Returning to school with Chris Walker

A couple of days ago we started to prepare to return to school after 3 months of lockdown. I immediately felt my thoughts swishing through my brain. What are we going to do with the students for 3 weeks? Should we be doing formal work at some point? What will the students need? What did they miss? How can we make school inviting to them? Then I attended the Ti Rito Toi webinar with Chris Walker. 

What a great webinar to attend. The focus was on sharing the Ti Rito Toi resources. But the motivation that I received from the speakers, made me feel relaxed and excited about going back.

Carol Mutch highlighted how we should make our school/class inviting and inclusive. 

Lynda Stuart pointed out that students should feel safe, secure and loved. Take the time to sit alongside the students. Don't pepper them with questions. Just sit next to them, join in the activities. Have a casual chat. Students need will naturally have conversations with you and with their peers. And the best way to encourage those conversations is through art, drama and caring stories. Students should have the opportunity to laugh and sing. Some ideas are balloons, puppets, music etc.

He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tanagate = It's all about the people (As highlighted in a previous blog of mine)

Peter O'Conner emphasized it's about catching up with relationships. Getting back to patterns and the rhythms of life. The book Te Meke Tuatara (A little kindness goes a long way) is a great way to help with this. 

He posed the question: Do the things you do really matter? And in doing that, do they know it matters? 

To me, the only thing that matters is the well-being of our students. 

And last, Marie Gallichan, a teacher of a year 2-3 class gave some practical examples of fun activities. This includes lots of art activities, a name activity where students add emoji's around their name to show how they felt (this is a great conversation starter...tell me about this emoji, why did you feel like this?), having a bear in the class that students can talk to every time a new student starts attending school. Then the students that came from day 1 (the experts) explains to the bear (including the new students) how things work now. Also options of comic strips, animation and scratch. 

I love the Ti Rito Toi resources. They make it so easy for the teacher. Shalen and I planned on starting with one of the units in the second week. I am looking forward to that. 

Blended Learning with Read&Write for Google Chrome

Copy of the recording

Last night I attended the Blended Learning with Read&Write webinar. A great tool to help all our students. Not just students with learning needs but also gifted students. The tool seems easy enough for our students to use and has multitude possibilities. 

Read&Write Features include: 

Text to Speech

Simplify

Practice Reading Aloud

Vocabulary Builder

Voice Note

OrbitNote PDF Reader

Editing Tools

What stood out for me:

 Read&Write will assist students with reading different types of text and with Simplify you can reduce text to make it shorter or less daunting for the students. Also, students will be able to gain access to all learning without the help of a teacher. This made me think of T-Shape Literacy and how one of the barriers was that not all students can access written text. This would be a great tool to use in conjunction with that, especially as students will be able to listen to information on a PDF format read to them. 

Another cool feature was the highlighting and creating a word bank. I've always wanted to create a personal dictionary for my students, but to keep a handwritten dictionary is not sustainable in a busy class, it's something that slips through the cracks. WIth this tool, it would be so easy to have one and students can build their vocabulary bank. 

And the last feature that caught my eye was the editing tool that helps students with proofreading and editing before submitting. This will ensure that when we have our learning conversations with our students, we will spend more time on the deeper features of their text instead of focussing on surface features such as punctuation and capitalization. 

I'm hoping that we can provide this tool all our students so that students have more authority over their work in a blended learning environment. Moving towards independence and success.

Manaiakalani Toolkit- Google Earth with Steve Smith

 Yesterday I had the priviledge of attending a Google Earth Toolkit by Steve Smith. His enthusiasm defnitely made me excited about using Google Earth. 

Even though we learned about Google Earth during my DFI training, it was one of the tools that I have not yet used to it's full potential in my class. As we went through the many possibilities of using Google Earth, I reaslised how special this could be for our learners from all over the world. So today I used it during our Google Meet with our students. I introduced how to use Voyager. We went on a little tour to all the different places where Diwali is celebrated. (Celebrating Diwali). It was so good to see the different temples, we did a 360 degree turn and could see what it looked around the temple. We learned through noticing that they take their shoes off when they enter their temple, just like our Maori students when they enter a Marae. It's such a good tool to start conversations, compare things, look at people in different countries etc. The possibilities are invinite. 

Further,  I showed my students how to find our school  Google Earth. How to move the person so that you can go into streetview and how to move up or down the street. Some students immediately searched up their homes. 

This is what one of my students did: 

She counted the steps from her home to the school, found her home country, found her favourite holiday destination, identified the place where she wants to live one day, and identified where her favourite animal lives. In just this little casual activity, I gained so much information about her. How great will this activity be at the start of the year when we learn to know our students. Google Earth will defnitely move to the top of my go to applications list. 

