Reflecting on my teaching through the SAMR lens.

This week, due to a workshop being held on the SAMR model at Jakarta International School, I had the opportunity to reflect on how I am trying to transform learning through technology. Although I had heard of the SAMR model before online and at a recent conference, I had never really taken the time to reflect on my own practice through the SAMR lens. 

Here is a brief introduction to the SAMR model from a fellow MSU Ed Tech alumni Candace Marcotte:

First of all, I tried to work out what SAMR meant to me and I tried to brainstorm some of the learning engagements I had used in the past and see where they lay on the SAMR continuum. 

For the past 6 years I have been teaching a unit related to Landforms and Natural Disasters. Some were earth science based whilst others were social studies and some a mixture of both. With the SAMR model in mind I reflected on how I have, and still am trying to ensure that my learning engagements are moving from the enhancement stage to the transformational stage. In this table I have shown learning engagements I have previously used when teaching these units and then how I have tried to step IT up to the transformational stage by using more creative and collaborative engagements to enhance student motivation, engagement and success. 

 For me some of the key ideas for transforming learning seem to be creating, collaborating and publishing to a global audience. Obviously, for elementary students we have to take privacy laws in to account even more so, they are not legally supposed to be posting on social media sites so this does restrict access to a global audience and to global collaboration. With that said though, elementary students can still strive to create products that can reach a global audience. They can, under teacher supervision, collaborate globally and thus  transform their own learning making it more meaningful and engaging for them. One example of this was when my class produced a one minute peace video for a global peace project. This impressed my students so much that this could be done, that sitting in Accra, Ghana we could create a video with schools all over the world. Equally engaging for my students was when we were able to Skype the author Cornelia Funke. Although this wasn't redefining learning it is definitely something that was not possible before, Skyping an author in L.A. whose book we are reading in Jakarta, Indonesia.

  One of the most exciting ways I think for elementary students is to create e-books using Book Creator or iBooks Author. My students have found the idea of publishing e-books highly motivating and really makes them really think about the quality of their work, and are a lot more engaged as they realise they really do have to act like writers,  proofreaders and publishers.

I'm going to keep the SAMR model at the forefront of my planning as I get to grips with the opportunities that my new 1:1 laptop class avail to me, and how I and the students can transform learning in my class.  

Here is an excellent graphic that was shared during the workshop at JIS which can help see how different apps can help in leading us all to transform our learning as we move from substitution and augmentation and users of content , rather than modification and redefinition of learning and become creators of content for a global audience. 

http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/padagogy-version2.png

Our Writing Process in Grade 4

In Grade 4 we have just come to the end of their first writing unit, 'Launching the Writers' Workshop', following Lucy Calkins' Writers' Workshop model.  To begin our writing journey as 4th graders, we discussed what kinds of things writers write and the purposes of writing. We discussed how writers use tools like Writers Notebooks to help them jot down their ideas for stories. We set up our Writers Notebooks and personalised them. We then did a couple of brainstorming activities (see below) to help us get ideas for memorable topics to write personal narratives about. 

We shared a couple of published personal narratives, including Mr Entwhistle, by Jean Little, and I shared a couple I had written. After brainstorming the students picked one memorable event and wrote about it. 

Then repeated this for several stories and were asked to choose one story they would like to work on with an aim to publishing as an iBook. To help us organise our story and aid us in telling our story, we identified the 4 key point of the story. On a folded booklet we then drew a quick sketch of each of these 4 points. 

The students then used these booklets to tell each other their stories. In doing this they were orally working out the first draft of their story. I modelled the difference between summarising their story, "I went to the beach. We ate ice-cream." and telling a story," Mum, it's so hot," I groaned as I mopped even more sweat from my brow. We had gone on a day trip to the beach, just the three of us, mum, my brother Fred and me."

After they had told their story several times and received feedback on it, the students wrote long and hard getting their first written draft down. To help organise the story into paragraphs, one piece of A4 was used for each diagram they drew so they would have a clear, beginning, middle and end. 

Once they had finished the first draft it was time for editing and revising. 

The students used coloured pens to edit their work. they were encouraged to underline any words they were unsure they had spelt correctly and see if they could come up with alternative spellings. Students were also given writing partners who helped confer with them and helped give suggestions on how to edit and revise their stories.

Mini lessons were taught on how to include dialogue, how to punctuate speech correctly, use of apostrophes and showing not telling. 

Here is an example of how one student revised her work:

Once they had finished their first draft the students typed up their stories in Google Docs. 

 Using Google Docs allows the teacher and other classmates to highlight text and comment on the story and give constructive feedback. 

The revision history feature also means that the student and teacher can go back and clearly see what revisions and edits have been made and when.

Once they had finished editing and revising the students drew illustrations for their books. These were then photographed and emailed to them. They then copied and pasted their story and inserted their photos into iBooks Author to make a very professional looking and quick to make iBook.  

We then shared our stories on iPads with a Grade 3 class and shared the iBooks with our parents. 

