Finding and Fixing: next steps to work on with my target group

 

These three slides have been very helpful in reinforcing the good practice of being consistent and repetitive when working with students who are often appealing to the teacher to help find and fix errors.   At first I must admit that after only a few go's I'd decide it wasn't working.

Using these prompts repeatedly, especially those found in the first two frames has been important in returning the ownership of finding what the error is on the student. I have too easily and very often given hints/clues that have not made enough difference to have these particular students developing good strategies of their own.   I can see that repeating of prompts will have students soon if not already realise the area in which they are needed to improve.  Missing middle parts of words, endings, sense making etc.

I've found to stop and work on word families, starts - middles - ends of words needs to be the norm with this particular group of readers.  The sense of urgency I have due to these students being in their final years before college, I need to yes remember but NOT have it rush me through these fundamental strategies of finding and then fixing errors in the texts these students are reading.  

Just a reminder of my target group: 1 x year 8, 3 x year 7 reading at 9.5 year level.  Very soon we will be re-testing and hopefully reporting back a lift in levels and/or reading strategies.

 

Guided reading = Instructional reading

Apologies I'm not going to be explaining what this is or isn't.  Rather I hope to draw your attention the beginning of our reading PD journey @pes for 2020.

This was a point raised...we have different names for often the same thing in NZ around reading!  One myth we've put to rest is that my title here - are different things.  Moving forward at PES we've decided they are one in the same.  We're going with INSTRUCTIONAL READING to describe what some teachers have been practicing as guided reading.





All teachers have a target group to observe closely.
a. What are these children doing when they come across an unknown word?
b. What behaviours do you notice while they are reading?
c. What strategies do they have?
d. What do you do to help next?

These are some of the questions I will be exploring with my group of 4 students.  3 of the 4 are year 7 boys, 1 year 8 girl.  Here poses another challenge.  What texts do I select that will be appealing to 3 very active year 7 boys and a very mature year 8 girl.   Looking forward to this challenge.

So far I've noticed the following:
Student A: is nervous to try out new words, knows his limitations and does not know what to do with a new word
Student B: very confident even though says many words incorrectly, will read through any word and not stop until asked to, continues without concern for making meaning
Student C: confident reader, knows to break up word to try and sound out new word.  Will often give the words others in group are stuck with
Student D: seems confident however any word will appeal to the teacher for support. No other strategies.
All students do not practice reading from beginning of sentence or earlier/on after to make meaning of an unknown word.

I need observe more and research what to do next in terms of teaching strategies to these year 7 & 8 students who are reading at the 9 and 9.5 year level.

Vaiaso o le gagana Samoa 2020

"Tapena sou ōso mo lau malaga" - Prepare yourself a gift for your travels. 

It is tradition for Samoan people when travelling to have organised a gift to take to families who await them.  If travelling from Samoa a boxed umu was a typical 'oso' to bring.  Other items would be material printed and designed in Samoa, Samoan Bibles, hymns books and daily devotionals. 
When travelling from New Zealand to Samoa, money, canned food, clothing and any household items are greatly appreciated by those awaiting your arrival.   Don't be surprised that when you return to NZ with only a umu box and an empty suitcase.  Samoan people are very resourceful and will make good use of practically everything you arrive with!

The gift we have today for you is that of our children singing two hymns they requested to learn and share this week.   Our guitarist John is of Tongan descent who started this whole process of learning, practising and today sharing these hymns.   What a gift to share John!

This gift will be used during the  year as our students lead karakia, mihi and himene to start each school day.

Malo lava to all students, faamalo atu foi'i iā  Mr Wright (guitar and singing coach), John lead guitarist, Kitione, John L, Valeli, Pisirina and Lepisi.  Malo lava le faasoa, malo lava le taumafai ina ia iloa e isi o le fanau ia pese tāua o le tatou atunuu.

"Tapena sou ōso mo lau malaga" - Prepare yourself a gift for your travels. 

DFI: Revision: Agenda Day 9, ONLINE Friday 8th May 2020

 Ubiquitous learning has always been a goal and dream of Manaiakalani.   This has been here all along.  The season of Covid-19 has brought about this concept more clearly for students and teachers across the world!  Teachers across the globe have had to think and deliver a lesson in the form of recorded teacher/student voices to support learning - Ubiquitous learning - all time any place!