Screencastify by Vicki Archer

A great toolkit with Vicki. She highlighted the basic tools while recording. I've seen all the buttons but never took the time to investigate what they can do. It's like a whole new world opened up for me today. What stood out on the basic tools were that you can adjust your countdown timer, annotate your screen, turn your webcam on and of while recording, highlight parts of your screen while you are recording, change your cursor to a flashlight highlighting what you are talking about, and add and remove stickers.

There are also a few cool new features. The one I am most excited about is that you can edit your video. You can blur out students faces, add text, cut or crop out unwanted bits and change where the sounds start or stop. A bit like iMovie.You can add questions in specific spots during the recording which pops up for the students in a box and they choose the correct answer.  How good would that be for during a reading lesson? 

A good tip is for when you want to record tutorials for students, you can create them on screencastify. Each step will be a new screencastify recording, but students will know exactly what to do. 

I am excited to use Screencastify more in my class and for creating tutorials for staff and students. I can recommend this toolkit. 

 

Hapara

 I have been digging a little deeper into Hapara during this lockdown time. 

What are the 3 biggest advantages of using Hapara? 

Teachers can give formative feedback immediately. 

Students can be assisted through Guided Browsing. 

The lesson plan can be created in Workspace

I was particularly interested in Workspace.  I've had a play on it a year or so ago but didn't have the opportunity to use it yet as the time was not right. 

Here are a few reasons why I really like Hapara Workspace: 

You can create lesson plans that are unique and cater to individual learners' needs, therefore easy to differentiate. 

It also allows for collaboration between students. 

Parents are able to follow their children's progress. 

You can embed all the applications you use such as Seesaw, Studyladder, StepsWeb, etc into the Workspace and therefore limiting the number of usernames and passwords that need to be memorized. A bit of an all your eggs in one basket feel.

There is a public curriculum-aligned lessons library where you can draw lesson ideas from. 

It's paperless - but does not exclude the use of paper/books. 

Lessons created on Woskpace stay with the teacher who owns it so can be used in different years. 

If future lockdowns happen, students will be able to continue with their learning as they will already be working online. 

Workspace can be synced with e.g. Google Classroom, even though we don't use it, it is a cool feature. 

Workspace creates opportunities for students to learn in a cohesive way through visible learning. 

If we did use Workspace, students would log into it in the morning and be able to get straight into their work. There would be no need to tell them what to do as they will continue where they stopped the day before. Students will know exactly where to find their work and can work at their own pace.

Lesson Layout on Workspace include: 

Goals: Clear objectives for each lesson. 

Resources: You can provide as many online resources as you want to, to help students understand the new concepts. It could be video clips, articles websites, images, etc. (LEARN)

Evidence: Students get the opportunity to share their learning and understanding. (CREATE) (Informative assessment) These can have a scheduled start and end date.

Rubrics: This is the opportunity for students to self-evaluate whether they have achieved the performance criteria. 

Comparing Seesaw to Workspace

Similarities: 

Life Reporting to Parents

Immediate Feedback

Individual lessons or activities can be created to each student's needs

Seesaw: 

Does not allow for online collaborative work. Posts can only be worked on by one child at a time.

Has a Blog Page

Students can create directly on Seesaw when creating a post. 

Students can leave comments on each other's work.

Teachers can be creative when creating an activity.

American-owned - so activities are not always in line with the NZ curriculum.

It's easy to add voice recordings on the activities for students struggling to read.

Workspace:

A little harder to add recorded instructions but not impossible.

Lessons can be created easily with a clear structure for learning opportunities. (Learn, Create, Share)

Teachers can set assignments or tasks for assessment including due dates.

It's really easy to link resources and create lesson plans.

Lessons from the library are linked with the NZ curriculum and LI's are in kids' speak.

Keeping track of the student's progress is a little easier than on Seesaw. There is an activity summary page where students and teachers can clearly see how they are tracking on with their work. 

These are just a few of the pros and cons I can think of. Am I excited about the possibility to use Workspace in the future? yes, very much so. Because I think it even cuts out a class site. The only class site that might be used for is general announcements or extracurricular activities. Students will then most probably use more Google platforms such as Google Docs/Slides. Seesaw could still be used to collect students' voices.

Teachers can have workshops with mixed groups or with all students that need help in a specific area while the rest of the class continues with the work on Workspace.

Any thoughts or comments will be appreciated.

SharpReading Stage 3 ONLiNE Course

 Yay! I managed to complete my Stage 3 Online Course

I am so happy that I had the opportunity to learn how to use unpacking sentences as a strategy to develop comprehension. The online course is easy to follow. I enjoyed that I could do the course at my own pace and revisit units if needed. It was helpful that I could practice with colleagues either face to face or online. 

Unteach Racism

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
What is the most important thing in the world?  It is the people, it is the people, it is the people. Maori Proverb.

