Tracey Observation and Conversation May 2010

Shelari

Sharing ideas is the best thing about being a teacher. I have been lucky to have been exposed to Shelfari, which I am planning on introducing into my reading programme over the coming term. It is an awesome way for students to keep a book shelf of what they have read and share their reviews and read other people's ideas.

Trail of Next Step for Creating Success Criteria

After reflecting during the holidays on how my students were progressing towards developing and working towards success criteria, I was happy. However, I was still the one doing all the work. I had not yet tried anything that would allow them to have ownership. Today was the day!

I started off by sharing this photo with them:

It was something they knew a lot about as we have recently completed our study on Anne Frank. Then we looked at the 6 levels of questioning. Together we came up with questions that would be relvant to each level. From there we created our own assessment rubric for question in our coming inquiry.

Here is what we came up with:

This was a positive experience, that I feel the students now own and are able to clearly understand the different levels of questions.

Success Criteira

After observation of my students this year. I am well aware that they are unable to create and use success criteria to devlop their next steps for learning. I need to gather data to support my findings. I have developed a survey using survey monkey, an excellent data gathering site, and had all students answer it. 53% of students said that they could create some success criteria when given a learning intention, and 34% only being able to identify one step.

I then gave them a task as follows:
Write the success criteria for an agument to encourage the Government to make Cellphone usage free.

Here is an example of the success criteria I was given:

Success Criteria for free internet:
• Write a good argument to why the government should let the internet to be free.
• How would it affect other people worldwide?
• How would the people who had internet and was paying it feel if the internet was now free would they ask for their money back.
• Give a variety of question’s why it should be free.

It confirms my need to develop success criteria with students so that they have a recpie for success.

I have identified my target group as year 8 boys.

After discussions with Lyn Ross, I came up with a task sheet to explictly teach success criteria. Where students would create an animation powerpoint. We explored how we would make it successful and what aspects we would need to include.

Sam Animation

Sam animation is free downloadable software to create animation that is quick and easy to use. As always the learning needs to be at the forefront so how can this e-learning tool enhance students learning? Well the opportunities are endless for example in literacy using this to retell a story, creating a story from infering a meaning from a text etc. In maths students could use this animation to solve problems and show their thinking. These are just a few examples.

Publishing Goals

After looking around other schools blogs with my class this week, the students decided that they wanted to publish their goals to their blogs. They also insisted that I posted my goal as well. After discussing teacher inquiry at our most recent staff meeting I thought why not. I am wanting my Inquiry to focus on students using co-construction success criteria to measure their own success and create their own next steps. I am trailing using the Habits of Mind to help students to identify goals that will help them to develp skills to be life long learners. In order for this to be successful I needed to make my students aware that I am a learner as well and we are all on learning journeys. So here is my goal:

Here are some examples from my students

Prezi.com

What an excellent start to the year. This week we have been mind mapping using www.prezi.com. Prezi offers educators and students special free accounts with larger storage space. You are able to embed your mindmap into your blogs for others to see. It is a easy user friendly programme. When you sign up there is a series of short movies that you can watch that teach you how to use it. However, if you are like me the best way that you learn is by having a play. Although I teach Year 7 and 8, I believe that this programme could be used at any year level as it does offer you the opportunity to insert pictures and group ideas together.

What is it to be digitally Safe? on Prezi