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I really liked the idea of choosing your own adventure Darragh and have used it in my own storybook – I also think children would lobe the idea of creating these kind of books for themselves.
I agree Marie, I have mostly used tests to as an AOL tool but have rarely used the information I have collected as useful evidence to inform my own teaching or to change the way that I allow children to access learning and to participate meaningfully.
I am very inspired by the idea of using Google Slides to allow flexible responses from students about their learning. This gives them agency to decide how to represent their own understanding and removes the barriers of heavy text responses, responding in one way, recalling facts and having the correct vocabulary to express themselves fully. If the children have the freedom to use images, drawings, audio narrations voice to text, mind maps etc they will feel more ownership over their learning, more creativity, more confidence in their own ability and perhaps more willingness to share their work proudly with their peers. It can be difficult to find time to give each child positive and constructive feedback on their work so I do feel that using Google Forms will help with this as well as being helping students to express their own opinions and facilitating student voice. I look forward to using more of the workspace in-built features this year to help students access learning, participate meaningfully and show what they have learnt.
I really like the idea of using Google Forms to gather feedback from students about their learning and opinions and thus facilitating student voice.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jyuP_5fwcv9Zoq7cNqqEUpJ8dMQlWCnT0gq0-6LyaTU/edit?usp=sharing
The above links to a digital story I have made about a child’s journey through the great famine. Allowing the children to decide what the family should do gives them agency and ownership and will help them to empathise with the plight of families during the great famine and the life that their decisions may have led them to.
I have begun using Workspace with the senior classes in our school this year – particularly Slides and Docs – but I am hoping to use Classroom and Forms a lot more this year. I can see that Forms will be a great assessment tool giving children instant feedback and helping teachers to quickly see if their class has understood each topic or whether they may need to adjust the way that they are teaching. I love the idea of keeping a log of all of the results of each child’s quizzes which will help to build a better picture of their overall learning. I hope that classroom will help teachers to assign tasks quickly and easily as well as providing useful feedback for each child.
I have created a forms quiz on the great famine to be used as a homework assignment which provides immediate feedback so that children can see for themselves how well they have understood the main ideas and vocabulary covered in class. It will also inform me about how well the class as a whole have understood the content and whether I need to adapt the way that I have approached it.
The key idea that I took from William’s paper is that assessment should create information that leads to a action that improves learning. Next year I will think more about what I will do with the evidence that I collect through assessment and also what the pupils in my class can so with it.
A few years ago I completed a course on using self assessment for learning folders – next year I hope to encourage pupils to become more responsible for their own learning by asking them to use their own digital portfolios to identify what they can do and what they need to improve, and to give them opportunities to act on feedback.I like the sound of Vocaroo Helen – what a great way of assessing reading fluency and helping the children to see how much progress they have made. I may use this in SET this year to asses reading at the start and end of the year.
As I have had responsibility for STEM and digital learning in our school for the past year, I have been trying to promote the use of digital technology in our classrooms to enhance students learning and we have made great progress so far. Our senior classes have Google logins and we’ve really focused on using Chromebooks to support and enhance the learning we are doing in the various curriculum areas as well as to assess students’ understanding of this work. We have not yet used Google classroom and this is something that I hope to focus on this year so that children can share their work and complete assignments at home.
One resource from the Google for education teacher centre that I would use is the ‘Create interactive assignments with Google slides’. There seem to be some very practical ideas here for designing engaging learning activities that encourage pupil participation. This could help us to make learning more interactive while also helping us to assess and reflect on future learning as part of the SSE process.
I recently completed a lesson about brain with third class. I used Google slides and organised it into a logical progression that introduced pupils to the main parts of the brain, their basic functions and how the brain helps us to think move, remember and complete every day tasks. They completed a collaborative activity where they discussed in groups 10 everyday tasks and decided which part of the brain was most involved in completing these tasks. They then placed a label on that part of the brain for each task.
One design choice I made was to present the information in small manageable sections using a consistent layout colour and headings and slide. This supported clarity and sequence by helping pupils focus on one concept at a time before moving onto the next the consistent design also made it easier for pupils to navigate the lesson.
One adjustment I would make is to add audio instructions and narration to each slide. This would support pupils who benefit from hearing instructions as well as reading them and would make the learning sequence more accessible for all learners. It would also mean that children could revise by accessing the presentation at home through Google classroom.
A possible link to SSE is evaluating how well this learning sequence supported pupil engagement and understanding. By observing how well the children complete the collaborative or having them complete a quiz at home using Google classroom I could reflect on the effectiveness of the sequence and identify improvements for future lessons.
I really like the idea of a whole class collaborating on story ideas as some children find it difficult to come up with their own character, title or opening line – you have some children modelling how they work and having every child feel like they have contributed while still giving them the agency of adding their own conclusions.