Clarifying, Sharing and Understanding Learning Intentions

 This is Dylan Wiliam's first strategy for Assessment for Learning. Assessment for Learning or formative assessment has been the centre of my thinking this year to improve learning outcomes for students. These videos have been great for helping me understand the importance of formative assessment and been terrific as guidance to implement into my teaching practice.

Although I have thought that learning intentions are central to my planning I realise that is not always the case. My class is able to do certain tasks which I know will help the learning intention. However, I am not always sharing the LI as I should or ensuring it is clear and understood.

Yesterday, I had two terrific lessons which I attribute to clearly beginning with a learning intention, co-construcing a success criteria and then frequently referring to this success criteria throughout the lesson, applying feedback and questioning to it.

One of these lessons just happened to turn into a walkthrough observation from my principal. Hence, the students were able to talk about their learning. On previous walkthroughs my principal has observed that students know what they should be doing but this is often task based rather than learning based. Needless to say I was extremely happy that students were able to articulate their understanding of the learning intention to her.

Coaching for Teaching Inquiry

 This year during coaching with Susan Arrowsmith I have really tried to focus my teaching and learning on formative assessment. I have set different goals each time which have not stayed on the same subject area but always with the focus on formative assessment. 

Coaching notes 

Teaching Inquiry 2020

PB4L Term 3 Meeting

 

Today I met the new PB4L facilitator Melanie. 

Mana akiaki/LeVa - $40 - Modules for preventing suicides for Maori. Life keepers

CARE - Connect, ask, respond, engage

Perhaps this is a good course to understand the path we can take to seek help for our tamariki. It can also help us with dialogue for us to use with students at risk.

UBRS - Understanding Behaviours Responding Safely

Understanding some neuroscience behind the behaviour, then looking at what we can respond safely.

This is about de-escalation. Have we got reliever packs that explain our PB4L system? Suggestion: they have a kete. Having a class description for the reliever with individual plans. 

Individual beacon website plans. https://beaconhouse.org.uk/resources/

Tier 1 needs to be kept alive with the lens of covid-19. 

Cool idea: One school is using their caught being good coupons as a statistical inquiry. Some schools are co-constructing their lessons for PB4L.

It was mentioned a few times today that most schools don't call it PB4L or positive behaviour for learning. This reminded me that at Oruaiti School we call it mahitahi but I always forget to say this.

How about we use a spot to put our coupons? Maybe in a toolbox separated for the house. Also, discussed whether or not we put the reason on the coupon. I probably think we should be highlighting the value.

Staffroom noticeboards: Can people come in to school and see the values and our reward system. 

DFI_Revision

Here is a slide presented today at our final DFI session.

For me I learnt a great deal from the distance learning during the lockdown. I was most proud of what I accomplished overall: a class site, google meets with the class, making videos to share with my class. It all took a lot of learning and time and the response was really positive.

I don't really have any regrets. What I have taken forward is the move to using the class site as the centre of my planning. Being visible to students, whanau, colleagues and other parties has become important and the class site is a useful app to make my one stop shop. Some of the other digital aspects of my learning I haven't used as much, but the DFI sessions have given me ideas to take forward into this new era of schooling.

My reflections for DFI are largely that I have become far more confident with digital technology. I understand the kaupapa for Learn, Create, Share better and am more comfortable with this pedagogy to direct my teaching for students, and also to share with our parents and whanau. My skills have improved and this has had a good impact on my workflow. A lot of the digital platforms were difficult to imagine in my Year 1 class. However, it is also good to know where students are going and therefore realise the implications this has on their learning. I have enjoyed the friendly, helpful facilitating team for DFI. They know so much and have wonderful patience to pass this on to us.

The exam was challenging today. Sometimes it seems like you just need to use your instinct for what to push when using these apps. However, I was pushed for time because I got stuck on a few scenarios.

DFI_Computational Thinking

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today our focus word was empowerment. I liked the explanation that the word 'agency' caused

learners and whanau to get upset by their experience with agencies. So they just changed the word.

Great idea. Giving students equity through having the same device, same low price, regardless of

where they live - it all makes sense.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I gained a lot of confidence with understanding the digital technologies curriculum today. It was then

great to try out the coding programmes to have a go at computational thinking. It was quite challenging

and I didn't enjoy using scratch. However, I can see how students would enjoy coding.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

I would like to use the coding programmes that are age appropriate for Year with my learners.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

My personal life could benefit from learning what all of these coding programmes are for when I talk to my nieces and nephews.

