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<p class=”MsoNormal”>The area that I have chosen to work on is skilled communication.</p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”>I have chosen this skill as I think effective communication is key in the classroom. It is a foundation stone to other important skills such as collaboration and problem solving.</p>
The traits of effective communication must be taught explicitly and facilitated to provide student’s with the skills needed to communicate.Oftentimes, we are rushing through lessons and can be blinded by the ‘right answer’. Going forward, I will aim to get children to extend their communication. I will encourage children to give further explanations or illustrations when answering questions or completing tasks. One way that I hope to achieve this is using the jigsaw approach to group work. The children will research/discuss in one ‘topic’ group and then provide feedback to another (their home/base) group. Once feedback has been provided I will encourage each home group to identify further research or queries which they have on the topics. Topic groups will then re-join and collaborate and communicate with eachother to provide the required feedback to their home groups.
To encourage multimodal communication, I aim to use a mix of tools when communicating information to the children, thus leading by example. Students will complete project work and will be provided with a rubric which will be used to assess it. On this rubric there will be points awarded for multi modal communication. I would also like to create a class blog/digital newsletter for parents or other classes documenting our class learning and activities completed each month. To ensure multimodal communication children would be encouraged to submit video clips, audio clips, images and text for inclusion in the newsletter.
When students are presenting information, answering questions, giving opinions and completing tasks I will promote the use of ‘providing evidence’. I will push them to elaborate; giving reasons and justifications for their answers and opinions, both orally and in written form. I will focus initially on doing this during guided reading lessons- in particular when students are making predictions, inferring and drawing conclusions from the text.
To encourage children to communicate with a designated audience in mind, I will start during writing lessons. In my WILF I will identify the audience to the students and encourage them to identify what they must be mindful of when communicating with this audience – for example, the language used, images to include, audience specific content and topics. I love another posters idea of getting another class teacher (1st class) to speak with the students about how best to communicate with that class level. Students could study articles/video clips/ letters/ postcards aimed at various audiences and compare/contrast them.
Digital technology enhances both teaching and learning. It provides fun and engaging ways to present information and material to students. Digital technologies also provide students with interactive and exciting ways to present their learning and to practice what they have learned. Through apps, online games and other digital tools, engagement with content can be made more motivating and interactive. Information and tasks can easily be adapted to suit the needs and abilities of various learners. The ability to readily adapt and differentiate content, outcomes and tasks through the use of digital technologies is doubtlessly going to ensure an enhanced learning environment for all. Through the use of digital technologies, barriers to learning can be overcome, for example a student who struggles with handwriting can present their project work using typed text, a student struggling with reading can use tools such as those available in OneNote; an auditory learner could listen to information; while a visual learner can watch/look at presentations/videos of the content.
Using the SSE guidelines and framework, I can assess and reflect on my own teaching within my classroom. The standards set out in these guidelines provide me with a basis to assess whether or mot my practice is effective or highly effective in various areas. This assists me in setting targets/goals for improving teaching and learning in my class as it clearly highlights direction for areas to improve on and the means to do so.
By developing my own use of Digital Technology I can implement items into my classroom and contribute to assisting other teachers who may be less confident with tech in implementing more Digital Technology in their classrooms. On a whole school level, the use of D.T. contributes to the gathering and analysing of information and also assists in the collaboration and record keeping necessary for the process of SSE. The use of technology is something with is necessary in today’s society. It is crucial that school stakeholders are confident and competent in using digital technologies. Through SSE and the DLF schools are assisted in identifying and working on improving in this area in a very concrete and progressive way.
The use of colour coded boxes for learning outcomes, key words and activities across all subjects would be a great way for children to visually decipher between the different pieces of information being presented to them. This would be fantastic for visual learners. Using a template like this would also remind me as a teacher to include WALT/WILF in my lessons. I wonder if using the same concept of colour coding could promote differentiation. Could the various content and tasks for ‘most-some-all’ students could be presented in a similar format, thus allowing the students to have some accountability and scope in their learning, allowing them more responsibility for their own learning? OneNote could be used to ensure that all learning styles are catered for through the inclusion of text, images, video clips and audio clips.
