Nationwide Lockdown Level 4 #2 August 2021 | Online Learning

Kia Ora bloggers,

Lockdown level 4 just like that... 

It was Tuesday afternoon on 17th August when I first heard that there is a community case of Covid and my first gut feeling was oh no it will be another lockdown but then I don't know why but I did not want to believe it. Probably because Term 3 had just kicked off and I had just begun making a shift with some of my learners who were needing to be accelerated. Anyway, lockdown did happen and just within few hours whole country went into level 4 lockdown. Auckland will be in lockdown for a bit longer as we need to do the heavy lifting being the gateway to NZ. 

Lots of feelings, thoughts and things rushed in my brain when I heard the news. My husband is an essential worker who looks after the IT side of things at Middlemore Hospital and that meant just like last year I would be responsible for the emotional and mental well-being of the people in my bubble. My bubble consists of my in laws, my children and our two dogs. AND of course my professional role of a teacher for 24 students. 

Online learning began from Thursday 19th August for our students at my school GTS. I spent Wednesday 18th August connecting with all my students and their families via phone calls and setting up online learning page on my class site. Why connect with the students and their families via phone calls you may wonder? Well, I believe having a good positive working relationship with students and their families is integral to learning and especially when learning from home. As Rita Pierson in her very famous TED Talk says- "For any learning to happen, there has to be a good relationship first formed with students". I totally resolute with this statement of hers. 

                                                            TED Talk from Rita Pierson 

Link to my class site

Link to my class blog 

Online learning has it's own proc and cons but I like last year focussed on the pros and made a plan and dived into online learning. I think being in a school that is part of the Manaiakalani cluster of schools gives us as a school that capacity, skills and ability to launch into online learning as our students already skilled in using their chromebook (Digital tool). All as a teacher I need to focus on is designing learning programmes that are fun, engaging and also support students in maintaining their achieved levels for their age. 

Reflecting on - Class Learning Culture| Developing Students' Critical Literacy Skills

Reflecting back on what I have been doing since the beginning of this year with regards to developing students' critical literacy skills in my class. This year as part of being one of the Manaiakalani innovative teachers I have the opportunity to design a tool that helps in developing and improving students' critical literacy skills. 

Below are some learning tasks, activities and websites I have been implementing with my students and as you scroll right down there is a link to the ARBS website which is a very useful website with amazing text database and tasks. 

My post on 14th April this year was on developing a learning culture in class that enables students to develop their critical literacy skills. Since the beginning of this year I have been designing and  implementing learning tasks for students that definitely have engaged students with texts in a critical manner. This was reflected in the latest Reading assessments I undertook in my class. (Probe fiction and non fiction reading assessments). The assessments have revealed that not only students have gone up a level or two in their reading but have been able to fill gaps they had in their assessments in the first Term. 

Kiwikids News Website is a great website to get some topical texts for students to engage with. 

We have been sharing our opinions on many inquiry topics we have done so far this year. Below are examples of two questions/statements we gave our opinion on with reasons that were justified from the texts and information sources. 

Argumentation writing- Students being encouraged to look at both the sides and then form an opinion. 

Students learning to evaluate texts. Students learning to see how authors create mood and atmosphere through writing.

ARBS website- A great resource for getting your texts from and also learning tasks. This website has English, Science and Maths resources under each curriculum level. 

If you have any clarifications or questions regarding any links I have shared in my post, please let me know. 

Nga Mihi

KPMG Hui #2 in Auckland with my MIT whanau

This year my project as a Manaiakalani innovative teacher is to work collaboratively with the MIT 2021 team and design a tool that helps in developing critical literacy skills in students. 

It always makes me happy to connect with my MIT colleagues, Dorothy and Matt (Manaiakalani Team). Yesterday we came together again as a team and shared our mahi and progress with regards to our projects. 

Since the last time I blogged I have been up to analysing the student voice and teacher voice I gathered in March in Term 1. Analysing the data has been really interesting in terms of noticing the trends and how similar certain trends are across classes at my school. 

Link to the teacher voice Google form

Link to the padlet I created for students to record their ideas

What I am really glad about is that we as a year 5-6 team of teachers looked at the Reading comprehension (PAT) data for Term 1. We really got to breaking the data apart, looking at each student and identifying the strengths and areas where there are big gaps. Finding out the gaps gave us an opportunity to plan for focussed teaching and to do targeted teaching of the gaps through flexible workshop groups in reading. 