Here is my scratch project. I look forward to trying scratch junior with my class.

DFI_Devices

Another busy schedule for DFI today. This afternoon I have created a video for Smart Values. I used our school values with the focus on responsible to align with the kawa of care for ipad use in Kowhai class. As I was making the video I was considering my learning intention and I was able to type this in at the end of the video to be explicit. I personalised it for my learners with a familiar puppet I have used before. I also uploaded it to my cybersmart page on our class site for access and visibility. I could have adapted this to be part of a guided reading lesson but I think being short and sweet on its own is helpful for my learners. I will definitely think of ways to incorporate these cybersmart concepts into other lessons in the future.

Earlier today we had a deeper look at the Hapara Teacher dashboard. We also had a task to complete to use a chromebook. Although I didn't complete it I think it was my favourite task during DFI because I could figure most of it myself and had a real sense of learning and achievement. I liked going to the tips, following the instructions and then showing I had found that information.

Everytime I use Explain Everything I learn something new. This is particularly useful for me and something I will continue to use with my new entrant and Year 1 learners. I did want to share my video link for my task today but I didn't quite understand where the link went to.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Fiona Grant presented slides about cybersmart and this helped me understand more about this part of the Manaiakalanin kaupapa. I particularly liked what Fiona said about changing our dialogue to be positive and discuss our digital expectations rather than highlight what we don't want students to be doing.
Dorothy also shared more about being cybersmart. The slide discussing the three principles of the Treaty of Waitangi stood out to me today with her comments about parents being in partnership with the school for using digital devices.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I think using more screen castify for lessons will be helpful for workflow. Because the lessons can be rewindable and therefore once I have made them I can use them again, particularly as my new entrant class keeps growing.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

I learnt more about Explain Everything which will be helpful to use with my learners who love using this app. I will also show them the videos that students made to show them how to upload it to their drive.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

This week I have read a few blogs. These have been through google searches. What I have discovered is that people enjoy synthesizing their ideas and posting blogs about it. This is great for my personal life, because they are generally easy to understand and short. Win, win.

Learning Intentions and Success criteria

I have just watched this video. The takeaway question I have here is "What does success look like for students in my classroom?"

Here is what I am going to try for reading...

• Make a video of reading strategies and what success looks like. Then I will put these on my class site to show each group.
• For some other reading strategies I will use exemplars.
• I am going to start asking students to watch each other during reading and comment to each other if they were successfully using these strategies. 

DFI_Enabling Access

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today we had a closer look at the pedagogy of connected. During distance learning I found that 

connecting with my students via google meet was wonderful for continuing to establish a class culture. Some students really looked forward to seeing each other. This combined with our class site really connected students and their whanau to learning at home. It was interesting to hear 

some of the history related to Manaiakalani in their journey with being connected. It was especially interesting to hear the planning the Manaiakalani team did for distance learning prior to the lock-down. As I established goals in my own distance learning planning I realised I needed help that was timely given by our school liaison Donna via e-mails. 

This is my new look class site homepage where I am trying to maximise my realestate or shop window. There are two chances to click from my homepage to the curriculum areas. Whanau, school leadership and relievers can also easily see my weekly planning. I included a link to our class blog and a picture of me to connect learners with the site through a familiar face. I still want to work a bit on my footer, but just using it was a good start for me.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I had the opportunity to change my class site which is good timing with our current school goals. I was quite attached to my class site layout during distance learning but did know that I needed to adapt it for the classroom now. I enjoyed looking at some good junior school examples. I gained confidence in choosing a colour palette. Knowing how to use a hex number will improve my workflow for using colours in all of the google suite.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

The ultimate goal for changing my class site was to benefit my learners. I think using the class site more is extremely beneficial as they are beginning to learn to read and need a lot of visual aids. Putting parts of their learning in specific pages will help them with being independent. My biggest goal was to get my planning onto my reading page.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I think anything that I can simplify and set up to save me time, such as planning in my class site, allows me to have more personal time.

DFI_Collaborate Sites

Today I collaborated with other junior teachers finding resources to use in a new class site for our
T-Shaped literacy task. Here is my seeds example.

