This is the year long journey of the development of our TV Station for five year old students. It has been a very powerful experience and has helped me to consider new ways to empower learners and provide student voice opportunities while capturing moments of brilliance happening in the class without me.
Our problem
There have been an increasing number of children arriving at
school with moderate to severe speech difficulties. Our news board and oral
language programme was effective however it was controlled by me and the
children were passive in their learning. I needed to find a way to empower
these children and allow them to gain confidence in their own abilities and
improve or extend their oral language development.
The mission which I chose to accept….
–ways to make it manageable in time and effort
-Cost effective
-Uncomplicated and simplistic for children to use.
-Empowering and purposeful
-improve speech and oral language skills
-Develop a sense of community and belonging
-Empower a 5 year old with a voice
-Develop questioning and answering skills
-Develop listening for information skills
-Roles and responsibilities
-awareness of the purpose of an audience
Why it works
Learning is much more effective and powerful when a student
is actively engaged in the learning process.
I embrace a constructivist approach to learning where children build on
their existing ideas and prior knowledge through authentic and purposeful
contexts. Our TV Station allows students to reflect on learning processes and
experiences with a real model of where they are at and to explore where to
next. The students develop their own
understanding of effective communication at a pace suited to them and their
style of learning. Our TV Station project is holistic and engages every level
of thinking while embracing diversity and celebrating learning in a community
effort towards engagement and motivation. We are able to integrate all
curriculum areas, values and employ all areas of the key competencies.
Children enjoy watching themselves online
Share their learning experiences with their family
Reflect on their learning and develop next learning steps
Co-construct new ideas – Kids lessons
Teaches me how to teach them.
Results
Providing my
class with the opportunity to direct their own learning and controlling the
direction of the TV station we now have evidence of ….
-children with speech impediments
improving in oral language
-speaking with clarity and
confidence,
-children taking more risks and
trying new things
-collaboratively developing
ideas,
-creating a community of
learners who support, encourage and treat one another as equals.
-scaffold each other through
questioning, encouragement, support and celebration
Technology
skills specifically taught
-camera
views
-filming and
still
-equipment
management
-using a
microphone
-viewing
film for developing next steps
Learning
skills developed and scaffolded
-questioning
-reflecting
on their learning
-talking about
their goals in learning effectively on film
-developing
new ideas collaboratively
-language of
and for learning
-turn taking
-listening
as an audience
-reflective
practises
-negotiating
next steps
Oral
Language skills developed
-speaking
clearly
-speak with
confidence
-speaking
for an audience
-making eye
contact
-explaining
thinking
-taking
risks
-being
creative
Hauora
Development
-sense of
belonging
-collaborative
knowledge building
-community
of learners inquiring
-risk taking
-self
confidence and belief
-self-esteem
-provides
them with a voice
-etiquette
of conversations
Teacher
friendly …
-Planning is done with the
children not independent of them.
-The filming is done by the
children independent of me
-Reflection and evaluation
becomes the specific teaching point and is done by the children but facilitated
by me.
-develops
thinking skills and creativity to make interesting viewing while incorporating
learning goals
These five
year old new entrants to school now experience a sense of belonging not only in
class but globally online, extending the learning beyond our classroom. They
get excited about their learning and have feeling of success when sharing their
learning with a wider audience. This project is owned by the children and my
role is facilitating the collaboration to higher levels and putting the film
together at the end of the week to upload online. I am constantly inspired and
impressed by the learners I am surrounded by every day. Our TV Station provides
EVERY student with the opportunity to shine and become empowered with a voice.
Getting
started
These things
have worked well for us.
Your
challenge will come soon to co-construct a programme for your class.
Set up
studio
Black
background with name
Wireless
microphone
Laptop with
webcam for kids to film themselves.
Camera for
filming and photography
2 seats for
filming and interviewing
Books,
finger puppets and fuzzy as props for building language.
Try to keep
it available for freelance filming too. This is where I get the most
information about their thinking, leaders and questioning skills.
Specific
teaching points…
How to
listen
Ask
questions
Use our
voice
Speak to an
audience
Set goals
Reflect on
achievements
Critique
film footage
Share ideas
and develop new ones
These are
all recorded in a meeting book to refer back to
Exemplars and
good models
Newsflash
sesame street
Weather
reports use of voice
Our own t.v.
shows
Some ideas to get you started
Writing practise
-reading back their writing
-writing for an audience
Weather
- Science
- Language
- Environment
- statistics
Te Reo
-
Recognising one of our languages
-
Teaching others
-
Consolidating learning
-
Practises vowel pronunciation
Did you know?
-
science
-
Inquiry
-
Consolidating learning
-
Sharing knowledge
-
Teaching others
Thinking
about thinking
-
Key competency focus
-
Developing language for learning and reflection
Interviewing skills
-
Sense of community
-
Learning from others
-
Questioning skills
-
Listening skills
-
Body language
Make our own lessons for other kids to learn from us.
Tips and Tricks
When starting up I spent many hours trying to get
programmes working.
Keeping it simplistic and manageable was my biggest
challenge
These tips are my reflection of what not to do
1-2 minutes otherwise its not manageable for you.
It takes too long to upload and parents get bored.
Manage your data
Create a folder on your desktop and label with date
for movie
Import all files needed for movie into this one file.
Use an SD card in your camera for easy loading into
laptop
Tools….
Camera use this for as much as possible. Easy, small
and portable great for the kids
Easy speak
Video camera
Ipad
Webcam
Any resources to encourage talking
Accepts any file type.
Easy to add voice overs with easispeak
Can edit length of music to fit images
Can move items around to order and sequence
Clearly if you are experienced in other movie editing
programmes you would use what you are familiar with.
For ease of use, cost and manageability and you are
just starting out this may be a preferred option to get you going.
Jamendo
Free legal and unlimited music published under cc
licenses which enables the artists to promote their music while protecting
their rights.
Royalty free music downloads
Easy to use
loads to choose from
To upload and convert all the files for me.
Can easily access an embedding code to put in blog
Created our own channel to keep all episodes together.
Is made public so I can embed into my blog and others
can view.
Could be kept private and link provided to all
parents.
Cyber safety can be a concern and searching you tube
is not ideal so I use a blog to present each episode linked to my class blog
Invites comments that can be moderated.
Easy to use
Must educate parents how to comment and why we comment
on blogs.
Word of Warning
-
Be careful with copyright laws with music and
photos
-
Be careful that you have written permission to
put each child’s photo online
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