The two websites I am finding highly effective to use are - ARBS website and ReadTheory website. What is really effective about the ARBS website is that it is designed by NZCER and has reading tasks ranging from level 1 of the curriculum to level 6. Since all the students in our team are in Year 5-6 we are mostly using the tasks under level 3 of the curriculum. Here is a link to the page from where you can access all the tasks not only in Reading but Writing, Maths and Science.   The students in my class are really showing high levels of engagement and progress completing reading tasks from this website. 

ReadTheory website is really good too in terms of developing comprehension skills in students. It has a wide range of reading material and texts for students and after each text the students have to answer questions or respond to the text in an engaging way through a quick quiz or interactive activities. All the students in my class are really enjoying reading from this website. If you set up your class and use a class code, you are able to see every student's progress. Students are able to set reading tasks at a level they want and challenge themselves and monitor their own learning. 

My next step is to get on with building a Google site with all the tools I am planning to design and really get the process of designing going now. 

I will keep you all posted with the process through blog posts in the coming weeks. 

Thank you for visiting my blog and if you have any questions or queries please don't hesitate to contact me. My email is- manpreetd@glentaylor.school.nz

Nga mihi nui 

Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher Journey Update

 

Kia Ora,

It seems like a long time since I last posted. It has been a roller coaster of a Term so far... Two lockdowns in Auckland, start of the school year, getting to know our leaners and whanau and this and that. 

It has been a full on Term yet very rewarding in terms of getting to know my learners and beginning to establish a learning focused culture where each and every learner can access learning, engage and be active participants achieving their full potential. 

Where am I at with my Manaiakalani innovative teacher journey so far?

Well, on Monday 29th March we had our second hui at KPMG and we came together as team after our hui at Coromandel in late February. 

We shared where we are at with our individual challenge that we are working with this year as part of our role as MIT (Manaiakalani innovative teacher). Everyone reflected lots on how and why with regards to their challenge after our first hui at Coromandel. Due to the two lockdowns in Auckland , I got working towards gathering data for the challenge I have identified towards the end of March.  

Since my challenge is to do with Literacy. 

" Supporting learners to use critical literacy skills when they read texts." The challenge I have identified across multiple schools and year levels is that majority of the students find it difficult or lack the ability to use critical literacy skills when reading texts.

The first thing I got into after our hui at Coromandel was dig deep into gathering as much information as I could before starting to collect data to move forward with my project and our hui at KPMG on 29th March. I did not just want to depend on the formal or compulsory assessments only so I created a Google Form for a group of teachers who have or teach Year 4's and up. Here is a link to the Google Form.

I wanted to know what my colleagues thoughts were around critical literacy and what their experiences are of students use of critical literacy when they are reading texts. 

I completed this Google Form as well and will be completing the same one at the end of this year just to draw any similarities or comparisons/changes with the one I did now at the beginning of the year. 

The other piece of data I collected was student voice through a padlet. Here is a link to the padlet that was completed by Year 3 to 8 students at Glen Taylor School(My school). 

Just with my class I will get them to respond to these questions again towards the end of Term 3 just to see if there are any changes in their responses. 

Hui @ KPMG 

It was such a fantastic day meeting at KPMG for the day and doing our mahi. We were treated so well and looked after corporate style by Justine from KPMG. Our main focus for the day was to get thinking about what tool we could create to solve the problem/challenge we have identified. 

The hui started by talking about and reflecting on where we are at with our thinking process with regards to our challenge- Has our challenge changed or is it the same? Have we thought about what tool we could create. We were shown this poster/model by Dorothy our Programme lead to get us thinking in terms of design framework and process. 

For the entire day we worked together collaborating with one another on coming up with possible solutions for the various challenges we have identified this year as a group. 

Some photos from the day- 

Justine from KPMG addressing us a group and sharing what KPMG does and what her role is at KPMG and how she supports Manaiakalani Education Trust. 

Kath and I sharing some vocabulary building activities our colleague Tim could use in his tool that he is thinking of developing. 

Kath and I presenting what we think Tim one of our MIT colleagues could design as a possible tool. 

Me working on my prototype. Thinking, drawing, reading and writing. 

In conclusion,

It was a day of coming together and working together and indeed it was. Did a lot of thinking and draft designing. I am happy to say I feel I am on the way now but it will be long before I can come up with a prototype. I will be working on my prototype for the next few weeks now. 

Take care everyone. More from me on my MIT journey in my next post. 

Whakatauki I would like to share with you all ( My class and I discuss a whakatauki every week)-

The bird that consumes the miro berry owns the forest
The bird that consumes knowledge owns the world. 

