Only in Doha can you go to do a quick grocery shop to stock up the house for the week ahead and end up in a mall designed to look as though you are in Venice! Complete with gondolas, an indoor sky and Venetian buildings. The #Vellagio Mall is beyond beautiful and really transports you to Italy... well worth a visit 👏🏼
Work time!
I kept to my plan to decide how I am going to baseline and measure progress during my #actionresearch into #flippedlearning. This was made more enjoyable by it being done at the poolside soaking up the Qatari sunshine ☀️
My aim is to establish whether #flippedcontent can enable a small group of learners to progress on to extension tasks in class time more often and with increased confidence. Given this, it makes sense for me to first guage how often the children in a small, focused group currently progress on to these application tasks in class time and how often. I can then measure this again at the end of the first intervention week and the second, to assess their progress when #flippedcontent is in place. I will also conduct interviews with the children to ascertain how they feel about home-based learning and establish if there may be any barriers to overcome.
'Flipping' 5 year olds! ☀️🙌🏼
Today also presented a rather exciting curveball!!! I usually would consider myself a confident Key Stage 2 teacher (age 7-11), however, today I was offered the opportunity to conduct my #actionresearch in year 1 setting (age 5-6). At first, this stumped me as all of the research I have found around #flippedlearning recommends it to be done with upper primary/secondary learners, due to the independence and accountability required. Also, the software I intend to use (#Edpuzzle) has super cool features such as including integrated AfL content to guage learner understanding and engagement - such as offering them questions and leaving them audio notes.
However, even though I could add audio to technically read aloud the questions to younger learners who may not be confident readers yet, I was unsure how I could get them to record their answers without being able to write effectively. Then came the fabulous suggestion from @Mat6453 to show learners how to use the dictation tool on their iPads to record their responses this way, for me to review and thus provide personalised scaffolding when it comes to the class-based activities.
Also, some fab advice from @ChrisWaterworth clarified the need for parental engagement to support such young learners technically - but also the importance of explaining how they can help, without doing it for their children. Hence, I will discuss with my mentor how we can arrange a meeting with relevant parents to:
1) Show them how to access and use the software
2) Explain to them how this process will potentially benefit them as well as their children
3) Highlight the need for honesty, if they facilitate their children in answering any questions or online tasks - to enable me to provide individual support to their children in-class to promote extension
4) Reassure them that only teaching staff will access and review the children's responses - to combat any sense of competition or pressure they may feel if results were in the public domain.
So... it has been an eventful and super productive day!! Cannot WAIT to meet everyone tomorrow and enjoy a lovely intro with to @DohaCollege with #HealthDay activities planned - including a cheeky massage!
I'll keep you posted - sorry for my rambling, but this is my place to reflect after all :)
Thanks for reading!!!
