Session 7

 

So Today's session had mixed feelings, in terms task delivery and how confidence I was in implementing the Skills Flow Task with the students. two students out of the 9 looked very tired today. They confirmed they had extra family events outside of school last night which finished really late. So i encouraged these students to stay strong for me during this block because really in my head I need the data lol. 

The feeling in the room was good as usual but it was more towards my own feelings about the task I prepared. Usually the skills flow task uses a text that kind of has a storyline that happens in chronological order but I flipped it and instead of using a story I used their formal Gagana Samoa speeches. I took phrases and vocabulary from their speeches they did not understand and use this instead. I found images that represent these phrases and called out each phrase and students had to number the picture from 1-6 based on the phrases I called out. The task outcome was about meaning and understanding of these phrases not so much completing the task which has little priority. 

I started with a flipped task and I use a before and after vocabulary grid which was solely to see what there prior knowledge of these words were vs the initial meanings. Things I notice was the opportunity for students to talanoa and unpack their understanding this is such a powerful tool for students. When they have the opportunity to talanoa and connect their ideas with their peers. the UDL model talks about the different ways we can represent content this was evident in my prep today, I had visuals, I had phrases and words, but this leads me to say I need to use videos in the next lesson so that students have this also because UDL how confirms how important it is to have multiple means of representing content. This connects me to the also providing different levels of output. In this session i wanted to cover, speaking, writing, listening and reading at the same time. We only managed to do speaking today due to time restraints. The sharing part was awesome. hearing the students share their thoughts based on the context of the phrases and the images I provided really worked. They mentioned their own words to describe the meanings, so the input was reading the Gagana Samoa phrases and listening to the phrases out loud and the output was speaking through the sharing of their understanding. Very Powerful to see and witness students making connection to their Gagana Samoa Language. 

My thinking now is was their signs of translanguaging happening? 

what about teaching for transfer? 

Students did another google form to see how they thought the lesson went. This was their responses.

 

Just wondering now where to next? What content am I going to deliver? I feel thats enough time spent on the Speeches as long as we covered the parts they did not understand well we can look to use other ways of Learning Gagana Samoa.