Showing posts with label Professional Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Professional Learning. Show all posts

Friday, March 28, 2025

Read/Write for Google Advanced Session

 I was able to attend and complete the read/write for google advanced session. I found many of these tools very logical and plan on implimenting them at a whole class level, before encouraging specific students to use them more exclusivly and frequently in class.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fCE4hfXFUwPUMbwKAH4qgo69f2jvSsoJ/view?usp=sharing

Thursday, November 21, 2024

MPI Day 9 - Create and Share

Today we spent some time discussing and exploring the Create and Share aspects of the Manaiakalani pedagogy. It was great to hear other teachers ways of engaging whanau in this process, and I took away a number of strategies for my practice next year.

It was very positive recapping the vast quantity of learning we have gotten through during this course, and spending time reflecting on both the processes and the content. It is great realising how much more confident I am with the content to be covered in our new curriculum documents, and the range of strategies and resources I am now aware of to assist this too.

I am looking forward to sharing many of these resources, tools and strategies with my colleuge whom is teaching the same year level as me next year, and planning together to use many of them. I believe it will be very valuable for us to be able to compare accross the cohort, especially with the attitude pre and post surveys.

A sincere thank you to our facilitators for the time and effort they have put into this, and how they have gone above and beyond to support us all.




Thursday, November 7, 2024

MPI Day 8 - Statistics and Data

Today we discussed the concept of data talk, aligned with math talks, specifically focusing on the reading of data. There are so many excellent examples and ready to use activities on YouCubed resources of data talks that I plan to insert into my planning in the future.


We spent a lot of time today deep diving into the PPDAC cycle, and a huge array of level open ended and level specific resources, relating directly to our currently draft curriculum.  It was great to find so many resources already translated into multiple languages ready to use, and the differences in the different phase expectations in statistics and probability. It was valuable to spend time exploring this as a cohort, and really clarify our collective understanding of how a students understanding is expected to progress over their years of schooling.

I found this Interactive graph activity on interrprating data a great warm up, or clarifying activity to check students understanding, with really clear pointers and clarifications for misunderstood questions and common misconceptions along the way.

Cencus at school is a fantastic NZ site providing vast quantities of statistical data collected from students accross NZ over many years. Not only does it seem to have a large quantity of support materials and detailed activity progressions at relevent levels from classroom teachers, it also has a new round each year which classrooms/schools can sign up to and then use their own relevent data in analysis activities and learning for students. I especially look forward to using the PPDAC fabulous feet resource from Cencus at School next year in my class.

I found the data cards a really neat way of displaying and manipulating larger quantities of data for students in a visual way. I would like to get my students to digitally create their own data cards with agreed on parameters to use in class, showing different types of graphs to display data and how this looks.

I have gathered a number of ideas and resources during todays MPI to further reflect upon and draw from with my classroom planning next year. It was good to gather tham into a single slide dek including todays planning task so as not to misplace them come next years planning and programming.






Thursday, October 17, 2024

MPI Day 7 - Geometric Thinking

 It was great today to be reminded of the Class on Air resource, and see the search and filter functions this morning. I feel this is a resource I often forget to utalise in my planning. 

Subitising is a new concept name for me as I had not heard it before. I found the linked resource amazing and have already linked an activity to my class programming with the intent on doing many more with my students.

The site of Math Playground is new for me and has so many great activities and progressions. I have added thr symmetry painter activity to my planning as a warm up to help refresh some of our previous learning from earlier this year.

Mathigon is yet another new site for me this session. The courses especially seem to be quite extensive, and I think this will be a fantastic tool for my classroom, especially for my higher learners whom I can at times find extending appropriatly difficult.

It was great to spend time today going through concepts that I have already taught this year, and to see some different ways of approaching these, and also how they translate in our new draft curriculum document. It is always helpful when my own professional learning can be tailored to what is current in the profession, and MPI is most definitly adjusting each session to the new information, while not getting rid of the good practice and content. I am feeling confident that the learning I am doing will still be relevent in years to come for myself and my students.

Coming out of today, I am excited to have a list of strategies, resources and misconceptions that I will be taking with me into my classroom planning and daily practice. It has been good to have models and tasks revisited briefly from previous days (frayer model/figure it out online resources/Jo Boalar/tip charts/talk moves/rich tasks etc). Polypad was heaps of fun to explore and I can see fantastic potential for this tool too.






MPI Day 5 - Algebraic Thinking

Todays content of MPI was around algebra. We covered a lot on a wide variety of elements of this, and it was really good to be able to explore all levels of the curriculum in this area. It was good seeing how it looked at all these levels, and helpful to understand where students should be coming from and going to next.

I particularly enjoyed the discussion around mathematical discourse and the vocabulary required of students when building and consolidating these concepts.

