COVID19 level 3

COVID19 level 3

School is open

The signs are up, the desks are labelled the floor is taped, to ensure the 1m physical distancing, the new staff roster and daily timetable completed.

We’re ready to welcome back our tamaraki group of level 3 COVID 19, 2020.

My usual first day of term ritual of standing at the school gate getting high fives and hugs from the children and knowing smiles from parents of  “they’re yours now” before they head off to their coffee groups was different today.

There was, the smile but keep your distance, this is what 2 m really looks children, then the reassurance and explanations to some the parents before they give a concerned look before they hurried off to their work places. Oh what a difference from day 1 of 2020, 13 weeks ago.

A thought to ponder

A staff member on TOD commented that with the slower pace of life and been able to focus on teaching without all the other distractions together with the level of student engagement on line, has given her back the joy of teaching again.

So what do we need to learn from this, so we keep our young teachers in this career energised and with the passion that they started with?

Todays Gratitude

Having the Manaiakalani outreach programme over the last two years, has given NBC a renewed direction, a journey that allows 21-century skills and competencies to thrive.

A positive of this unique time in our history is that is has shown our community how MKO pedagogy driven through connectedness, has been visible and ubiquitous empowering their children through agency to grow knowledge. No marketing or persuasion of mine could have done it better.

So unknowingly, COVID 19 has shown the Manaiakalani pathway to be again a success story, which hopefully given our leaders food for thought for the direction of future educational policy!

DFI 6 Collaborative sites

Collaborative sites.

Today felt as though I had a some scaffolding to hang onto as we were building on our site knowledge from last week.  Each week until now has been new knowledge for me so to have to time to go over, and refine my skills and consolidate my knowledge on google site was appreciated. The more you delve into google site tools,the more I realise the options available and where I can challenge myself.

I enjoyed looking at other sites and critiquing them today, it gave me a clearer direction of the model  I'd like to achieve, as a visual person this was one of my goals.

 Today  as we worked in small groups  on our site goals,  with  the conversations naturally flowing, with questions and answers coming from all,  I realised everyone was a learner and teacher and I relaxed, which is the best sate to learn in for long term memory. I enjoy this supportive of type of facilitation.

The Manaiakalani pedagogy highlighted this week was CONNECTED, this is so  needed and amplified in our present lockdown.
I was reflecting on the days after the earthquake,10 years ago when our pupils were out of school for 4 weeks, how far we have come. My home landline was the only form of communication to my community and staff I had for weeks. Fast forward a decade, every family is connected to a teacher daily, we zoom and google meet with our staff and learning has continued, in a new format.
Hopefully our connectedness  isn't fast forwarded by event in the next decade, but the power of  being able to network so readily has opened up our world.

I will now go and review our school sites to ensure the visual appeal and site functionality under the below criteria are meet, enabling us to be as connected as possible.

DFI 4 Dealing with Data

Dealing with data.

The pedagogy we looked at today is Sharing which is in our human DNA its who we are as a race we love to share; we’ve gone from smoke signal to YouTube!

In this digital age students have access  to a global audience across many platforms, Manaiakalani has chosen to uses blogging to share and respond.

Blogging has many advantages as seen below,

 but  some parents may need guidance and information on security and as the fear of the world been able to see their child’s work or  them being let onto the www is beyond their safety net.

As with my just in time learning, that I’m doing presently with Google meet, sites and forms, hopefully the need and authentic way that students are using blogging with this lockdown may enlighten some to the powerful learning tool that blogging is.

Today I realised the vast amount of information that can be accessed by the blogger and enjoyed using this data to create a spreadsheet.

The short cuts and tools avaiable in sheets like many in the Google suite is amazing.

Given the time to explore is appreciated in our DFI day.

A fun tool is Google MyMaps;

it’s an exciting app that allows you to plan journeys

in a customised way, while we’re all in lockdown have some fun and plan you next holiday. ! 

DFI 5 Making learning visible and sites

DFI 5  Making learning visible  & Collaborate sites.

The pedagogy of making learning visible is one that I have been striving for across our school, it gives clarity, transparency on many levels and is an enabler of success.

In the classroom from a learning perspective, "guess what the teacher is thinking or wanting " needs
to go and make way for  a very clear visual scaffolded approach to learning that considers the learner and their style of learning more.

Making  the default  always to be visible allows parents and whanau to access their child learning and become more involved.  In our present situation  with online learning, a parent emailed me with the comment how excited she was to be able to see what her child needed to learn and explore and her child's response to it.

When students see the, what, how and why, learning gains more purpose and gives them more control over setting their own goals and targets  and success criteria.
With students too making any part of the learn create share visible, to an audience there is an increased response, which inspires a learner to continue.
Hatte's top influencer of learning was feedback,  the way we are structure the feedback with positive thoughtful helpful  further enhances this.
 Visibility for the teacher comes with the use of Hapara again a tool that allows for instant feedback, and is invaluable to ensure students are at the  right place at the right time!


I really enjoyed searching  through the multimodle sites, which engages the learner in so many ways.
The hook has always  resonated with me, finding that for your learner I believe is the key to a great learning relationship.

The new learning of creating our own sites, was exciting, and a learning curve, but the unlimited possibilities to engage learning is unlimited.
This is perfect timing for the world we are presently in.
I created an ANZAC site  which I shared with our Year 8 teacher, to give to her students and give me feedback!


 


 

DFI Day 3 online: Media

Being a visual, hands on person ( and social)  I found our  DFI on line challenging, which is good for me to experience as so many students may be going through the same feelings also with new learning that they are unfamiliar with.

For me there were two visuals that stood out, the one below reminded me of the proverb
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. - Confucius













If we really believe in this then the question Dorothy asked   "why does the opportunity to create slow down as children get older"?"  really happen? Ill be posing that to my team.


The 6C's  below of Deep Learning also includes creativity, so  I ask why aren't tasks for reflection or follow up  on students thinking and learning, allowing their own creativity to come out ?  Another thought to ponder for  my team.




Amazing I have a utube channel! I need to revisit the playlist , but I can link in videos to slides and work I'm presenting.
I've used google meet before but hadn't set one up, so I practiced this with another collegue, so far so good, but in these days of ioslation  I'm finding myself sitting at your computer for hours, on google meet and zoom, perhaps everyone is excited about their new way of contact!!