Remote Learning for ANZAC Day

Like a lot of things, ANZAC Day has taken on a different shape and form this year.

As Week 3 looms, you might be feeling a distinct lack of energy for planning this long weekend. Below are some ideas for remote teaching and learning about ANZAC Day – relevant, timely and ready to go.

My short film viewing lessons are for junior secondary/Year 11. The links at the end take you to sites with a compilation of ideas/resources which also feature ideas for younger learners.

The short film Falling Sparrows (directed by Murray Keane) is available on the NZ On Screen website. You might need to supply students with a resource around film terms first. They could make a Kahoot, Quizlet or cross word to share with you. Students then watch the film, answer the following focus questions, then discuss in a group meet. Open with the question from the film’s synopsis: What do you think about the statement that for the boys, “war’s a game and nobody dies”? That’s a week’s worth right there.

1. What does the monument symbolise (represent, make you think of)?
2. How does the director tie together the beginning and the end?
3. What (or who) do the dead sparrows represent (think of the title)?
4. What do you notice about the boys’ dialogue (What they say to each other and how they say it)?
5. Give one example of diegetic sound (sound you’d hear if you were there)
6. Give one example of non-diegetic sound (added in editing process)
7. Name 2 film techniques used (e.g pan, slow motion, dissolve) and describe their effect.
8. “Blue Dragon” has trouble telling the difference between reality and fantasy. How is this shown?
9. How is humour used?
10. How is tension created?
11. What is important about the shot of the two sparrows flying in the sky after the accidents?
12. How does the mood change at the end?
13. What do you think the message (theme) is?

Tama Tü directed by Taika Waititi is another short film featured on NZ On Screen. Students can watch the film, answer the questions below and complete the reflective writing. This could be a springboard for creative or formal writing at Level 1 or the close viewing assessment. The film also has links to Maori Battalion.

1. The crow is a tohu (sign). What does it represent?
2. What is the name of the jerky camera movement used at the start? Why is it used?
3. Name 2 things you hear or see that tell us this is a war zone.
4. Name 2 different signals the men use to communicate to each other.
5. The director says “even at war… boys will be boys”. How does he show us that?
6. What is the significance of placing the manaia (a mythical creature that wards off danger) next to the toy soldier?

Journal writing: Imagine that you are a soldier in a ruined city in World War I. Describe what you can see, the thoughts running through your head and your feelings.

Other ANZAC sites for remote learning:

• TKI page with range of resources
• NZ On Screen ANZAC collection
• A primary teacher’s guide
• Sons of Gallipoli – a song with words below. Good for poetic devices/close reading
• Digital Resources for ANZAC from the team at Enabling E-learning
• Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story

If you need resources around film terms for pre-teaching/revision, feel free to message me.

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My top remote learning tools

Here’s a quick list of resources I’ve compiled and share with our staff recently – thought my followers might like a piece of the action too.

I’m a Microsoft Innovative Educator, English and Media Studies teacher and currently working as a Learning Support Coordinator across all year levels and subjects so hopefully there’s something for everyone. (I’ve posted on most before so check the tag cloud for more details).

As you’ll be aware, a lot of online providers are offering free access to platforms and resources currently so it’s a good time to try them out. Before creating new content, have a look at what’s already on offer.

General:

• Quizlet is offering free teacher access until the end of June
• Kahoot is also offering free access to its premium service currently
• Free stories on Audible
• More stories from Radio NZ’s collection
• Prepared lessons on Ted-Ed
• BBC Bitesize – loads of lessons here too
• The Literacy Shed – animations, music videos with teaching ideas. Primary/Year 9 or 10.
• FlipGrid – Post a question, an idea, a problem and students make quick videos to respond (they can black the screen if shy)
• Pear Deck – a PowerPoint extension enabling students to respond in real time to questions. Easy to install and use.
• Wakelet – save, organise and curate content. Senior students research, whole class collaboration, teacher posts class readings
• nzonscreen – free, NZ audio-visual content. Lots of the films from the 10, 11, 12 compilations are on here. Falling Sparrows  great for Years 9 and 10 in lead up to ANZAC. Lots of other ANZAC content on there too for seniors.

Microsoft Tips and Tools:

• Getting started – introduction to Office 365
• Setting up meetings in Teams
• More on setting up meetings in Teams
• Range of MS Tools available remotely
• Help page for remote learning tools
• Screen recordings in PowerPoint for creating online tutorials
• Get students to make a Sway presentation demonstrating their learning; share or present to class

And this coming week, the last two Ask Me Anything Sessions led by Microsoft NZ experts.

