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Skill: Collaboration
Lesson type: Jigsaw lesson based on Italy.
For this lesson the children will be placed in four ability based groups known as a ‘Expert Groups’. Each Expert Group will be given a link in Teams Assignments to a text based on a topic relating to Italy – Italian Food, Italian Geography, Italy – Map and General Information, Landmarks: The Leaning Tower of Pisa. These texts will reflect the ability of each group and Immersive Reading can be used for less able students to access any difficult content (picture dictionary or text to speech) and/or the text can be pre-taught by their SET teacher. Each group will be given 10 mins to read/discuss/highlight/record key information on their topic. They must decide this as a group as this will be the information passed on to other groups later. Following this each member of the expert group will be reassigned to a ‘Home Group’ – each home group will contain at least one expert from each of the expert groups. Each expert will then be given 3 minutes each to teach the ‘Home Group’ about their topic. The ‘Home Group’ will then create a Sway presentation based on Italy using the information they have learned from each other – they MUST include information on each topic. A series of these style lessons could be used to learn about other Italian landmarks/geographical features/famous people etc.
The link below is for a Sway presentation that can be used to explain Jigsaw lessons to your class.
Link:
Using digital technology in your classroom to enhance children’s learning.
Technology can be used in vast array of settings to enhance children’s learning. Firstly it is a highly attractive and visual learning format which children find highly motivating and rewarding. Technology can be used to present learning content either as PowerPoint or Sway presentations, as an assessment tool using Microsoft Forms/Quizzes, to engage in project work or research using online search engines and as a reward for hard work/good behavior using education games available online. Technology can also be used to provide access to content for struggling learners in a discrete way via tools such as Immersive Reading on OneNote.
Applying SSE Guidelines to your teaching.
As a staff we definitely need to focus on using digital technology more both in the classroom for teaching and learning and as a home school link i.e. providing assignments online to be completed at home. In order to get these practices in place I think we firstly need to establish an IT team (a tricky process with a small staff in a rural school who are already fulfilling many additional roles!). I think if this was added as part of the roles for a post of responsibility it may be easier to find volunteers. Consultation with staff and the entire school community as well as whole staff training would be crucial to the successful roll out of an endeavor such as this. The staff would all have to agree to use common a platform such as Microsoft 365 to ensure continuity for staff, students and parents. Monitoring, review and setting of SMART targets would also be essential.
Impact of developing your own use of digital technology at school level.
Developing your own use of digital technology is crucial in impacting it’s use at school level. It not only motivates you to engage with it as a medium for learning but upskilling also fosters confidence in the classroom application of digital technology and allows for meaningful engagement with it among your students. It can also serve to alert other staff members to the potential of digital learning and create discourse around your schools Digital Learning Framework.
OneNote and OneNote Learning Tools have huge potential in supporting and expanding deeper learning opportunities for students. Creating a template which is colour coded and used for all lessons in this format would be hugely beneficial for all students specifically those with learning difficulties as the format is familiar and predictable. The facility to add Online Video, Links and Audio creates an attractive and interactive learning medium and would serve to both motivate the children to learn and expand deeper learning opportunities for them. Given that these lessons are saved and can be revisited in the future provides for revision and consolidation of topics (which may have otherwise been lost once wiped from the whiteboard). Saved lessons could also be pre-taught ahead of time by the SET teacher to support struggling learners. The audio feature could be used to model appropriate pace, tone, pronunciation and intonation for the class when reading aloud or giving presentations. The ‘draw’ feature would be a great tool for labelling drawings during lessons/teaching or used as an assessment tool if used by the students. The Immersive Reader feature is a game changer for providing differentiated text in a discrete and inclusive manner particularly the text to speech, syllable and picture dictionary features. I am looking forward to using this in the coming school year.
It’s such a pity our school didn’t use Maicrosoft Teams during lockdown as it’s far superior to Zoom and Aladdin which are the platforms we engaged with.
Within Teams I particularly like the Assignments and Grades feature. The facility to create assignments from existing ones is a fantastic feature as I have many Word Documents saved from previous years which I can now upload on Teams. This will in turn create a record and bank of work completed by the class and be a real time saver for the future as they will now be stored in one place. The Grade feature will mean this can also double up as part of my assessment folder. The feature to export to excel will make results really visual also.
The fact that the Assignments are saved in one place will also mean as teachers change classes over the years a wealth of resources can be easily found, shared and stored between teachers via the Professional Learning Community section. In this section minutes and agendas for staff meetings could also be shared. As I am job sharing this year it may also be a handy way of communicating and sharing the weekly handover with my partner. This will all lead to a saving on printing and the promotion our green school ethos.
I also really liked the recording feature outlined in PowerPoint as it could be easily used in Teams Assignments to walk students through the completion of any Forms or Quizzes given as part of the assignment. Screen record would also be invaluable in helping both parents and students navigate online applications and resources required in order to complete Assignments given on Teams.
Some challenges I could initially foresee would be the fact that if starting from scratch it may time and labour intensive to create, save and upload assignments. Another challenge may be getting all members of staff on board as we know some can be reluctant to change or fearful of technology. Finally, challenges such as poor wifi connection in rural areas may inhibit some students ability to access these features.
I have really enjoyed engaging with the content of module one and can already see huge potential for its use in my classroom the coming school year.
Sway
I was really surprised at how easy Sway was to use. I found the inbuilt feature to add photos a real time saver – previously I would have made powerpoint presentations and had to google images, save to my pictures and upload! Sway presents information in such a fun and exciting format. I hope to have the children in my class use it to create projects and presentations during the year. These can be saved and used as resources for future classes. I would also hope to set up a committee to create a class/school newsletter using Sway – this could begin as an end of term one (a Christmas Special) and progress to a monthly edition as the children become more familiar with the app. The print feature means hard copies of presentations can be displayed providing a record of learning and attractive classroom displays.
Forms
I have used applications similar to Forms before but really liked the ease of use of this one. I will certainly use it this year for termly assessments and end of unit testing. The self-correcting nature of it will be a great way to save time and I really liked the hint re keeping scores (to 100 points to see percentage scores). The children could also use this feature by creating short quizzes for each other based on topics being covered.
SSE
Forms would be an excellent tool to record the baseline and improvement in children’s achievements following the implementation of interventions targeting improvement in the chosen subject for SSE. It could also be used to collect feedback from staff on how the SSE process is going – particularly helpful when frequent feedback is required as it means staff doesn’t have to gather physically to give their input. This also provides a record of work completed by staff on SSE which can be printed and stored in the school SSE folder.
