Incredible bloggers

This year has been a year of challenge and difference for us all. One thing that has amazed me has been the volume of quality blog post shared by our year 3 and 4 learners. 

Yesterday in our Google Meet we took the opportunity to share some of the amazing work children had been doing. 

These 9 learners have smushed the number of blog post they did last year. Many of them have blogged over 100 blog post this year. 

Cayden today blogged his 200th blog post for the year. 

Why am I sharing this. You know the saying it takes pressure to make diamonds. While the pressure of learning differently has allowed many of our learners to step up and shine and I am so proud of them. 

Level 3- Here we go again

The speed at which we returned to level 3 and staying at home this time was much faster than last time. 

We learned in the evening and the very next day by lunch time we were at Level 3 and standing up our Online learning platform again. 

I know for me I learned a lot from the first lockdown and this made it much easier to transition back into online learning. 

We also still had our online learning page set up and were ready to go with a template for what the learning design should look like. 

So what was different this time. We started out with very low attendance on our Google Meets with many children perhaps choosing to take a break or unable to access devices as we had a limit time to get them out to children. 

As we moved into the first full week attendance increased and by the second week I had 50% of my class attending Google Meets or blogging. 

As a result of this I felt it was important to offer more learning opportunities. This lead to Workshops which I ran in addition to our class Google Meets. These focused on one of the learning areas and expanded on the ideas covered in the Google Slide and rewindable teacher video. 

You can see one of these in this Class Onair lesson. 

One thing I found interesting is the confidence we all have gain through this experience to speak up and share in an online forum such as Google Meet. Reflecting on this I though what a life skill this is for the learners who have been engaging. 

I am still very concerned for learners who I have not seen engaging in online learning but am comforted by the fact that I have had contact with most families over the phone and they discussed options for their child and their learning if they can not get online. 

While this time is challenging and I know both I and my class would rather be at school learning together, I have seen great value in this time. I have learned to structure my lessons differently to include the value of playing games. I have begun to think more about how I can bring Google Meets back into the classroom so that all learners gain the value of learning to engage in this way. I have seen how conversation and breaking down of task can change the way a child looks at challenge problems. 

I am a learner! and this lockdown has taught me a lot.

Online Student Teachers

Ever since my first day in the classroom I have waited eagerly for the day I would be able to have my own student teacher.

I guess this is because of all the amazing Associate teachers I had and the many mentors who have supported me since then. Looking back I know that each one of those people gave me a gift. From all I have gain curriculum, from some I learned patience from others I learned to have high expectations and from all I learned to be a teacher is so many other ways.

So when the opportunity arose to be an online Associate Teacher for the group of training teachers in the graduate program I literally jumped for joy. This was it, my chance to give back the gift so many wonderful teacher had given me. Little did I know that I would get a much greater gift from my student teacher than I could ever give them.

Before our first meeting I emailed the training teacher to set up a time and shared with them this video that the children in room 21 helped me to create to give the teachers a feel for our classroom.

This movie is movie is just for your Debbie, Karen. Aamel and  Lucy.

Only moments after I sent the email I had response and the lovely ladies had commented on our blog.


Only a few days later we met on Google Meet for the first time. Our meeting was a whirlwind of ideas, information and conversation.  I tried my best to collate all we talked about into a Google Doc so that they could refer back to it. I also gave them their task description, as these student teachers could not be with us in person they were asked to look through the kids blogs, comments and collaborate to create a set of learning activities to meet the students needs.

I asked for, During level 2 we look at position and orientation. This proved to be a challenge for the children. They struggled with the vocabulary of position: in front, behind, beside, under, over etc North, South, East, West and so on. They began using grid coordinates and needed more work on this. It would be great if they could have a learning experience using a range of positional language and working with grid coordinates. This will be with the learner in my class working at and above a year 3 level.

From this we discuss them each taking an area and creating a task for the learners. We talked about games as a way of engaging the children. We talked about the interests of the kids and how these can be motivating factors in learning.

During the two weeks the training teachers had to create their learning activities I had a range of questions from them. However these questions for the most part were content and learner focused and not digital skill focused like I had expected.

Reflecting back I remember 3 days before our second meeting feel concerned that I had not supported them enough when I heard other teachers talking about their training teachers asking for digital support.

What I learned was that if they had needed it they would have asked but they like any great team had been drawing on the resource of each other, the internet and the university and had save only the questions about my learners that no one else could answer for me.

The site they create is exceptional and therefore deserve a blog post all of its own. I feel so privileged to have had three amazing student teacher, who are self driven, hard working, thoughtful teachers  already. They have shown me they take children learning seriously and what to use all they know about a group of children to create content that inspire and challenges them.

