Learning and doing

I posed a question to my class of 24 Year 1 students..."What do you need to learn in Maths this week?" Their first answers were the games they liked playing e.g. I need to learn the dominoes. I explained that the dominoes are more of a tool to learn other things in maths. Students then identified the number patterns on the dominoes and counting as their learning goals as they could use the dominoes for this (they love building with the dominoes).

This exercise led to another question...How do we know what we know? Good thing it's a week of assessments...an opportunity to have learning conversations with students about what they know and decide together the next learning to focus on.

Writing Rewired and some other fun stuff

On Monday it was inspiring to hear other teachers talk about the ways they are making learning more exciting, accessible and challenging for the students in their classes at a Writing Rewired Workshop in Cromwell for the eCentral Cluster.

Making the Writing Programme Fun was a google doc that was shared with us and has been compiled by teachers from all over NZ and was added to on Monday.

I had a few key take-away points

• get creative with current songs that interest students and use them in our learning - Thanks Danella
• re-read Clarity in the Classroom - Thanks Claire
• explore Hattie's work on Visible Learning further (part of our staff Teacher Inquiry too)
• Consider ways for the students to 'collect their evidence' - digital or paper? both?

There were lots of other things I am still 'processing' and are tucked away for a little later in the year when the class is more established.

Today I had a visiting teacher from Auckland in our class.  The focus was how eLearning tools are being used in a Year 1 classroom.  Our class has only had devices for 3 days - today was the third day!  This was a fabulous opportunity to share some of what I am developing with students using tools - things that will grow and change over 2014 as the needs of the learners change too.
Things we are establishing

• Mathletics on Samsung Notes (entering usernames and passwords takes up a big part of the time here).
• Letter Formation videos using our Casey Caterpillar shapes on QR codes so students can scan these with Samsung Notes to practise the letters they need to work on 
• Skitch - students have been working on character descriptions in our reading and writing after looking at the Gruffalo dvd they were photographing our class Gruffalo and then writing a description of it or labels on the picture - working with a partner for this (mixed groupings)
• PM reading on laptops with headphones - students are using their reading rocks (colour wheel based) to know what level they are reading at and selecting their reading level to explore the books and related activities.  Teaching students mostly used to touch screens how to use a lap top mouse pad has been interesting to say the least

I was amazed at how focused the students were on their learning when it was using different devices - is this because they are new to them?  Will the interest/hook/engagement continue?