Tuesday April 7th 10am-10:45am

Thursday April 9th 3:30pm-4:15pm

You don’t need to be part of the MIE programme to join – just use the link below or ask your friendly MIE to ask a question for you. 🙂

Short link to join the meetings

As always, try only what you feel will work best for your students in your subject area.

And always keep the learning objective top of mind.

Also feel free to post a message or email me if you would like supporting resources I’ve created (Falling Sparrows, Literacy Shed and more).

Go well.

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Elementary!

Following my last post (soapbox more than sharing sorry) I realised something. Aside from the very real pressures preventing teachers from using digital technology effectively, have we been blinded by science? What if we all take a big step back, right back to the NZC, then maybe forward a bit to our curriculum area’s learning objectives and then inch forward slightly to our department’s goals. Is it possible to start from the purpose of the lesson and THEN consider the place of digital learning tools?

Here’s an example. My Year 9s are going to close view Ang Lee’s stunning film Life of Pi this term. Close viewing a visual text (being a critical media consumer) is a core skill in English. We want students to be able to infer meaning from a visual text, to consider how the director uses a range of film techniques for a specific purpose, to analyse how those big ideas are incorporated in the text and reflect on the importance of those ideas in their lives, their community and the world.

To attain those objectives we generally:
1. Watch a film and review key scenes
2. Explicitly teach a range of film techniques
3. Discuss and analyse ideas in the film
4. Discuss and analyse the director’s purpose
5. Relate techniques to purpose
6. Reflect on the film’s messages for individuals and for society

So, you watch the film, you do term:definition matches and you write an essay that demonstrates you can apply knowledge and express ideas.

How could digital technology enhance that process?

1. Close view – Use the best TV you can with best sound system available. Use pause and slow mo.

2. Techniques – take screen grabs using a snipping tool, print image to A3, get students in groups to label the techniques or use phones/ipads to go out and replicate a few scenes to help embed techniques and effects. Make the key literacy terms interactive and competitive – try quizlet, Kahoot, Edmodo.While it might take 30 minutes to make your quiz, if you make it generic, you can reuse.

3. Ideas – upload background notes on your LMS. Then give the students opportunities to work through a range of tasks (character analysis, themes analysis, narrative techniques) online, in any order they choose, over a week.
4.Director’s purpose – check: has your DVD got interviews with director at end? Are they on YouTube or the film’s official website? These can be viewed as a class or online with headphones as a close listening activity. I’m going to use an interview with Yann Martel (author of Life of Pi) on RadioNZ as an extension activity.

5 and 6. To consolidate their knowledge (moving from Bloom’s understand and apply to analyse, evaluate and create) students choose their groups (student choice) and complete an assignment requiring them to collaborate and create.

If you go right back to Bloom’s Taxonomy (or Solo or whichever theory resonates), it’s a matter of starting with basics then working up to the higher order thinking by creating opportunities to independently analyse and avalute. I’ll use One Note on 365 because that’s the platform my school uses. It took me about two hours to set up a shared content library, individual student folders and a collaboration space (the basic tenants of One Note). The aim is to use Office Mix (an add on to powerpoint enabling students to add audio, quizzes and drawings) to create a presentation they will then present to class providing an opportunity for some public speaking as well.

If we start with the big picture, consider core skills, learning objectives and key competencies and plan from there, then digital technology simply becomes a means of getting there – while also allowing students to develop digital literacy skills.

Of course it takes time to learn how to use One Note, Office Mix and Quizlet but it also takes time to create paper handouts and worksheets. My advice for the over or underwhelmed is pick one class or one unit of work. Start with a big bit of paper, mind map the big picture goals/objectives/competencies then consider possible steps. For me, taking time to make sure the folders I create for students in our class notebook match those in the content library and are in a logical order is vital to ensure students can navigate their folders easily. So forethought and curbing a tendency to add extra folders after I’ve set up the directory under the guise of “extras” are crucial.

And as for the essay? My students will still write essays this year (a core skill as that is how they will be assessed for externals in NCEA) via written text studies so will practice that skill again before exams. Risky strategy possibly but if they can see the assignment through, hopefully they will have gained greater insight into the text and thus have more to write about.