This idea of ubiquity when we look back at our collective data over the years show when teachers are in front of students our learners show progress.  When they are away from us the learning level stops and sadly often drops back for our learners during our summer holidays.   Enter the 'Summer Learning Journey' to support ubiquitous learning.   This is where students choose to be part of the learning journey and have great support from a head teacher with helpers (often Uni students) giving daily feedback to support the learning journey.  The active student participants returned to school and showed continued progress in learning levels!  Woo hoo!

Now we prepare for the goolgle test - 3 hours whoop whoop!  I have finished and have no idea if I have passed but on with badging my blog!


Reflection I shared:
The range of backgrounds of members in our group was great to be part of.  A real life picture of what our school communities are made up of...the less experienced through to the experienced...those directly impacting whanau as coordinators/leaders through to the very young beginning teacher, mature teacher but new to the country etc.  Showing again how key this DFI course is in enabling the fundamentals of teaching and learning best way possible across schools.

DFI makes very clear how pedagogy links to the digital, the people, LCS - Manaiakalani, makes very clear the reason Manaiakalani is so important!   It enables communities of educators to get up to speed, refresh, renew and refine our practice in teaching and learning.   The whole package offered and delivered did this for me.  To be given time away from the class weekly a huge help for me...likely would not be able to do so otherwise if I had to book this time another way.   Thank you to all who enable this to happen.

Manaiakalani the journey:
Have been part of this from the beginning and to have the journey and it's details organised and presented as it has was humbling.  Humbling and so awesome to see that what was tried, kept or cast away lol - we have contributed to and is now used as a successful set of practices across NZ wow!! 
To have knowledge/practice that in the past often explained as 'The good teacher' does, NOW demystified.  This course is empowering to all who can join and the knock on will be the empowerment of the school communities they represent.  This takes away mentality of the one magic pill or one amazing teacher...DFI kits you up to be this and more! 

Thank you very much Dorothy, Gerhard and the Manaiakalani team - the Maniakalani Trust who enable this to happen!

Alo, alo, alo lou foe
Taunuu lou fa'amoemoe!
Stroke! Stroke! Stroke your paddle!
You will reach your destination!

Computational Thinking: Agenda Day 8

DFI was started to empower teachers!  We are working with highly digital children, a 9 week intensive programme for teachers.  Our journey began with our learners, Manaiakalani is passionate about empowering our whanau.  The partnership of all of us working together is most powerful!

It's NOT just a tool.   It's empowerment.  Money is empowering.  Let's be real it is.
80% of our community here in Tamaki is state owned.  Right now homes are being replaced by new housing.  This is a mixture of state owned and privately owned.

Researchers have found that where discussions are able to travel back and forth at least 5 times between individuals this will improve language for our students.  We can create this opportunity to build on discussion via their blogs.  Focusing on not only leaving a comment but to reply to them and more.  Build in that threaded conversation.

Our children at home right now are empowered because learning has been made ubiquitous.  What else is empowering our students.  Are the sites and links we providing our students supporting this empowerment?

Future of Tech

Deep dive of the big picture of future of tech with Gerhard.  The Jetsons come to mind! :). Gerhard shared a video of Boston Dynamic's Big Dog as an example of advanced technology in action.  The opportunities this opens up is impressive and exciting.  With these projects we consider the 'Why' behind these inventions.  Hanson Robotic's Sophia...it was amazing!!  A lot of her intelligence is from scrolling through  youtube videos.  Check out Sophia the robot on the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon.  This has prompted a whole lot of discussions around artificial intelligence.  How does it benefit society?  So many thoughts and discussions happening around this.  Creativity seen as such a human trait and now artificial intelligence showing this creative ability too...wow!!
Facial recognition is part of this too.  Gerhard lead us into an online activity where you had to decide which way a programmed car should travel with hazards on road.   Here are some images to give you an from the 'Moral Machine' online activity.  Some very tough choices to be made, who do you save and who do you hurt eek!


Kerry: Chalk'n Talk with Kerry
Year 1 - 10 to be involved in digitally fluent for online learning.   Today it's not an option it's a necessity for learning!  DFI is focused on this to have teachers empowered to lead and support our learners.  Giving students the opportunity to not only be consumers...but creators of content! 
Here is an example of progress outcomes as provided by ministry with a learner's version on the right.  Kerry has found these useful with learners to help us unpack packs of the digital curriculum.

Kerry is currently working on going through our Manaiakalani Cyber Smart Curriculum and seeing where the progress outcomes for New Digital Technologies Curriculum is present.   Kerry made a really good suggestion to look at whatever we are doing and where possible see if there is one thing more we can add into this...computational thinking outcome(s).    The basis of Digital Curriculum links so well with what Dorothy shared this morning about technology being so much more than a tool and also the links with future tech shared by Gerhard.  Kia Takatū has been put together by the ministry, it's another good way to update yourself around Digital Curriculum, provides little toolkits for teachers.  Thankful for this session to be reassured that we have already included some of this in our teaching phew! This was followed by our own explore time of Kia Takatū.