I have included text box labels to specify which is the main text, supporting texts, complimentary text and the challenging text. The youtube video of "The tiny seed" being read aloud is my hook in. These labels are more for my benefit than the students.

I am not sure that I would go for this layout the next time I try. However, it was great to practise using google drawings to help understand how to make links that can be viewed on the class site. It helped to learn more about cropping and now I think I am capable of making buttons by using this process. I also think it is nice to see all of the texts at a glance.

I am definitely more confident to trial T-shaped literacy after planning and practising today. What was hugely beneficial was the spreadsheet layout for the types of texts that I stated above. Following our sense making session on Tuesday it was good to think about authentic texts and what the implications are for a junior classroom.

Further Reflection...

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today we had an in depth look at the kaupapa of being visible. I have heard teachers from other schools talk about google classroom and I wasn't sure why we don't use it. The points in favour with Google sites were good ones, I thought: No passwords to put off whanau, visible to everyone.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Having the template for organising the various texts for the T-shaped literacy was definitely the big takeaway for me today for improving workflow. I just didn't know how to go about organising it. Having the time to spend putting this onto a class site also meant I will know what might save me time in the future.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

My learners will benefit from the seeds planning I did on a class site today. I will do other literacy plans similar to this for my learners. In fact, I am planning in my head how to take our teddy bear's picnic tomorrow and use bears as a theme for some T-shaped literacy.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I still don't know all the terminology for things that I am learning. But the more I see the facilitators click here and click there the more I learn. Then I feel more inclined to tutu in my personal life. I had never used the google suite on my phone before this DFI course as I only thought it had relevance for school.

Learning Outcomes_Where do these come from?

I would like to ask what document you refer to for your Writing learning outcomes?

This is a great question I was asked this week. The word ‘document’ made me head off to my shelf and find my writing folder full of lists of WALTs in kids’ speak ready to hand over. During lockdown I found a great treasure from a previous school of a Jill Eggleton Key Links pack with a great checklist to tick off with each child in an individual writing conference to show if they are writing at a level of 1i, 1ii or further still. I also thought to send the link to a document teaching staff at our school have worked on for students to check goals. I think these documents are easy to use for planning when you first begin teaching. However, they do have some restrictions - time to administer, simplicity, not broad enough in all of the aspects we are wanting students to achieve and most of all they are learning intentions and success criteria, not necessarily learning outcomes.

Now that I think about it I don’t always pick up a document and refer to it to plan writing. Some of my planning is through experience. It is also through assessment of students that I plan writing outcomes. I think about my learners, what their next steps are and what my focus will be. I also consider what is going on in our learning environment. 

Here is what I mean. At the time of lockdown the majority of my new entrant learners were at that point where to improve their writing they should be encouraged to make spelling approximations. However, through my experience as a parent trying to get a child to write at home, I knew that this was not the time to be worrying over how children were spelling words. I took it back to basics and used a modelling video of a teacher writing a simple sentence. We kept it simple. Parents were now learning beside their child. My focus at this point was on the part of the writing process to do with goal setting, following a learning intention and self-assessing whether you achieved your success criteria. This is a really important part to the writing process and possibly why so many documents have been written in child speak. 

I knew this was quite easy for some of my students and they were doing this bare minimum one sentence yet they were capable of two sentences in a busy classroom. My colleague, Leonie, was getting very excited over her writing by using science pictures to promote exciting word usage. I thought what better opportunity to try this than when they are with their parent who will help give them instant support to think of these words. But I kept it simple and specifically chose 'describing' words and wrote ‘adjectives’ in brackets. This was our writing focus for about three weeks of online learning. Within this I was flexible to change the topic of our writing each day. As students photographed their writing for me I encouraged them to reflect on the success criteria after they read their story to me. It was terrific because the mums were right there as a personal tutor to ensure the reflection happened. This would take a lot more time in a classroom to achieve. 

Some students quickly grasped the learning goal and I gave them feedforward in my comments. Something happened that seldom happens for me in a classroom; they started trying their new goals because Mum was reading the feedforward and remembering to do it in the following session. I was able to differentiate learning according to the learner. So one student now writes titles in her writing simply because she was ready for new learning. I extended her learning whilst keeping the main focus simple and the same for the whole class. 