By creating a Form quiz on each chapter/page of the One Note lesson, students could independently work through a OneNote lesson and complete the corresponding Form quiz. This could be a very useful activity for early finishers to promote further learning on topics covered in class or on new topics.
OneNote could be used by students to record their own learning. This would be a great way for children to present project work either individually or group work.
In our school, we do guided reading. Planning and organising work for each novel is challenging. Going forward, I think One Note would be a fantastic way for teachers to organise guided reading lessons and keep them in a very organised way for future use. Vocabulary, grammar points, comprehension strategies and activities for each chapter/section of a novel could easily be complied in OneNote pages.
The learning tools such as immersive reader outlined in this module would be a fantastic support for children with SENS and EAL. The method by which the poem has been presented allows for differentiation in a way which would be invaluable for assisting students of all levels in accessing the poem as appropriate for them. If parents had access to this at home it would help them in supporting their children’s learning too, especially in homes where English is not the first language.
Before completing this module I had a very limited awareness of Microsoft Teams. I can now see that it is a tool which can be used for much more than video calls!
I now recognise Teams as a tool which can be used to create and collaborate on various types of files with the added option of providing/sharing feedback. The use of Teams to create and use documents, polls, forms, quizzes, announcements and so on could be invaluable both in terms of teachers and school leaders using it for shared department resources and also for teachers to use for classroom resources. Through the collaborative nature of Teams, staff can keep up to date with school activities and policies and communicate efficiently with each other. On a whole school level, this would be great for sharing and collaborating on planning documents, resources and other school documents such as school policies. Within the classroom, teams would allow for interactive presentation of information, project work and compiling portfolios of learning, both by the teacher for their students and also by the students themselves. The ability to set groups within Teams would be very useful for keeping department and class resources separate.
Schools I have worked in recently have used Classdojo or Seesaw for communicating with students, families and and Zoom within the school for staff meetings and training. While it is a challenge for staff and parents to become familiar with new/different platforms, I believe that once everyone would become familiar with Teams, it would be an invaluable platform for combining the various communication, collaboration and sharing needs which are required for teaching and learning.
Is there a way that I should show I have completed the following steps of the module:
- Use Sway to create a digital story and enhance with copyright free images and video.
- Create a 5 question multiple choice quiz
- Engage with two Microsoft Learn Education Centre courses ?
(I have posted reflective piece in forum)
Thank you
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>The use of onedrive for saving files would create an amazing bank of easily accessible resources for any teacher and a shared drive would be a great tool to enable collaboration between teachers to share and build upon resources. </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>To date, Powerpoint is the only office tool I have used in the classroom. I have been using other sites for creating quizzes however at times logging in and out of various sites can be off putting, especially with younger classes. To have all of these tools in one place makes it more accessible and user friendly so I am looking forward to engaging with the Microsoft Education Centre to develop my awareness and skills in using the tools available through Microsoft 365!</u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>I used powerpoint as a way of ‘presenting’ material to my class and to minimise the use of textbooks in the hope of making my lessons more tailored and relevant to my class. I am looking forward to using Sway to make lessons more accessible, engaging and interactive to students. The templates will be very useful as starting points. </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>I have also been using powerpoint to make multiple choice quizzes which had to be used as a whole class activity and completed in copies or on pages! I look forward to replacing this practice with Forms! Forms seems very user friendly for both teachers (creating quiz) and students (when answering questions). The automatic ‘self grading’ features makes them an ideal form of assessment that children can complete independently. The overview of responses provided is a very clear way to show what areas of a topic may need to be revised. Print outs of these response overviews will be definitely be included in my assessment folder for assessment of learning and assessment for learning going forward! </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>In terms of SSE, a school could use one drive to compile a shared bank of resources in whatever area is being looked at in SSE. Also, the use of forms could be used to gather and analyse data across many aspects of teaching and learning in the school. These tools could be used during Croke Park hours to present SSE info (using SWAY) and to survey staff, parents and students (using Forms).</u></span>
