Engage is a self regulation programme for improve life- course outcome. This was run through Manaiakalani. Lots of practical ideas were shared on how to help and teach learners to self regulate.
The games were given were divided into the engage domains.
I am keen to try some of these games with my New Entrant class and build on them as the year progresses.
Panmure Bridge School along with Glen Taylor School joined to have a Reading professional development day. Leading the day was Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey.
Some key points and highlights:
Link to maths with Talk Moves
Link to phonics with Yolanda Sorryl
Ideas shared around how to do daily Shared Reading
Good shared reading alleviates the anxiety around guided reading.
What was reaffirmed and resonated with me especially as this is something we have previously discussed in our junior school team meetings:
* No round robin
* reading within a colour band
* Digital modelling books to refer back to -rewindable learning / Ako Ano
* Good universal LI's for Ako Ano and follow up activities.
* importance of multiple opportunities to read
*Big Book/ Shared Book
This also linked really well with HLP's
Interesting - No modelling book in NE - I think by having a digital modelling book where the learners can hear and see cancels out this theory.
My focus is on how do I ensure these HLP's are integrated and embedded into a classroom setting and support teachers in doing so. Coming out of lockdown the emphasis on teacher and student wellbeing is of utmost importance. Creating a well balanced non threatening environment will need to be carefully considered.
Step 1 - less team meetings. maybe every alternate week. This would give teachers time to breathe, time to focus on learners and creating a well balance programme that incorporate HLP's.
Step 2 - 1 Team meeting, 1 learning area.
Step 3 - Highlight and discuss HLP's for that learning area. Look at research, evidence based practice and teacher professional contributions within the team.
By going slow, being thorough and sharing of ideas I hopw we alleviate stress and everyone feels well supported.
My role during lockdown is to support teachers develop an online programme that is streamlined but meets the needs of our junior learners as they do not have devices that they take home. To make a decision on how online learning will look in the junior school there were a few factors to consider:
* Current expertise and capability of learners
* Access to a device
* Ability of Teachers using GSuite
* Communication with whanau
* Possible home circumstances of learners
* Learners ability to access email
We decided to keep it simple and streamlined with somewhat similar throughout the junior school. The aim of this is to encourage the junior students to visit other class sites and attempt their activities as well. A decision was made to use quicktime and screen castify. This would be used to:
* Record a message to students explaining how online teaching would work
* Teacher recording a story/ poem and maybe a Maths activity.
Having so many new teachers that are new to using G Suite, I have attempted to make step by step instructions for them to follow. With no microphone, step by step instructions were done using google docs. I hope to update this using screen castify when I have a new laptop. One major positive is definitely that Teachers are receiving a crash course on using GSuite tools. I also made step by step instructions on how to upload to site, publishing sites, blogging, and slide decks.
I have asked all teachers to familiarise themselves with Google fundamentals even if they don't actually take the test but only work through the modules.
The ever changing face of learning environment pedagogy and the redevelopment of the Tamaki area has led to the Manaiakalani cluster principals making a trip down to Christchurch in order to see how schools have rebuilt after the devastating Christchurch earthquakes. We were able to see some amazing building with sound pedagogy and research invested into making these learning environments sustainable and meet the needs of the school community.
The schools we visited were Rawhiti School, Marshland school and Rolleston College.
Some key ideas I liked:
School cultural narrative
Assembly areas within a hub
library areas within a hub
A seperate whare for kapahaka and a meeting room
Dedicated are for headphones
coloured boxes for reading books
Climbing rocks
Hobbit hill and slide
Bike trail
It was decided that because I have:
1 BT year 2
1 3rd Year Teacher
1 Teacher returning to New Zealand and
1 experienced Teacher new to New Zealand,
I will be walking for the first part of the year or until a new class needs to be opened.
This first week my focus has been on welcoming the new teachers and assisting them with setting up their classrooms and the importance of building a good relationship with their students and wider school community.
My second focus was the importance recognising our learners culture and the important role of the Treaty of Waitangi and why and how it must be used and adhered to in a classroom environment.
To help them become acquainted with life at Panmure Bridge I gave each new teacher a welcome to the junior school document. LINK
I also decided to keep a virtual diary to show how I spend my time during theses days. LINK
My second focus was getting them acquainted with Assessment protocols and procedures. I explained how all these would be accessible on our team minutes for them to see at anytime. LINK
This week we were welcomed back to school for 2020. After meeting the new members of staff and Richard Johnston giving us the 'State of the Nation' address we had our Maths professional development was with Marie Hirst.
Session 1: We started with a revision of some warm up activities and a chance to get our brains working again.
Warm up:
Alphabet letters are given a number and bring it down to 1 digit. Look for your corresponding meaning.