After four weeks I changed the writing outcome to be for writing in a sequence. By now some of my struggling writers were not sharing my set work and I had a bunch of children who were ready for a new focus. In a classroom setting this would be where I work with groups. I know one colleague differentiates learning through a system of Must do, could do. So my new learning outcome became writing in a sequence. I modelled this and my expected planning by drawing three pictures. My learning intention/WALT/child speak became 'We are learning to write a sequence'. I called my 3 picture drawing a 'sequence plan' and added the success criteria to match a sentence in their writing with the picture. By making this my focus I knew that I could keep this for a while even when I change topics and text purposes. I knew a lot of children were doing baking and this has a sequence, They were making crafts and that has a sequence. They were going for rides on their bike and that has a sequence. In those three different topics a student could write a recount, recipe and instructions. I have beginning writers, so getting bogged down in genre is pointless for me. What the Literacy Learning progressions say after one year at school is that 

They draw on knowledge and skills that include understanding simple text types (e.g., personal recounts and simple 

descriptions) and using them to meet their writing purpose;

So this guides me in my teaching to not have a recount as my learning outcome but what the students need in order to write a good recount by the time they have been at school for a year. I keep this at the back of my mind that students will be able to write a simple description, because when I am teaching guided reading I might see a good opportunity to let them describe an animal as a follow up activity. This will help prepare them for the future of descriptive writing. I think that success in writing comes largely by the support we give students before they have to do it. This includes exposure to writing forms in books and plenty of prior modelling.

When our students write they learn more than just the focus (learning intention). However, this is the learning I will provide feedback on. In my post comments I found myself giving feedforward to each child that reflected them as a learner. Interestingly I noticed that one of my students wrote in the present tense when she was writing about a trip she had taken during the weekend. That illustrated to me that I will have to spend time talking about and maybe explicitly teaching her about using past tense in recount writing. At the same time I now know that all of the other students used past tense. That is a learning outcome I have in writing, ‘use the correct tense’. But I will not set it as a class learning outcome unless it becomes necessary. Why teach something they already do?

To sum up I don't just go to one document to plan my writing. I have used multiple sources for a while and now have experience to draw on as well. There is a lot to take into consideration and starting at one document is the first step. Don't throw out the document you have been using. Add to it. Put it in your own words and come up with your own learning outcome. Make sure it fits with the unit of study (At the moment that is space or matariki, so what are the potential writing opportunities to use here?). Look at the last assessment available, formal (e-asttle) and formative (what their writing books or writing posts show), look at where their learning is at (Writing Learning progressions), look to where they should be going or what is our bigger overarching achievement objectives (New Zealand Curriculum)(exemplars), chunk your writing learning outcome into digestible learning intentions (WALTs) with success criteria. (These don't have to come from a document but there have been multiple versions created). I visually like the ones at the bottom of the page on Jessie Pope’s class site. 

Oruaiti School I cans for writing

(Oruaiti School Level 1 of NZC Writing 1a)

(Level 1 of NZC Writing 1p 60weeks)

(Kowhai Level 1b NZC Writing, Kowhai Level 1p NZC Writing, Kowhai Level 1a NZC Writing)

Some of these are still a work in process. 

Mangonui School I cans for writing and on my shelf - Green writing folder

I also want to stress that I have many writing learning outcomes that I specifically teach in another part of the day and not during 'writing time'. This includes handwriting and phonics. These are processing skills that are outlined in the NZ curriculum and Literacy Learning Progressions. I think it is a good practice to explicitly teach these skills so when the process of writing occurs students are able to focus on ideas. I also think that good literacy teachers make explicit links between reading and writing. Therefore, I talk about the writing process when I am reading a book aloud or when I am teaching in guided reading sessions. This can be miniscule such as, “What punctuation goes here? A full stop? Yes, because the author wants us to stop talking. This group of words makes sense when we stop here.” There is no way a teacher can plan all of these learning points, so we have to really know our learning outcomes to maximise those teachable moments. We need to constantly refer to multiple documents, formatively assess students and collaborate with our colleagues. 

I had two major takeaways from distance learning:

1. Keeping a broad writing learning outcome kept writing simple, achievable and flexible for the majority of students.
2. Clear, achievable success criteria enabled me to give feedback specifically about their learning goal. I could then make feedforward a next step. Something achieved, something to work on. 