Exploring Coding:
We had 40 minutes of exploring coding.  I tried out mind craft for a bit. Then tried compute it, this is where you read and follow the written code. There's a trick at times to focus on the written code rather than the coloured dots!   A lot of fun...can be addictive!  To now check which curriculum strands and areas this does link to.
 

Here's my very poor attempt at scratch - I think tired brain kicked in!  Thanks Kerry for being very patient with me :).  Will need to re-visit Kerry's notes to have another go especially when our children have this working really well in the years before they get to my team.

Devices: DFI day 7. It's more than a tool!

Devices:  this day focuses on the devices our young people use and we will experience Learn Create Share using Chromebooks and iPads.

Fiona Grant has kicked of our morning with a great overview of our cyber smarts! Commenting, a special focus for success is the promotion of positive language. Don't assume it's already there for anyone. It's something us as educators need to be very aware of along with our learners. In the past the learners feedback was very limited if not absent. Now with the use of blogs students are encouraged to give feedback. Initially I noticed as an educator students were focused on the mistakes made - spelling errors etc, this was telling of what they observed of us! EEK! This act of commenting positively has brought about a real mind shift for students AND teachers!

Smart learner, footprint relationships have become the key elements of smarts with the others being more of smarts that are then linked into. This focus is intentional for the first three terms of learning year.

Part of this is the confidence in which the students use their device to achieve learning outcomes. Ubiquitous - learning is accessible at any time/place by the learners. Again if the three smarts of learner, footprint and relationships is embedded then ubiquitous learning will be successful.

Connected, when designing learning we want it to engage our learners. Using positive language to capture our students. Think about what images, text we are presenting? Does it promote positive and helpful - this needs to be our default our norm.


Hapara Teacher Dashboard: Sharing work
Some don'ts...don't ask children to share their documents with you. Do not ask them to make folders. When you do this you disempower everyone involved as you it goes against the workflow that has been set up for the learners AND teachers.
Always have children making documents in the folders they already have. This is where there are will be found by teachers and no issues of lost files 'can't find it Miss'.

Gmail: a good place to see at a glance if students have opened up your email.

One-to-one devices:
The Treaty of Waitangi was a fundamental in our decision to go one-to-one.
Partnership: our fist point of action what to partner with our families, to talk with each other about the possibility of having one-to-one devices. What it would look, sound and smell like. So many of the small but important details that make up todays kaupapa around the use of one-to-one devices in our schools.

The Chromebook Experience: normally at this stage we'd all be given chromebooks to work through this lesson. A great way to experience what our learners do. We gave a 'Digital Dig' tasks a go. This is a really good activity to re-visit every start of year to re-focus the learners on key skills/functions they will need for learning.

iPad learning journey. After a lot of testing of various tablets it was found that iPads were the best for our learners, our junior learners. 1-1 ipads are set up very intentionally in comparison to a blended learning area. Well before the school year gets on the way, the set up of the iPad is very important. They are the same in every way possible to support classroom teachers.
Kawa of care for our learners is key also at this young age, this includes the care of their stylus.
Explain Everything is an enabler of students and teachers to create learner artefacts. We had the chance to look at this programme. Gerhard made a point again to use the actual names of the tools. It makes good sense as students like us will use this foundation of tool naming to launch from when we move onto using the correct names of tools. We had another explore session to experience some of what our junior students and teachers experience.
1. Try and create in EE
2. Import pre-existing learning activities onto white board
3. Explore what learners have created on EE

SHARE: Blogger tips from Kerry was the last session today.   Kerry took us through a quick lesson on how to add a page to your blog.  It's a good idea to have an 'About me' page for your audience.  

Enabling Access- Sites. DFI Day 6

Connecting with cohort:

This was a good opportunity to check in with our Auckland cohort on how distance learning was going. Positive reports on all fronts. A key theme was the act of teachers to provide for learners regardless of how many students tune in. Schools are already communicating with whanau to work out what the needs are to get students connected online. Good thing we have hard packs and the learning channel there to support distance learning!

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Dorothy

Pedagogy and Kaupapa

Visible connected learners

Act of sharing causes connection. In this time of distance learning sharing and connection has been made through camera and mics on devices. Where cameras haven't been able to work I've found it hard to get a sense of whether children understand what I'm teaching.