Some key learnings in this session and ideas for weekly planning:
10 principles of effective maths pedagogy.
Fluid groups for target teaching. Monday - Needs based maybe Tuesday and Wednesday - collaborative problem solving Thursday - Needs based Friday as required.
Strategy Teaching Model Bk 3 Getting started. Make connectionswith number within the same lesson.
Something to do: Make magnetic tens frames for trs. Number line 1-100 on whiteboard. Number 1-20 on tr station.
Make sure you use the language that will be needed and put up on Vocabulary wall.
Do LI at the end… what have we learnt today i.e. to split numbers to make a tidy ten.
Robyn Anderson has a think board on a google doc, can share so Trs can make a set for the class.
Session 2: How to set up a successful Maths programme
Learning environment should have some if not ALL of these:
Annotated clock
NESW
Thermometer
Calendar
Height chart.- different facts e.g. red kangaroo
Number line 1-100 on whiteboard
Angles by the door
Horizontal vertical by door.
Maps with focus questions or pictures.
Am I trying to complicate things?
Am I trying to always think of the next big thing and trying to reinvent the wheel instead of keeping it simple?
For next year I decided I am actually work backwards. Im going to use the Burst and bubble speaking frames as a guide to focus my inquiry path. This could also possible be my titles for my blog posts.
I am also thinking of asking Robyn Anderson our CoL in school teacher about whether these speaking frames could be used as a means to assist the new teachers we will have in the junior team.
This has been a busy term having my own class but also using part of my management day to work in Room 1 showing the year 1 learners and their teacher how to use Explain Everything and its many tools.
It is important for the learners to go into next year where they will be year 2 with some basic iPad skills.
The ones I deemed important are:
How to hold and move with the iPads: hug hold, always hold in your lap if on the mat and leave on a desk when not in use. How to put it on charge and remove it from charge without damaging any chords.
Basic skills: How to find and navigate their class site, how to swipe and clear iPad after using it, how to take a photo using their camera, how to access apps on their iPads not on their class site.
Explain Everything: how to open and EE link, start a new EE, give an EE a title, upload to their drive. We also worked on taking a photo and changing the background colour, accessing the pencil and draw tool and how to add more slides.
The learners are picking up these skills really fast and are attempting to help their teacher become more adept at using them. The concern I have is that over time, less time is being spent mastering these skills during the week thus only leaving them using EE's on a Thursday. One way I could tackle this is to make EE's and add to the class site allowing learners an opportunity to hone their skills over the course of a week.
Whether this will be bough will only be determined next year when they move onto a new class and they are able to use the basic skills taught without the teacher having to reteach it.
I'm back in the classroom! It is exciting to be able to implement some of my learning this year including learning through play, digital curriculum and Tapasa.
What I am most concerned with is ensuring I create a good balance of learning through play and the development of oral language skills with the fundamentals of learning and teaching i.e. pre reading reading and writing skills.
I want to ensure that the learners are transitioned to school and not suddenly faced with formal teaching which in many cases will be the exact opposite of what our learners would have experienced in an ECE environment.
As we are in the last term of school my planning will be around the key competencies and developing this in our Tamariki. I am currently looking at how I can adequately reflect this in my planning and accomodate this in my classroom.
For my class site and planning, I have divided the term into 2 week blocks focussing on 1 big book and having all learning through play, Digital activities and games/ pe sessions related to the book.
The morning session will be focus time with some pre - phonics work, key competencies, maths and pre reading and writing skills.
Some ideas:
Pre phonics - guess the sound, tap the rhythm, I spy
Key competencies - Relating to other, Managing self
Maths - colours, shapes, 1 to 5 number knowledge, same but different
Reading - listening and enjoyment, how to hold a book, telling own stories using pictures
Writing - name, fine motor skills, crossing midline
Digital - Finding the class site, how to hold the ipad
My class site is simple but hopefully effective:
Back to school for Term 4 this week and a huge emphasis on assessment protocols. This data is used to write our reports as well as to inform groups at the start of the new year. Teaching will continue to happen after testing/ assessment week with emphasis on consolidating knowledge and reinforcing critical thinking and resilience. Having 2 new teachers in the team since the start of the year, special attention is given to why we have the protocols and how to administer the assessments.
It was interesting to hear the views expressed by teachers on assessments and why and how they are administered. The rationale for having these protocols and testing will be addressed at Team meeting and a buddy system encouraged so we can all help and support each other.
It has made me think more about what testing are we doing?
Why are we doing it?
Can it be streamlined and or adapted? - This would be for school purpose testing and not Manaiakalani testing.
I have made a note to talk more about this with Marie Hirst our Maths Facilitator and ask her assistance in unpacking our current Maths assessment schedule.
