoke an emotional response. 
• When reading texts Teachers should draw students' attention to the sensory details and this will help in understanding the text better.
• Use your clines also helps students to comprehend texts better.
• Use of conjunctions will also allow students to have richer language.
• Students should ask questions and share their ideas to clarify their meaning about the text. Talk allows students to peek into the thinking of other students understanding and misunderstandings. Talking about the subject of study supports language development. It supports deeper reasoning and encourages  people to reason with evidence. Therefore it is important for teachers to provide platforms to discuss open ended questions and this will also prevent IRE ( Initiation, Response and Evaluation).
• Teachers need to scaffold students so they learn but too much scaffolding makes them dependent on the teacher. Therefore teachers need to have a balance in their delivery where they refrain from too much support. Instead, opportunities should be provided for students to take ownership of their learning. A quality scaffolding is that fades overtime and increases student responsibility.
• Teachers need to design rich tasks for quality learning to happen.

I have tried to summarise the points through this google drawing...

Reflection: Aaron's talk was very informative. It has encouraged me to use small units to plan for reading in my class. 

Recording and Reflecting

Lots of times Ashley and myself get involved in professional talks about Manaiakalani. This time we were talking about 'class on air'. It is a great way of sharing teaching ideas with the rest of the world.

So we decided to film each other and put our lessons on the blog.

It has been a boon to have two teachers in a class and recording each other was not a problem at all. We do not have great tools like the 360 degree camera and microphone to get the best quality, but we are so motivated that we are determined to record our lessons. 

My lesson was a short lesson on Number Talks. My question to students was " what do you know about 1/4 ( a quarter)? 

 This is my first attempt, so please be kind when leaving comments.

Reflection - After watching the video I realised that one students was dominant in the group. I should have encouraged other students to participate in the discussion as well. I should be incorporating more use Talk Moves.

Understanding fractions

Last week I attended the Maths Lead Teacher's meeting. It was run by both Sue and Ann. It was very informative, challenging and packed with activities that we can do with our students in class. 

One of the activities that I liked was an activity on fractions. We were given twenty blocks each and an A4 coloured paper. Then Ann started giving us problems to solve...

She gave us problems that were somewhat like..

If 4 is a quarter, show me a whole; if 9 is one and a half, show me  three and a half and so on.  I must admit that some of the problems were grappling. We did this individually at the PLD but for the purpose of my class I paired by students.  I gave them enough wait time to think about the problems. Check out the use of equipment and visual representations of their problem solving.

First the students could not understand what they were asked. But I had decided that I would not give them hints and so kept encouraging them to understand the language of maths in the question and then try to solve it. I gave them enough wait time.  Finally one child shared his understanding. It was an correct answer. I asked him to share his working with the rest of the class on the board. This was an Aha!! moment for the others. They all solved their problems in their pairs and then took the initiative to help out those who did not get it.  It was a very rewarding lesson and all students enjoyed doing it. The activity definitely made the understanding of fractions clearer and easier.

Number Talks

Number Talks were introduced to us by our Maths facilitator, Sue Pine. These are extremely easy to do and are of an immense value to our daily Maths programme. My co- teacher Ashley and myself devote 10 minutes of our Maths time to number talks everyday. During this time students are asked to work out a problem mentally in their head. It is interesting to find how students derive their answers. It gives an insight into what strategies students are able to use and how efficiently. It is always good to visually represent the different methods used by students as this allows them to learn  other strategies from one another and also allows students to show their mathematical thinking.

Here is what we did in our class to introduce number talks.
We asked our students what do knew about the 1/2.  The answers that we got are in the picture below.

Here is a video  from Jo Boaler that will facilitate the idea of Number talks further.

Reading Together Programme

I have been conducting the Reading Together Programme for 3 years now at our school. It is a fantastic programme where parents are made aware of the importance of Reading to and Reading with their children in Early years of their schooling. The strategies are so simple that anyone can learn them easily.  Just having 15 minutes of quality time with a child daily can help children move up levels in Reading. The programme consists of 4 sessions. Each session emphasises on how to make Reading fun and interesting at home. Hearing from a teacher about how to make reading fun and not a tedious process, instantly releases the parents of the hype  that is usually created around children's education.

This Year was the most rewarding year.  I had 17 families on roll and all showed keen interest in the programme. All children whose parents took part in the programme have made shifts and Reading has become a regular routine in their homes. As we were mixing and mingling with parents, I heard my Principal Rhonda Kelly say to the parents, " Time is the best gift we can give our children". And I could not agree less. Thank you to all the parents who took part in the programme. Together we can make a difference for our children.