It has been hard to keep this up in class this week. I miss my hard working parents!

  

DFI_Day 3_creating a playlist on YouTube_Adding audio to slides

Today the Manaiakalani team brought the 'intensive' to today's digital fluency intensive. There is always so much to learn and add to our digital toolbox. I was able to ask a few questions and get quick help for things I have wanted to know for a while. Having had intensive learning over the distance learning period it is just fabulous to have a few problems easily ironed out by some digital experts.

Making a playlist in YouTube

This is something I had never imagined needing. I did already have a YouTube channel to make videos. However, using creating a playlist was new for me. I can imagine this will be a good place to easily find the youtube videos I found helpful to share with students during distance learning. It is also another area I can see it will be useful to separate school or professional life from personal life. My goal this week is to go to Week 1 DFI slides to learn how to separate google accounts.

 Inserting Audio into slides

This was something I really wanted to do during distance learning. It was an idea that had been shared during our Junior Slam. However, I found the step to get my voice recording into my drive impossible. Thanks to screen sharing in my group session with Dave Winter he was able to tell me in a few seconds what I have been endeavouring to do since I have had this laptop. Needless to say I was pretty stoked! A few minutes later I saw another lady who had the same challenge as me smiling with delight when she discovered this very simple step.

I wonder if anyone might be able to help me work out how to fix this slide that I have embedded so it looks better. 

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

I was reminded today that the 'create' part of the kaupapa is at the centre of the Manaiakalani pedagogy.
It is the hook for learners and we need to ensure our learners have plenty of time creating.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Creating a playlist on YouTube will be beneficial for me. I feel a lot more confidence with using YouTube.

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

Definitely embedding audio into my google slides. I use these a lot of my class site. I will also use slides in the future to create with students.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Having a playlist for my personal life will be great because I like the idea of reducing adds and I also have videos I want to watch but prioritise others first. This way I can have them ready when I have finished watching the first videos.

DFI_ Google Meet recording and reflection of a blog post

This morning we began our session discussing what does Learn look like at our school. At Oruaiti School we are transitioning from traditional analogue learning to digital learning. The lockdown period turbocharged my own digital learning because I had to launch a google class site, learn how to use google meet and upskill my blogging skills. The Y4-8 classes were already doing this and this was good for two reasons: A bar was set for using these platforms during the lockdown and I had some terrific modelling of what class sites look like with expert colleagues on hand for questions over the holidays. Prior to lockdown I still did a lot of learning traditionally with my five year old students. However, now I will continue to plan through the class site.

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani Great Kaupapa and pedagogy?

I think revisiting the RATE acronym helped me with my understanding of the Manaiakalani pedagogy.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
• Today was slightly overwhelming with all of the great ideas but it is reassuring that this is rewindable. Last week I felt like I was upskilling digital affordances I already use. This week there was a lot more new learning for me. I need to work my way through the agenda again to begin to feel confident and capable. The workflow suggestions were terrific. I didn't know about google keep and that is something I will begin using. I can't wait to get rid of my annoying sticky notes! I will be trying to use Toby mini to get my tabs in order. I also want to clean up my favourites bar and e-mail some more.
• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
• I will use the captions on google meet. And I was so excited to know I can share audio on videos when I screen share by using the chrome setting. This is my number one takeaway from today.
• By using Toby mini I hope to be able to increase the mahi I can provide to students through being more organised in my folders.
• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Google Keep. I think after continuing to declutter my work folders, etc. I will be able to start doing this with my personal files. This, I am sure, will be hugely beneficial.

Transitioning back to school - What will it look like?

We are now expecting to go back to school. There will of course be families that stay at home and families that return to school. So how will we do this? The online experience has proven to be effective for some learners and had a variance of buy in from others. So now comes the challenge of keeping the good stuff and mixing it in to the classroom to mix with the two groups of learners: those at home and those at school.

What do I think has been good for students with distance learning?

- Having school learning at a time that suits students' families. i.e. If the family is up at dawn then they can get their school work done early.

- Quality learning time one-on-one with parents when learning to read and write.

- Parents have learnt some of the language we use at school because they are immersed in it (not just going to a parent evening).

- For my young learners and parents learning to use a class site I had to keep things simple and consistent. I imagine this was good for students. I tend to like to change routines.

