Trying Read the Words at school

This is a test to see if we can run this text to voice option at school.

Another text to voice option

This site is Read the Words. It is a free option but the voice recording only lasts for 30 seconds with this free option. If you would like an upgrade, then there is a fee involved.

vozMe - From text to speech

vozMe - From text to speech

Posted using ShareThis

New audio recrding tool

I have just located this new audio recording tool. You can use it for text to speech or to record directly. I am trying this at home so I hope that it works at school.
The tool is AudioPal. This is my test trial to see if I can embed my recording.

Professional Practice project Week 4 Term 4

Yesterday we continued with our poetry writing, introducing metaphors.
Prior to this, we did a reflection on similes. The students did another circle map and wrote down everything they new about similes. They then looked back at their initial circle map and then used their definition rubric to assess their progress in their thinking and knowledge and understanding of similes. They had to choose a symbol to indicate their present level of thinking, knowledge and understanding of what a simile is. They had to give a justification for their choice.
We then had the opportunity to discuss these justifications.
I will post some pictures of the initial circle maps and the present ones. I will also post recordings of our discussions.

We then watched a You Tube video on metaphors, with a view to establishing a compare and contrast HOT map on similes and metaphors.

Today I conducted a quick survey to see how the children felt about their learning, thinking about their learning, reflection of their learning and determining next learning steps.. I asked them to think about how using Solo Taxonomy, the HOT maps and the rubrics may be helping with these aspects of their learning.
To put this survey in context, it is something I do every morning.
Each day when I call the roll, I always have a survey about some aspect of our life at school. It may be something like how are you feeling about going on camp or how are you managing with your home study this week. The children have a scale of 1-5 to indicate how they are feeling or how they are managing.
Because we have done this every day, the children feel safe enough to be absolutely honest. Their responses give me a quick indication of how they are sitting or feeling about a particular issue, task or area of learning.
For the survey today 5 indicated that they felt that using the HOT maps, rubrics and thinking tool was most helpful for them, in helping them identify criteria or skills required to develop their thinking, reflect on a specific piece of work, self and peer assess and decide what to do to improve that work. 3 would indicate that they felt that it was assisting them in all of the above mentioned areas but they wanted to develop their use of all the aspects further. 0/1 would indicate that they had no idea how these tools were helping them at all to develop as reflective, self-directed learners.
23 out of the 25 children in my class were present at school today.
The results were as follows:
2 said 5
9 said 4
6 said 3/4
3 said 3
2 said 2
1 said 0/1
This was an encouraging indication of how the children view the use of this initiative at present.
Some of the children also did an e-Portfolio reflection based on the same criteria today.
CK
BM
These children are 9 years old. These reflections were totally unassisted writing. I can see that there is still work to be done in the helping the children to articulate their thinking in terms of the developmental stages using Solo Taxonomy but I feel that they are becoming reflective about their learning. I think that they also feel far more empowered. This observation is qualitative and there is no quantitative measure.
Another development is that my teaching colleague is now asking questions about what we are doing and she want to know about Solo Taxonomy, the HOT maps and how we are developing and using rubrics to direct our thinking, learning and deciding on next steps to learning.

Friday Week 3 Term 4

Today has been very interesting. We have been working on our portfolios with a focus on publishing our poetry. I introduced the children to Imagechef , a web 2.0 tool. It has many options for publishing to the web.
I was amazed at how quickly the children picked up how to use the different programmes and how inquisitive they were to explore other options available on the site. It would have been wonderful if I could have recorded the conversations how how else we could use the different tools for different aspects of our learning.
The children also learnt how to find the embed code and how to upload this on to their blog ( e-Portfolio). Once they knew how to do this, many of the children explored other presentation options and went ahead and did the uploading themselves.
Here are the links to some of the work done today.
EF
SB
AN
We also used the Web 2.0 tool Chirbit to write and record our thinking about Solo Taxonomy, how the symbols relate to our thinking, how we use the HOT maps and rubrics to develop our thinking and also as success criteria linked to our learning intentions. Some of the children wanted to talk more about how they felt the rubrics were helping them.
This was very interesting for me as a self monitoring process. The children worked in groups of three. They worked directly onto the computer. They wrote down their thinking and their discussion as they went.
I feel that that using this taxonomy, the HOT maps and the rubric have definitely raised the level of meta-languge around thinking and learning. I also think that the children are more articulate in being able to articulate their thinking and their learning.
One pair of boys wrote that they had no idea of how using Solo Taxonomy, the HOT maps or the rubric helped them in their learning. I replied to them thanking them for being so honest. This was good for me because I now know who I need to work more closely with.
Here are some of the reflections in text. This programmes also presents text as audio and you can record directly. We had a few problems with the direct recording at school.

