Screencaster Badge

To earn this badge, I viewed an hour's worth of short instructional videos. Completed a test and created a 30 second Screencastify video.  I need to make instructional videos for my student's work so that they can rewind their learning and have more chances to view, hear and find out what they need to do.

WRITING AN ESSAY: INTRODUCTION

Friday's focus was writing a 4 sentence introduction that will work with any technique. Using a support card from the 'Write that Essay' resources started my students on the process. We co-constructed our first paragraph using the information on Tupaia that they knew. 

Neutral Sentence: a general sentence about a topic that everyone could agree with.
              Tupaia, a Polynesian who traveled with Captain Cook, used the stars to navigate.

Context sentence: show some of your knowledge. 2 or 3 specific facts.
              Tupaia was an artist, a tattooist, fluent in many Pasifika languages and in English.

Argument Sentence: state your position on the topic
              Tupaia has not been acknowledged for his part in Cook's journey to Aotearoa. 

Sum Up: 12 words or less, reinforce your position
              Tupaia did lots but didn't get very much back. (as written by a student on his blog) 

 

It was good to go into my student's blogs to see how many had reworked our original paragraph and added their own ideas. 

Next week students will have more practice writing Multipurpose Introduction topics. 

New Term, New Focus New Challenges

This term we are looking at the historical causes and effects of exploration and voyages. To start this the students are viewing Tupaia's Endeavour series.  Using Sketchnote to collect information that they can then later take into a group task, was a challenge today. It is a challenge to listen, view and record new information. It was good to see many of the students identify the key labels under which they started to gather their notes and the information that they picked up and I missed.

While they did theirs on paper I  placed some notes on the whiteboard. I asked them what was a key point of interest or surprise that they picked up from the viewing and it was the shooting of the Tahitians over the trading dispute and of Te Maro in Aotearoa.

The documentary has many interesting historical facts that it introduces about Tupaia, a Tahitian High Priest and Navigator, who traveled with Captain James Cook to Aotearoa/New Zealand. Tupaia was a key mediator between the Māori and Cook. I am keen to see the students gather historic knowledge and identify the causes and effects that Cooks arrival and exploration of Aotearoa/New Zealand have had.