World Read Aloud Day

On March 6th 2013 my 4th Grade class at Jakarta International School celebrated World Read Aloud Day. The day kicked off with a Skype call to L.A. to no other than Cornelia Funke, the author of the Inkheart series and our present read aloud, The Thief Lord. Cornelia was an excellent interviewee and was so interested in the children and their questions. We in turn were fascinated to find out more about her books and how she gets her ideas and how she writes. Most of our questions were about the Thief Lord. We asked her who her favourite character was, which part was the most difficult to write and how she thought of the characters' names. She told us she loved Harry Potter books and the Narnia series and that two of her favourite authors are Phillip Pullman and Neil Gaiman. From a teacher's perspective, it was great to hear her say that she keeps a writer's notebook to jot down her ideas, how she writes her first drafts in a journal first before typing them up and how it took at least 13 drafts of The Thief Lord before she finished it. Nice for my students to really see the connection that what we do in Writer's Workshop, is what real writers do too. Cornelia Funke was such an engaging and enthusiastic author to Skype with and it was so nice of her to Skype my class. I had got her email off her website and thought, 'Let me ask her if she'll Skype us', not really thinking I would hear back from her but I got an email back from her straight away. It just proves that you don't get things in this world if you don't try. 

After our fabulous Skype interview, we went down to our buddy KG class to read picture books to them. The Grade 4s had chosen the books the day before during their library session and had practised reading them, working on their fluency and their expression. KG also read the books they had made about themselves to us. Not ones to be left out, Mr Dee, the KG teacher read a book, 'The Book that Wants to Eat You'. The kids loved this book which is all about a book which eats unsuspecting children and adults, especially if they have traces of food on their fingers, or cookies in their pockets. I got the chance to read my favourite picture book to KG, The Lion Who Wanted to Love. I just love this story, the moral and the illustrations in this great book. It was wonderful to have the chance to share it to 40 children who had never heard it before. 

Next came a Skype with Tanja Galetti, the Elementary librarian at Hong kong Academy and close personal friend. We used to work together at Lincoln Community School, Ghana. Tanja would always amaze me how well she knew the children as readers and it was very rare that a child didn't read, and love, the books she recommended to them individually. Tanja is an amazing reader, librarian and girl geek. You can read her children's book recommendations on her Shelfari page and follow her on Twitter. We, and some of the Grade 4 teachers, co read a story from the "You Read to Me, I Read to You' series entitled 'The Little Red Hen and the Small Grain of Wheat'. Our 4th grade classes then swapped some of their book recommendations.  It was great to have this inter-schools collaboration and to co-facilitate with a great friend.

After that my class were thrilled to go to another Grade 4 class and share the iBooks we had made from our recent realistic fiction unit. We had written the stories using Google Docs and then drawn illustrations. They then used the Book Creator app on the iPad to turn their story into an iBook. The students were thoroughly motivated by creating iBooks and creating such a professional looking book using this app. As always, they loved having an authentic audience to share their books with and enjoyed the experience more sharing their published works on the iPad.

The afternoon started off with Ms Wolff’s reading of ‘Goldilocks and Just One Bear’ which was a great twist on the Goldilocks story which the students loved. I had never heard of this book before but it is a great book to include when looking at different versions of fairy tales. Of course, my 4th graders loved it and throughly enjoyed seeing the plot unravel and seeing how it connected to the original story. I realise I must read more picture books to my 4th graders as there are so many excellent ones out there. 

I then had the chance to share my favourite iPad app with my 4th Graders, "The Fantastic flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore". They loved the interactive book as well as the picture book version I have.  Then we had time to squeeze in some of our read aloud The Thief Lord. 

Grade 6 students have been reading and writing historical fiction so they came down to read different historical fiction picture books to us. The grade 4s loved this interaction and again it was a good reminder to do more inter-school interaction. 

What I loved about our World Read Aloud day was making the global connections. The students were so thrilled to be able to speak to people in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Next year I would also like to do similar activities but also send more time locally, reading with and to local Indonesian school children in English, and or Bahasa. My students definitely experienced and were enthused about the joy of reading. Hopefully next year we can spread that fervour to children in our host country by reading aloud and sharing books with them. 

          

Creating eBooks

My 4th Grade class have come to the end of their writing unit on personal narratives. To share them, I created an ebook using iBooks Author. All I did was copy and paste the text from their Google Docs and then insert the drawings they had done to illustrate their narrative. The end result is an iBook which, using iTunes Producer, I was able to upload to the iTunes library. Feel free to download the book at
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/tales-stitches-blood-fun/id594417878?mt=11 

Both iBooks Author and iTunes Producer are free apps to download for your Mac.


I created this book, as opposed to the students,  as we do can't have iBooks Author loaded onto the school laptops, as we don't use Lion operating system. Next time I am planning for the students to use the iPad Book Creator app to create their own ebooks of their realistic fiction stories. This is an easy to use app which just got even better. You can easily add text, photos and audio. Now, with the latest update, you can combine books, so children can work on different pages and then combine them together. The books can then be uploaded to iBooks at the touch of a button. You can then use iTunes Producer to upload them to the iTunes store and share them with the world. Creating ebooks is definitely the future for publishing my 4th Grade class's written projects. The hope is also to co-create books with our KG buddies in the next few months too. The only problem I foresee is that we don't have 1:1 iPads so we have to ensure that no-one deletes our books or images. To find out more about using Book Creator visit their site.