Our thinking about how we use Solo Taxonomy Week 3 Term4

In our discussion we said that now that we have being using Solo Taxonomy and the different rubrics, this helps us compare what we did last time in our learning with what we are doing this time in our learning in everything.
This is a recording of what we think.
JB and ODJ

Our discussion and thinking on how using Solo Taxonomy helps us with our learning

We have had a discussion about how we think Solo Taxonomy helps us with our thinking and our learning. These are our thoughts at the end of Week 3 Term 4.

Our thinking and discussion on Solo Taxonomy Week 3 Term 4

This is a recording of our discussion on how using Solo Taxonomy helps us with our learning.
OB JV CK

Our thinking on Solo taxonomy Week 3 Term 4

This is our thinking and a recording of some of our discussion
AC and EM

This is what we think about how Solo Taxonomy helps us Week 3 Term 4

This is a recording of our thinking and discussion at the end of week 3.
BMD, EF,and JK

Text to speech at school

Just testing this out. I am really having difficulty recording at school.

Using Imagechef for poetry

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Thursday 22nd October Week 3

Today we started writing our Free Verse poems. We revisited our 3 tier rubric and did some talk-alouds of what each kind of thinking would look like and sound like.
We then read some free verse poems to identify structure, creative images and use of figurative language. Our next step was to brainstorm topics for writing.
I was thrilled with the first drafts or first round of writing. During the writing process, there were small conversations around rubric criteria happening around the class and children were reading their work to their peers and then there was discussion about where they sat on the rubric. They realised that they could be at different levels for the different success criteria.
I am so pleased with the quality of the writing.
The one area that we needed to revisit was the structure - not so much in terms of using the appropriate structure when writing free verse but more in the presentation when typing up their work. The children identified the importance of punctuation and how the choice and placing of commas and fullstops impacts on the visual picture created and the emotion or feeling portrayed. We discussed whether or not we should add something about appropriate use of punctuation to our rubric. Tomorrow the children will use their rubric to identify their thinking with regard to structure, creativity and the use of figurative language. They will identify WTN steps before they attempt a second writing of free verse.

Recording voice and screen

This is another free online Web 2.0 tool that can be used to record voice and desktop.
I think that it has many possibilities and we will try it out tomorrow.
You do need the latest version of Flash player and it does take quite a bit of time to upload your recording in order to get an embed code.
The site is Screenjelly. The url is http://www.screenjelly.com

Here is the trial recording that I have made.

Trying out different voice recording Web 2.0 tools

This is a great find and it works. It is also easy to embed in a blog as this is what we are using for an ePortfolio.
The url link is http://vocaroo.com/?media=v8eGEB8xxGEi41WSI
The programme is called Vocaroo.

Week 3 - Moving on to Free Verse Writing- Wednesday 21st

I have realised that the Solo taxonomy and HOT maps and rubrics support many aspects of thinking. These 'learning to learn' tools support the development of creative thinking,developing and extending the metalanguage of learning in making learning visible,in developing and writing learning intentions,and in metacognition, self-directing learning through determining WTN (where to next steps)and reflection of learning.

Today we looked at the structural features of Free Verse poetry. Once we had determined these we then developed a 3 tier Solo taxonomy rubric to guide our writing and direct improvement of our writing. We decided to develop criteria in three main areas: creativity, use of structural features and inclusion of figurative language ( similes0 and descriptive language. We determined the criteria for each level of thinking. The development of this rubric was a collaborative activity.

Week 3 - Establishing learning intentions

After completing the HOT map on our thinking and prior knowledge of similes, we established our learning intentions for knowing what a simile is, identifying similes in writing, creating new similes and using these in our writing.

As we worked through the interactive activity and a Notebook simile lesson(for Smartboard), we identified the features of similes. Each time we came across another aspect or feature, the children would turn back to their Circle map and add these in in another colour.

Week 3 Term 4- HOT Maps to define

This week our focus in writing is on Free verse poetry writing. We are also going to concentrate on similes and metaphors to colour our writing.
We started off the week using a circle map to define a simile. We used the definitions HOT keys rubric to assess our thinking as a starting point of our knowing.

This students work shows that his thinking is at the Prestructural stage. He has no idea what a simile is. I explained to him that this was fine because this was a starting point. I am really happy that the children feel safe and confident enough to be able to say that they do not have any idea.

