Showing posts with label Team5@pes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Team5@pes. Show all posts

Friday, 24 April 2020

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.  


Wednesday, 1 April 2020

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!

Thursday, 26 March 2020

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!!

Tuesday, 24 March 2020

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.


Saturday, 31 December 2016

2016 the year of 'So'o Tau'au' - To join shoulders

So'o Tau'au, 2016 sign off from SchoolTV on Vimeo.


2016 has been everything BUT normal!   We had changes to the timetable weekly, family, new baby :) teacher's on leave and leaving, Papa's and a Mama passing -  and in all this our kids stayed amazing!  Stayed normal!  Why??
We knew how and why - to 'So'o Tau'au'.

So'o tau'au is a Samoan saying that you typically hear in times of challenge.  Families and elders will visit those in a time of trial to offer support, this statement will be made.    Typically in our team we have sayings that help to embed our school wide korero.   Rather than a growling - it's a prompt to re-focus using our korero - saying.   This we carried through our learning spaces, in and out of the classroom - Te Reo, camps/field trips, tech@Tamaki College, testing, tuakana teina, visiting speakers, fundraisers, health talks and more!

Early in term 2 I shared this Samoan saying with our team during one of our morning karakia times.   It became something we used year long along with all other korero.   With all the changes that were expected and especially those that were not - this saying was one we held fast to.

Signing off for 2016 - I would like to wish all the students and teaching staff of Team 5 a fantastic festive season!    Well done on another amazing year, you've all contributed to making this year one of positive difference.

Looking forward to what 2017 will bring - opportunity to again 'So'o Tau'au'.

Ia manuia lava le tausaga fou, faamanuia atu le Atua ia te outou uma.

Mrs Andrea Bakulich Tele'a

Simon says this about 'So'o Tau'au'