Ubuntu

Dis is die mense

It is the people

I appreciated that the teacher's council does not see this program as criticism indicating that somebody has done something wrong or right. But rather helping us to accept where we are as a country with regards to racism, and triggering a starting point to unteach racism. 

This statement by Takunda Muzondiwa from Mount Albert Grammar School hit a chord in my heart. 

"At the age of 7, my family immigrates from Zimbabwe to Aotearoa. I pass through Customs but my culture is made to stay behind. In the classroom, I am afraid my tongue beats back to its African rhythm, is concussed by fear, or has all its memories obscured by amnesia. Yesterday I was an African, today I am lost."

My journey will consist of 3 stages: 

Identity

Confront

Dismantle

Racism is taught, you are not born a racist. It can be unlearned. And one might think you are not a racist, however, you could be implicit bias. Treating students differently than others for different reasons e.g. they might not be able to do the work, or based on where they are from. The question is how am I bias? I did the Implicit test. Not what I expected. I am taking a hard look at how my implicit bias will influence my learners. Our roots are deep. Racism is taught through many, many generations. But we have the choice to slow this taniwha down.

Here are some suggestions of what we can do:

• If Māori children are to achieve, it is crucial for teachers to lift their expectations of students and treat all students as having the same potential for achievement
• Check resources used - stereotyped?
• Having safe and productive conversations with people around me
• Start a conversation with colleagues using Tātaiako outcomes of learner and whānau voice to identify whether any learners are privileged over others in your setting.
• Make a list of the things you hope all your learners and their whānau would say about your learning community.
• Identify one activity you could put in place to understand if what you hope they would say is close to reality.
• Start a conversation on Hapori Matatū about what changes can be made in learning environments to agitate for equity
• create learning environments that promote access to equitable outcomes for all our learners.

What will I do first?

1. I will focus on lifting my expectations of my students and treat them all as having the same potention.
2. I will double check the resources that I use, that they represent my students and not the white privileged community. 
3. Have a conversation with my colleages and make a list that we would like our learners and whanau to say about our learning community. 

LifeKeepers

 A great course with valuable tools to recognize signs indicating suicide and how you can help. 

I now know: 

- More about preventing suicide

- Understand risk and protective factors

- Can identify warning signs

- Appreciate cultural differences linked to suicide prevention

- Know how to intervene with C.A.R.E.

- Know where to get the right support 

Growth Inquiry

Term 3

As part of my WSL role is my own inquiry in Growth Coaching. The goal that I set for myself with my external coach is: 

By  the end of Term 4 2021, (Friday 9 December 2021)  

I  have deepened my understanding of the GROWTH coaching  Framework and elements (Framework, skills, coaching way of being) so that I can coach my teachers in their inquiries to enable them to improve their teaching practices in literacy.

I had the opportunity to coach my DP while being observed by my principal. At the same time being videoed.

When I did the coaching my initial thoughts were that the questions I'm asking are not really getting to the root of the problem. It's hard to explain, but I felt like I wasn't asking the right questions. However, as soon as I started really listening to what she said instead of focussing on my notes, my questioning or prompts became better. 

This session was super powerful for me, as the feedback from my principal made me aware of what I was doing right (structured coaching session) and what I need to get better at  (setting my goals). We had a good discussion around the difference between what the goal is and what the next steps are. I was getting confused between the two and made my next steps (tiny achievable steps) my goal which could actually hold the process back, as coachees might think that that is all they have to do over a 5 or 6 weeks period of time. I grabbed the opportunity then to redo my DP's goal while co-constructing it with the help of my principal. 

Further, I shouldn't be saying, "Anything else?" I should be saying "What else?". 

Follow up with my ASL: 

I had a coaching session with my ASL and had the opportunity to coach her. The feedback was good which gives me the confidence that I am on the right track. 

When being coached by my ASL I found that my thinking process was better as I have an understanding of how the process works. So I don't feel anxious if she asks "what else?" as I did the first time I was coached. It's not a trick question, it's just the opportunity to think deeply. 

Feedback from my colleagues that I'm coaching: 

I asked feedback from my coachees to help me in my inquiry. 

The general feedback was that they liked the Growth Coaching model and that setting the goals that they feel is achievable was good. 

Here is what some of them said: 

"It is good to have you as a coach and keep me on track and motivated. I like that we reset my goal and made this clearer and more realistic as I was feeling a little bit over whelmed by the tasks I had set." This was after my session with DP that I went back to my coachee and we corrected her goal. 

And the other said, "In terms of feedback, I get the sense that you still feel quite a strong sense of responsibility to ensure that the process is happening properly, and ideally that sense of responsibility should shift to the person being coached (me)".

So my next step is to trust the process. Have a really good understanding of what a follow-up or check-in should look like. Know my coachees really well. Who needs more check-ins and who needs less. Supporting them does not mean pushing them...