Twitter is the domain that pulls from all our blogs - really simple syndication! Our students across Manaiakalani and outreaches across Aotearoa have been blogging a whole heap! Impressive stats are being collected in this time of lockdown. Our students are certainly sharing and connecting via their blogs.

In our own local blogs - specifically year 7 & 8 children have refined their sharing on blogs to grab the attention of their audience. Our age group are well into blogging and if you are not intentionally teaching/reminding students to be mindful of audience the blog can just become the old 1B5 that they 'work' in and that's it! This has been a huge plus of this lockdown time. The parts that make up connecting learning.

Maria: Visual appeal - shop window!

User experience - easy to locate ‘stuff’ (2/3 clicks)

A chance to visit sites to check for the above. A really good chance to not only visit sites but more so to reflect on how my own is set up...is it appealing?? User experience??

High school sites are as expected very different to that of primary schools. The various levels, range of class levels etc is reflected in high school sites. Having children myself who have completed college the site I saw from Karen at Tamaki College is really helpful. To be able to go back to review the standards/expectations/example of tasks would have been a great support to my children!

Local team site sharing time!

Really appreciated this time together to simply share what we work out of daily as educators and the other hats we wear in our school community. I am impressed the wonderful range - multimodal provisions in the sites that were shared. The familiar faces of teachers doing fun things like reading a big book, notices and reminders etc. Rewindable learning is key in our sites. The familiar 'What do we do again Miss'...our sites support this well! We had the chance to hear from the site owners for couple minutes at a time then we gave feedback via a form.

Some feedback I got from sharing our Team 5 site that all teachers for year 7 & 8 have their own pages. Hope my team get to see this as it's the work of Team5@PES.

• Awesome!!!
• Such a well thought out site with tons of intentional planning to ensure the success of your tamariki! Responsive to current climate with limiting the links too!
• Excellent site! Easy to follow, love the faces of teachers that match the group, has their names as well, so everyone knows where they should be. Like the visible timetable so everyone knows what's happening. Like instructions next to the slides. Great job!
• Brilliant organisation. Lucky kids

Blogger tips with Kerry was a good reminder for me! I found my blog list had students over quite a few years still sitting there in my class blog. Needing to get onto this pronto - adding students from my class this year! You'd think I would have had this done.

A great big thanks to Dorothy, Gerhard and the great team of leaders today!

Another productive day!

Collaborative teaching and learning. DFI day 5

Gratitude chain: what a great way to start today's session of DFI.  30 seconds to firstly acknowledge what person prior to us was grateful then into our grateful korero then onto the next person all in 30 seconds!

VISIBLE: can you see it?  This has been part of the Manaiakalani kawa since it's beginnings.  Our journey has see many of the locked away - kept to thyself practices diminish because it doesn't work!  No that's right we need to make what we do VISIBLE which does mean sharing of great ideas we all have.  Teachers experience that today in open learning spaces, the development of teacher around learning AND behaviour is so much quicker.  Students, teachers AND whanau are more a part of open spaces across schools and the community via our online hosting of all that we do.
Our default is visible.  Visible learning supports the Kawa of what you say is what you'll do - they'll be no surprises!

Hapara was specifically designed to support Manaiakalani.   This was designed so that the learning would be visible to the teacher.   It's a great tool to support our students and brings stability to our current situation of students carrying out distance learning.   Our whanau have access to Hapara also to support their children from home.
John Hattie supports - our feedback and feedforward makes a positive difference for our learners.  John Hattie is a Professor of Education first at the University of Auckland then later at the University of Melbourne in Australia.   He is very big on VISIBLE learning! 
Our researchers

We need to keep sharing the process of teaching and learning in a visible setting.  We must follow the process of limiting the links.  Remove the barriers of passwords and limiting the links.  It's the best way to go.  Thanks Dorothy for the korero here!

MULITMODAL....MULITTEXTUAL
How can we make our delivery inclusive?  Not just about uploading our worksheets, we actually need to move away from this and look at how we can include all our students.  How can our students take on more responsibility for their learning.  Self manage and self scaffold.
First key concepts is:
a. Engagement - the HOOK
Are our sites engaging, does it hook the attention of your audience?  Does your homepage have all your communication points present?

BUILDING TIME - time to build a google site from scratch with Gerhard.  When creating a new site, identify FIRST what is the purpose of your site.  Think - limiting links, limit the amount of clicks for your audience.  If you can't get to where you need to be in 2-3 clicks - you need to refine this process.  A flow-chart on paper can come in handy here.   Once this purpose and flow has been decided, next you think about the pages.  What's taking up the most real estate?  The least?  What is the best layout for this?

