Pasifika Youth Keynote no.1 @NZEI Pasifika Fono 2024

 

At the NZEI National Pasifika Fono 2024, the stage was set not by a traditional keynote speaker, but by a captivating ensemble of cultural performers hailing from our very own schools in Auckland. These remarkable students, exuding confidence and pride in their Pasifika heritage, left a lasting impression on all in attendance.

Their performances were not merely displays of talent; they were powerful reminders of the profound role that dance and song play in preserving our cultural heritage and language. As I watched them take the stage with grace and poise, I couldn't help but reflect on the significance of ensuring that these traditions continue to thrive in our schools.

Indeed, the presence of these talented performers prompted a moment of reflection for me. What would happen if we neglected to prioritize the teaching and celebration of our cultural heritage in our educational institutions? The answer is clear: we risk losing an invaluable connection to our roots - the rich tapestry of our Pasifika identity.

As educators and community members we need to remain intentional in our efforts to provide time and space for cultural expression in our schools. Whether through dance, song, or other forms of artistic expression, we must create environments where students feel empowered to embrace and celebrate their heritage. If you are already celebrating language weeks, how might this be grown further? How can you grow the knowledge and experiences of your staff and leadership? Who on staff could lead a staff meeting about the celebrated culture? How are we developing leadership in these areas of culture and identity?

But our responsibility doesn't end at the school gates. We must also call upon churches, community groups, and other stakeholders to join us in this mission. By working together, we can ensure that Pasifika culture continues to thrive, in our classrooms and throughout our communities.

I hope that this space often labelled as 'Polyfest' or 'Fiafia' will become more and more part of the priority learning areas for tamariki across Aotearoa.

Te Tai Tokerau Teacher's Summit

 Te Tai Tokerau Teacher Summit News

Kia Ora. I had the privilege of leading a 40 minute workshop at our Manaiakalani Teacher Summit held in Te Tai Tokerau - Bay of Islands. I led our team through a small presentation that resulted in teachers from across NZ producing this together. Here's my intro I gave to advertise my workshoip. Maybe you can join us next year? You could lead a workshop even! Go here to find out about other presentations on offer as you dream about 2024 and your own or staff PD opportunities. 21 years of teaching at Point England School, 1 year as the Pasifika lead for Manaiakalani, 3 terms as an In Class Facilitator. I am of Croatian and Samoan heritage. Bilingual speaker of Samoan and English. For 6 of 21 years I was the e-Learning teacher. Part of this role was to lead a team of children and whole staff in the daily production of the ‘Pt England News Network - PENN’. Celebration of the small and big steps are important in village life of raising children. I am very excited to be able to share how we’ve celebrated our students and whanau in our community.

Farewell my beloved

 

 

 I am deeply grateful for the 21 incredible years I’ve spent at Pt England School. Malo lava Russell, tele naua ou fa'ata'ita'iga matagofie mo a'u!  Ae maise fo'i le au faigaluega o le aoga, aiga ma fanau, measina o le tatou nu'u o GI.

This community has been more than a workplace—it has been a family where I’ve grown as a teacher and a person. Fair to say all my milestones as an individual and Tele'a family have been connected to this place!   

The shared journey with colleagues, students, and families has been a privilege and an honor. I will always cherish the relationships, memories, and the countless lessons we’ve learned together. Thank you for the love, trust, and unwavering support throughout this amazing chapter of my life. Thank you my dear friend Sandy Lagitupu for this film, you're such a star!

PES - I LOVE YOU!

Filifili se tusi - pick a book!

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  What did I learn that increased my understanding of the kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme ?

Looking again at our provisions for learners around the apps in Chrome. Do these follow through to being able to gauge any progress for our learners? Can our students understand what these show? In google docs etc there are features to support students to engage more with reading, take some time to see how they are working already in classrooms and how you might adapt to suit your learners and reading goals.

• What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading?

Take time to work through the different elements of a text set. Which is the base text? What different perspectives do I want the text set to cover? Text sets are great when they are multimodal! Think again around grouping of your learners. Move away from always having reading ages put together, what about their interests? In our provision for reading we can communicate clearly that we acknowledge them as individuals by way of text selection and grouping.

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• What did I learn that could be shared within my wider community, with either colleagues, or whānau/aiga?  This is for ME not a directive from sessions...but where sessions have landed my thinking re selecting text.

Take more notice of our learners attitude, what has influenced this? What mess
age have they received from years of schooling? Community? Homes? Social media? Stop and capture what our learners feel about reading, their interests, their influencers. Use this to start from to select texts that engage, excite my learners.

 

Mana Ako Club Coordinator

2022 opened with plans to take on full time study and a discipleship course.  I had committed to being a coordinator for the Mana Ako Club.  A club that supported our senior learners with two afternoons of homework completion as well as learning across the curriculum.