Exploring the equals sign and other symbols and expressions was affirming for me and the way I currently teach mathematics in ym classroom. I often talk with my students around the 'language of maths' and how it is like learning another language. This works well for many of my students who are exposed to and often speak multiple lanuguages in their daily lives. Understanding there is deeper and often multiple meanings and therefore uses for a range of symbols helps students grasp the complexity and depth of what they are doing with more ease.

It was fantastic discovering more resources again today, specifically the following two of the online abacus and solvemoji.com/. I am also really looking forward to using 99math.com.



Friday, June 9, 2023

Teachers only day - curriculum refresh - 2nd June

 Teachers only day- curriculum refresh


⁃ Rerepeti and the team introduced the why.

⁃ Acknowledging that the roll out will be a refresh. Not a new curriculum. It will easier to use. Working as a collective.

A phase journey system of the curriculum with on going pd support. NELP tool. Learning g priority and they align with refreshed curriculum.

Te Mataiaho- curriculum framework.


Unpacking- we are up to the final draft. Circular visual. This Tohu has been gifted. A karakia that starts the document sets the kaupapa for the document.


Dr Wayne Ngata explains the origins of the whakapapa that him and his roopu have gifted.

Video watched.

Mātai - to observe study

Mataiaho is about strands- looking at weaving learning areas.

Ago- explains line of thinking.

To observe the strands of learning -

Matairangi- looking beyond the horizon

Maitaitipu- thriving community

Mataiahika- local mana whenua

Matairea- to progress

Mataioho- awaken

Mataiara- arise/ Awaken arise and go forth.



We are moving away from translations. As part of the journey we are now bringing in a Maori world view. No longer translating.

7 pieces that make up this framework. Each piece contributes to a whole. Moving away from solo or seperate sections. All contribute to te Mataiaho. First 3 are the why. Next 2 are that what, the last 2 are the how.

Mātai to gaze the suffix on end informs what you are gazing at.

Mataiaho addresses the need for change

Why

Matairangi- lays out the overarching kaupapa.

Mātainuku-foundations

Mātaitipu- seedling- vision for young people. Students.

Mātairea- progression, curriculum levels. No achievement objectives. Each phase us an outcome. 5 phases. Learning areas are the aho. They are the threads that are interwoven.

Mātaiaho- delivery of curriculum, awakening - how are we working with ahikā? Curriculum review.

Mātaiahikā- connection to place and community. Contributions knowledge WhT is being done to nurture.


Monday, January 30, 2023

UBRS Understanding behaviour and responding safely.

27/01/2023 Key Points

1. Understanding behaviour
Behaviour is everything learnt purposeful changable.

Valuing diverse cultures using Te Whare o Tapa Whā. (Mason Durie)
(thinking about what is valued from each culture, respect to elders; Pasifika, looking after siblings; Māori, calmness; Inuit)

Essential Behaviour principals
All we do is behave
Behaviour is learned
Behaviour must be observable measurable
Behaviour tends to triggered
Behaviour is purposeful depends on context, behaviour skill set.

Behaviour is controlled reinforced by what happens afterwards.

We often manage the what and not the why.

Understand the why in a behaviour work what the student 'needs', it might be a calm place, quiet, food, somewhere to go.

The Brain is Important

Stem (auto motor functions)
Limbic System (produces emotions and body chemicals)
Cerebellum (stores reactions to limbic functions, fight and flight)
Cerebral Cortex (thinking bits)

Self Reflection
Is dependant on your own behaviours and experiences.
Shaped by experiences
Understand ourselves means we can help others.

Knowing what pushes your buttons enables you to mitigate your own behaviours.
Thinking about what triggers you and was it you that triggered

Managing Responses.
The only thing we can control is what we do and believe when we are faced with a challenging situation. Make it about the process and not the person. Respond constructively to any situation.

Understanding stress response involves a Hierarchical Brain.
The first three years are absolutely critical to the well being of our children.
The brain develops in the order mentioned in The Brain is Important.

Tolerable stress or anxiety is a good thing, allowing situations for students that develop a regulation of their emotions when faced with challenges.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Hapara Highlights - Level 1

I have been working on my use of Hapara in the classroom in preparation for my move into the year 7 cohort this year. It has been great to explore the Hapara community online and see what tools are available on this platform to use in the classroom and for online learning should the need arise in the coming school year.




Friday, September 24, 2021

DFI week 9

 This week we have reviewed our learning from the term and taken the google educator exam. It has been great having the time put aside to reflect on the learning that has taken place and how I have already put much of it into practice.

