Inquiry Update - Week 2 Term 4

What? How to improve oral language and critical thinking skills

Why? Extension group, but still need to be able to express themselves intelligently and with confidence. To extend their thinking skills.

How? Paideia Seminars, rich experiences, links with theme for the Term

End of Term 3: Y5&6 completed Stop Motion movies, x2 Paideia Seminars

Focus for Term 4: Science focus on the Physical World. Researching info about UV light and its effects on our skin and on the Earth. Skin cancer and Global Warming/Climate Change. Making UV sensors with Ray Shah (scientist). KPMG Trip focus: Dance and Drama theme - Pop Up Globe theatre.

Inquiry Update - Week 10, Term 3

Extension Group Reflection snapshot - End of Term 3, 2019


Year 5&6 Extension:

Museum Trip over 2 days. Focus was on exploring digital technologies. VR experience was enjoyable for students. Based on ‘Something in the Water’ Inquiry theme - creating a Rocky Shore ecosystem. Coding with Dash robot - recording information about sea creatures and playing back during coding.
Stop Motion DLO’s being created - based on a theme around water or the ocean.
Film Festival movie created - students collaborated to create the script and plot for the movie. 

One movie created for 'The Outlook for Someday' competition. 

x2 Students featured in Kea Kids News on HeiHei website (Episode 6).

Term 3 Paideia Seminar.

Year 7&8 Extension:

Created movies about sustainability as DLO (Digital Learning Object) for the term.
Film Festival movie created - collaborated to create script and plot.

x2 Students featured in Episode 5 of Kea Kids News on HeiHei website. 

Term 3 Paideia Seminar

Coding with OMGTECH!

Students were lucky to have a session of coding with Zoe from OMGTECH! The students learnt how to use lines of code rather than blocks of code (e.g. Scratch) and it involved a bit of problem solving. Their task was to programme a robot so that it would navigate its way through a maze without touching the lines. Students were also given the opportunity to explore the Minecraft programme.

Final Inquiry Reflection 2018

Last week the final Paideia seminars took place for the Year 5&6 and Year 7&8 Extension groups. The Y5&6 seminar took place on Tuesday afternoon and the Y7&8 seminar took place the following morning on the Wednesday.

The provocative statement put to the students was: 'The Arts are just as important as academic subjects'. It was quite interesting to hear their viewpoints based on this provocative statement. Many decided that academic subjects such as reading and maths were more important than the arts. Some argued that reading is the most important subject because it helps with all subjects. Some said that the arts should be optional. Others said that the arts are important for giving students who are not good at reading or maths the chance to express themselves. The variety of opinions was interesting. There was no dominant thinking (agree or disagree) towards or against the statement.

I was impressed with the way in which the Year 5&6 students were engaged with the discussions. Most students were able to express their thoughts and opinions with the group. Most were able to build on the ideas of others which demonstrated that they were actually listening to what was being said.

It was a different story with the Year 7&8 group. It was quite difficult to get half of the group to engage properly with the discussions. Quite a few were reluctant to share. I think that I made the mistake of holding the seminar in class. There were no stand alone tables so the students sat on their chairs facing each other. The students had also completed quite a complex task before hand, so in hindsight it was probably not a good idea to hold our seminar straight after.

Overall, I am happy with the way that the Paideia seminars have panned out. We didn't have any in Term 1 due to the lack of time and due to our FiaFia event. I do feel that it's still something that needs to be pursued next year because it does give our students the chance to improve their critical thinking skills and communication skills.

Inquiry Reflection - Term 2 Paideia Seminar results

Inquiry Reflection

Towards the end of Term 2 both extension groups participated in a Paideia Seminar. The seminars were filmed and then I analysed how well the students participated during the seminars.
















This is a graph that shows the Year 5&6 Extension group results. There were only 3 students who spoke at least 10 times or more. There were 8 students who spoke between 5-10 times. Four students spoke less than 5 times and three students were away. The more confident students tended to contribute more ideas and were able to elaborate on what they were saying.
















Here is a graph of the Year 7&8 Extension students participation from their Paideia Seminar last term. One student dominated the conversations with more than 15 talk times. Another student who was also quite confident spoke more than 10 times. There were 8 students who spoke between 5-10 times. Five students spoke less than 5 times and two students were away. The students who spoke the most tended to be very self-confident and articulate. This was in contrast to the shy students who needed to be prompted to share.

This is the second year that I have been using Paideia Seminars to encourage students to think and to communicate clearly with others. Once again the confidence of the student makes a big difference in whether or not they participated effectively, regardless of whether they researched their inquiry topic effectively or not.