Toolkit - Independent Learning

 After attending the workshop on Independent Learning, I realized that we are not far off with what we are currently doing in our studio. Something that I would caution the presenter about is going back to the Teacher creating loads of slides or documents which takes hours to make. So I took from the workshop what I could. 

A reminder that independent work should not be new learning, but the consolidation of work already learned. 

It should be relevant to their learning needs. 

It can be individual, with a buddy, or a small group of 3 or 4. 

Teach students how to solve problems: not interrupting teachers when teaching groups, possibly ask 3 before me, however, it will be better if they don't have to ask the teacher at all. All students are experts and they should be able to help each other without interrupting the teacher. 

The facilitator had weekly contracts that she created. Basically a choice board. What I did like, was the Morning tea ticket out. Students have to have read and entered into their reading journals in order to be able to go to MT.  The other nice idea was to add a house point value to each task completed. (However, I am cautious of not creating an admin heavy job for teachers). She keeps Fridays as catch-up days on contracts. 

Work that is expected in the contract has been taught prior. There is an exemplar in the modeling book with clear expectations. This will help with keeping work to a high quality. 

Toolkit - exploring iMovie

I took the opportunity to upskill myself in using iMovie. I used Maria Krauses' slide from Manaiakalani. I've used iMovie quite a few times in the past, but could only do the basics, so wanted to use the opportunity during lockdown to extend my skills. 

This is my Practice Run (please note, I did a few things in the movie to show my learning, not necessarily looking good)

What I learned: 

- how to change the theme

- change filters (I used black and white)

- to add a voice recording in a specific place

- add a sound effect

- fade music in our out at different places

- extend the length of a photo to match the music or sound effect

It took a bit longer than I thought to figure out how to export my movie. (I ended up googling this part) Just to realize I needed to give the movie some time. So tip for next time, when exporting, watch the little timer instead of clicking all over the place to try and understand why the movie is not downloading. 

Manaiakalani Programme Share Staff Meeting

 Today was our first share meeting with the focus on being on helping kids with additional needs. I joined this group as I hoped to get ideas on how to support students that struggle to stay engaged when working on the devices as well as hoping to get some magical solutions to students going on the wrong sites via the guest account. 

The meeting was very informal and teachers introduced what they were hoping to get out of the meeting. Most of the teachers in my group have much higher challenges where they work with non-verbal students and students that have high behavioral needs. 

What I took from the share meeting is again reiterating the value of the Tuakana Teina model. I would like to explore how we can set this up in the studio for students that struggle to stay focussed on their task and especially when new students come in, how to navigate on the Chromebook. 

Ambassador's refresher course

What is Coming Soon?

Seesaw Lessons:

It includes kids-friendly navigation. Lessons on letter formation, number, and key competencies. During the lessons, kids can click on links to take them to activities, and then students and mark off activities that have been done. The lessons also include instructional videos and multiple learning experiences (including hands-on activities). In the lessons, there will also be the opportunity to reflect.

Product Accessibility:

Another new feature is where you can add captions in different languages to show when a video is playing. Just change settings. 

Bulk Updates:

Bulk updates can be made via CSV sheets 

Messages:

A new Messages dashboard (Yay) will be coming soon. Teachers will now have the option to messages individual students, parents, or whole classes. Students will be able to start a message to their teachers that are connected to their studio. They cannot start conversations with other students, school admin, parents, or teachers outside their class. 

Progress View

An overview of the students' progress according to either their activities or their skills. These can be filtered by students, groups, or activities. 

It's always good to do these refresher courses, I am especially excited about the Messages feature that will kick in soon, so I signed us up for the pre-trials. I love connecting with my parents and feel like that has not really happened this year due to a number of factors. It will be so good if we as a studio can lift our positive messages home. And with the Message feature, parents don't have to wait for the teachers to communicate with them first before they can contact us. They can send us a message at any point in time. 

Seesaw PD

Today I had an opportunity to present a PD session on how to increase student voice in our classes using our Seesaw platform. 

My focus was to help teachers see the value of student's voice and to share practical ideas on what that will look like in the classroom. 

I was very aware that my colleagues might have been tired after already being in a PD session during the day and wanted to keep the session practical with lots of teacher's voice instead of my voice. 

Did I achieve my goal? 

I was very happy that everybody participated in the discussions and that we could walk away with some solutions to our barriers and challenges. Especially around the noise when recording and the bridge between year 3's and 4's. The solutions from our discussions were to create recording stations with clear signs to make everybody aware when recording is happening. And to create opportunities for the current year 3's at the end of the year to be introduced to Chromebooks at the end of the year in a tuakana teina model.

