In this post I am going to introduce you to Listenwise - one of my favorite resources I have been using recently! What is it? 3-6 minute long NPR stories, which come with activities for your class! Who doesn't love NPR?!

The first thing I want to flag up, is that the website divides it's stories by '"Current events", "ELA", "Science" and "Social Studies", but in reality there are stories to cover all different subjects and topics, (I searched Design and found lots of relevant stories).

I'm going to show you the lesson for 'Animal Farm' and Satire, along with the teaching resources it provides on both the free account and paid account.

With the free version:

• Listen to the audio
• See the Listening Comprehension Questions
• See the Discussion Themes
• See a link to a Socrative Quiz on this lesson
• Download two listening organizers (A T-Chart and a Language Identification worksheet)
• See related lessons

With the premium version you can also*:

• View an interactive transcript (let's you skip to certain parts)
• Listen to the audio slowed down 20%
• Assign multiple-choice quizzes
• Assign the Listening Comprehension Questions 
• Create online student assignments
• Get further support for ESL
• See the standards it links to (not relevant to us anyway!)

*I very rarely show resources that are not free (I think Extraordinaires is the only other one I've shared). You can use this resource for free, but I recommend the premium version.

What I love:

• The support for ESL students (slowing the audio down, viewing the transcript, tiered vocab lists)
• Seeing that the quizzes are not just about recal - in fact the questions and divided into:
  • Literal
  • Vocabularly
  • Main Idea
  • Inference
  • Point of View
  • Summarize
  • Analyze
  • Evidence
• The teacher dashboard - where you can see students work, as well as students results for an individual quiz, as well as their overall results (so for example, you can see if they are struggling with one of the skills above, like inference).

​Here's a screenshot of their most recent lessons:

I've created a video showing all the features and how easy it is to use. They also have a support section. If you have any additional questions, leave them in the comments.

On Thursday night I went to seeRon Ritchhart speak at a local school. I think the presentation was really aimed at parents, but I enjoyed hearing him talk more about enculturation and enjoyed him going through the Understanding Map.

Although I was familiar with this already, (my lovely colleague and office mate has it proudly on our wall), I had never really thought about it as a practical tool.

It gave me two main thoughts:

1. Have Grade 10 students look through their process journal or report, using this map, so they can assess if they are showing how their knowledge and understanding has improved through the Personal Project.
   
2.  Use this for creating units/lesson series - guiding students through each stage to explore a topic.
   
   

I decided to challenge myself to create a mini unit using this as a guide...and of course... I am always using the Guardian's "Twenty Photographs of the Week"... and this is what I came up with:

Link to the presentation!

I'll be taking over two science option classes next week to run this class!
​
How do you use the Understanding Map? Add your suggestions, ideas and examples in the comments!

The slide deck below has some prompts related to Theory of Knowledge (TOK for your MYP students to explore. It does not go into great detail about knowledge claims, knowledge questions, areas of knowledge or other TOK specific areas/vocabulary. The aim of this presentation is to get students used to the ways of thinking that they will experience in when they dive into TOK in their DP classrooms.
You may wish to put some of the prompts into your unit’s Inquiry Questions

This is a work in progress - I will keep adding more ideas and resources to this resource - and would love your input. Do you have any short prompts/questions that would fit in? If so, leave them in the comments!

Link to Presentation.

Thanks

Just like our students we are always reflective and looking for ways to grow. One of the ways we do this is by gathering feedback from our students. One of my colleagues is doing an online PZ course, which discussed the Ladder of Feedback. She has decided to incorporate this into her student feedback form, which I helped her create yesterday.

I've made a copy, which you can see below. If you want a copy, leave your email (must be gmail) in the comment box (not the 'email' box, as I can't see this)!