Thank you so much Debbie, Karen. Aamel and  Lucy for inspiring me with your passion and commitment to children's learning. 

Connecting-Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu

This term has meant some changes for the Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu program. While the focus remains on connecting children using blog commenting with schools across the country this term the wonderful Fiona Grant has add a professional learning element that connects us at teachers through a Google Meet.

These meeting have been incredible. They are an opportunity to see how teachers around the country are going with distance learning and share ideas and success stories.

Last week the meeting was run as a SLAM this meant that people had 1 minute to share and idea to help others with their blogging, class site or teacher workflow.

It was such great fun and we all learnt some great tips. You can check out the slide and recorded Google Meet here.

Blogging

Blogging I back in full force. This year we have the Manaiakalani blogging app up and running and it is so exciting to see the learners blogging eagerly. I started off introducing the blogging process to a small group of learners in the class in order give them the skills and empower them to become blogging experts who other could go to for questions. 

Then I worked with kids 1-1 with the support of my expert bloggers to help them understand the process.

We are now moving into the phase in which each learner is ready to blog at different moments in time and I decided the best way to support them in this was to make the process rewindable and visible through the Cybersmart page on our class site. Salem helped me with this creating with me videos of how he blogged so that learners can follow them.


I think I my next step will be to create a photo process and QR code for the classroom wall that students can see and refer to and that links them straight to videos. This will empower them to be their own problems solve as they continue to gain confidence as bloggers.

Writing really matters to me!

When I was at school I remember writing things and wondering why am I doing this. I would think no one wants to read my retelling off the New Zealand land wars when they can read a book written by a professional author, so what is the point.

Now that I am a teacher moments like these pop back into my mind from time to time and they made me do things differently. I am lucky and as is my class that our writing goes up in places like this. On a blog, a site or in a video that the world can see but is that purpose enough? This year I really wanted that kids to make meaningful connections with their writing.

So what was I to do. These kids had been blogging for year and well this was great they didn't see it as as meaningful as it was to those who read it. So I capitalized on what was most important to 8 year olds and we made new friends. We decided to write letters to a class in Rotorua about 3 hours drive South of us. I organised with a friend who teaches down there to buddy our kids so they could write to the same person many times.

A video we made:

Example Letter:

Dear Kate,

Kharizma left this school so I am going to write  a letter to you. My name is Kiarah, this term we have been learning about music. We have been making instruments and making music. We found out what sounds the musical notes make. Our class have been  playing recorder’s and it has been so much fun. We played these notes with the recorder's, a, b, d, c and g.

Sorry that she left. I hope you enjoyed my letter.

From Kiarah.

This was so much fun, we wrote letters, drew picture, did painting, made videos and even wrote a christmas song for our new friends and the excitement on the children's faces when they received those letters let me know that they felt this writing was purposeful and that it mattered to them!

Here is our Christmas song we wrote for our friends.
This year we have been so privileged to have had to opportunity to write to a class in Rotorua. We have really enjoyed reading their letters and writing to them about our lives. I have been wonderful seeing how different people spend their time and learning about what Room 30 are learning.

Here is a little video we made for Room 30 to thank them and wish them a Merry Christmas. 

 

We hope you like it Room 30!

Blogging is Rewindable too!

Today we had a wonderful staff meeting in which we build on our knowledge about rewindable learning from last year. This year we discussed how our blogs and the blogs of our learners can be made more rewindable by using labels effectively.

This year I used Labels for my learners these are: Maths2017, Writing 2017, Reading2017. I think it could be better for the learners in the future if I divided up these labels to make it Reading,  2017 so that they can have a full record of reading and what they did in 2017.

Another thing we discussed was how to make sure that the feedback we give in Doc is rewindable by putting them on the blog. We discussed perhaps using Google keep to keep these comments and add them to the blog so that they can be reflected back on.


One of the things that happened during the Summer Learning Journey was that dialogic conversation happened on the learners blogs. Can we realistically get this dialogic discussion happening digital with our teachers given our busy lives? I hope so but I am not so sure watch this space.

Audience, Learners knowing that they have an audience and who they are important. This is built for our learners through twitter feeds that automatically tweets their post.


Blogger Tips

Schedule posts
This can help to keep our class blog alive so that the wider world can still connect with us.
Keeping a blog up to date is important we need to JUST DO IT!
Can you get the kids to email the post to blogger?

Blog Layout
When it comes to your landing page what do you see? Can you get to old post? Can you see the comments so see who is engaging with you?