This definition shows thinking at a Relational or Extended Abstract level. She has a good understanding of the point of comparison, that the words 'like' and 'as' are used to compare, but she is also aware that a simile compares nouns. She is able to give an example.

This is the self reflection of the student working at the Relational/Extended Abstract level of thinking. Some of the students are now automatically giving an explanation or justification for their choice of level of thinking on the rubric.


This is the rubric reflection of another student. She felt that she was making connections in her thinking at a Relational level.

When I looked at her Circle map it was clear that she did not have a clear idea of what a simile was and this showed in the example that she had given.

After working through this interactive learning on similes - this is the work that this student produced. Her understanding of what a simile is is now at a Relational level.

The language of learning

The children are using the symbols of the Solo Taxonomy to clearly articulate their learning. What I am most happy with is the way we are using the rubrics to identify the WTN steps.I feel that the children are becoming more empowered to know what to do to improve the related aspect of learning.The children are more able to direct their next learning steps.
I have made posters of the taxonomy symbols and their related thinking words. These are posted around the room but are also stuck to the desks in each group.
This allows us to identify levels and range of thinking all the time. It also gives the children the language they need when talking about their thinking or reflecting on or talking about their learning.The posters also help us collaborative develop levels of thinking when establishing the rubrics.


There are different HOT maps that support the development of different types of thinking. As we develop these types of thinking, our ability to articulate our learning improves because we have the understanding of a specific type of thinking and the language to articulate this type of thinking.
I am focusing on actually teaching how to think in specific ways eg. if I wanted the children to contrast and compare Equality and Exclusion, I need to teach this skill and we need to have practice. These are the HOT maps that relate to the different types of thinking.

We looked at comparing and contrasting appearance. Partners sat knee to knee and spent five minutes carefully looking at each other. They wrote down what they thought was similar or common about their features and what was different. This was our starting point when talking about what does it mean to compare and contrast. We also talked about other words that might mean the same as compare and contrast. We talked about what we are actually doing when we compare and contrast and also where we would use this type of thinking in everyday life.
We had an interesting discussion about how comparing and contrasting related to Habits of Mind and which Habits of Mind specifically.
We then used the Taxonomy to establish our rubric for comparing and contrasting Exclusion and Equality. This happened over two days.


In Science we have worked on developing definitions, making predictions and evaluating. We have also analysed our results.







This is the template that we are using to collaboratively develop our rubrics

Tuesday Week 2

Today we continued with our writing of cinquain poems. I am feeling more confident working with the Solo Taxonomy. As I continue to read more about it, I realise that this cognitive measure is multi-levelled. The rubrics that are constructed can be for the range of thinking for a specific learning intention or for types of thinking, moving from lower order thinking strategies such as define and describe to higher order thinking.
We are also now using the collaboratively constructed rubrics to direct and extend our thinking for a specific learning intention that also includes a range of difficulty within that learning intention.
To make this a little clearer, today we used a different pattern to structure our writing of a cinquain poem. Yesterday we used the pattern
Line 1: 1 word
Line 2: 2 words
Line 3: 3 words
Line 4: 4 words
Line 5: 1 word
We established the rubric prior to starting this activity. We have also had a focus on adjectives this week in language, to extend our vocabulary and colour writing.
Today our cinquian pattern required extensive use of adjectives. The pattern was
Line 1: Noun
Line 2: Two adjectives
Line 3: Three - ing words
Line 4: a phrase of 4 words
Line 5: One adjective describing the noun

This structure proved to be a lot more challenging than yesterday because the children found that their vocabulary was limited and they could not think of appropriate words.
Our strategy was to introduce a brainstorm box. The topic was chosen and they then used the adjective brainstorm box to think of as many describing words that they could that applied to their topic.
On the first attempt, we found that many of the adjectives chosen were not always appropriate and that they did not help to paint the desired picture in the readers mind.
The children said that we needed to change the rubric. They felt now that the Relational level would require an additional criteria. They said that instead of just saying that adjectives needed to be added, that the adjectives had to be appropriate in creating a desired picture.
The children also realised that the poem could be built up using words that they new and then by using an online Thesaurus, they could find many other words which were appropriate for their writing.
I loved the writing done by Claudia because she started off and her writing was at at the Multistuctural phase. We then had a chat about WTN ( where to next ) and she went away and worked on the same poem. She used the brainstorm box, the online thesaurus and tried to include alliteration as well- and she ended up with a beautiful piece of writing - at the Extended Abstract phase.
The whole process of writing, assessing where you are, deciding what you could do to improve and then working on the same piece of writing is so empowering and allows the children to attain a level of success while at the same time giving them the opportunity to direct their learning process.
Here is an example of Claudia's work today.


