Interesting times up ahead

New Zealand will soon officially be on lockdown. Only essential workers will now be able to go to work. Families will stay within their 'bubbles'. So many changes are happening now due to the spread of Covid-19 around the world.

New Zealand's Prime Minister announced on Monday 23 March, that the nation will be on Alert Level 4 from Wednesday 26 March for four weeks.

My first initial thoughts when I learnt of the lockdown was MY FAMILY!!!! After I phoned my mum and discussed how our family will prepare for the lockdown, supplies shopping for my siblings and their children, I then set out to prepare my class for the lockdown and working from home for the next four weeks.

All teachers in our school made learning packs. I was not as frantic as the other teachers as most of my learners take their devices home and I knew we would continue to collaborate while they will be home.

In class before the end of the day on Monday, I tried to organise a hangout with my students by sending my class a hangout invitation. That was a total fail and it didn't work. Therefore, I sent an email to Fiona and she quickly responded and we set up a meet up on Wednesday morning to set up how I could do hangouts with my class during the lockdown.

I am so glad Fiona came to the rescue because she helped myself and Mr Nath in Room 10 set up how we could have hangouts by setting up the links for each class and giving us tips on how to set up our home learning pages on our class site. She also gave us very important Dos and Don'ts about having hangouts.

One of the Dos is to prepare a little recording of yourself to remind the students about the hangouts and what preparation they need to do before coming to the hangout. These recordings should be on the class site the night before.

This is my very first recording. You can tell that, as I was speaking, I was also trying to think about what to say next. I suppose the whole nervousness about remote teaching is also evident in this recording.

Teaching from home for the next four weeks. WATCH THIS SPACE!