By late January plans had changed, one to being put on pause and the other being a declined application!   What?!!   The same week things changed I returned to my workspace in support of my senior management.  I carried out the role of Acting AP for a term and a half.

My constant so far this year has been my connection to the Point England Students by way of the MAC - Mana Ako Club!

As a school teacher it's close to your ideal set up - a class of 15 at the most! Tending to learning needs as they arise out of the weekly homework set.   Adding in learning of life skills that are guided by the team at journal surf.  Life skills mostly come out of key competencies and social/emotional learning outcomes as promoted by the NZ curriculum.

The range of learners attending MAC have varying needs to support, one thing in common is that they are all very comfortable.  Comfortable in learning where they are in learning levels and where they want to be.  That the varying levels reflects simply where they're at, not their lack bur rather a work on, an area to grow.

This year we've continually re-visited the practice of having a 'growth mindset' v's 'fixed'.    It has proven to be very powerful.

I am blessed to have had this opportunity to work in MAC, to see children work in an environment without the pressure of huge class numbers.   Time devoted to social and emotional growth that lends to having learners who are comfortable to make mistakes, ask for help and try again.

One lockdown, year 8 prize giving down and a new year to look to!

Hoorays and Halleluah's on the highest! What a way to end 2021. A few weeks with local schools being closed for a bit due to covid, uncertainty grew! We are so thankful that we have made it this far, got through a prize giving - 'Awards Assembly', Year 8 Graduation 'Year 8 Farewell Assembly'. Our thanks can be heard in this himene that we learned this year during our leadership camp earlier in the year. When one of our students fell ill, it was what we sang daily along with our student led karakia. Thanks to ALL who have supported the Team 5 whanau this year. We sing this with you all in mind. Fa'afetai Iesu, Fa'afetai!

Lockdown in the life of Team 5 2021

 

A lockdown in the life of Team 5! Nau mai haere mai! Here's a quick capture of our fantastic team of learners and teachers. Lockdown saw our teachers and students travel through different themes and language weeks to enhance our learning online. A big big KIA ORA to Team 5 for showing 'Karawhiua' everyday! Turning up and DOING the mahi - Karawhiua! We know that this lockdown has brought us many fun days of learning together online. We look forward to the days ahead where we will be able to sit together, reflect and share of all the good!

Reading Inquiry - Strip it back

 

10 years plus into the online world of sharing our student and teacher learning online.  Where are we now?  Time for a stocktake I say!

Sitting with my mentor I had the opportunity to look through my teaching team and our provisions on line from planning through to the learner and whanau.   It became very clear that the baseline of these provisions were somewhat murky...hard to see.    An example: WALTS were stated, it took travelling to slides 3-4 before arriving at a task that focused on WALT.   

While likely the students knew where to find the basics of:

1. WALT: what we are learning today

2. TEXT SET: what we are reading/watching/listening to this week

3. FEEDBACK & FEED FORWARD: for/from student, teacher and whanau

It was not clear enough with my lense of 'Team Leader', 'Mum' hat on.   Time to reset.

At a recent PD for PES staff and also a cluster PD with Rebecca this was a list that my team came up as definite work-ons, must haves for our weekly delivery in reading.  We decided to make a real effort of providing for the following in a limited number of slides.  Explicit teaching also about why we are having more than one text - explaining T shaped literacy.  Trying for 5-6 slides at the most with the following:

*1. Summary (story web, back plan - give a word count)

2. Word work (focus on vocabulary)

3. Comprehension (literal/inferential)

*4. WALT - the problem area (reorganisation/evaluation type questions)

5. Create - mindful of gear and length of time to complete 

6. Showing of additional texts found by reader 

As a team we are sharing fortnightly on a single WALT, text set and follow up activities.  This has been really helpful for the team. Not only are we sharing but picking up ideas from one another that are successful so far this term.  We are trying the same with our maths.   Goal: to get back to a baseline that covers the basics of good quality learning and teaching for our students, teachers and whanau.

Noi'ia from Rotuma! Rotuman language week

Noa’ia! That’s hello in the Rotuman language. My information report today will share with you some important facts about Rotuma. 

 Rotuma is located in the Southern hemisphere. To the north of Rotuma is Tuvalu, the east is Samoa, south is Fiji. West of Rotuma is Vanuatu. There are less than 2,000 people who live on Rotuma. Many more live on the local island of Fiji. Maybe this is due to more opportunities for work and education. 

 The languages spoken on Rotuma are english and rotuman. Sadly the Rotuman language is classified as endangered. There are now only 15,000 speakers of the Rotuman language in the world. 

 Rotuma and it’s language can teach us how important it is to hold onto what is our culture, language and heritage. Rotuman people are showing the need to keep our language and cultures alive. Join a club or start a group where you can practice using the language of your whanau more often. Are there already places that are using your language - join them! Create and make space for these precious opportunities to keep our languages and cultures alive.

Go here for more information on our language weeks in Aotearoa.

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.

 

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!

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!

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

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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