Forum Replies Created
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Hi Louise,
Organising and sourcing the appropriate toys/ resources for Aistear can indeed be time consuming and costly. In our school, over the past few years, we have built up a bank of resources for a large variety of themes and topics. These are stored in a central area in large plastic tubs and can be taken out year upon year. This has greatly lessened the time spent on sourcing and collecting resources for each theme. This kind of approach might be worth considering, particularly if you have more than one infant class in your school.
Many thanks,
Fiona
Hi Kitty,
As with adopting any new approach, change will be gradual and it will perhaps take a little settling in time for students to become accustomed to having greater ‘freedom’ with their work. That said, as you have outlined, there are so many ways in which we learn, it makes perfect sense to offer our students opportunity to engage with the way in which they learn best and the benefits of that should far outweigh the challenges. I think you raise an interesting point in relation to the disruptive child, will the ‘freedom’ provide more opportunity for disruption, or perhaps will it allow that student to learn in a way best suited to their learning style and overall lessen their need to disrupt and distract from the learning as they can now engage in a way which is accessible and meaningful for them?
Many thanks,
Fiona
Hi Gillian,
I like this idea of using Canva as an assessment tool. In addition to informing your assessment, it would be very easy to store the pupils finished work in a digital portfolio such as Seesaw to refer back to at a later stage. I have used Canva to create Mindmaps, which are a tool I find particularly useful as an SET.
Thank you,
Fiona
Hi Helen,
A very comprehensive approach on how to incorporate the use of G Suite for Education into your everyday teaching and learning. As you rightly state, our students are very tech savvy and by incorporating these digital tools we are providing a platform for expression which they are comfortable with, while also providing them with opportunity to develop their digital literacy skills. We are also providing greater opportunities for inclusion and differentiation and assessment. We have recently invested in a set of Chromebooks in my school and I look forward to utilising them in all the ways you have described in the year ahead!
Many thanks,
Fiona
Hi Annette,
Absolutely agree that Standardised Tests and standard testing methods can be very daunting for students, particularly students in receipt of SET. It is great to incorporate a variety of assessment methods and tools to give a full picture of where a student is at in terms of their learning. Apps such as Socrative are great to incorporate as an assessment tool as they are colourful and engaging, fun for the student while still providing the teacher with worthwhile insights into learning targets.
Fiona
This is a well organised unit of work on procedural writing Patricia. In terms of differentiation it would be lovely to include a procedure using concrete materials such as making a sandwich in class and recording the steps using photos on the iPad. These could then be printed out and put in order or made into a slideshow with the procedural writing text added to each slide. The slideshows could be presented on the IWB for the whole class to see and also uploaded to the student Seesaw accounts to share as their digital portfolio.
As you have a big range of classes to differentiate between mixed ability/age pairings could work well for this task also. There are also a lots of procedural writing templates available online which could provide scaffolding for those who need it.
Thank you for sharing,
Fiona
This is a nice comprehensive plan Annette. This would be a lovely unit of work for narrative writing and I like the way you have incorporated a variety of stimulus and tools into your lesson with the use of Post it notes, iPads and YouTube clips. Great to utilise the PDST writing prompts for character development and there are also some great “Roll a Story” ideas available online which could also be a useful asset in this lesson, particularly for differentiation.
Thank you for sharing your ideas Annette,
Fiona
Thanks AnneMarie & Elizabeth for highlighting the usefulness of the ABCya Word Cloud website and the creative ways in which you will incorporate it into your teaching & learning in the future.
Hi Kitty,
<span style=”text-align: center;”>I love the idea using G Suite for education to to create digital rubrics. I can appreciate that the students would respond very well to the clarity of this assessment tool & it would be very useful AoL method. Thank you for sharing,</span>
Fiona
Lots of great feedback on Seesaw here, I agree it is a really useful digital tool. One that many of us relied on during the Covid lockdowns & perhaps reached a saturation point with it during those times. Great to get this reintroduction to it & hear the many positive ways it can aid teaching & learning in both the mainstream & SET setting.
FionaA well planned literacy approach Jacqueline, thank you for sharing. Appropriate progression steps chosen for your 3rd Class group with clear targets chosen for the students on the continuum of support. Your narrative writing plan is well aligned with the PDST writing genres framework, with clear progression as the weeks progress. I like the way you have included your weblinks into your planning document, will make life so much easier when you go to put this plan into practice, well done!
Fiona
Great resources Mary, I like the way you have chosen a variety of literacy and numeracy resources for your 3rd & 4th class. Nice to see the range of uses for Digipuzzle with use of whole class, group, pairs and individual work outlined.
Fiona
Hi Mary,
When I first moved to SET I, like you, moved away from using some of my firm classroom favourites such as Kahoot- I think possibly due to time constraints and the huge variety of groupings I had for withdrawal I had felt it wasn’t feasible, but certainly with a bit of careful planning these digital tools can play a really important role in the SET setting, just as they do in Mainstream.
Mind mapping, graphic organisers and word clouds are a really great resources to use to record Oral Language discussion topics and by utilising a digital format you can easily create an e-portfolio for record keeping and assessment purposes.
Fiona
