DFI SESSION 8

Today spoke about computational thinking. We discussed the difference between digital fluency and digital technology.

The importance of learners being digital fluent students.

We spoke about  Empowerment for both teachers and learners. I find it important to empower learners and

some of my greatest joys comes from seeing my learners grow and develop in confidence and ability to show empathy for others. 

Exploring scratchpad

This was a fun task and I can see older learners really enjoying exploring scratch pad.

This is a sample of Scratch pad we explored how to use the different tool buttons in scratchpad.

 

DFI SESSION 7

Today we spoke about  being Cyber smart for learners. This can be linked to our PBL as learners focus on the importance of showing respect to each as well as for their devices. 

My classroom in 2020 and 2021 has a class site with Reading, Writing, Math, Inquiry and learners blog. Learners have access to weekly learning outcomes, songs and activities.

During the DFI sessions in which I have a relief teacher my learners have access to there I pads.  Learners are able to access their learning on the class site, where they can revisit the week's learning. It is also helpful for the reliever as she can easily view our topic and learning with the learning intentions.

An example of the Writing slide for 

We use the rewindable learning/ ako ano where learners can revisit learning outcomes with examples related to the outcome. This means that learners that need extra practice in a specific learning outcome have access to this on their Ipads. Each group will have access to their ako ano on their slide. The ako ano is recorded during the lesson and then uploaded for learners to access on their Ipads.

DFI SESSION 6

 Today we continued exploring  our class sites and discussing the importance of making it visible. The visual appeal is very important especially for the learner, who needs to be drawn in and motivated to explore and revisit learning. Furthermore we discussed the functionality and accessibility of our sites. We need to think about how learners are accessing the site. It should always be no more than 3 clicks to arrive at their learning. The simpler to access the information the better and easier for the learner. 

We discussed google site buttons and how to organise this. I noted and explored Pixabay which has stunning free images that can be used when designing ones site.

I find the Colourpick Eyedropper it be very cool. Once you have installed chrome extension 

then the colour will adjust colour values for text.

Google sites empower learning in our digital learning environments.

The purpose of the Learning Site is as follows.

We spoke about eliminating Spam on blogs. Never click on any suspicious links !!!

Never just delete a spam comment. First mark as spam and then delete it!

Eliminating Spam on Blogs 

All blogs in Manaiakalani schools  have the default setting that allows Anyone to comment.

Blog administrator settings include the teacher being sent an email notification when a student posts and when a comment is left on their blog.

The easiest way to quickly see what is happening on your students’ blogs is through Hapara Teacher Dashboard. A regular (ie daily) check here is necessary to identify spam early.

First thing in the morning is best practice as the spambots seem to operate on Northern Hemisphere time zones.

It is important to learn what to do and how to do it - if you get spam on one of your blogs.

We recommend you talk to your facilitator or  education programme leader if you are unsure and want help. We are available to support you and our schools.

STEPS TO ILLUMINATING SPAM:

If this is urgent and offensive, we suggest you take these steps- or ask our facilitator to do it for you:

1. Mark the offensive comment as spam BEFORE deleting it - to alert Google to investigate.  

2. Activate comment moderation on posts older than 14 days

3. Remove the Recent Comments gadget from the sidebar, reducing the potential for the spam to be seen by the child or whānau before it is stomped on.

4. Revert the post that attracted the spam to Draft, breaking the link with the spambot.  

Hapara Teacher Dashboard should be checked daily - that is why you have it!

Before school.  Spambots appear to be based in Northern Hemisphere time zones, so spam will generally arrive overnight.

I enjoyed sharing my class room site and seeing other colleagues sites too. I noted that I do need to focus on font and sizing with my slides, as this will have a greater visual appeal to the viewer.

DFI Session 5

 Today we have been  talking about visible teaching and learning. We call our kaupapa words the joists of the flooring. Learn, create, share does not work smoothly if the joists are not strong.

Today we have been speaking about making the learning visible to the learner, whanau, colleagues and the community who play an important part at your school.

As educators we are  always talking about the Who, we are referring to the learner

4 aspects of the learning journey

Planning/Process/Outcomes/Assessment

By using Google slides we make teaching visible to the learner. Hapara allows us to see what the young learners are doing and what they learning. 

With Class on air these teachers have a web cam in their classroom and there is a site and other  teachers are able to view  their teaching and learning in a range of contexts. You can see their planning and what learners are doing. This makes learning and teaching visible to other teachers.  Teachers have the option to share their enquiry journey. In doing so we join in a wider community making learning and sharing visible.

Creating my own multi modal site

I really enjoyed working with other junior teachers collaboratively and planning and creating an innovative theme which we can use with our learners. By considering a common theme between various texts. We then created our individual multi modal site. I look forward to sharing this site with my learners and having them complete the tasks in the plan. It relates to PBL and them being good friends to others.

DFI SESSION 4

 

This is a graph taken from a spreadsheet from a learners blog post. I then did a brief analysis of it.

