Brian Oshiro - Encouraging Critical Thinking and Creativity

 Encouraging Critical Thinking

- How to get children creative?

- What questions are we asking our learners?

- Learner selected texts

- What questions do we ask? Bringing the text to life, are we engaging students? Or is it the continuous respond to text. 

Do you know what Climate Change is?

What are three causes of Climate Change?

Brian discusses the difference between these 2 questions, what one of these questions better assess' student learning? Do our learners know these answers?

The next question - Why do some claim that climate change is the biggest crisis facing this generation?

This questions gets students using what they've read and having to apply it to a real life situation, making connections.

This relates really nicely with extended discussion and how it is so important to have a great provocation.

What - Why - How!

Start with a what question (giving learners an easy engaging question to start with), follow this up with a why question, finish with a how question. Get your learners to defend their answers, how do you know this? Where is your evidence? Search through the text. Ask learners how they can solve a problem? They then have to synthesise information.

Ground rules for talk are so important. The provcation could be the best you've ever made, however, if the ground rules for talk aren't there.

How can we foster creativity and critical thinking in schools?

Are we giving students questions that don't just have one answer?

Integrate higher-order questions. 

This video is such great watch, would highly recommend.

How does this relate to me? What are my takes from this?

Look at the 3 step questioning, What, Why and How. Getting my learners to be more curious about different ideas, I understand that I will need more learner selected texts for this to work as well. In our podcast scripts I am going to look more at scaffolding the questions that my learners will ask each other and select those questions as a group, rather than being a group task, this will get more higher order questions that they will discuss, looking specifically at the 'how' questions.

If we can get students understanding the What, Why and How questions, the best thing would be during our extended discussions, our learners asking each other these questions, I will keep modelling this throughout our lessons.

Watch this space!

Mid-Term Reflections: Getting learners inferring more complex texts.

 2025 is flying as we are halfway through Term 1, all our testing is done and we are getting stuck into our learning. What I'm finding in my class is that my students are stuck on having a deeper understanding of the text.

The data - Priority Learners - These are my 2 middle groups that I'll be focusing on. These learners are Year 7&8, most of them can read fluently, they need to work on comprehending the text.

Looking more deeply into the PAT reading comprehension data, I can see that our students did really well with basic retrieval questions. However, our Year 7/8 cohort really struggled with complex inference questions and local inference questions.

Going back to my inquiry question: 

How might podcasting support the development of my learners' ability to engage in extended, meaningful discussions about a text? 

A big part of my inquiry is based around my learners having extended discussions. I was lucky enough to be apart of the RPI cohort last year where we were taught why and how to have extended discussions, you can see more about this if you scroll through my blog.

Moving Forward: Implementing Strategic Adjustments

I've been watching a few different Class OnAir episodes to help me get better at teaching extended discussion. I watched one of Rob Wiseman's episodes, one thing he did was give the students the provocation before reading the text, so they're able to think about it more and are ready to share when it comes to having the extended discussion. This is something I will try as I often find my kids haven't had enough time to collect the ideas they want to share during our extended discussions.

Another thing I noticed that Rob did, was that he had the extended discussion first and then had response to text questions following that. This is something else I'll try in my reading lessons.

The Podcast Initiative: Progress and Implementation

I'm having a lot of success with my podcasts, we've got to the point where my learners are able to use Google Vids, for filming and editing, they're starting to post these on their blog which is great. 

The KPE (Korero Pt England) blog is still currently being made, we can't wait to post our podcasts on this blog. 

Next Steps and Ongoing Development

To further enhance this inquiry, I intend to implement the following strategies:

• Provide explicit instruction in inference skills, utilizing modeling and think-aloud to demonstrate effective techniques.
• Use AI to create text and follow up inferential questions as independent and group tasks.
• Implement scaffolding strategies for extended discussions, including pre-discussion prompts and structured discussion formats.
• Explicitly connect the podcasting process to the development of comprehension skills, encouraging students to utilize podcasts for summarizing, analyzing, and inferring.
• Upon the KPE blog launch, utilize it for peer feedback, reflection, and to share.

Stay tuned to hear more!

New Edublog? New site? Podcasting Worldwide!

Welcome back! 

We had our first meeting with everyone, what an amazing experience connecting with other teachers in our cluster. I had some great chats about the podcasting i'm doing in the classroom.

I have created a YouTube channel to which I will be uploading our podcast videos. Matt helped me create an edublog where we are going to be able to share all our 'Korero Pt England' episodes. I have been thinking about what I want the edublog to look like, I really like the Cybersmart site and want it to look something like this, but also having this format relate back to the original Korero Pt England blog with the different episodes and a link back to the original 'Korero Pt England' blog.

Student Voice Questionaire:

Rating out of /10 - How much do you enjoy podcasting?

Average - 7.8/10

How often would you like to do podcasting?

Weekly - 10  ,  Fortnightly - 18

Why do you like podcasting?

• Gives me confidence
• Share my learning to the world
• It's fun
• Get to work with my friends
• Can be myself
• Learn new words
• Work with new people in my class

Would you rather use Camera or Google Vids?

Camera - 8  ,   Google Vids - 22

Collecting the data of Student Voice was great.  I'm happy that they're enjoying podcasting, and am currently working on my reading programme to integrate podcasts every second week. It was great to see the reasons why my learners were enjoying podcasts. The reason a lot of my students picked Google Vids over camera was that they enjoy decorating their vids.

Next steps:

• I have a meeting with Dorothy on Tuesday to pick her brain about a few queries I have with my reading programme.
• Create my 'Korero Pt England' edublog account and begin sharing our podcasts.
• Make a website for teachers and show them how they can use podcasting in their classrooms.

Stay Tuned!!

