Term 4 - Lockdown continues...

We are still currently in alert level 3 in Auckland so term 4 has begun the same way that term 3 ended, with online remote learning. As a team we have continued on with our layout of the class site with creating a range of different content each day. This term we have decided to scale down on some of the activities and focus our efforts towards guided reading groups. This is something that has been a little bit of trial and error this week. I thought about having each of my groups separately but in order to have two texts a week this was going to be challenging in regards to google meet times. I am very aware of students being stuck at home and having lots of google meets can not only be a time pressure on the students but with their whānau as well. So I will call this week guided reading a trial and error model! This has however given me some guidance in how I could run this better next week. 

Plan going ahead:
Next week I will go back to having three reading groups, two of my groups are reading at a similar level so I will run this as one group. My other two groups with my target learners I will focus back in on the level of text that they need in order to make shift within their reading. Again without trying to overload the students and their whānau I am working on a way to make these guided reading sessions fit on to the end of my google meet sessions. I am really looking forward to continuing this on next week with my students as many of them were really excited to have this focused on their specific reading group. This in turn also means that is is possible for the students to have more specific follow up tasks to the texts that they are reading. 

Data collection?
Over the holidays and during this week I have been thinking how can I continue to work on my inquiry with a focus on vocabulary. My plan at this stage is to try and create a google form specifically for my target learners to check where they are with spelling and comprehension. My thinking at this stage is to try and have a weekly spelling test (pre and post) with vocabulary related to the texts we will be reading as a group. I then want to create a form that at the end of reading each text the students will fill out so I can gauge how they are going with comprehension and what I need to do to facilitate this learning online. 

It has been tricky to continue on with the momentum for my inquiry however I am excited and ready to create these new changes with my class next week and to see how this can strengthen my learners and what they need to work on for reading. We have seen low attendance again this week but I am thinking this could be due to the first week back of online learning, so will hopefully pick up again in the next few weeks!

Holiday Blogging

These holidays I have continued on with the team 4 holiday blogging blogger that was set up a few years ago by Matt Goodwin. This is our own team blogger especially used for holiday blogging. With the students still continuing to be at home even in the holidays with their chomebooks at home we thought why not continue on some momentum for learning during these holidays! This was an optional task for our learners as I know there were many of them still wanting to have access to some form of learning each day. 

The holiday blogging challenge is a research type model that is set up by the students and the topics that they think others will want to learn about. Each day there is a new challenge on the team 4 holiday blog and the students are given the opportunity to research this topic. The task is the same each day where they will need to find out facts and information about the topic challenge. This finishes off with the vlog or screencast of the students sharing what they have learnt about the topic for the day. We run this Monday to Friday each week of the holidays with some days have double challenges!

I found that these holidays I had a lot more students wanting to share topic ideas and also complete the learning each day. The students that have participated in this holiday blogging have absolutely loved it and there was no pressure to have to complete it each day. We just had it there as an extra thing that students could do while still being in level 3 during the holidays. There were some fantastic challenge ideas along with some really creative research tasks created by students across the whole of team 4! It was a great way to keep momentum going along with having our learners set up to take part in the summer learning journey over the December and January school holidays.