This learner averaged 

2,7 blogs per month for the year 2017

18,4 blogs per month for the year 2018

28,8 blogs per month for the year 2019

15,3 blogs per month for the year 2020 

Since starting blogging this learners blogs have increased and for the years 2018 to 2019. However in 2020 her posts decreased. This could be due to covid, absenteeism. 

Share

 Session 4 

This week we have been focusing  on Share (Dorothy) and the importance of this. Share and connect go hand in together As humans we connect and share! As the hook from heaven our goals being to raise student achievement. Sharing has been hook since 2010. Ways in which we share in a school system include some of the following. At school assemblies, news letters, school production, sharing learners stories and learners with principal and others, giving learners sticker, displaying learners work  on the wall. 

Sharing in the digital age. We chose blogger as the main online space for  our young people to share their learning. Share to finish learning. Learning the importance of sharing and taking time to share is crucial part of learners learning journey. This is a lifeskill that needs to be learnt.  Share to learn. Share to finish learning. You may start  sharing as a place to learn.  We are using  blogger as platform for  our  DFI course. This can be great use for sharing for appraisal.

Creating a form 

Forms and sheets work really well together. Blank form Write in the title of the form it will automatically sync up and show. I found this fun. However If I used these I will  need to use images for my year one learners, as they do need the visual to help understand the text.

     This is an example of  the Form that I created.

Today we explored using My Maps 

I decided to show places that I have visited.

DFI SESSION 3

Google Draw

Today I explored google draw and learnt about its many uses.

                                         
                           I then created an about me button in google draw.

Google Slides

We also explored google slides and its purposes. Google slides are used to enable learners to access their learning. At a year 1 level it is crucial that the slides created for learners have mainly pictures with few words. These visual images are vital for our young learners.

DFI SESSION 2

 Today we focussed on Google Meet which I am well familiar as we started this at the start of  Covid. I was also introduced to Google Keep and  I installed the app on my phone and started a shopping list. Therefore google keep can be used for my personal uses. In the classroom Google Keep is good for learners to keep all information in one place. It is handy for note taking, taking photos and a good place to collate all your 'stuff'.  One can put a bank of comments together example report comments. I found it very interesting that one can use Google Keep and add location and you will receive a notification to your mobile when you are passing that location, example shopping. No excuse to avoid getting the shopping done. It is important to note that Google Keep does not work from room to room across the school.

Taming your tabs 

We learnt ways to effectively  manage and keep track of your tabs. I noted that

having too many tabs open  will slower your device. So don't have too many tabs open close them if not using.

Sync is 3 dots at the top On Chrome Make sure that sync is turned on as if you close that tab and sync is off, you will lose all that information. 

Bookmarks

I found the using bookmarks very useful for any info used daily like attendance, blogs, class site and drive.

  

Workona

Workspaces (smart browser windows) is one of the best ways to organise your work.

We had a google meet with Dorothy who revisited the four DFI goals and focussed on Learn.

I learnt how to do a google meet recording and add it to my blog.

DFI SESSION 1

 At our first session today  I got a deeper understanding of the Manaiakalani journey since 2006. It was very interesting to hear about how the Manaiakalani trust was started and the huge efforts and work that went into establishing this wonderful organisation. It was great  to hear how the Learn, Create, Share came into being. 

I gained some insight  about Google chrome and its function as a software application browser.. Also  why  it is best to use Google chrome as a browser, as students have this on their chrome books. I learnt how to set up a profile picture and how to set up bookmarks. It was very helpful to learn how to organise my drive.  

I learnt how to use voice typing and I will teach my learners how to use it. This will be fun and assist their reading skills.

Being able to confidently organise my work in folders will definitely save me time,  as I will be able to access information easier.

DIGITAL FLUENCY INTENSIVE (DFI)

In term two I will be participating in the Digital Fluency Intensive Programme / DFI. This will be a nine week course, which is designed to provide  purposeful professional learning for educators in our wider community of learning.  as well as to build confidence and  digital fluency in educators within the Manaiakalani Programme. The course will be run by Stef Parker, Dorothy Burt and the DFI team. 

MANAIAKALANI TEACHER ONLY DAY

Manaiakalani

What a privilege it was having  Dr. Rae Si‘ilata (Ngāti Raukawa/Tūhourangi/Fiji) the Director of Va‘atele Education Consulting and Senior Lecturer in the School of Indigenous Graduate Studies at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi as our key note speaker today. Her work focuses on effective bilingual/biliteracy practice for Pasifika learners in schooling and on facilitation of teacher professional learning and development in linguistically and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Dr Rae leads professional learning and development for school leaders, teachers and teacher aides/bilingual tutors leading to transformational system change.

The three workshops which I chose to do are Enhancing reading with Explain Everything,  Effective reading practice and T shaped literacy for juniors.

HPE

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• This year we started our compulsory 45 minute PE sessions. We are also required to do at least 2 ten minute fitness

• sessions per week. In room 3 we do fitness daily. We do Go Noodle fitness songs daily. This lasts about 10 to 15 minutes. Each day 3 songs are chosen. Term 1 we choses Footloose, I like to move it and Banana Banana Meatball songs from Go Noodle. Learners have really enjoyed doing these dance/ movement exercises daily. It has been a fun way for them to learn and follow sequences as well as exercise.