I have noticed how the conversations in my class have shifted to include language around coding when talking of instructional writing, about how we could use many different methods to show our understanding and our devices are one of those, and of how my students are really valuing the opportunity to share their work over a number of different formats at the end of each day while also giving very constructive feedback to their peers.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have put much of this learning into practice in a supported playful environment over the past 8 weeks. It has meant I have retained much more and it has been easier to integrate much of it into my daily practices. 

I hope there is further training to participate in over the coming years, or perhaps even refresher courses. I feel it would be very valuable to check back in 6 months or a years time. I look forward to further accessing the toolkits available through Manaiakalani over time, especially having access to archived toolkits over school holiday periods.

It was fun to work through and complete the book creator certified author qualification too. This will be a great resource to add to my classroom.


 





Friday, September 17, 2021

DFI week 8

This weeks final DFI focused on computational thinking. This is such an important skill for our tamariki to practice and master. It is my favourite Albert Einstein Quote: “Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.” that I believe embodies this idea very well. 

I found the resources around teaching this thinking really exciting. Especially the TKI resources. I look forward to exploring these further in the weeks to come with my students.

Scratch was an interesting tool to explore, and I can see how simplifying the coding experience would make it far more accessible for younger students in particular, but also for older students new to coding. It is a very logical program to use and I look forward to getting my students to work in this program in the coming weeks and months.

I enjoyed exploring the online coding options and games too. I have a variety that I intend to use in my classroom, either on my promethean board as a whole class discussion activity, or on iPads for individual work. I have included snips of some of these below.

  

 


Tuesday, September 14, 2021

PaCT tool exploration

 We explored how to make teacher judgements today using the PaCT tool. Reviewing what we have already covered reminded us that we need to remember to look at what we are taking away from each lesson.

Take aways:

  1. It is important to view the illustrations provided to get a really good idea of what the big ideas really mean for each set/ signpost.

  2. If you think a student(s) is displaying evidence at one signpost then read the descriptions above and below to double check the level of sophistication fits.

  3. The illustrations are also really great ideas for teaching a big idea.

  4. You don’t need to review each student for each set. You would group students to think about where they are to decide your deliberate acts of teaching for the next steps, one aspect at a time.

  5. We will rotate our specific focus each term on reading this year as we familiarise ourselves with these learning progressions. It would be impossible to be thinking about all the aspects for R, W and M constantly!

  6. As always we would use OTJ from a number of evidence sources to decide where students are.

  7. The focus should be less about where students are in terms of giving them a ‘level’ and more about What do I need to teach, and them to learn next”



We took a sample of students work and then looked at each aspect and used the blurb and the illustrations to help us place a student on a sign post. 


A good discussion happened at the end of the hui regarding E-asttle v's PACT tool for end of year assessments. Below are some of the things we took away from this lesson. 

We have noticed ...

...with practice I will get faster at this and more confident with making judgements

…need to change year levels of some students, classes have been set up with names to use now, look at notifications

… writing LPF is good to use. Want to use instead of asstle this year as doubling up. Maybe can for yr1-2??

...would be really valuable to go to experts on staff to moderate with my tricky judgements

PaCT tool - taken lots away. Talking with others about what our kids are doing at different levels, useful to collaborate

Feel confident with it and I want to finish putting them in

… just get it in! You know more than you think you do with your first sense.  Calm the farm a bit - you can’t teach it all

… after so long thinking about it, procrastinating and not doing it. Getting stuff in has been beneficial. SO many opportunities to double check and triple check, so it’s robust and thorough. 


Friday, September 10, 2021

DFI week 7

 

Today's learning was based around devices, and managing them in the classroom context in a way that promotes the manaiakalani values and pedagogy. I found it very interesting to view familiar sites and slide decks on a chromebook, and see how differently they display.

Explain everything was a really good app to explore today. It was great to finally get a chance to use a working form of this program as it is not functioning in my classroom at the moment. I can see a huge variety of ways to use this within my classroom, and ways to use this without it adding a large quantity of work to my planning. It will be a fantastic addition in the toolbox for my students when recording and sharing their understanding and mahi.




It has been so valuable to have this learning from manaiakalani during our lockdown period. My students and their whanau have provided feedback to myself and the school how they felt connected, supported, and confident to find the learning both for the day and previous days content. I felt confident in providing rewindable content over the time period for students and whanau. Its good to know that i can hide the tab on my website so it doesn't clutter up the page, but is still available for future use if there happens to be a need for it.



Friday, September 3, 2021

DFI week 6

Today we looked at different websites primarily set up for student access to learning. We then gave feedback to each person in our bubble, and used the feedback given to us to set goals around the development of our own class sites. It was incredibly valuable to have the time and support to take these goals and implement the necessary actions straight away. I have learnt how to create and embed a feedback and query form on my class site, inset a banner with important single sentence information parents or students may need, and have taken the time to better organise the pages within the site while adding space for student voice.