The examples that I presented to my colleagues demonstrated that collecting student voice does not involve complicated posts. It merely teaching and practicing with our students how to present their opinions and perspectives on topics. Initially student voice will be academically and focussed on teh work they do in the class, but a step further would be collecting student voice on topics outside the classroom, e.g. on the colour run, or whether we should change our uniform or not/ 

From the blog posts, it seems like most teachers took away something from the session that they could implement in their class. 

I look forward to closely following their student's posts on Seesaw to see if the information we gained today, transitions into their teaching practice. 

For myself, I will think of how I want to consciously teach my students to use their student voice to share their thinking. The meaning of a quality post slightly shifted for me. A quality post is not just on how your students present their work, but more on how they share their understanding of their learning. I want to teach my students that hitting a roadblock during our learning is a crucial part of our journey and explaining how we got around the roadblock adds value to our learning. When sharing this in our posts on Seesaw,  other students can then learn from our experiences and form their own perceptions. 

 

 Slide

Multipmodel Activties

Sharp Reading - Seven Plus Intervention For Struggling Older Readers

 I have had the privilege of being trained in the Seven Plus intervention program for struggling older readers. The intervention is designed to run for 8 - 10 weeks, each lesson about 15 - 20 minutes and in small groups, perfect for 1 on 1.

The focus for the intervention is fluency, vocabulary, and decoding strategies (this is where the explicit instruction takes place).

The key concepts of the intervention are:

1) Scanning Multisyllabic Words - train the brain to look for and identify manageable chunks of visual information as the reader is reading and eradicating default decoding strategies such as guessing or sampling

2) A Top-Down Approach - we start with syllabification, then develop knowledge of chunks, and then backfills any letter sound deficits

3) Students work on "Hard" text - hard text is scaffolded so that it never feels hard, the text provides rich vocabulary opportunities, success on "hard" text is very motivating, only one paragraph per lesson so the learner is not overwhelmed. 

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO STICK TO THE ROUTINE!

My training consisted of a one on one online training session with Hilton. My first job was to then do an assessment with the identified students in order to grade them into levels. Luckily the BURT testing was already done by management so I could go straight into the assessment for Seven Plus. 

Then I had a go at doing a lesson. It was really good that I did the lesson as it was a bit trickier than I thought, and while everything was fresh in my mind, it gave me a chance to organize everything in my mind. It also gave me the opportunity to ask Hilton a few questions. 

I've completed my online training as far as I can with syllabification. I look forward to seeing how this intervention will help our struggling students to accelerate in their reading. 

The next time Hilton and I meet up, we will be looking at chunking. 

Student-Centered Leadership by Viviane Robinson - A summary of what stood ut for m

A few things that resonated with me when reading: (my thoughts are typed in blue)

What is meant by leadership?

A common judgment of leadership is: 

1. the quality of school management - children are happy and behaved, school is orderly and how the property is looked after.

2. the relationships with adults in the system - staff, parents, district officials

3. to equate it with innovation - however, innovation practice is not necessarily predictive of student learning. Some innovations don't work and schools engaged in multiple innovations can burn staff out, create incoherence in the instructional program, and make things worse for students.

So what is leadership correctly measured as? How much formal authority you had, attraction to personal qualities (e.g. dedication, selflessness, ethic of caring or courage), and relevant expertise (offering knowledge and skills that can help others).

Not only those with formal authority over others, but also people leading from a basis of expertise, ideas, and personality or character. In summary: people who influence (which means in a school setup that could be anybody).

Being a student-centered leader is not about how qualified you are or how high the grades were that you obtained when studying, it is about using knowledge about effective teaching, teacher learning, and school organisation to make high quality administrative decisions in a school.

This made me realize that leadership is not only about the status of your appointment, but how you can use your experience and expertise to help others, demonstrating good qualities such as professionalism, dedication to the needs of the students, and selflessness.

Solving-Problems: 

If a leader wants to implement a new innovation, introduce it at a staff meeting and learn from the ensuing discussion what is important to colleagues/teachers. Through the discussions, the leader will get answers or ideas that have tension between them. Therefore it's important to critically scrutinize each idea so if for example one person sees that a new assessment will add to be a burden and overassessment, it's important that the leader asks if others feel the same way. If the claim of over-assessment survived the scrutiny, the proposed requirements stay on the table or on the list of solutions which means that something else needs to go. Leaders need to scan and encourage all participants to take responsibility for the whole problem by keeping the list of requirements in front of everyone and insisting that suggested solutions are evaluated against all of them.

This reminded me of all times I heard that you can't help people by doing things to them, I have to get them to do things with me. Implementing an idea because I think it is going to solve a certain problem and just throwing it at my colleagues, will not bring change. It is important to bring an idea to a table, get the input of my colleagues by scrutinizing it and then collaboratively decide if it is worth implementing.

