Distance Learning Term 2

Due to the Covid 19 Lockdown we have spent the past 2 weeks teaching online from home. To begin with it was much more difficult that I thought it would be. This was mainly because although I had been using my Class Site with my class for over a year, I realised that I rely a lot of being able to talk to the site when instructing the students on what to do.
I had some feedback from parents that they and their child were feeling a little bit our of their depth with all of the linking, sharing and storing documents. I took this feed back on board and started to use a lot more screen castify videos. Previously I had been going through my class site during my class hangout but my doing it through a video it allows me to add more detail and more importantly students and their whanau can rewind and watch the instructions in their own time. I am able to explain other things as they come up with whanau as well using screen castify. Initially, I felt very self conscious about making videos but in these circumstances it is necessary and now I dont worry about it. I can tell that it is working as well as I am getting much fewer questions and confusion.
 I find the process really simple and it is something that I will definitely continue using it even when school returns to normal.

The challenging thing I am finding is creating tasks that are simple to follow but that will cater to the wide range of learning needs and levels with in my class. I have started to introduce a few more leveled tasks this week and I try to add extension tasks where I can as well.

I have been really impressed with how well our class has connected through Google Hangouts/meet and it is great to chat with the class via chat. It is interesting how some students feel more confident communicating in this way compared to face to face. Some of my relationships with students are improving by working this way.

I still find it challenging to meet the diverse needs of all of our whanau but communication is key and this experience has definitely has a positive impact on my communication lines with families (something I always find challenging). I think the biggest positive outcome from this experience will be that parents have a better understanding of school expectations and how and what their children are learning. It would be great if this experience lead to some accelerated progress from some students.

Manaiakilani staff meeting 18/2

Above is a few of the slides that I would like to come back to from today's meeting.

Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Today was our first meet of 2020. We discussed where we were heading as a staff toward our Teaching as Inquiry this year. I explained that based on my reflections of leading staff in Inquiry in 2019, I felt that it is imperative that I support staff to feel self motivated in the direction of their Inquiry. I feel confident in my role as Kahui Ako WSL that I can facilitate staff inquiries to ensure that they are meeting direction of the Kahui Ako and the school targets.
This week, Su Arrowsmith facilitated a staff meeting where we discussed possible areas we may like to inquire into. Next week, we will meet 1:1 to develop and focus these further.
With Elise we looked at the school strategic plan and could easily see how the staff's ideas (as they are now) can fit well into the school's strategic goals. This was exciting, as we could see, how as teachers, we could be taking an active part in achieving the strategic goals. It also allowed us to clarify that the Inquiries we were showing interest in, were indeed based on data coming from the strategic goals and could also come to a natural collaborative goal.
Elise and I started an action plan to move forward in for this term. I will facilitate a staff meeting in the next few weeks with the objectives being:
- Staff can identify where their area of Inquiry would support the strategic goals of the school.
-Staff can identify where the data is that they have to support their area of Inquiry

• Summative
• Student Voice
• Whānau communication
• Observation
• Conversation
• Anecdotal Evidence (books, docs etc)

-Staff will identify areas where they may need to collate more data and set a goal to gather more data in this area.

Kahui Ako Within School Teacher Inquiry

This year as KA WSL we will be undertaking a professional inquiry around developing our leadership in this role. I think this will be beneficial as we become more comfortable in the Inquiry process we are then able to lead others with more confidence. This definitely something I am interested in as I have felt confusion over my role in the past year.

If I refer to the Inquiry Cycle and try to transfer this into my leadership role;

SCANNING: What is going on for my learners?
What is going on for teachers in my school (in regard to their Inquiries last year)?
Based on observations and casual discussions I am going to assume that there was frustration and confusion. Some teachers may have felt frustrated that their Inquiry was not focused on the area of interest for them (and more dictated by me feeling like we needed to fit into the umbrella of Kahui Ako). Some teachers may have felt that the Inquiry process just added to their work load. Some teachers may have found the 1:1 meetings beneficial. How do staff feel about recording their ideas on blogs?
Is this where I now start to gather data? I would be interested to hear ideas on this as I get my head around how this professional inquiry will develop.

Manaiakalani TOD T1, 2020

Reflections time





Manaiakalanai Teacher From Panmure Bridge- Robyn Anderson
Time to reply to comments
Evaluation sheets
This is something I want Whaea Meg to know....
Maths vocab games- kids to use independently.









Start from the beginning of the year

Setting expectations
Wait time
Turn and talk- 2 become a group of 4
Revoicing- draw a pic if need clarification

Maths activity
Video conversation
Kids to share it and give feedback as a way of reporting.

Coaching Session with Su 22/8

Today's coaching session with Su was helpful for me to come up with an action plan for all of the things I would like to achieve this term.
Here are the notes for my reference: Coaching Notes 2019

Ultimately here are my next steps:
- Create Visual aid for  quality blog posts to be put on classroom wall and on class blog
(end of week 6)
- Timetable in weekly blogging session to ensure students are publishing a quality blog post once a week. Week 6= Maths
- Share self assessment report format with students, they will reflect on what they have been learning, how confident they felt about it, if they enjoyed etc etc. This will be shared on Monday, Week 6.
- Alim group will continue to articulate goals, I need to ensure they can post about goal also, this will need to take place during an Alim session.
-Target writing students will make writing goal in Week 7 after they have been exposed to Explanation exemplars and been given the chance to write one draft sample.

Kahui Ako/Manaiakalani Lead Teachers Mtg 16/8

Main points from today's meetings:

Manaiakalani
- Cybersmart Wall: area in class rooms to promote quality blog posts/comments, cybersmart. I will need to follow this up. Get students to compete these posters. Share with staff.
- Visible Professional blogs- Te Hiku. It was decided that it will be an expectation for lead teachers to have their blog links on the Te Hiku site.
- Tui Mai tui atu: Pilot teachers from the previous year will be encouraged to share blogs with another classroom within our cluster.
- T Shaped learning- this was brought up again today, it may be something that we want to look into as we reflect on our reading practice (as this came through in our data). I wonder if this may be something that we look at with Rhona?
T Shaped Literacy Slides


Kahui Ako
- I need to reintroduce blogging time at staff meetings again to encourage more reflection on professional blogs.
- Story Hui- some schools are using this as a part of their Inquiry. I think the way we use coaching conversations is similar to this and I am feeling appreciative that we have acquired these skills from Susan.

We discussed how our Inquiries are working in our school. I reported back on how our Inquiry sat well under the the student agency results. I think the 1:1 meeting with staff members went well and I will set another day for Term 4. The focus will be on checking, set goals with teachers on how they can gather evidence as to weather they have made a difference.

Writing was discussed again as this is a constant issue. How can Inquiries focus on writing in a new and innovative way as this is something that we are constantly faced with?

Inquiry Term 3: Taking Action