Today we also worked on the Multistructural thinking strategy of Comparing and Contrasting in SOSE. We are going to use this strategy as we continue with our Inquiry on Sustainable Friendships so today we had a go at comparing and contrasting.
The children worked in pairs.They had to sit in their chairs knee to knee. They had a Venn diagram template. The aspect to compare and contrast was Appearance and Features.
We discussed the words Compare and Contrast. They already knew that compare was the same as common. We also came up with the words similar. From this they worked out what Contrast meant. They then had five minutes to complete the task. There was no talking- just careful looking.
We then came together and they shared their thinking.
Questions that were posed were:
What would your Venn diagram look like if you did this activity with another partner?
Where else in our present learning could we use this kind of thinking or where this kind of thinking would be useful?
Where would we use this kind of thinking out of school?
Here are some samples of their work and their answers to these question.

Week 2 Term 4 Solo Taxonomy and WTN

Today was very exciting. We identified our learning intention for writing a cinquain poem and then established our Solo rubric collaboratively.
We then looked at the first pattern or structure for writing a cinquain. The children then had a go at writing a cinquain poem using this structure. The children then used their rubric to assess their level of success and then identified " Where To Next " or "What To Do Next " - to improve their writing.
Today there were may "Ah ha " moments where some children could really see how the rubric requires more in-depth thinking as well as gives clear direction of what to do to improve their writing.
The rubric is very simple at this stage but we will develop this through the week.
I am amazed that I have not used Solo Taxonomy before. I think that it is very user friendly and I can see how it is a tool that empowers children to accurately and easily assess their learning and determine what to do to improve.
I think that this is the area that is most thought provoking for me as I examine my practice. I think that we correct students work and provide feedback but I don't think that we give them enough direction of what they actually need to do to improve.
I also think that the collaborative construction of the rubric provides clear understanding and ownership of the learning process, for the children.
Here are some examples of our work today.

Using the Solo Taxonomy in our learning

This week we revisited our symbols representing our different levels of thinking using Solo taxonomy.
I am so delighted with the articulation of thinking from the 9 year olds in my class.
I tried to record one of the students. I know that the movie is sideways and the sound a little difficult to hear. I may have to redo the recording but this was on the spur of the moment.


We also used a definition thinking map to write down our initial thinking on what a physical and chemical change is ( Science ) . This week we then looked at Solo Taxonomy self assessment rubrics. We went through the criteria for each level of thinking and what an agreed expectation would be for each level. The children the assessed themselves and explained their choice.
We then had a look at the WTN pointers- WHERE TO NEXT?
E can up with some actual things that we could to to move from one level of thinking to the next.
Here is the table of our WTN choices or option.

Curriculum use of HOT maps and rubrics- Week 1 Term 4

I am going to use these tables to monitor my coverage of HOT maps to ensure coverage at all levels of thinking and understanding.
Week 1

Week 1 Term 4 Planning using the SOLO Taxonomy planning template

I have decided to use this template in the planning of our Inquiry into friendship. Using the template has really stretched my thinking and made me focus specifically on explicit learning experiences that support learning to learn and the teaching of specific kinds of thinking.
These photos of the planning are at Stage 1 and this is a work in progress.
I have established the essential question or statement of Inquiry and 3 essential questions which cover the different levels of understanding. These questions will be the launching pad this week.I have identified specific learning outcomes. I will determine learning intentions for lessons from these.I have also identified some initial learning experiences. I will be adding to this planning during the week.

SOLO Taxonomy - Initial survey

I have completed an initial survey of where I sit regarding the explicit use of thinking maps and self assessment rubrics based on the SOLO Taxonomy. As expected I rate poorly at this stage.
I realise that although I have know about thinking skills to support reflective practice, and I have used de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats and Coast's Habits of Mind, I have never systematically and explictily taught thinking to support understanding and reflective practice.
This is my initial survey.

Establishing a collaborative idea of what learning is

I presented the group with their statements of what learning is. As you can imagine, this stimulated a great deal of discussion. From there we worked together as a group and the students did a brainstorm on everything that encompasses learning.
From there, we took all the individual statements and tried to come up with a definition of learning for 4M that was practical and something that the children could relate to and apply.
They developed posters for the classroom and used the Web2.0 tool Image Chef to present their thinking on their e-portfolios ( blogs ).
Here is some of their presentations.