- If students share their learning with me their teacher, they always have an authentic audience. This has been a good incentive for one student who needs to know their work will be seen by me. It has helped his mum to get him to do the learning I have set.

- Sharing work has been easy to do because parents have submitted the learning. There has not been the time needed to show students how to post and not post the same thing 10 times taking up lots of valuable time. Therefore, I have had plenty of time to respond to each student. I feel for the first time in my teaching career that I know exactly where all of my students are at. And I could still be wrong about this.

- When I have given feedback to students the impact is immediate. e.g. I suggested a new learning goal to one learner to put titles in her writing. This was only relevant to her because she was ready for a next step. The next day she had a title in her story! Why? Because her mum read the feedback and made it happen. I probably would have forgotten about it from having lots of other learners.

Honestly, I am not sure how I can feed most of that in to the classroom. Some students have made terrific progress because they have had a parent helping them. One-on-one support from parents has been the winning formula in my opinion.

DFI_Session 1

1. What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

Today I learnt about the original literacy cycles created by teachers in the Tamaki schools. These cycles emerged into the Learn, Create, Share model.

2. What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? 

Today I learnt a great deal more about using google docs. It seems like a basic word processing tool, so I was amazed by the extra features it has. I have heard teachers in my school talking about the voice typing tool, but as a junior teacher I wasn't too interested in it. Now I know where it is and how it can be incorporated into lessons. In regards to my workflow, it was a good opportunity to tidy up my google docs and I opted for Kerry's numbering system for my folders.

3. What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

My learners could use voice typing. I teach new entrants so I am not sure about other tools to use with them. However, I have learnt a great deal about google features which will benefit me for working smarter.

4. What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life? 

Having a DFI course online from my own home was terrific. I was able to hang out washing in my breaks and I worked very efficiently in our group sessions to create a doc to use because we were heads down, microphones off. It will save me a lot of travel time by having the course online and create far more personal time. In saying that though, I might just get excited by new ideas and spend a lot of evenings creating digital resources.

Today's Core Business Slide

Reflecting on Goals

Currently as a staff we are discussing how we will report to parents whilst doing distance learning. I think we have decided on trialing a self-assessment style report. I was very encouraged to have Rob trial a template on his daughter with amazing answers.

It is very encouraging to hear the learning goals that Scout has been working on. These answers will be different around Kowhai class because I am beginning to have to differentiate learning quite a bit for each student. Having students share their learning with me has really enabled myself to give a next step to the parent for their child. And they do it the next day.

One student who did not share for a bit has found that the work we gave her in the past week has been too easy. I didn't know she was doing lots of work at home because I assumed she wasn't because she wasn't posting anything. This was quite an interesting revelation. Now she has lots of sheets of work that she doesn't need to do. Whoops!

What has made such a difference in the past week is encouraging students and parents to reflect on the learning goal. This is always something I am thinking about. Students are getting better at adding video recordings of what their learning goals are. I am also asking them to highlight in some way where they have achieved their goal. Or my comments are specific to the learning goal. Often my feedforward is the suggestion of a next step or new goal because they have often achieved their goal. My next challenge is to get parents and students choosing their own next step/learning goal. In order to do this I need to present these goals on the class site. That is my challenge in the weekend.

I am using the term learning goal to refer to my WALTs/LIs or whatever you may call these things. I think this is an easy term to use all of the time with families and students. I will often have success criteria to show they have been successful in achieving this goal. Sometimes they will say things like: "my describing word is yummy" and I consider that they understand the learning goal is to use adjectives and so am excited by those comments on their blog posts.

Comment about learning goal from a student/parent: 

walt: sound the letter as we write it. and write on the lines 

This was for a post on handwriting.

And this went with a post for a student showing me their sight word knowledge:

I am learning my sight words.

This is for a writing post:

today my describing word is happy.

A few students are encouraged by the parent who records a video of them to say what they were learning to do. This has increased over the past week and is encouraging to me because I think it has made a shift from 'sharing mahi' to 'sharing our learning'. 

It is difficult to know if it is students who understand the learning goal or their parents. However, I think it is a good step towards student agency and one I hope they will carry back into the classroom.

Distance Learning_Week 4 with Northland Junior Teacher Catch up

A little bit of the fizz has gone. Numbers are starting to dwindle at times with those on google meet sessions in the morning. And there has been a massive drop in the afternoon sessions. Whilst this is probably a common story around the country I was reinvigorated by a couple of colleagues on our Junior Teacher catch-up today.

