Five ideas for helping students develop a basic understanding of the text

Five ideas for helping students develop a basic understanding of the text Aaron Wilson, Woolf Fisher Research Centre, University of Auckland (2016)

This term I have repurposed some of the cyber smart curriculum activities by
adding these activities to help students build their understanding of the texts I have used.

Summarising in your own words

A possible approach:

1. Jot down 20 important words from the text
2. Now choose the 6 MOST important words
3. Now use those six words, to sum up, the text in a couple of sentences

I had to be explicit with the teachers that this is a reading activity that they could embed into any of their class work. For the younger students, I changed the numbers of words to less than 20. With the junior classes we wrote the words they choose up onto the board and we wrote some sentence starters to support them. It was able to be used with 5-year-olds and year 8 students. I also used it with a video the students watched.

I still have the issue that some teachers are still seeing me like an hour a week reliever in the class, they are not making the connections, following up the lessons or attempting to take ideas and pedagogy I model and embed them into their lessons. I have been asking them to set a goal for the following week from each of my sessions. Hopefully, this will encourage teachers to follow up and try these activities.

Would a Cybersmart wall space in each class encourage teachers and students to add students work to and retrieval charts support teachers and students? Do I need to be more explicit with the expectations of the teachers? Do they need clear goals for each week?

Differentiation

It is about:-

• Essential Questions
• Flexible Learning Paths
• Teacher as Facilitator

 The main key areas to differentiate are:-

• Content,
• Product
• Process

Why differentiate digitally?

•  Provide Flexible Learning Paths 
• Develop Future-Ready Skills 
• Provide an Effective Way to Use Digital Tools FOR Learning (not just an end product)

 You can create choice boards Choice Board Templates and Resources
 Novel Study Tic-Tac-Toe 
Chrome PD Tic-Tac-Toe
Tommy’s Spall’s Student Creation
MenuAmber Teamann and Melinda Miller’s PD BINGO 
Interactive Learning Menus 
You can use google forms to allow students to review content, go on a Choose Your Own Adventure, or even have the questions get progressively more difficult.

Google Forms Branching Tips

• Start small, just a few questions.
• Map out your branches before you begin.
• Utilize the page titles and descriptions to help you organize.
• Test it! Then, test it again!
• Remember, this type of assessment will not be graded–Assessment FOR Learning!
• Your spreadsheet will not be pretty! But that’s okay!
• Kids are smart! You must facilitate this type of assessment.

Other Ways to Use Branching in Google Forms

When a student answers correctly, they could be taken to a harder question.
When a student answers incorrectly, you could show more specifically where they went wrong with each answer choice (not just review a concept)–like solving a math problem incorrectly.
Student choice: Use this feature to allow students to select from a menu of choices to demonstrate their learning, then upload the file to the form to submit. The spreadsheet would allow you to see what they select and should be working on during class.
Gamify! What if every correct answer revealed a clue or a puzzle piece? Students could collect and work individually or collaboratively to put together.
Put this feature in students’ hands and let them create something for their class, or another class to teach a skill, or play a game.

Thanks Kasey Bell