Screen snips of before I started todays editing:


Screen snips of after I finished todays editing:









Friday, August 27, 2021

DFI week 5

In this weeks DFI our kaupapa focus was on having visible learning and the benefits this brings our students. It makes a lot of sense to me to ensure that my students feel like what they have to say is being heard and has value, and this pedagogy aligns well with my belief.

I like the multi modal learning pedagogy too. Having classrooms with a varied range of students, all whom bring their own unique experiences, abilities and understandings to the classroom leads straight to good practice being differentiated for all students. Having the technology varied for not only learning levels but also learning styles seems logical and important to me.

 It was really fun making my own google site today for learning based around friendship and the book "The Rainbow Fish". I relearnt a lot of small things about making a site from the beginning of this year, and how to ensure the settings are checked to give everyone access. This is especially important with lockdown level 4 right now and having all students accessing their learning from at home. I feel this is something I will use a lot in the future.




Friday, August 20, 2021

DFI week 4

This weeks learning has been about three different apps that I have not previously used much, if at all. There has been a lot of new information this week

I found todays learning fantastic for showing me ways to collect and analysis data from tamariki, fellow staff, and whanau. It has given me numerous new ways to collect and analise data for and from my class, in a much more efficent way. Im looking forward to setting up a self reflection for students at the end of the school day or specific lessons, to help them become more independant and accountable of their own learning journeys.

I am excited to try using maps to help my students compare distances and locations. I had not previously used this app before at all, so there are many possibilities I have not tried for learning opportunities within my class.

With another possible lockdown upon us and remote learning very likely to become a reality in this coming week, I am wanting to try usinf forms in a way my students can access to check in with me each day. I envision this being mostly about wellbeing, but I may also see if I can use this for clarification of students learning and as an opportunity for whanau to reflect back to me on quantity and quality of activities.


Blog analysis

Friday, August 13, 2021

DFI week 3

This week in the DFI course I have looked at media. Specifically options for using different forms of media in the classroom and on my class website, and how to effectivly embed this in a variety of different yet appropriate ways so my students can access pertinent information in an engaging and age appropriate way.

I set up a youtube channel so that I can safely control what content my students are accessing to support their learning. I learnt how to change the settings to keep it safe, and to create playlists of videos and content to access from multiple platforms.

I then spent some time working in google draw. This was the first time i had encountered this program, and I enjoyed using its features and settings to develop visual content and embed this into my blog. I can see many benefits to using this program, and in getting students to use it when creating visual content themselves. I look forward to adding this to the options students have when creating visual displays of their learning and understandings in my classroom setting. It was especially useful to go further into the features of this program in our deep dive session later in the day. I discovered numerous additional features and got to discuss a variety of ways i had not thought of to use this program in my classroom.

It was very valuable to spend time working through features of google slides. This is a program I use often, so to find shortcuts and extra features is fantastic. I can see many ways I will be able to use this more effectivly with my teaching now, in a way students can access better, and to help me work far more efficiently by saving me valuable time when creating new slide documents.




Friday, August 6, 2021

DFI week 2

 Workflow

Week 2 of the DFI course has been very informative for me. I have been bombarded with useful tips for streamlining my digital time and being more effective in my teaching and administration time.

I particularly enjoyed learning about being able to use google keep more effectively, including using the voice to text function, picture to text function, and the different label options to colour code, sort, organise and list.

It has been very helpful learning more functions of google mail. I now have a far more streamlined system to use, with folders, tabs, priority starring system, the ability to use the smart finish function to finish sentences, scheduling emails to send to students or whanau at specific times, and having an email signature that includes links to the school and class webpages, as well as the class blog, to hopefully encourage more digitial traffic.

I found it really useful to spend time reorganising my bookmarks, removing the longer labels, so it is easier to navigate quickly and is now far less cluttered on ym screen too.


Friday, July 30, 2021

DFI Week 1

The first week of the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive has been a great affirming experience. It has given me confidence to know that what I am doing is best practice, and that I am not doing things in a slower or longer way when it comes to the use of digital technologies within my own teaching and organisation.

I found it great to take time out and spend energy on exploring the tools on google, and enjoyed creating an interactive document that can be used in my classroom. Im looking forward to crowd sourcing with other educators during this term and beyond.

It was great to practice skills and learn deeper functions of google docs, such as functions of the explore tool and page setup functions. I think these will be useful in setting up interactive documents for my students on my class website.

I intend to update my own professional profile with google, and to add a personal profile to my laptop in order to better seperate the two digital environments. It is exciting for me to start this professional blog as part of that process as it is the first time i have participated in any personal blogging.



Ngā Whetū o Manaiakalani