How do we hook in the behaviour and learning we're after.   The MULTIMODAL elements hooks in the behaviour we are after - being excited, interested - a desire to find more!   The MULTITEXT elements caters to the cognitive!

Multimodes to engage the learners.  This might mean writing, video, song, animation, graph.  We want people to understand information - this is our goal!

Our site should have multiple modes of presenting this important information.  Academically we want to be sure we are reading multiple texts.
1. Main text: the actual text we want them to be able to read
2. Complimentary texts - ideas can be accessed independently says the same thing but in different way
*Scaffolding texts - main ideas can be accessed independently, ideas are still on same wave length as main text.  Vocab list with links etc.    (referred here to matrix created by Angela Moala)
3. Challenging texts - not just challenging vocabulary but various points of views, conflicting information type of challenge
4. Student selected texts - an invite for students to build up mileage and knowledge by students

I was in team Kerry for building site from scratch on 'Fake News'.  It was a great experience working with our team of 5, great questions to help me along the way.   Please go here to see what I managed to create with the support of leader Kerry. 

What will I take from today?

• Limit the links on our sites!  Keep thinking of ways to refine this feature for our learners, not simply for this time of distance learning but into the future schooling that follows.
• Multimodal and Multitextual - an oldie BUT GOODIE!  A must!  Are we empowering learners with the resources we are providing?   Are we allowing our students to contribute to these resources?  We should be
• VISIBLE: if it ain't visible it ain't useful to no one

Kia Ora to Dorothy and national team of Manaiakalani facilitators.  

Have a blessed Easter Break.

Taha Challenge - your turn! Taha Tinana

Colleague Kiriwai Tapuke has created this site along with a team of her students who are all about 'Te Whare Tapawhā'. Challenges are put out regularly by students for students.
Go here to see to see Kiriwai's site and the great way it leads students through independent challenges that promote well being!  We are using it alongside our Easter Learning Journey to support our learners in this time of level 4 alert.

The challenges are based upon Te Whare Tapa Whā - four walls of a wharenui (meeting house) represent elements of hauora or health and wellbeing.

Taha hinengaro (mental health and emotions)
Taha wairua (spiritual health)
Taha tinana (physical health)
Taha whanau (healthy relationships).

 Today's challenge has us working on Taha Tinana - our physical health!  Take up the Taha Challenge!

DFI: Dealing with Data: DFI Online FRIDAY 2020 session 4

SHARE is the theme for today!   Hasn't this been the focus these last two weeks for us all!
How relevant is it for us today!

After farewelling Team 5 this morning I jumped straight onto our DFI for our fourth session.   Blogger is where I have begun today!   Blogger was selected years ago, today it is still highly functional space for our children. It looks after us legally too so thumbs up all around!
WARNING!  Don't be swayed by the latest look/app, stop and check that it's safe legally, systematically secure.  Blogger still wins this hands down.

AUDIENCE: you want an audience?  We need an audience!  Blogger promotes celebration of completed tasks, the effort to share what you can with your audience!  As an audience we have a role to play too!
Our well being is very important!  Hauora - our students hauora right now is being supported by our ability to interact through comments on their blogs and google meets etc.





DEALING WITH DATA

Google form helps us to collect data!  We had a 15 chalk and talk session with Gerhard.  forms.googl.com is a way to get there.   Great idea is start with a black template rather than a themed form.
In sandpit time I've created a survey I will send to whole of team to find out what our students want for the weeks of distance learning ahead in regards to regularity of meets for various learning groups.  Part of this will be their need around social connections for Hauora - Well being.

Google MyMaps
So much opportunity here to support teaching and learning for literacy and numeracy.
Google Earth has many great functions - 3D imagery, embed html content, does not yet allow importing of spreadsheet.

Google Sheets
A lot of cool tips here for admin involved in teaching AND the teaching and learning we provide our students, whanau and school community across regions.

Blog data case studies - using spreadsheets and google draw to analyse blog data.
We had the chance to hear from Robyn from Panmure Bridge School.   Her sharing was around a case study on a Mele - a student in her class.  The idea of setting goals for blog posts and children planning using statistics to work out how many blog posts per week/month/year.  What is a realistic goal and how it can be achieved.  Along with this I imagine that students will also refine the quality of posts not just the quantity!

