Collaborate with Sites- DFI Day 5

It is always interesting being in the 'student chair' and experiencing what our learners experience in our classrooms. The task alone of finding resources and texts that we could use on our Multi-Modal Site, led me on a warren of discovery. I found myself getting distracted and going off on a number of different tangents. I found myself being pulled in a number of different directions and couldn't decide where I wanted to go with my Site.

This highlighted for me the planning part that is so very important, when designing learning tasks for our students. Having a broad topic such as 'Lest We Forget' was great, but I needed to narrow down where I wanted to go and what reading skills I specifically wanted to teach through this unit of work.

But as we know there is more than one path to get to the destination and the learning that took place along the way was beneficial.

So here is my Multi-Modal Site that I created. I definitely need to go back and adapt/ add to this, but for the purpose of being able to create a site easily and for having a go at finding texts that appeal and engage both behaviorally and cognitively, I think I am on track.

The texts selected have all the elements of having a main text, scaffolding text, complementary text and of course a challenging text. In relation to UDL, there needs to be more work put into this site, but this is a start.

DFI Day 5 was full of learning again and some of the things that I will take away from today are:

* I need to have a go at the DFI Google Sites Challenge, so that I am prepared for the Google Exam.

* When creating a Learning Site, it's important to limit the links.

* Hapara has a Parent Portal! Wow, I need to look into this more as I feel this would be a game changer for some of our families.

* I learnt that in Teacher Dashboard, under the 'sharing' tab, that if there is work in this folder, then the children have not put this work into a Google Drive Folder. This is something I need to chase up on Monday!

* I was able to look at buttons and how I can use Google Drawing to create interesting buttons on my Site.

 I am feeling so blessed at the moment to be able to be part of the DFI and to be learning alongside others who too, are wanting to provide the very best learning opportunities for their students. But for now, my head hurts from thinking, so I must sign off.

I would love to see any other Multi Modal Reading Sites that others have created. Please feel free to share below in the comment section. 

Nga mihi nui, Amber