This week I was lucky enough to go back to my old 'hood at Clearview Primary. I was catching up with Tori Wilby ( @miss_wilby, @Clearview7and8) who has been using Hapara Workspace with her Year 7/8 class. I've long been a fan of Hapara Teacher Dashboard - such an amazing way to organise google apps, which let's you take the collaborative GAFE suite next level! Hapara Workspace builds on the features of the dashboard, by allowing you to create learning pathways/ sequences of work for your students. Students are able to easily access selected resources, complete activities in google drive, collaborate easily and receive and respond to feedback. If you already have Teacher Dashboard, you have Workspace available to you also. When I visited, one of the Year 7/8 reading groups was in the process of finishing up working on the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley. A challenging text, but the students were so engaged and told me how much they had enjoyed the novel. Most students had the novel as an ebook, and some had it as a graphic novel. ( Love this differentiation - following the principles of Universal Design for Learning.) To support this novel study, Tori has run guided reading sessions, where there has been close analysis of selections from the text. Vocabulary development and comprehension have been they key focuses of these sessions. Student discussion and collaboration is planned for in these sessions. Student learning activities have then been available on the "Workspace." Tori has added relevant resources such as videos and weblinks, then attached a range of google docs/slides/forms that the students need to access in order to complete their reading task followups. Workspace allows you to sort students into groups to allow for even further levels of differentiation. Some of the activities are collaborative, with a task shared amongst a group of students and some are for individuals. When Tori opens Workspace, she can see all the learning pathways she currently has running. This is what the "Frankenstein" workspace set up looks like. You can add learning intentions/ goals, rubrics and more! Tori highlighted the key benefits of using workspace in her classroom and for this unit of work:
An added feature in Workspace is the ability to set due dates for assignments. Once a student has submitted their work, Tori is able to assess it. If necessary, she can send the work back to the student for editing. The newly added "see recent changes" feature in google docs lets her see modifications instantly once the students resubmit their work. When Tori is happy with the completed work, she marks it as assessed. Workspace then makes a copy of the work and puts it in a separate folder. This means Tori is now the owner of that piece of work and has a final copy from that moment in time. The students get their own copy back and could make modifications if they wish, but Tori still has the finalised copy. She can then easily download these as PDF's and will sometimes make into a class book - either by printing, or importing into a programme such as Book Creator or ibooks author. It was great to touch base with the students and talk to them about their learning. Some benefits that they highlighted from this unit of work were:
A huge thanks to Tori and the Challenge Team for having me along to their class. And MIND BLOWN: Did you know that Frankenstein is NOT the name of the monster in the story, but the name of the monster's creator?? STILL SHOCKED. Maybe I need to add this book to my summer reading list. To end with, check out these amazing thoughts from the students - the slide show below is from their K-W-L slides that they had worked on throughout the novel study. These are some of the "L" learned slides.
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AuthorMy name is Ngaire Shepherd-Wills. This website is a record of my TeachNZ sabbatical, Term 2, 2013 and then I have continued to share my wonderings and discoveries about Innovative Learning Practices. I now work for CORE Education. Views are my own. Tags
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