We had sandpit time to create our own graphs and analysis of a blog and it's data re posts etc.  That's the image I've posted right at the top!

So what you gonna do with this all Mrs Tele'a?
I will plan a lesson like that of Robyn and Mele's sharing today to support student goals and motivation during this time of distance learning.    I will send out the google form I've created to support our teacher planning.  Also refresh my own plans around rostering when and where to be giving feedback via blog commenting.

Thanks to the DFI team from across Aotearoa for such a productive day.
Ka kite Ano.
Le Atua i lo tatou vā

Andrea

Day 3: Distance learning. Teacher findings so far

Kia Ora to teachers of Aotearoa and around the globe! After 2 days of go go go via google meets and further online interaction with our students we had a chance this morning to catch up.

Here's our notes from our meeting, hopefully it'll give you some insight of our journey so far. We hope you find this encouraging as you navigate your next steps online with your own learners. Your connecting with  tamariki and whanau is so important!




Our chat went something like this...

1. How we all doing on the home front?Teacher 1: working at remembering the time to check, going ok wifi at home.
Teacher 2: wifi home is going good, can see that kids pop on and off. Home end going well
Teacher 3: wifi good. Recorded up at parents place last night to post and back home. Maths class got to see the dog so bit of distraction there - kids loved it!
Teacher 4: Going well, wifi seems to be going well have some moments but maybe it's the kids end?

2. What's going well for your literacy and maths meets with students?

Teacher 1: 8 - 10 students: Maths is consistent group, all tuning and on time. Always asking about the tasks that I’ve sent
Literacy: 2 this morning, 4-5 checking in daily more about connecting right now not so much school work.

Teacher 2: Literacy, had few more kids pop on today who were not at school on Monday and shared presentation how to access a book from TC online library. Keen to start reading. Good questions from girls today.
Maths: been more like coming home to mum - mostly home class children. More of social interaction rather than maths. Saying they don’t have enough so directed them to pages of other teachers in team.

Teacher 3: Literacy has about 10 kids everyday, playing game until others join. Do karakia and himene together before moving into literacy which a great way to connect with each other to start the day. When unmute we can communicate well.
Maths: most have been turning up, feels like too many at times. Cannot unmute here to discuss as 25 kids! Too many kids to let everyone have a turn! About 20 expectant of a maths lesson.

Teacher 4:
Good attendance at literacy
Maths going well too.
Internet band is not best at times for kids.
Getting through the work, have genuine questions. Have a good chat catching up. Trying to keep it short and sweet. Notice in maths kids are wanting more.

3. What improves our distance teaching and learning? Tips for the team
Teacher 2: make a list of 2 - 3 things to discuss / teach children in each session or else ending up awkward smiling lol!
Teacher 3: do a kahoot, did one on language features - could sense a great sense of community. Great for building morale. Check out blog - beyond the blackboard.
Teacher 1: similar to teacher 2, need to be very clear about what teaching points I will cover with students
Teacher 4: Getting students to present their work, student showing a bar graph...taking turns. More than talking heads. Today was a reading in literacy, student googled and presented it. Giving children the opportunity to lead learning using the presentation tool. Making a good example of those completing tasks, they get to lead too!


Overview:
As a teaching team we have these key points to work on to maximise our live time with students
a. Plan what teaching points you want to deliver in this window of time, including feedback from students
b. Create opportunities for students to lead different parts of the google meet by korero/presentation etc
c. Be clear with our instructions on slide show - ensure they marry with our talking heads :)
d. Pastoral care of teacher to student is an important part of our google meets so far.
e. Where numbers are growing towards full class of students, we will need to look at booking 2 - 3 different times for google meet to cater for different needs. Teacher 3's example of having many students for maths - 25. To deliver best it'll be ideal to seperate the google meet groups.


As a team leader I am so very proud of our team. A very short turn around from last Friday where we sat and planned our 'Limiting the links' approach to our site. When Monday's announcement was made our team felt prepared. Farewelling students on Monday 23rd March 3pm, greeting them via google meets  the next day Tuesday 24th 9am. Very thankful!!

Day 2 Distance Learning @ PES

. 

Talofa lava i tou paia ma mamalu! 
Day 2 of distance learning brought about new ideas and practices for both the students and teachers.

We found our numbers increased, possibly due to student to student prompting overnight.  Possibly parents feeling more comfortable in their homes and directing children towards school now that they understand isolation in the home.   Whatever the reason we were delighted as a team to have more children connect live with us via our 2 set google meet times. 