At the beginning of the year I approached Robyn Anderson our in school CoL teacher on how she could assist me with supporting the teachers in the junior school. I found it really hard at the start because I had a full class of year 1's, 1 year BT teacher, 1 year 2 BT teacher. In term 2 we also employed a new to NZ teacher who was experienced but needed support with understanding and navigating the New Zealand curriculum as well as digital technology.
Robyn and I planned for her to join us each term for 1 team meeting and then for her to meet with each teacher as a follow up within the same week. Robyn and I also met separately twice a term to ensure that the teachers were heading in the correct direction and how we further needed to support them. My role was to support them with curriculum knowledge, advise them, suggest reading material and evidence based research. Robyn assisted with helping them record their inquiry, suggest blogs etc from other CoL teachers that might have a similar inquiry and to help if inquiry had changed and how to reflect this.
This process has helped extensively in relieving the pressure as well as Robyn being an excellent model for clear, succinct , in depth inquiry.
Today Mrs Salmon, our Reading Recovery Teacher and I had an in depth meeting and look at our current reading wedge graphs and how our resources meet the need of the learners and the teachers. We have noticed that some of our learners are staying for an extended length of time on Magenta books. This is not the pre- reading stage but actually reading every magenta book we have as a resource. As this is a concern we have decided to cull all readers that does not actually lend itself to successful reading, namely readers with one word on a page, readers that do not use punctuation correctly and readers that are not actually telling a story.
Knowing our learners start with a significant lower literacy knowledge that most of New Zealand, we looked at the Learning Progressions with specific focus on Starting school:
To know when to move learners on our criteria was set around CAPS specifically:
Early Reading Behaviours Looking at the pictures, memorising text, reading from left to right and pointing to each word.
These are all early reading behaviours and the steppingstone for comprehension would be the pictures and retelling the story no matter how basic. Pictures play an important role in problem solving especially tricky words and therefore the images MUST relate to the story. We also stated that the learner should be recognising between 10 to 20 words.
Learnings/ Aha moments
Our learners are spending a long time on Magenta books and not roaming around books as pre reading.
Ramblings/ Rumblings
Are we doing our learners a disservice in not moving them along sooner and are we staying in the deficit thinking model?
Today we had Marie Hirst in school helping us with our PD on Maths. Our focus was Effective Maths Warm ups that included Daily Maths. Picture number talks, Odd one out, Solve emoji and Same but different to name a few.
My New Entrant class will be starting soon, and so my focus on oral language and incorporating the 'talk' into my Maths programme more, lends itself to the same but different task and number talks. I am also considering how I have done my Maths Calendar work in the past and how by simplifying the Daily Maths Wall initially, how we could build a strong knowledge on number.
My second train of thought was HOW AM I GOING TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN MY SYNDICATE WITH INCORPORATING THESE ACTIVITIES INTO THEIR OWN CLASSES.
one way to assist teachers could be to ask each teacher to share at team meeting one warmup they have tried, what worked, what didnt, how did they adapt and or extend it for their learners and digital capabilities.
Learning/ Aha moments:
Remember that every moment is a teachable moment. Using the correct terminology sets our learners up for success,
Ramblings/ Rumblings
How to effectively us maths warmup for maintenance, reasoning, maths talk, and fluency.
Tapasa is a cultural competency framework for teachers of pacific children. Some important aspects that I have learnt through this PD run by Jeremy:
The Va - the sacred connection between people. Love, Service, family and spirituality.
Jeremy suggested we use this language with parents: The Va : I want to establish the va with you OR the purpose of this meeting is to establish the va. In Samoan can you also say Tauhi va.
Tapasa is all about:
* Cultural confidence
* Connections
* Culture
* Consistency
* Collaboration / collabor action.
My goal is to use this language more with Pacific Island families.
Today was my first day of having to work with a facilitator and the principal in outlining a plan to implement a professional development plan for the school. The process helped me focus on what I believe the fundamental ideas and foundations in Maths are that will help our learners achieve accelerated shift as well as improve and develop a positive attitude towards mathematics for both teachers and learners.
This reaffirmed the importance of building strong relationships and knowing, in this case, the staff as well as our learners. The right fit, the right product, the right motivation, the right balance. I look forward to not only working closely with Marie Hirst but also learning from her.
This term sees me stepping away from the classroom and supporting an experienced teacher, new to New Zealand in navigating the New Zealand curriculum and embrace the Manaiakalani Cluster pedagogy of Learn, Create and Share.
Balancing learning to get to know the curriculum as well as assisting with learning how to use technology on a daily basis is not an easy task. My main focus is to show the important must know items first. This is to ensure that daily communication and administration can be completed and everyone is always in the know about what is happening. I will also be working through the the google educator certification with the new to NZ teacher.