COL 2025 - About Me

Kia Orana, my name is Zac Moran and I am a year 7/8 teacher at Pt England school. I have been teaching for 9 years and am very passionate about education.

This year I have been lucky enough to be selected for the COL group in our cluster of schools. Last year my inquiry was based on getting my learners participating and engaging in extended discussion to improve vocabulary and reading comprehension. Last year I was apart of the Reading Practise Intensive with Naomi Rosedale this taught me that extended discussion leads to the improvement of reading comprehension and an increase in vocabulary. This then led me to my inquiry this year.

How might podcasting support the development of my learners' ability to engage in extended, meaningful discussions about a text? 

This year I will be continuing to have extended discussions in my class. For the first few weeks we will be setting up group norms and looking at the ground rules of talk.

Why Podcasting?

In 2007 Dorothy Burt and multiple Pt England teachers started 'Korero Pt England' a platform for our children to share their learning with the world. What an engaging and creative way for our learners to share their work. Last year I had a lot of success with rich conversations, creativity and enagement

Throughout the year I'll be sharing podcast scripts that I have created and trying to get other teachers on board with podcasting in their classrooms.

These podcasts below are from my learners last year, the first one is a podcast based on a text set we were reading that week - Rosa Parks.

The second link is 'Whanau Podcasting', something I'm going to try and do more often this year, hopefully this gives our learners a platform to have conversations with whanau around what they are learning.

Rosa Parks Podcast - Angelina

Whanau Podcast - Nunu

I will be updating my blog regularly with updates on what we are doing in our class. Please leave a comment

Day 9 - Sharing Reading

 Wow, today was our last day together on RPI, we finished with a bang!

What an amazing day of learning. 

We started with hearing that Share aspect of our pedagogy is just as important as learn and create. As you see below, the 3 parts are just as important to one another. Our learners having an authentic audiecnce gives them more drive to complete their tasks to a high standard and post it on their blogs.

As you can see below, we had 342,376 blog posts from our learners this year in the Manaiakalani, the even more impressive part of this is that there us 125,397 comments, which shows that our learners are getting an authentic audience, our learners blog posts are being seen and commented on. This gives them more drive to make their work even better!

Another thing we heard today was about using our learners blogs as a source of formal assessment. All of us teachers right now around Aotearoa are in the same boat when it comes to writing reports, what better resource do we have to make OTJ's than our learners blogs! Use them!

This image below is a massive problem teachers all around the world have.  It can be so difficult getting our children to complete their work and then posting it on their blog. In our team at school we have 'FIOP' (Finish It Off Properly) time, where our students get some quiet time in the classroom to complete their learning tasks from the week and then post them on their blog. I normally cast my 'Turn it in' page on the TV so students can see what they need to complete.

Today we learned about another pillar; Sharing. As you can see, sharing is such an important aspect of our learners journey through education, if there isn't an authentic audience for our children, they might have no drive to complete their work.

We then learned about feedback. The 3 different types of feedback can be broken up into:

- Reminder

- Scaffold

- Example

When giving feedback you should base it on one of these prompts depending on the needs of your learner.

Here I have done an example of Reminder Descriptive Feedback.

Here I have done an example of Scaffolding Descriptive Feedback. 

We then talked about how we can share with our whanau. We were put into groups, I worked with Hinemoana and we thought to do something about the Hikoi that's happening at the moment, to do some learning about it in the classroom, write a script with some questions on it and go home and ask your whanau questions and if they are unsure of answers, our learners would be able to teach them.

Massive thank you to Pt England School for giving me the opportunity to be a part of the RPI group this year. I have learned so much and gained so much confidence in my reading teaching. I'm already excited for next year and getting my reading programme up and running again! Thank you so much to the Manaiakalani team for always being so positive and uplifting and giving us so many different ideas throughout this program.

Keep watching this space

RPI, we out, for now!

Day 8: Homework

 It's been a while since I posted! 

I have my final RPI session in a few days, which i'm excited about.  During my groups final session I was catching some sun in the islands of Croatia. I'm back now, and ready to get stuck back in.

First thing, I have been doing podcasting all year, I decided to do a podcast as my create task. My top reading group 12-14 readers are reading the novel, Wonder. We did an update on the book in our podcasting. Check it out here!

I completed the readers profile survey with my learners again and was quite suprised with the results!

A lot of my learners started the year not being very confident in their own reading ability, if you look below this has rapidly changed!

This is another graph showing that my learners are enjoying reading more at school.

Thanks for reading, please leave me a comment! Will be back with Day 9 of my RPI soon!

RPI Day 8 - Create in Reading!

Ever since I started at Pt England school I have been challenged by Dorothy Burt to be creative and get our learners creating. This is something I have enjoyed doing since I started my teaching career, and I enjoy learning about new ways we can get our learners creating!

One thing that was really interesting to hear about was the create task can be before, during or after reading. I normally will get my learners doing their create task after reading with their follow up task. I could be doing create tasks when we discuss the predictions we have of the text.  If the story is about something you are able to do outside of your classroom you could stop and do it during the reading lesson.

Naomi and Kiri gave us a poem and asked us to pick a verse and to find an image to describe it in Google Draw or using AI. I decided to use craiyon.com.  I found this site really helpful, if you use specific vocabulary in your description the ai generator gives you a great image of what you're asking for. This is a great activity to do with your learners as they need to make sure they have specific vocabulary or the image won't come out as they want it.

We have to always remember that our learners have so much creativity flowing through them at all times.  This was a great article showing that we need to keep giving our learners creative opportunities to shine.  This session was really inspiring for me as I feel like I give my learners opportunities to create, however, it's about thinking outside the box and throughout the lesson of all the different opportunities and the range of create activities we can use. 

Below is a create task we were asked to complete to create a book trailer of a book of our choice, hope you enjoy and what to read the book!