• I am very pleased at the learners enthusiasm to being active and participating in daily and weekly PE sessions.

• For PE , Term one, we focussed on co-operative games. This has been especially necessary as learners are getting to know members of their class. I used balls, hula hoops, skipping ropes and had learners work together using these equipment. As learners needed to use skills related to throwing and catching for example when playing with the ball. Lots of teacher modelling was needed in order for learners to learn the skill and understand what was required of them when completing a task. I also set up stations once learners had some experience using the equipment. Learners took a while to understand how the stations work, but once it was repeated they showed more confidence and understanding.

THE EARLY LITERACY PROJECT

This week the junior team were asked to read through The Early Literacy Project and share 3 things that resonated with us and 1 new thing to try/ implement or interesting.

I read and following stood out to me.

.Teaching of reading is better when explicit, structured and systematic

.Phonological awareness plays a big role.

.Text must support the learning not be the learning. 

Structure and everything is provided for explicit instruction. 

After we shared what resonated with us we we noted that we cannot discard valuable teaching as prescribed in Effective Literacy Practice (Years 1 -4)

INCREDIBLE YEARS PROGRAMME

Term one  I started the Incredible Years Classroom Management Programme course,  a six weeks course run by Lil Reynecke and Emily Maruai.  A  programme which promotes positive, pro- active and pro-social strategies which encourage best practice in classroom management. With the purpose being to reduce, challenging behaviours in learners and to increase their social and self-control skills.

At the first session we were asked to think of possible goals for ourselves around the Incredible Years Programme (IYP) . As well as a possible target learner that we would focus on during this programme.

My goal is to be able to successfully implement a variety of  strategies required to assist learners

displaying unacceptable social behaviour in and outside of the classroom.

Looking at the learners in my current class I could not identify anyone who displayed any unsatisfactory social behaviour. I will however revisit this early in  term two as I will be having 10 learners join my room and I will have a straight year one class then.

During session two we looked at proactive teacher strategies and developing a behaviour plan for relationship building. For example a negative display of behaviour from a learner could be poking and touching others on the mat, in order to gain attention. The class rules should be displayed and used to promote positive responses from learners. Therefore refer to the class rules and discuss the importance of keeping hands and feet to oneself and respecting personal space. Some ways of building relationships in this regard can be to use puppets to engage learners to display positive behaviour in relation to poking and touching others. Also using the Show me 5.approach. Walking feet, Hands to self, Eyes on teacher, Inside voice, Listening ears.

Some ways that I can be pro active include looking  at my  time table, structure, plan and allow for transitions, look at the positioning and set up of classroom and make changes accordingly. Use positive verbal as well as non- verbal signals. As well as having active breaks for learners. This could involve doing an action rhyme or song, exercise or walk outside. 

How do I do transitions in my room? Currently learners are accustomed to tidying up between lessons. Therefore the tidy op song is played and learners tidy up areas of the room and then proceed to the carpet. Before I start a new lesson I either have an introduction song eg Prior to starting writing we play and sing along with the Tricky word song.  I find this valuable as it settles learners as well as having them look and sing high frequency words which they will later use in either writing or reading.  It is also a great way to reinforce remembering hfw. 

We also discussed the importance of displaying a visual chart or  list of  jobs for learners to do in the class. This could range from putting out pencils, to opening and closing windows. This promotes learners feeling empowered and developing self confidence. Homework for the next session Read chapters 1, 2, 3 & 14. Bring your schools discipline / behaviour plan.  

Session three I was away with the flu. Therefore I will need to have a catch up session with either Lily or Emily at my school. The date is yet to be finalised.

 

PBFL

 

POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR FOR LEARNING (PBFL)

This year we  started implementing Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBFL) programme at Panmure bridge. I really enjoy incorporating these lessons into my daily teaching programme as it links to class and school rules. The ideas for each lesson is quite easy to follow and especially effective with new learners to our school. Term 1 Lesson plans 2021

Learners in my room have responded very well to this programme. I have incorporated it into my Literacy programme as follows. When we have oral language (Turn and talk) learners share what they know prior to me teaching the lesson. We continue by having learners write about the specific topic of the week in their story writing. They then follow up by reading their story to their class mates or special friend. I intend to also have them record themselves reading their written stories.  I have also integrated with art as far possible, as learners enjoy art and it can be displayed for them to see. For example when they learnt the importance of wearing their school uniform they enjoyed crafting the Panmure bridge school T shirt with the school logo on the front.

Learners especially enjoyed this weeks PBFL lesson about not giving up. It was so great to integrate it

with Literacy, Drama and Art. We read the Keep Trying book together. Learners discussed things that 

they were learning to do like swimming, drawing, playing catch, during oral language. They then crafted

posters with captions focussing on what they were going  to Keep trying.