Primary STEM Chat - Full Archieve

This is the archieve for the full lists of Primary STEM Chat which is not being going for several years.   As stated previously this is a Twitter Internet Chat which is based around a STEM Theme which takes place each Thursday from 10:30pm-11:30pm.

Primary STEM Chat Wakelet

Assessment and Reporting in a STEM Classroom.
Primary STEM Chat is an Australian based Twitter Chat with an educational theme.   It is run weekly with a STEM focus and different aspects of STEM in the classroom.  While it originates from Australia it has some contributions from New Zealand (including myself) and has resources that are not necessairily available in New Zealand.    The link is provided above.  Note due to time differences it starts on Thursday 10:30pm and finishes 11:30pm.

Digital Technologies Staff Meeting PD

Staff Meeting. This took place in week ten. Ideally it would have perhaps been better to take place sooner in the term but it scheduled meant this is when it was (perhaps could have advocated more for an earlier time). Two staff members were absent and the staff meeting was further complicated by a powercut which took place at 3:45pm which removed Wi-Fi and prevented the group discussions from being recorded. There was a sharing aspect of the staff meeting with a request for staff to bring an item to share from the Digital Curriculum that tied in with the resources. 

This wasn't successful as most staff didn't bring something (however this could be remedied by staff completing the slideshow at a later date which I can send a reminder out about).   The other issue that could have been followed up on was the staff who undertook the PD.  It was clear from the discussion that was centred around the Mindlabs PD for the Digital Curriculum that while it had been completed by some staff, which I believe was two others, it had not been looked at by most staff.    Given everything that happened and the follow up etc its something that I want to positively pursue to ensure that everyone makes the most of the opportunity.   I think the PD aspect from Mindlab is an exceptional resource but need to promoted as something positive for the staff as an opportunity. 

I haven't received any feedback on the PD at the moment however I think the experience and the slideshow and the building of it was positive, but the approach and the sharing of it and the delegation of the tasks could have been driven better (perhaps I could have followed up in person with additional emails and spoke more directly to people about completing the sharing part of the session).

From here:

• contact staff to ensure that the feedback was completed (during the holidays)
• provide staff with a reminder opportunity about the Flipped PD and the opportunity to gain a PD qualification, linking to the helpfulness of the task.   
• Use the 'Digital Fluency Playing Cards' which have been purchased by the school to further enhance the understanding and discussion about the Digital Curriculum
• Get feedback about the staff meeting from Senior Manangement who were there (KT) and feedback from Senior Management who were not there (JC, KB) about the slideshow.

Blooms Taxonomy Professional Reading

Moving Beyond Who, What, When Where and Why Using Blooms Taxonomy to Extend Preschoolers Thinking:

• Souce: naeyc
• Rationale: This is the number one 'hit' when researching Blooms Questioning and given where I was wanting to start looking at I felt it could be applied to my work, even though it is targetted at a lower level of student.  The big take that I took out was the questioning ring to make sure you were balancing your questions for me as the teacher.  This is something that I took for granted and assumed that I would do automatically but the keyring was a very proactive step and started to retrain me.  I focussed on the reading to start with as something to colour code and reflect (constantly) on where I was questioning.  The students were at first wondering what I was doing with the key ring, and some asked me directly about the process but I was honest with them and it worked well as a result.

Levels of Questioning in Blooms Taxonomy - Source: TeacherVision.Com: 
Some facts that need to be considered:

• Most teachers spend 90% of their instructional time questioning students
• Many teachers ask up to 400 questions a day approximately 80% are factual knowledge based questions
• Students who are constantly asked low level questions will focus on producing low-level answers to questons

Rationale: These facts could potentially not be correct and depend on the system involved - the  US has a test based system which I have spoken to educators about where-by the end of year testing that the students take part in essentially determines whether they have a successful year or not.   In the case of an education system like Singapore where I was able to go and visit first hand in 2016 the system is predominantly rote learning where the focus on the exams at the end of the year is a live and let die example of something that is based soley around the testing.  The data listed above clearly comes from an American site and dosen't site its source or reference point however the emphasis to me came on looking at what sort of questions that I was asking the students and what that was producing.  I think the most relevant thing that could come from that was for 3D Printing - when we were discussing a print and what was produced by the students  I found a series of Blooms Prompts (with the Lightbulbs in the resource section) useful to use to help my discussion with the students, particularly at the higher end of things.   One thing that I need to look at is that the higher discussions that come as part of that process need to be documented somehow because at present they are not.
Using Blooms Taxonomy for Effective Learning. (Source Thoughtco.Com)
This is esentially a series of visual resource posters about Blooms and revisiting of the key points about Blooms and questioning.   It provides a series of key images but by the time that I located this I had already found a series of posters and displays relating to Blooms that I was already in the process of using and didn't want to replace existing material.   (It should be noted too that this is one of the sites that still maintains the use of Synthesis for Blooms - which has been replaced by 'Creation' in the revised version, a minor point but something that perhaps needs to have a note made)