Having fun creating in our learning

This week, Room 7 are reading a story called Badge of Honour. One of the activities was to impersonate the school principal in the story and to address a student character in the story who has not been wise in his decisions. The story is a great read. It is based in New Zealand and the Room 7 students can relate to this story in many ways. 

Here are the slides Room 7 have been working through. You can also access the text from the slides.

Here is Soane's impersonation of Miss Latu the school principal from the story Badge of Honour.

The create aspect of the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy is a focus in my inquiry. I have a lot of fun thinking of activities where my students can learn and create at the same time. I love seeing their creativity coming through in their work and their confidence to take risks. 

Going back to Alert Level 3

The Alert Level 3 announcement although it was an urgent announcement, I am not in a panic because I am prepared with hangouts and work on our class site. I am however, worried that the amount of work my students can complete from home is not the same as what they can do in class. 

Going back to update the Home Learning page on out site, memories of the first lockdown were there from the daily reminders of hangouts, work completion and my screencastify recordings for the students to watch. My Bitmoji has been making a regular appearance on the Home Learning page too. 

Our first hangout felt quite normal. I was proud of my students for being so adaptive to the changes in learning environments. It is as if we just picked up where we left off in class and carried on. I am so grateful for our Manaiakalani cluster because it just makes digital learning, remote learning so easy with the systems in place.

Being Cybersmart is constantly being discussed in our hangouts. I feel my students area aware of why it is important to be Cybersmart and also the consequences and effects of their actions if they are not respecting themselves and others online. 

Here are some tips for hangouts from a veteran hangout teacher :) 

• Keep communication with your students going - emails, commenting on work, announcements on the Home learning page (screencastify, notices). You have to let your students know you are there supporting and monitoring their learning.
• Update the Home Learning page regularly - I use images, backgrounds for the dates, Bitmoji (good conversation starter)
• Talanoa, Talk, Chat, Share - my class and I love talking about subjects of interest to them and myself, current events, families, community, school...(we carry this on in our hangouts). Don't let the hangouts be a 'do this, do that act'.
• Have at least two hangouts a day - one in the morning to set the students up with work and clarify any work they do not understand, one in the afternoon where the students can report back on their progress
• Record the hangouts - in hangouts you can record, this is a good record of your discussions and also memories to look back on
• Very important - MAKE SURE WHAT YOU HAVE ON THE SITE IS VISIBLE. Imagine you are a parent trying to help your child navigate the site and you can not access what is on the site? Don't be that teacher!

A reflective post I have posted to my class blog as a post lockdown reflection

The past six weeks have been an amazing journey of learning, reflecting and adjusting. When we first started the lockdown, my biggest fear was - how are my students going to cope with their learning from home? How can I support them when they are not in class? Will the parents be able to help with their learning activities?

However...I strongly believe we have made it work Room 7. We utilised the technology we are blessed to have today, we utilitised the cluster we are blessed to be in and we also utilised the kaupapa of our school and made it work.

Having the hangouts was a great way to see you all and learn together. There were days I felt like the hangout was just simply a hangout where we chatted then you would go off and enjoy your day not giving a second through to your work. A few motivational speeches from Mrs Tofa changed that (I still have to copyright my motivational speech guys).

The blogs have been my go to for the last six weeks. Looking at your blog posts provided a wealth of knowledge, insight and appreciation to your efforts in your learning. Your individuality really comes across in your blog posts. Some of you really are fabulous authors with the way you present your personal voice in your blog posts.

I tried to incorporate your home life in your learning activities. Your whanau recipes were great, our whanau challenges for ANZAC, our school assembly...just pure joy to see. I hope through this lockdown you have been able to see just how important your home learning is as well as your school learning. I also hope you and your whanau have built on your capacity to work together in your learning. Remember this is all for you and your future. The more effort you put in, the more you will be able to receive in success.

Lastly my thank yous. First I would like to thank myself for being Room 7's greatest teacher (lol) just kidding. I would firstly like to thank all of you who consistently tried your best in your learning during the lockdown. Thank you for persevering with your learning. I would also like to thank your parents and caregivers for their on going support. I hope they have been able to enjoy and learn from our learning activities throughout the lockdown weeks. Big thank you to the Manaiakalani team for their support in setting up our hangout links and being there for me to call upon when I needed help. A massive faafetai lava to our Glenbrae whanau Mrs Patea and our staff members for the great team work and communication and guidance during the lockdown.

A special thank you which deserves to be in its own paragraph would have to be for our government. Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the cabinet not forgetting Dr Bloomfield who is now almost as famous as Taika Waititi or maybe more famous? The support for education and our country has been phenomenal. I am truly grateful for how the government managed the Covid-19 pandemic and how they are still managing the effects of this pandemic on our nation.

Now, as we prepare to head back to school. I know some of you are excited and some might not be too excited about the early morning rises. Just be grateful we had experienced what we had with the lockdown. Covid-19 has changed the world in many ways. We are adaptive and resilient people and now we will go into school on Monday to make adjustments to our new norm.

With that, see you all on Monday. The photo is a preview of what our classroom will look like. I still have to fit in a few more tables in to cater for our class.

Thursday Zoom CoL PLG

Today we had our PLG via Zoom as we are still on lockdown under Alert Level 3. 

We were reminded today about the importance of profiling our students by finding out:

• gaps in achievement from time to time
• student voice
• whanau voice
• interventions put in my previous teachers
• student work from previous years (blogs, drives)

Aaron reminded us that profiling is formative and enables us to see areas which we can build on. We were also reminded that the information we collect can be quantitative - narrative approach. From today's meeting, I have added more detail to what I am doing in profiling students. 

Russell Burt challenged us to think about how the lockdown has impacted the way we think about our roles as educators. I responded in our small groups discussions that teaching from home has given me the opportunity to build on my relationship with my students in a more meaningful way. For example at school, there are so many complexities which requires my attention. Teaching from home, I can focus on a student who seeks my help and nothing else can interrupt the time I spend teaching this student. I have also reflected that teaching from home has given our whanau community more insight into the learning and teaching which happens in the classroom. Through the hangouts, the whanau of our students are able to listen in and participate more in their learning activities. 

Student involvement in hangouts

I decided to give my students the opportunity to do the hangout reminders for our hangout. First was Dwyane. She did a wonderful job of it. She used Screencastify to record herself then shared her recording for me to put into the class site. Confidence building activity and a great opportunity for students to take leadership in our hangouts. 

My class hosting our school virtual assembly

My class were assigned to host our virtual assembly for this week. It was a fun project where my students and I collaborated to put our assembly together. As we worked on this project, I kept on thinking about how wonderful it is to be in a digital learning community. Collaboration between the students and I went smoothly as we shared ideas and the students sending in their recordings. 

Enjoy!

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!