Diary of a teacher on lockdown

The challenge for today in our Fun Week Challenges was our cooking challenge. Our class had a meet at 9.30 am in the morning to discuss what we were going to do and also the recording/videoing aspects of our challenge. After the 9.30 am meet, all students and teachers then set off to do their cooking or baking. 

I had a staff meeting right after the meet so I did not make a start on my baking until after the meeting. It was definitely a challenge to bake pineapple pies before our 1.30 online shared lunch meet but I was able to finish with 15 minutes to spare for lunch and to catch my breath. 

While baking, I also knew that my class were cooking or baking and probably rushing around the kitchen like I was. I had a little help from my son and after hearing the students share, I also realised they too had help from whanau at home. Collaboration in the home at its best. 

My entry for today's challenge were Pineapple Pies. I have had the recipe for more than 10 years. It was passed on to me from some sister missionaries and I have made so many modifications to the recipe to suit my liking. I am very fussy with my pastry. I like the pastry very flaky and bakes until very golden brown. The filling is custard which has to be Edmonds custard with crushed pineapples and pineapple chunks also because I like eating pineapples. That is why I use the pineapple chunks as well. The end product were delicious, flaky and light pineapple pies. Probably the best I have made so far even though I was in a rush when I was making them.

Our online shared lunch meet was fun. The students shared their cooking and baking.  Other food entires were: frooze balls, hash browns, cookies, chicken curry, donuts, burgers, Maori bread, chocolate cake, mini curry pies. 

It was a great way to end the day sharing our cooking and baking. I am so proud of the effort my students are putting into these challenges and also grateful to their parents for their support in their children's activities. 

Diary of a teacher on lockdown

Term 3, Week 10. My class were meant to be on camp this week but due to alert levels, we have had to change our dates to Term 4. Regardless I still wanted my students to have some fun this week. Therefore the Room 7 Fun Week came into action.

Totally understanding the need for my tamariki to have some other type of learning activities while learning from home. We finished off our Project Based Learning for our current unit in Week 9 and kick started our Fun Week today. 

The objective is to have some hands on fun activities to do from home and be creative and innovative. Each day, there is a different activity to do but the goal is to give it a go and of course blog about your fun idea and creation. 

A while ago, I shared a poster with my class which emphasised the positive effects lockdown learning can have on our tamariki. There is often the discussion that students are not learning as much while learning from home. That not physically being at school and learning in school will have negative effects on their learning. However, this poster opened up another perspective.

Here it is: WHAT IF THEY ARE AHEAD?

would be very keen to have a discussion with any of my fellow teaching colleagues around the motu about how you have found the engagement of your learners during this lockdown. What innovative ideas did you put into action to engage your learners during your class meets? 

Supporting my colleagues with their Teaching as Inquiry

In my role as a CoL Across School teacher, I have been working with my colleagues on supporting them with their practice in the classroom using digital tools and also their Teaching as Inquiry. 

In the professional discussions I have been having with my colleagues, I have realised that teachers are at different levels of understanding when it comes to Teaching as Inquiry. We have the experienced teachers who have been inquiring into their practice for some years and have received a lot of professional development in how to carry out a Teaching as Inquiry into their practice, then we have our PRT teachers who are starting with their Teaching as Inquiry. 

I believe as teachers, we are always inquiring into our practice because of the nature of our work. We plan, teach, reflect, change, implement and the cycles goes on. However, there are more practices we can implement into our practice when we are conducting a Teaching as Inquiry. 

Teaching as Inquiry is a journey that we as teachers travel to learn and reflect on how we can utilise our role as teachers to accelerate the learning of our tamariki. If we know something works, do we still need to inquire into this? Or are we taking a safe route in our practice by repeating something we are doing in our teaching practice which we know works for learning? 

My advise is do not be afraid to go into the unknown. Identify the challenge you want to address in the learning of your tamariki and inquire into how you can improve and change this challenge. 

I created this slide presentation to help my colleagues with planning and actioning their Teaching as Inquiry. I am adding more details as I work through this year with hope, come end of this year, this slide presentation will be ready to be utilised by my colleagues from Term 1, 2022 when I am on maternity leave. (Yes, I am going on maternity leave beginning of Term 1, 2022).

If you have time to go through the slides, I welcome your feedback in improving the slide presentation. 

Diary of a teacher on lockdown

We are now several weeks into this lockdown. The daily meets are happening, the normal attendees are attending and then there are some who we are trying to engage with to attend the meets. 

One of my non attendees is a lovely student in my class. On the first week of lockdown, this student attended some of the meets then she stopped. I was getting very worried and phone calls were made, emails sent and the reply was "Yes Miss, I will come on". That didn't really happen. However, although this student is not attending the daily meets, she is actually doing the required work. She is sending through work that we are currently working on. Blogging her tasks and its almost as if she is getting information from the meets without being there.

I reflected on this and realised. This student is able to do all the required work because of the way the Home Learning page is set up with the required work and I am also sending email reminders to students of the work they are required to work on every day. I also add screencast recordings at the end of the day to wrap up the day and just reflect and acknowledge the students for their dedication and effort in our meets and work. 

I suppose the objective of this post is to remind ourselves as teachers about the importance of having a class site which is easy to navigate and while we like to play website designer and make our sites flash, we also have to keep in mind that the site should be easily navigated by the students and their parents. There is already a lot of anxiety attached to being on lockdown and adding more anxiety by having to navigate a complicated class site is not helpful for our learners and their whanau. 

Site tips:

On the landing page of your class site, have a very visible HOME LEARNING button which links to your Home Learning page 

Keep the site simple and easy to navigate

Have visuals to guide the students (too much text is uninviting)

Be present on the Home Learning page. What I mean by this is, have photos of yourself or recordings of you talking. I believe it helps with connecting with our tamariki while we are not seeing them face to face

Update the Home Learning Page daily. Some people might think, this is too repetitive and I am having to copy the same thing. For me, updating daily with announcements, meet times, recordings of myself keeps the Home Learning page active. The students will visit the Home Learning page and be updated if there is a change of meet times, or there is an assembly...

Diary of a teacher on lockdown

 Engaging our learners and whanau during lockdown

Our school from the first week of lockdown have been setting challenges for our students and their whanau to participate in this week the challenge was a Baking Challenge. It is great to see our students participating and our parents in the background lending a helping hand. 

Here is a movie for our students challenge this week. What talented students we are blessed to have at Glenbrae School. 

As well as challenging our students to take part, we also set the challenge for staff. Here is the movie for our Staff Challenge this week. 

Diary of a teacher on lockdown

Through all the lockdown teaching I have been doing, I have been learning to adjust to what is the norm when teaching from home and students are learning from home. 

I have come to realise that, it is harder to engage the students when they are not sitting right in front of you. At the beginning of our meets, I have always had to remind students to have their cameras on because personally, I prefer talking to my students when they are visible on my screen. When their cameras are off, I do not know if they are still lying in bed and I feel it is part of respecting themselves, others and their learning when they are on the meet ready to learn. 

How did I attack this challenge of the cameras being on during the meet? 

I assigned one of the students, one who is always the first to join the meets to be the monitor for the cameras. When this student was assigned, he gladly took the role and would remind people to have their cameras on. Quite funny though, because the monitor is one who I also had to remind a few times to have his camera on. It is quite pleasing to see the respect that the students have for each other. When ever my monitor would ask his peers to have their cameras on, they would comply. I have to admit the meets are much better with everyone's cameras on.