Trust

Trust is built by respect (valuing ideas of others), personal regards (caring about personal and professional lives of staff e.g. meeting with a teacher for career planning and professional development purposes is likely to build trust as it signals that the leader cares), and competence (people are reliant on others to succeed in education. It's often easier to discern incompetence than high competence because signs of incompetence are more public and less ambiguous).

 Leaders are often judged on how they handle incompetence for example teachers and parents make negative judgments about a principal's incompetence when buildings are not orderly and safe and when individuals interact in a disrespectful manner. Judgment of leaders' competence is often based on how they deal with perceived incompetence in the staff for whom they are responsible. Allowed to persist, gross incompetence is highly corrosive to trust and undermines the collective effort. Leaders who are conflict avoiders or conflict escalators are unlikely to deal with competence issues in a timely and effective manner. Because school Improvement requires sustained collective effort, teachers may reduce their commitment if they judge that their leaders cannot deal with those who will wittingly or unwittingly undermine the group's effort. Integrity teachers make a judgment about whether their leaders walk the talk keep their word and resolve difficult conflicts in a principal and even-handed manner. Integrity demands resolutions that reaffirm the primary principles of the institution. Actions must be understood as advancing the best interest of children. 

To build trust leaders have to deal effectively with breaches of trust including perceived poor performance, disciplinary matters, and failure to keep agreements. Yet it is these situations that leaders struggle to deal with because they feel caught in a dilemma between addressing the issue and taking care of relationships. 

This was such an interesting piece to read. The author hit the nail on the head when she says that some leaders struggle to address issues of incompetence or non-compliance as they are caught between addressing the issue and taking care of the relationship.

We often talk about having those hard conversations, and even though I have improved so much in this regard, I still find myself postponing these conversations to the latest stage possible. However, if we had the conversations earlier, changes for the better could have been made earlier and progress could have been made. The author gave some good examples of how to approach problems in an Open-to-Learning Conversation. Avoid Soft Sell of Hard Sell conversations, as they are closed and won't lead to improvement in teaching and learning. 

The effect of quality teaching:

How instructional coherence promotes achievements. We know that exposure to multiple representations of the same idea over a relatively short period of time so a unit of work spending 10 days promotes their learning. Learning opportunities that meet these conditions are more likely to be found in instructional programs that are planned around the progression of learning objectives that are mapped onto an instructional calendar. A common instructural framework means that teachers reinforce the same ideas, use similar vocabulary for communicating those ideas, know how to make links with it with what has gone before, and are guided in their efforts by common assessments. If students learning opportunities are integrated and cumulative, rather than fragmented and rushed, students are more likely to be engaged and successful. The second reason why students learn more in coherent programs is that the teachers are learning together about how to teach the things that are supposed to be learning. 

This emphasized to me how important our collaborative planning is and managing the timeframes around it. I am often told to slow down, and sometimes I'm not 100% sure what slow down in a full-on curriculum looks like, but what the author said makes 100% sense. (see bold sentence)

Opportunities to learn: TIME

The first idea looks at is how teachers use the time allocated to particular subjects. Time can be lost waiting for the learning activity to start because students or the teachers are late, because resources are not yet available or because the transition between activities is badly managed. One indicator of quality teaching is that routines are in place to minimize such wait time.

The biggest challenge in our collaborative space is the transitions. On top of the above-mentioned reasons for time wasters, I could add, in a collaborative space, if teachers are not on the same "page" transitions can be hindered as all of a sudden some teachers are confused as to what is happening next, or time allocations are not treated with respect. Confusions around which spaces they are working in and who is Learning Couch adds even more tension in the space and wastes time.

Secondly, time can be lost through misalignment between important intended learning outcomes and the lesson activities. In a unit of work on insects for example a teacher provides multiple opportunities to learn the characteristics of insects, including an art lesson in which students are asked to be creative and use their imagination in painting the insects. The teacher provides positive feedback on this basis and makes no comments about paintings that depict creatures that are not insects. At a more mundane level, lessons activities can be misaligned because learners spend their time drawing headings, colouring diagrams, and guessing the correct answer on worksheets rather than developing the intended conceptual understanding.

Yes, I agree. If the follow-up activity is not aligned with the learning attention, the opportunity to deepen students' understanding has been missed.

Thirdly, even though the wait time is minimized,  and lesson activities and teacher feedback are carefully aligned to the outcome, students may not be engaged with activities. Students are cognitively engaged when they are actively thinking about the material. It is important that being behaviorally engaged or on task is not taken by teachers or their evaluators as equivalent to be in cognitively engaged. The latter is best assessed by asking students what they are trying to learn and how they will know when they have been successful. Cognitive engagement may be low because the material may assume prior knowledge that the students do not have, or conversely, may present ideas that students already know. Learners may be disengaged because they do not feel emotionally connected with the material, with the teacher, or both.