I had decided not to join the online meeting today as my enthusiasm for online learning has declined along with dwindling numbers. However, I did go on and was reminded why some teachers make good teachers. There must have only been about one-third of the teachers there had been in the first Junior School Jam. And it was so interesting to see that the more mature of my Northland colleagues were out in force today. Experienced teachers who have seen years, maybe decades of educational change and are still teaching today because they have a burning desire to teach children the best they can despite the circumstances. Whilst there was a discussion about faded enthusiasm for online learning from our students there was no complaining about it, simply reflection. These teachers had ideas to share because they know that they can be the difference between students getting online or not. No blaming families, Covid-19, bad internet connections or the weather, just wonderings: How can I get my students enthusiastic again? How could I play kahoot to get them enthused? What can I do to encourage blogging comments?Then there were terrific suggestions: keep it simple and routine. Get them active in a google meet so they are active and participating.
These are the things that have worked for me but I don't necessarily do all the time. So here are my self reflection questions for my own google meet sessions?
What activities will work for the morning google sessions that involve lots of interaction as well as increase learning?
What activities shall I drop? Probably the shared book. But poem/song is working.
 How will I change the afternoon sessions to be of value? Do I need to change the time and create a group session rather than an afternoon sharing time? Should I be encouraging the sharing of work to more than just myself and the family,e.g. to all classmates?

Slide from today

Slide from last Junior Slam

I am excited about the sharing of goals from distance learning. That deserves a post by itself I think.

Distance Learning Day 9 - Some Tweaking

Today we moved into Level 3 for distance learning. I thought this might change the dynamics for how families carry out distance learning at home and it did appear that a couple of children could not be part of the learning today, perhaps for those reasons.

What's working for Kowhai online learning:
The google meet seems to be a connection for students with myself and their peers. Older classes use it for talking about the set work but families seem happy to get the learning off the class site and so we use the google meet session for sharing information with each other (oral language, class community). It is also a chance for me to encourage a certain learning goal. e.g. I started flashing sight words last week to promote learning high frequency words. I told everyone about the sight word 'test' and many did it as a result of that.
I decided that this platform would be great to have shared reading. But alas, this morning I made a mess of it. After reflecting with Michelle I put my pages onto a slideshow and will try that out tomorrow. As it is a bit of a challenge to get readers out to families and then do good guided reading with it I thought about shared reading as the approach to practise reading strategies and learning goals for reading. I hope it goes better tomorrow.

Students have enjoyed being read to online. This surprised me. So I will go with it. I do this in the afternoon sharing time.

Students love sharing their learning, but they are so shy about it in the afternoon and it can be fiddly trying to hear them and try to see what they have done. I have had some success by actually showing their posts by presenting during the afternoon google meet. Thanks Michelle for suggesting this. There has been a gradual change in how parents are helping to share posts. This is because they can see other students learning and I can use examples to show everyone. I think a quick verbal comment specific to someone can be more effective than a group e-mail.

For me, parents are the key to this working. I am very grateful to the amount of time and energy it is taking some of our families to learn at home. Parents have learnt a great deal about the language of learning we use. Two of my parents are regularly doing video posts of their child. The child will first tell me what they did, or wrote. Then the parent asks them to tell me what they were learning or what their goal was. It is hard for me to tell if the child knows about learning goals. But I have no doubt that parents understand learning goals. For week 3 I gave a choice or suggestion to try the maths at the level you think students are capable of. All of the parents I wanted to choose the higher number maths chose it. To my shame I had thought parents weren't pushing their children enough. But this suggests that actually parents are good at doing what is asked of them and will do it if asked. So this leads to my thoughts for future planning:
How do I keep my learning activities simple and easy to access whilst differentiating learning for those students who need more challenge? Also, how will I present learning goals to students and parents on the class site so students begin to choose their next steps/new learning goals?
I think the most successful part of distance learning from my perspective has been the 'sharing'. I still have a bit to go with the 'learn' and 'create' parts of the Manaiakalani vision. But the sharing so far has been incredible for having a purpose for students doing their learning. I am their audience and I am ready with a comment and feedforward.