Next steps: To focus on helping the shy students use effective strategies to help them to prepare well and to share their ideas. To encourage the shy students to contribute more often in the next Paideia seminar at the end of the term.

Year 7 & 8 Extn Projects using Scratch and Makey Makey

In Term 3 the Year 7 & 8 Extension students had to work in small groups of 3-4 on a project. Each group had to use 'Scratch' and 'Makey Makey' kits to create one of 3 projects:

1. Band
2. Game Show
3. Game controls for people with physical disabilities

Here are snippets of highlights from their presentations.


Y7&8 Extn projects Term 3 2017 from SchoolTV on Vimeo.

SPARK MIT Meeting #2

Today was our second SPARK MIT meeting at SPARK Headquarters. We talked about where we were all up to in terms of our inquiry focus. I talked about my inquiry focus which is all about improving critical thinking skills through the use of 'deep dialogical discussions' with the Year 5 & 6 Extension group. I also talked about the use of 'coding' with the Year 7 & 8 Extension group to extend their thinking skills.



When I reflect upon my experience during term one, I consider myself really lucky to have had the guidance, help and support from Anne Sinclair who has been like a mentor teacher. The Year 5 & 6 students were extremely lucky to have the attention of two teachers throughout the term to help guide them with their learning. Teaching students how to hold deep dialogic discussions was something new for me. By the end of the term I could see how most of them had developed their skills in speaking and holding a conversation with others based on a topic. With some prior knowledge and background research (including lots of scaffolding),  most of the students could talk about their position/stance about an issue (pollution) much more deeply. We gave them an opportunity to reflect on the Paideia Seminar that was held at the end of the term, and most students were able to recognise and reflect on the areas that they needed to work on.

In terms of coding with the Year 7 & 8 group I am also grateful for the help that I received from Zoe from OMGTech. I don't think we would have made as much progress with their games as we did if she hadn't been there for support, advice and guidance. It would have been a very stressful process to try and get the students games completed on Scratch (in time for the cluster exhibition) without her help. The students also learnt many new technical skills along the way. I felt that it was a huge learning curve for me as my knowledge about coding was quite limited earlier in the year.

During our meeting we also talked about the 'innovation' aspect of our inquiries. My innovation is around the use of a range of tools to collaborate with and capture evidence of student learning and collaboration. I have used padlets, shared docs, google slides, a survey (google form), movies (vignettes) and my site (Creative Space) to capture evidence of learning and collaboration. This forms part of a bigger question which was how to assess and measure learning with these students based on my inquiry. What evidence did I have? Monitoring and assessing some of the Key Competencies would also be important. Using surveys to capture evidence of student attitudes towards their learning was considered. I also needed to consider how to get the home class teacher (of the student) to take notice of what the extension kids are doing.

We also had the opportunity to meet with our SPARK buddy. Today I met with Tracy who is a lawyer at SPARK. Tracy has previously been a teacher so we had a very interesting conversation about my inquiry and how she could help support me this year.

Coding - Scratch Games shared at Te Oro

Our Manaiakalani group of schools in Auckland, NZ have been learning about how we can take care of our local environment. The theme was 'Te Taiao o Tamaki'. On Wednesday 12th of April our Manaiakalani Cluster of Schools held an exhibition at Te Oro to celebrate a term of learning about the environment. You can view highlights from the exhibition on this link. 

At Pt England school our theme for the year is 'Responsiblity'. In term one we have focused on 'Kaitiakitangi i nga wa katoa' which is about taking care of our environment and everything in it. The Year 7 & 8 Extension group used Scratch to create games about our local environment. 

This is the first time that many of our students have used Scratch. This was a great platform to learn how to code using blocks (lines of code) rather than text. The backgrounds are of our school, local reserve and beach. The exhibition at Te Oro was an opportunity for our Year 7 & 8 Extension students to share their learning this term. The 'Game Space' area was very popular with students at the exhibition. 

Link to the students games



Scratch Games at Te Oro - Manaiakalani Cluster Exhibition 2017 from SchoolTV on Vimeo.

Coding and OMGTech

The Year 7 & 8 Extension students were lucky enough to receive support in the form of Zoe and Alex from OMGTech to help with their projects on Scratch. Their knowledge and support was invaluable and helped the students to make headway with their projects. First they introduced themselves, described their backgrounds and then explained the basics of using Scratch. Later they worked with the students and helped them to problem solve and deal with issues regarding their games.

OMGTech visit Part 1 from SchoolTV on Vimeo.