This is where I want to put extra focus during my planning this term. I want to make 100% sure that the students in my groups are cognitively engaged not just behaviourally engaged. Even if the initial time for cognitive engagement is short compared to being behaviourally engaged.

The fourth way in which time is lost is through persistent lack of success. Quality teaching provides learning opportunities that are not only aligned to important learning outcomes and well-matched to students' prior knowledge and interests but also designed to promote success. This doesn't mean that all failure is to be avoided, because mastering important learning outcomes often requires considerable intellectual effort and persistence, and these are qualities that teachers should nurture. A key to promoting success is early detection of student's misunderstandings because such misunderstandings subvert the learning the teacher intends the students to gain from the lesson activities,

It is important that students get the opportunities to be successful. They must experience a sense of achievement, which means that tasks should be well thought off. Will the student be able to complete the task in the allocated time frame? Will they be able to do the task by themselves or at the max with the help of a buddy? How will his/her success be celebrated or acknowledged? The student must feel that his/her work is important, somebody will be looking at it, and he/she can take pride in their efforts.

In summary, quality teaching involves maximizing the time that students spend engaged with and being successful in the learning of important outcomes. This means that leaders' judgments about the quality of teaching are based on the four aspects:

1.  the importance of the outcome being  pursued

2.  alignment of the activities and resources with the outcomes

3. The behavioral and cognitive engagement of students

4.  the student success on the outcomes. 

Digital Leadership - Feedback Term 1 in Harakeke

 Today I did a quick reflection with the Harakeke Team in order to determine if I am on the right track with my digital teaching in class. Feedback from teachers are as follow: 

What worked well: 
Starting from the start (how to log into Seesaw).

Reflecting quickly after the first few lessons (and adjusting).

Learning was spot on. 

Teachers were available to manage and support students while Alida teaches. 

Having the time during the week to practice what we learned on Monday.

Lessons were the right amount of time (30min), students were able to maintain what they learned. 

Students were able to teach each other later in the week. 

Shifts happened after each lesson.

Were the lessons helpful to the teachers? Yes, especially learning how to use captions to voice record, and creating slides with recordings. 

What did not work well?

In the last lesson (when Alida came in late) the speed of the lesson was too fast. Students could not keep up. 

(Teachers would like to have a redo on this lesson)

What could I do better? 

Extension for early finishers. 

What would you like to learn? 

Creating open-ended activities on Seesaw. 

Having rewindable videos to explain what we learned e.g how to log on, or how to create a slide.

We then spend a bit of time refreshing our memories on what we need to remember to keep our Seesaw professional:

Approve posts within 24hours

Comments or captions linked to the LI

Photos of students to be uploaded. 

Check that there are posts for all students. 

Check which parents are not connected, especially new students. 

Use folders to organise work.

This feedback was very helpful for me especially the last conversation we had around how we could use Seesaw to share our work. We scanned through some functions of Seesaw e.g. the highlighter, voice recording on a label and creating frames. This made me think of whether there is a need to look into different ways of sharing work on Seesaw. Now that everybody has a good idea of HOW to create on Seesaw, we might look into WHAT to create. 

So what?

I realise that there is value in these lessons. That I should never be late, not even 5 minutes. 

Next steps: 

Create rewindable videos on lessons already done. 

Come up with a bank of ideas on how we can share on Seesaw. How can we utilise Seesaw to make our sharing interesting. (Perhaps create a site)

Continue with lessons in class, our next focus will be on how to build digital learning into their construction inquiry. 

Digital Leadership

 As one of my goals, this term I organised an open afternoon for whanau to come and familiarise themselves with how our students find and share their work on their devices. The main reason for this was because we realised during lockdown how hard it was for parents to support their children with their work. Not all parents are confident in using digital technology. 

Michelle helped me to create a pamphlet to send home to encourage parents to come. 

We arranged it for a Friday afternoon. I thought nobody would come as it was the Friday after our whanau conferences on Wednesday but was surprised that 4 parents came. (I know some people will say, only 4? But I'm a half-full glass type of person).

It was such a successful afternoon that I am excited to have another one in term 2. 

This was our little programme: 

Students created a little Seesaw post with their parents to see how easy it is to do. 

It was great to see how engaged the students and parents were. Feedback from the parents was: 

"This was really good, thank you for inviting us"

"It was good to see how she access her work as she usually just do it on her own"

"This was very helpful, thank you". 

Things that I can do better next time: 

Make a bigger effort with promoting the afternoon. 

Share our experience with other students and encourage them to invite their parents. 

Have a little prepared activity on Seesaw available, so that they can see how they can access the video clips and templates. 

Sharp Reading

 Yesterday I had the privilege of doing a Sharp Reading lesson for Hilton. He supported me where needed and modelled how it should be done. 