My maths class was smaller today, only 3 students actually but it was a productive session in that the 3 students are close in learning levels and so the competition began! 

One of our teachers had 25 out of 28 students tune in for maths!! Was an exciting but challenging time to work out how to best cater for the range of 28 learners present.  You are reminded of how the google meet is whole class situation so you're thinking on your feet the whole time.

A highlight for my learning today was the noted difference in students.  Yesterday - day 1 of distance learning they were so very keen to simply connect.  Today - day 2, students were ready with matters they wanted to discuss related to their learning.  I also as the teacher was prepared with 2-3 learning points that I wanted to be sure to deliver before ending the google meet.  At present we are meeting for up to 30 minutes.  Any longer and I'm finding that the students are challenged with background noise and whanau needing to share the space they're in.


Learning from today: be well prepared for the 20 - 30 minute google meet with specific points to teach.   Write it down and stick to it alongside any pastoral/housekeeping notices and encouragement you need to give your tamariki.

Day 1 Distance Learning @ PES

Talofa lava to our teachers!    We farewelled our children yesterday afternoon hastily due to the late but important announcement that we were moving very quickly into level 3 then 4 mode to stop Covid-19 from spreading.

During our final korero, I shared with the children that they were heading home no for a normal holiday but rather to go home AND actually STAY in their homes.  The idea of hanging out with neighbours...picking up a mate to go bike riding, hang at the beach, for a feed of fish'n chips etc was not going to happen.  The Prime Minister has instructed us 4 weeks of isolation in our whare's!

We had prepared our children with a few changes made to our team learning site which followed the Kawa of care for the learner from Manaiakalani of 'Limiting the Links'.   So all connections for students were from our front page to their ONE page that hosted daily/weekly learning.  Thankful too that team leader of our year 5 and 6 students - Matt Goodwin let me sit in and observe a google meet with students last Friday along with limit the links site set up.  All helped us arrive at today!

I'm stoked to share here that while some children did not attend the days we shared this new set up - they got online still - Day 1 of distance learning and got to the 2 hangouts - meets we set up across our team of 6 classes.

I must say seeing them pop up to join meet and then hearing student voices across the block of classes was a choice moment!   So good!   A style of learning children are accustomed to BUT this time no teacher body with to them - instead live on screen woo hoo!

Here's a screen capture of one google meet we - for maths.   Had 8 at this very moment on live.  Our team focus for these early days to simply connect with our learners, check in that they're doing ok, chat about how they were coping with the change AND then a bit of maths and literacy.  I know it'll shift into more academic content soon but priority right now is support our children with this sudden shift in life.  I'm pretty proud of our children, whanau and teachers right now!

DFI - cohort 1 of Auckland, I got to put into practice our learning around google meets, even turned the captions on AND fortunately had Dorothy Burt walk through to give me 1-1 guidance on some things I needed at that very moment!   Yes - bit mā...things Dorothy and Gerard had already told us lol - hand on face emoji right here eek!

Hows that??  3 weeks of DFI then immediately into distance learning putting into practice what we've just learned - phewww!

Looking forward to connecting with my learners today.  9am with our literacy groups then 12.30pm with our maths groups.

Media: Agenda Day 3 - al about CREATE today!

Straight into it - learning to use split screen - 2 seperate screens that we'll be using with our students should we have a period of students staying home and us as teachers teaching via the online portal.  Holding the green button top left will help you do this.

Create: needs to be right there in the centre of what we do! 
Playfully creative people!  Are we not happy to be around such people?  Yes!   Let's see things with a glass half full. 

Imagine what we could do online - distance learning.   Creative juices flow time!  There is research available to us that confirms the importance of creativity.  Kohl (2008) "Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery.   In children, creativity develops from their experiences with the process, rather than the concern for the finished product.

A great example of this in action is a principal Robin Sutton of Hornby High School has named his school 'School of Creative Excellence'. 
Creativity is at the heart of education.   It's our cultural heritage!

Disengaged learners: do we have them?   My answer is yes.   Here's something to check, are you using create element as an incentive?  For example: if you finish writing the story then you get to create... OR are you using create as part of the learning?  This is what Manaiakalani programme promotes.   Create is PART of the learning process - not a reward at end of doing some 'work'.

Creativity empowers our students, it enables students to take charge of the knowledge they have.

Planning for your learners at home?  Make sure there's lots of create in there!  Get students to hold up things they've created - share photos.   Engage the students daily with creativity in what you plan to present to them daily in class or online due to social distancing.