This has been a powerful learning experience for me. I would like distance learning to carry on for a few more weeks at least because:
1) My digital learning has been relevant and supercharged.
2) I have been able to focus on my teaching inquiry as I haven't had some of the distractions that get in the way during school time.
3) I really think my teaching practise is being improved. I am getting better organised. I am thinking about what will make progress, what won't.
4) It may not look like it by having a one stop shop for today's learning on the class site. However, I think my phone conversations and chats on google meet with individuals is making me tailor learning for the students in Kowhai.
5) I am learning a heap about my families who are online: what is important to them and how does the lockdown affect my families?

Inquiry through distance learning

Learning conversations are the basis of my teaching inquiry this year.

Initially my thoughts were that:

• As a class we would share our learning online at 1.30pm similarly to how we have been sharing at 1pm in our class.
• I would have individual conferences/learning conversations via google meet with student and parent.

The reality of the first week has been that:

• Not all of the students have come to the 1.30pm session.
• Students enjoy sharing but want to talk about what they have done (not yet talking to the learning goals).
• Not all students are keen to share when they are online or are tired by distance learning.
• Only one parent seemed fine with a google meet with her and her child.
• It was difficult to see students learning on the google meet and we had to action how we could share work electronically.
• Positively, parents did come back in the afternoon. Students and parents had undertaken the learning tasks and seemed to be doing well.

Therefore, for week 2 I have decided to:

• Keep the afternoon sharing session to be a finish up for the day. Celebrate some successes and encourage participation with lots of affirmation for doing mahi.
• Use exemplars of student learning displaying that they have achieved their learning goals/success criteria.
• Try to get as many parents as possible to log on to home learning seesaw so students can upload their learning.
• Give clear learning goals on the class site and use the morning google meet to discuss learning goals.
• Talk about feedback with parents and students, discussing how feedback and feedforward makes a difference in student progress. Ensure that I am using other learning language.
• Use a sandwich for commenting on seesaw. i.e. specific positive praise about learning, constructive next step for learner, positive comment (might be general comment)
• Not sure if by video or slide I might attempt to give information about strategy and knowledge and the use of these as well as display learning steps so parents can see where their child is headed.
• Encourage learners to self and peer assess.

My colleague, Leonie, shared one of her own strategies for student agency. She discussed the learning with her students during the google meet. Then she used a child who enjoys talking to classmates to explain to another confused student what Mrs McLean wanted them to do and show. The student spoke in child speak clearly to the other student. Both students were empowered. It may be an oldie but a goodie strategy, but I think because this is her normal class discussion strategy she easily used it in the online forum. I will make sure I do that this week.

Distance Learning Day 1

After a three week holiday that wasn't really a holiday, it was terrific to finally complete day 1 of distance learning. I was completely shocked to have so many eager, smiling faces waiting to see teachers and friends on their home screen this morning. Parents settled in enthusiastically to learning alongside their child, many enjoying the support they could give. Lots were eager to share their learning with their friends online.

What I've learnt from the past three weeks:

Sometimes we store away PD and then it becomes very relevant in a circumstance we were not expecting.
I have been tutuing away with my class site for a while now. I have only used it very basically in class and certainly wasn't using it in the way I was expected to. Now, I have a fully fledged class site that is the main pit stop for parents and students during distance learning. I am pretty glad I had other examples to copy off.

Problem solving is an important skill in a fast changing world.
It's like I totally had to change the way five year olds were going to access learning. I am still not 100% on how they will share it with me. But I had to really think about how my audience would think and then make something usable for them. I was keen for parent support and made that my focus.

When you have a clear goal you can learn very quickly. 
I was adamant I wanted to make little videos to make it easy for parents and students to understand. So I sifted through a couple of options before being e-mailed screen castify links. I watched excellent tutorials and have been able to get some basic videos up in a short time.

Orientation Day 2020

Orientation Day slide


I'm excited to be in a supported class for Manaiakalani this year. Donna and Venessa have been introducing us to the kaupapa for Manaiakalani and giving us a great overview for the year ahead.


I have added to my class site.

My three goals to embed Learn, Create, Share into my practice.

1. To use my class site for sharing my planning with students, whanau and other staff.

2. To use the Explain Everything app for follow up activities in my reading programme as well as for students to share learning in other areas.

3. To imbed a photo flowshow into the class site.

Thanks Venessa for your terrific help so I can add to my class site.