I got confused during the "Convince Me" phase. He ironed out how I should not get confused between an instructional lesson and a guided lesson. 

My goals for the next few weeks are to practice clearing the roadblocks and smoothing out the convince me phase. 

Digital Development Green Screen

I had another go at creating a Pepeha on Green Screen. My previous attempt was not great. So what did I do different this time? 

1. I introduced Green Screen on its own. Students had to add a photo of their favourite animal and say something about it. So just speaking on the Green Screen. 

2. Secondly, we did not waste time writing our Pepeha's in our books. I printed the ones that used the Papakura Pepeha and wrote the ones that had their own Pepeha in large writing using a different colour for each line. Which helped to prompt them to stop and watch if the next background photo is on the screen. We practice reading our Pepeha a few times with a buddy, creating a doughnut and sharing with a different person each time. 

3. Thirdly, we typed up our Pepeha on Seesaw, adding photos/drawing to demonstrate the meaning e.g. Maunga (mountain). Then students recorded themselves reading their Pepeha. They only had a photo of their faces on, so the pressure was a little less as they could still read from their book. 

e.g. Laweneta's Pepeha on Seesaw

Paul's Pepeha on Seesaw

4. Lastly, we started working on our Green Screens. First, we downloaded the photos that are linked to our Pepeha. We set the photos to show for only 5 seconds. We then had somebody hold the books up so that we could still refer back to them while creating the Green Screen. 

The Results: 

 

So this session went a lot better than the first time. It still took a lot of individual support when doing the Green Screens. So what can I do differently? 

- I am going to create a visual board with the steps of what needs to be done to create the Green Screen. 

- I will ask Te Roopu Kaiako to allow my group to take turns and recite their Pepeha's in front of their Te Roopu after we said the Karakia. 

- Set up the portable Green Screen so that students can record without moving out of the class. 

Digital Development Green Screening

 So I gave creating a digital Pepeha through Greenscreening a go. It was much harder than I anticipated. The challenge was not as much the digital, but more the Pepeha. 

Here are some of the videos we made.

Challenges I faced.

We were limited to time due to the rotation we have in our studio and because of COVID lockdown interruptions. What I realised was that it was a bit unfair to expect students to learn their pepeha and learn how to Green Screen at the same time. Some students didn't even want to try while reading their pepeha as they said they couldn't read it. Problem-solving or debugging was a major issue. There was no time to take them through possible solutions. 

So what am I going to do differently with my second group. 

I am going to start introducing Greenscreen from session 1, but use an easy topic such as talk about our favourite animal. Then send the pepeha home and creating space in class time for students to learn their pepeha. And then by session 3 start their Greenscren pepeha, which will give them enough time to trial and error. 

Sharp Reading

 Our PLD this year is a Reading focus. We've been introduced to Sharp Reading, a programme developed by Hilton Ayrey and Brian Parker. Both highly experienced ex-teachers. The programme is focussed on making teaching manageable for teachers, maintaining the correct level of challenge for the students and ensuring success for each student in EVERY lesson. I really like the idea of getting the maximum out of each lesson. 

We've complete Unit 1 on a callback day with Hilton. 

Today I started my online course, Unit 2, and completed tasks 1 - 3. Thank you, Simon, for being my online peer practice buddy. 

Things we noticed was to remind students to start with "I think it means" (ITTM). 

Also to focus carefully on what the students are saying in order to not get your mind distracted. 

It is important to have a copy of the guide sheets next to you and familiarise yourself with it before you start. 

And I need to be a little clearer when I am explaining the 1,2 or 3, linking it to "How convincing am I?"

My next step is to practice 2 - 3 lessons with some students in the class. A small group of 3-4 students. 

Digital Development

One of my focusses this year is to upskill on my own knowledge of digital activities in the classroom, based on our Learn Create Share model. One of the first challenges I took on was how to create a green screen video. Although there is an app on the iPads, it took a bit of research and trial error to get it right. Thank you, Justine, for your support being a model etc, while I was trying and testing. 

I'm hoping to support our students in creating their own digital Pepeha during term 1. My possible challenges are: 

1. Students not having the information they need to create a Pepeha

2. Students that don't want to do it because they are not Te Reo speakers.

3. We only have a short time to create the Pepeha, and it does take a bit of time. So students will need to know what to do as soon as possible so that they don't waste time waiting for me to show them what to do. 

How am I going to approach this?

Now that I have created my own, and know exactly what to do, I believe the students will be able to follow my modelling and instructions quickly. Parents have already been notified that we will be doing a Pepeha, and a letter will be going home as soon as we are back at school to gather the needed information. If any students show hesitation on doing a Pepeha, I will bring the topic up in circle time and discuss how we can be culturally responsive to each other. 

Here is my example video. Please note, my focus was on how to a green screen, not on my Pepeha. So please forgive me if it is not done correctly.