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ipads in Action

It’s been an exciting start to the year at a new school, topped off with the privilege of being allocated a trial ipad class of Year 10 students. This post is really an extended reflection of where I’m at, there they’re at and where we might be heading with ipads in an English classroom.

The first challenge was setting up the device. This entailed getting myself online via the school server as well as ensuring it would work at home. This was made simpler by my Year 11 students who completed all of the above in about 15 minutes – how they remember all the relevant settings is beyond me but I was grateful for their help!

The next step was familiarizing myself with navigation. Enter two ipod touting sons who quickly showed me the in and outs of finding my way around the device, uploading apps and creating folders on the desktop. 🙂

So what have we achieved? At this stage baby steps.

My class has access to a dedicated Koodle page via the school website. I update this weekly and promote it visually in class. Having an LMS is one thing but as I’ve learned, getting students to use it is another. To be specific – be explicit. They need to see it to connect with it. I also promoted the site to parents via email. Their page includes an introductory section with a document featuring links to websites I recommend students bookmark on their iPads. This includes online dictionaries, visual thesaurus, reading support sites, writing support sites, search engines as well as grammar and punctuation sites with interactive games – such fun!

Now this might not seem ipad specific yet but hang in there! At this stage my aim was to integrate the ipad with existing technologies in a bid to ensure students could hook into technologies relevant to their needs. I should add they are a mixed ability class. One of the big pluses of ipads has to be helping teachers provide differentiated learning opportunities. Now you’re interested?!

Next I set up a wide reading blog. Initially this was private and I emailed students invites to their school accounts. Part way through the term, take up was just two students out of 24 so I made the blog public to make it easier to access. This blog has examples of wide reading responses, suggested texts, links to sites about reading/books and the odd You Tube clip students could use for a visual response.

Although I later discovered we don’t accept posts as responses (schools have different policies on this – it is permitted in the Achievement Standard), the blog is a good resource if students are stuck for inspiration. I also promoted the blog to parents during interviews, many of whom were unsure what a reading response was.

In the first term we covered creative writing and a novel study. My big goal was to use a web adventure based on CSI investigation for them as a starter to their creative writing assessment. Unfortunately, I planned this unit of work over the summer holidays before I had the iPad so was gutted to learn the website wouldn’t load on an iPad because it needed flash 😦 Note to self: never talk up a digital learning opportunity until you’ve tested it…

I really think the class would have enjoyed a game-based approach to learning about characters and setting, and using that as a starting point for their writing. Similarly, the fantastic BBC Skills website I intended to use for grammar and punctuation doesn’t work on iPads so I had to find alternatives. Moving on (!) I incorporated iPads into lessons for:
1. Grammar and punctuation – Grammar Monster
2. Poetic devices testing– Quia
3. A shared glossy for novel – used EverNote to create and asked students to do the same using Evernote, Penultimate or Scratch. I placed a link to my glossary via Koodle in case students were away/behind.

Term 2 planned uses:
Now that I’m aware of applications and shortcomings, I plan to use the ipad more regularly in lessons. My aim is to do this as seamlessly as possible. At this stage I’ve earmarked the following apps/websites:
1. Quizlet – novel terms and content testing
2. Spell City – interactive games using the glossary created in term 1
3. Prezi – for a presentation on theme for film study
4. Animoto – as above
5. Four Pics One Word – general starter
6. Cartoon Studio – plot summary film/character study
7. Auto rap – turning film reviews into rap.
8. TED – as a start for non-fiction writing

9. Socrative – range of uses but the great thing is it can be used in real time by teacher and students.

Later in the year, I hope to use the ipads for sharing/analysing essays via Drop Box or Noterize. I‘m also hoping to create a private twitter feed for a character study of Romeo and Juliet, and would also like to use iPads collaboratively when preparing for exams.

So has it been worthwhile? I guess it’s early days. For me, the biggest thing has been upskilling in “my spare time” but as with all digital learning, sometimes trusting students to sort out small glitches i.e encouraging them to be the experts is the best way forward. Being brave and giving things a go is also really important. Not everything I planned worked so you just have to move on and find an alterative.

Not surprisingly, the biggest challenge to date is not technological but around appropriate usage in the classroom. If you thought FB was bad, wait until you have to deal with snapchat/tumblr. That’s an issue we’ll be working through this term with discussions underway about developing consistent rules across all subject areas. I’m not sure what that will look like in practice but if we don’t address that issue, the ipads are doomed to become just another device to police in the classroom which would be a real shame.

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