YOUTUBE
This session was very helpful in ensuring it's a safe space to post movies that you keep unlisted and free from comments.  A way to eliminate the extras that pop up in sidebars when showing children a video - you embed the playlist into your site. 

Google Draw - wooo hooo!
There are so many things you can create in google draw.   We are having a bit of explore of the many things you can create in this space.
Basic animation right here made in google draws.  Know about arranging background level, object level, rotating and re-sizing using shift key to keep dimensions correct.

Slides as a presentation tool
Providing slides for students is very different to using slides with a hall full of people.  Be clear in your mind about what you are presenting.  Do your images show this - your korero?  For example: at present Dorothy is visiting a number of schools/groups across NZ with the one message children can still learn at home.   Think tweet size statement.   Do this and you'll capture your audience from beginning.

You click 'new' google slides...keynote...powerpoint...ditch the default settings! 
Tips from Dorothy re planning:
Have ideas on post it notes...if they don't fit on notes then you've got too much - cut it back.
Slides are used to create digital content.  Students have created animations where they have borrowed backgrounds and object images.  Other students have created all parts on google draw.  Awesome aye?!  A great idea for home learning that may grow soon.  There's some quick learning to put in place for this to be successful.   Idea from Dorothy - give a task to students to complete using different tools.   Draw a tree - on hyperstudio, google draw, keynote etc.  Beauty of this students will notice how they have skills in one medium and how easy it is to transfer into another app/program.

Deep dive for today - Kent Somerville of Pt England School

Live streaming to youtube, can have it embedded immediately into your school site via youtube.   Your viewers can see your screen with a countdown available.  This happens when you have scheduled an event.  The camera you use needs to have the capability of hosting it's recorded footage online.  

Live streaming covers a whole lot of different events for schools.   The capturing of events in this way is useful for rewindable learning in many learning areas.   A real advantage when learning about spacial awareness on the sports fields etc.   Imagine what you could do in the classroom with live stream!

Agenda Day 2, Auckland Cohort 1, 2020

This morning's focus was around the use of google hangouts or google meet as some call them.  In light of the Coronavirus and students around the world being made to stay home from school - this has been a very useful day.  Ubiquitous learning a theme of the day!

Back to hangouts - do not copy what we've done here...as good practice - etiquette, it's important to be in hangout on your own laptop.   Don't worry Sally and I had our own laptops to watch and share through.  Having your own laptop means you are there to participate and also shows an appreciation for the lead speaker in hangout who's prepped for you and the team!

The ability to speak with a group of learners, receive information from a teacher AND give feedback is one which Maniakalani children have - right now!   Should our children be asked to stay home - learning CAN still happen!

In our hands on session using hangouts we were taken through a great presentation that walked us through RATE.
Recognise
Amplify
Turbocharge
Effective Practice
I especially appreciated the review of the 'Amplify' part of our practice. 
"We amplify our effective practice by using technology to share our professional learning and experiences" Dorothy Burt.  There are two parts to Amplifying - Getting and Giving.  We get - research...find resources.   We give - share our own practice online through our sites, professional blogging etc.

Google Keep - it's a keeper!
Ability to make lists/notes and share with collaborators - like colleagues or whanau.  The grocery list etc that is live and can be checked off.  A keep safe space for quick little notes and links...capture image of text and have it stripped off and presented as plain text.   Great tool to use to support the learner focus closer on selected text.

Gmail: settings is the place to go.  Archiving of emails rather than deleting is a better option to clear inbox.   Having inbox emails as individual or collection of email conversations is something to consider when setting up gmail.  Labelling is a good way to organise work flow according to a group of people or individuals.  Emails will still come through inbox OR you can send directly to label file.

Google Calendar
Handles multiple accounts.  You do not have to share you calendar when inviting individuals to events. 
One Tab app - for those who have issues with having wayyyy to many tabs open.   You can use this to have all the tabs
Bookmarks bar - click on lock and drag onto bookmark bar...delete?  Double finger tap then delete!

Hapara: using dashboard for quick check-ins re 'Is your doc in the right folder' have this on screen acknowledging students as they post in correct folder.

Hangout - put it into practice. 
We made a first attempt to run our own hangouts.  Some learnings from this :)  The default on quicktime screen recording is to have the mic turned off...turn this on or sound won't be captured!  Be ready with what you want to say...do the thinking away from camera if the purpose of hangout is to reflect.  Mute your own mic when you are not sharing - however NOT if you are the person doing screen recording.  Thanks to Sally, Jan and Marie who shared beautifully today via hangouts.
Thanks Dorothy and Gerhard