So with this thought in mind I am going to move forward with developing my prototype and consume as much knowledge as I can so I develop a tool that supports teachers and learners in all Manaiakalani schools in developing critical literacy skills when reading texts. (Teachers are supported in teaching these skills and learners have a tool they can use to enhance their critical literacy skills when reading texts).

Nga mihi nui

MIT Hui at Kuaotunu | Thinking about how, who and getting into the process of ideation

The next activities we engaged in during our first MIT Hui at Kuaotunu were thinking about how might we solve this problem? Who will support us in this and what will our support system look like over this year? Lastly, we participated in the process of ideation where we had to think of eight different ideas that might help in managing or solving the challenge we have identified. 

Sharing with my MIT colleagues at our first Hui my support network I will have in my journey this year. 

We all had to ask each of our MIT colleagues how might we solve this challenge question. Thinking about how might we turn this problem into a solution. 

This activity of thinking of eight things we might do to solve the challenge was harder than I thought. Doing this task helped in opening up my brain channels and it made me think about what could I design to make an impact or help solve the challenge I have identified. 

Empathy| Being The Learner Facing The Challenge

At our Hui in Kuaotunu we engaged in a variety of activities in order to understand the challenge we have identified. One of the initial activities we were involve in was to take the empathy angle and be in our learner's shoes. Think like the learner facing the challenge. We all carried this activity out with a buddy and through it got to see and feel what the different learners might feel when facing a challenge. 

My buddy was Sarah from Pt England School in Auckland and we both discussed our challenges we have identified. We all completed a poster activity where we placed the learner in the middle and responded to the four different statements and questions we had on the poster. 

A photo of my poster- 

My Buddy Sarah's Poster-

This poster activity made us think about the learners in front of us rather than our own judgements and experiences. It made us realise the importance of being empathetic and keeping our learners at the forefront. 

My buddy Sarah and I put ourselves in our learner's shoes and through role play activity in-acted  like our learner facing the challenge we have identified. Questions our learners would ask, things going on in their head, feelings surpassing them during class. 

I was really fascinated doing this activity and started to think about the role of empathy in design thinking process to solve a problem. So, I got surfing the net and reading about empathy in solving problems and found this piece of reading by Dr Keith Robinson very interesting. 

Here is the link to the article I read. 

 

Understanding Problems and Challenges Through Role Play

 

On the second day of our Hui at Kuaotunu we were involved in a role play activity in which we were given a character/role to play and our role was to be in the shoes of the board member on the board of trustees at the Kuaotunu Area School. The role of the board chair was played by our programme lead Dorothy and Jenny played the role of the principal. 

Each of us had a role to play in the mock board meeting. A series of challenges were put forward and shared by the board chair and the principal with all the members of the board and group of parents who were invited to the board meeting to participate in the meeting. 

This activity really helped me in realising that it is very important to firstly identify the challenge but then most importantly to unpack it and discuss it with group of people who can help with either resolving the problem or coming up with ideas that will support in managing the challenge and do something about it. 

One thing that I particularly found difficult was starting a question with the word why. We were asked by our programme lead team to try and begin our questions with why. It is easy to begin asking questions about a challenge or a problem by saying what, how and who but when we start putting why at the beginning of the question it is a process I was not very familiar with. 

This role play activity showed me how I need to use the word why as a question starter when thinking of the challenge I have identified in my journey of MIT this year. 

The Five Why Questions Task

In my previous post I have shared the challenge I identified and completed a Moonshot Proposal. 

After we sent our Moonshot Proposal slides to Dorothy (our programme lead) she assigned us roles of asking 5 why questions to someone on their identified challenge and then one person was asking us the 5 why questions on our identified challenge. 

This process really made me think hard about the challenge I had identified and got me thinking in terms of why is this a challenge and why am I wanting to make a difference. 

Here is a slide that shows the conversation I had with Tim who was my buddy asking me 5 why question on my challenge. 

Getting Started|Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher Journey 2021

Last year I was lucky enough to be accepted in the Manaiakalani innovative teacher team for this year. I have always been interested in how a group of teachers along with the Manaiakalani programmes leads have been innovating since many years now and have designed tools/programmes that have supported making shifts in student learning. 

So, I am very humbled to be involved in this journey and will work hard with my fellow MIT colleagues in designing a tool that will help in making a difference in the area I have identified in this initial phase of our MIT journey.

In late January during our school holidays our first task was to introduce and share our challenge with our MIT colleagues and engage in conversation with one other MIT colleague in asking 5 why questions. We all shared our challenge through our Moonshot proposal slides. 

Working on this Moonshot Proposal made me wonder about the challenge I have identified.