[Nicola Healy]

I think this is a great idea Carol.  I know in our school the SET use the my Thoughts on School document with their students, and I’ve recently thought that this would be useful to use with all the students in your class.  As you have said by creating a form, you can collect their responses and then revisit the same survey later in the year and compare the responses.

This is real qualitative data for the teacher to inform her/his future learning experiences and for parent consultations, etc.

[Nicola Healy]

The SSE focus I have chosen for my own individual practice is using digital technologies for managing, monitoring and recording pupil progress.
As a whole school we have spoken about using LETRS spelling screener at the beginning of the year to identify the phoneme-grapheme correspondences and orthographic patterns that are largely known in the class and those that are not known and need to be explicitly taught.

Having administered the screening test, I could look at using Google Sheets to collect the data for individual students and for the class as a whole.  Then I can identify the areas that need further work and I could readminister the screening test later in the year and use the same sheet to collect and compare the new data.  If this was helpful I could share it with other staff in the school.

For parents and children I would have real data about spelling and not just a score.

Having compared the data, I can reflect on how effective the explicit teaching was or wasn’t and what areas need further development and then plan the further learning in spelling for my class.

[Nicola Healy]

I can see why you rejected the idea of covering the box with sticky notes.  This could become really messy, especially when students have spaces that don’t fit a complete sticky note, etc. and there could be a lot of paper and boxes everywhere but not much learning.

[Nicola Healy]

I used the Brainstorm idea to generate ideas for lesson starters to introduce the topic of community for a Third Class Geography lesson.

I liked the idea of the Zoom In Zoom Out Village Detective as I think it would hook the children and get them engaged and interested, which is what I want for a lesson starter.

I rejected the soundscape idea and the design an icon for the village idea – as I think we would have to have done some work on our local community to generate clever relevant icons.

I didn’t mention children’s names or exactly where our village is but kept it general in that we were close to both rural and urban areas.

I think the brainstorming Gem would add to the teaching and learning in my classroom as it helps me to think of interesting and engaging lesson starters and moves the learning away from the ideas suggested in the text book only.  Then the text books can be used for some of the lesson but not necessarily for the whole lesson and we can focus on the skills needed to be a geographer.

[Nicola Healy]

I also think that Google forms would be useful to investigate how the children enjoy learning and where the learning can go next and to investigate the children’s confidence in different areas.

It would be useful to have this data and to be able to see if there is a change over the year.

We conduct bullying surveys once a term as part of Wellbeing.  It may be useful to consider doing these in future rather than on paper as they would could analyse the data collected more easily.

[Nicola Healy]

My activity is a digital Artefact diary activity – ‘Be a Stone Age Archaeologist!’ using Google docs.  The children will pretend they have just discovered a stone object.  There will be a photo of the object.  The children will write 3 short sentences about the object that they have found.  They can use voice typing to help them to write their entry.  There will be a space on the Google doc to fill in for the diary.  I will include a word bank and sentence starters.  This will make the activity inclusive as children who find writing difficult will have some supports and can also use voice to text.

Being an archaeologist will help the pupils’ engagement.

I will use the add comment feature to give feedback to the pupils.

I will have a space for the pupils’ to add a question they would ask the owner of the ‘stone object?’.  I can use their questions to inform the next steps for learning.

[Nicola Healy]

This is really helpful.
Thanks so much Carol.

[Nicola Healy]

This is so helpful.

Thank you Pat.

[Nicola Healy]

Hi Carol,

This sounds like a very interesting and exciting project.  It might be an idea for your pairs to revisit their chosen tree during the different seasons and see how the tree has changed at different times in the year.  They could take photos and add them to the presentations.  They could share these images on the schoolwebsite – sharing the learning with the whole school community.

[Nicola Healy]

My topic was The Stone Age Peoples with Third Class.

A design choice I made was creating a quiz that asked questions related to a short video.  It supported sequence as the children watch the video about the Stone Age and then answer the quiz questions after to see what they have learned.
One adjustment I made was read aloud enabled by Mote.  This came about as I was reflecting on how reading the questions in the quiz might be difficult for some students.

I have explored Google Classroom – adding a topic, making a quiz and using Gemini to generate ideas.  I think this could be very useful in helping me create and organise lessons for my Third Class Pupils next school year.  It could be a good replacement for Seesaw which I miss and which has proved to have become too expensive and so the school no longer subscribes to Seesaw.

However I need to see if we can set up Google workspace for education related to our domain name.  When I tried to do this earlier it said that the domainname was already registered, so I need to find out more about this.

Lots of learning today and lots of reflection!

[Nicola Healy]

Hi Carol, I think your idea of children focusing on just one specific theme for their interview so that they get more detailed information is a great suggestion and if different children in the class chose different themes you would have a wealth of information and oral history to share when the children presented their finished projects.  Really interesting and engaging for your Sixth Class pupils and their grandparents!

[Nicola Healy]

I asked Gemini to generate some warm-up games for introducing new vocabulary for the Mé Féin and Bia topic in Third Class.

The useful Gemini suggestion I chose was the game Cad atá ar iarraidh? (Kim’s Game).  I liked Gemini’s suggestions for the Step by Step Teacher Instructions and the ceisteanna to ask during the activity.

When I asked Gemini to generate success criteria in child friendly language.  I chose not to include the suggestion of “I can close my eyes honestly when the teacher says “Dún bhur súile”.” as I don’t think this would be useful at the beginning of the year when establishing relationships with the children.  Rather I would rather use a box or towel etc. to cover the items so that the children don’t have to be under pressure with closing their eyes honestly, as at this age many still find it difficult.

I especially loved the accessibility suggestions for children of pointing to a desk mat as this would work for children in my class without mentioning any personal names or  needs etc.

I love what I have learned in this lesson about using Gemini and refining what Gemini generates with further prompts and always reviewing and reflecting on what is generated and then making decisions about what to use.  Always considering responsible AI use of not sharing personal information or data.

I’m excited for the future modules.

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