2021 Teacher as Inquiry

2021 Teaching as Inquiry 

   

I am pretty excited to use this platform to share my Teaching as Inquiry. As I dive into my teaching practice to explore a variety of methods to improve achievement levels for my 8 year 4 target students. This is great way for me to get these students ready for year 5 next year.

Our School wide Focusing Inquiry Curriculum Area: is Oral Language / Reading

I have broken it down and  I will inquiry into:

How will rich vocabulary words improve student reading outcomes?

As an experience teacher, I look forward to exploring my practice at this new school, where I have been here for the last year.

Lots of new learning and building new relationships with staff, families, the community and my students.

Throughout the year, I will be blogging about my students and teaching and learning and our success and failures.

I look forward to reading and exploring research that can support my teaching practice and assessment.

2020 at Glenbrae School

 

What a year 2020 has been for me. Who would of thought I would start at Glenbrae school during a global pandemic of Covid19 and New Zealand and the rest of the world would be lockdown.

This was my year of moving classrooms. I did really well coping and I worked really hard with all the new learning. I will start with the physical classroom.

Starting in Room 4. Preparations for refurbishment of the junior buildings and moving into the Hall side room. We were in there for about 2 weeks while Room 11 was being painted and new carpet was being put in.

That's when I started to prepare Room 11. We stayed in Room 11 for majority of the year until December.

Then, we had to move again to a little side room called the annex room. We were in there for 2 weeks and then we finally moved to Room 3.

Our new refurbished classroom our finished and getting ready for 2021.

Next year our class will be Room 3.

What a year.

Manaiakalani Create Workshop Opportunity

 

Manaiakalani Create Workshop Opportunity

Amy Tofa and I having the opportunity to share with colleagues to create a virtual library.

Here is the slide I create to support our workshop for creating a virtual library.

On Monday 10th August 2020, I was given the opportunity to teach a workshop at a Manaiakalani Create workshop at Tamaki College.

Earlier this year during lockdown level 4 I came across a Facebook group called Bitmoji Craze for Educators. Here I found an explored a virtual library.

There are number of youtube clips that teachers around the whole shared their creations of virtual classrooms and libraries and the benefits of using them. 

Being new to Glenbrae school and the Manaiakalani programme this was great experience to explore and share my new learning.

This was a cool experience to share the knowledge I have learnt and having the opportunity to share this and help other educators to create their own virtual library and use in their classrooms.

Photos credits: Amy Tofa. Thank you.

Educators hard at work creating their own virtual library.

Thank you Glenbrae school and Manaiakalani for this opportunity.

References: Bitmoji Craze Educators Facebook page

youtube clips - how make a virtual classroom scene

- how to make a virtual library

DFI - Week 9 - Revision

DFI - Week 9 - Revision

As I have completed a 9 week online PD of Manaiakalani DFI this has been an enjoyable learning journey for me.

Starting at a new school during lockdown level 4 and starting this PD lockdown Level 3 and being apart of the level 3 school bubble has been an exciting time for me.

Today being the last lesson and preparing for the Level 1 Google Education exam has had me very nervous.

This is last part of the bringing the pedagogy together and as stated in the screenshots above.

Ubiquitous Learning. 

Learning being accessible, anytime, anywhere and any place.

This just makes education just accessible and reflects how it is evolving.

Today was exam day and those three hours were wow.
Fingers cross for me.


Reflections

What am I proud of?
I am proud of this opportunity to do this PD and work at school that is under Manaiakalani and the numerous opportunities of learning for my students and I.
The structure of Manaiakalani has greatly helped me to know there is help to support my planning and teaching.

This experience will shape my planning and teaching to Learn, Create, Share.


What do I regret?I may regret not using more of the google apps such as google sheets, google keep, google forms and taking more risks in filtering my emails. Otherwise, I need to keep trying and learning and this is to help with my workflow and management.


What will I be taking forward into this new era of learning?
Well, I have learnt so much. I'm loving, using google slides, google sites, exploring multi modal and implementing into my teaching practice.
My previous blogs have outlined my learning and improvements to my planning and teaching.

I will continue to explore and implement into planning and teaching the pedagogy of Learn, create and share. Empowering my students and helping my teaching be visible to my parents and students.

This was great as I was able to share my learning with my husband who teaches at another school, my previous staff members supporting their online learning.

A special thank you to Dorothy and her team and my bubble facilitator Venessa who made my learning journey enjoyable.
To everyone who was on this journey with me, Thank you so much.

I highly recommend DFI to everyone.
Thank for this Professional Learning Journey of DFI

DFI - Week 8 - Computational Thinking

 DFI - Week 8 - Computational Thinking

 

Fist Pump!!! We made it week 8 

Todays session was a great reminded of the background story of Manaiakalani and how it 

evolved from the schools in Tamaki area. The above photos are screenshots of the slide presented.

With empowerment comes, opportunity, making connections, empowerment for our students and teachers. 

The other side of the coin is the many factors of disempowerment and the challenges our students and families make on a day to day basis, such as finance, housing, employment, health, family conversations and the building of children's vocabulary.

With these factors schools are doing their best with the resources and technology available to empower our students with multiple learning opportunities.

Within our New Zealand curriculum it is stated;

  

Our focus for today is Computational Thinking, we were shown this image below in a slide. (I took a screenshot)

This is reflected in the advancement of technology. The  evolution of technology with robots and transport are prime examples.

LEARN, CREATE & SHARE

https://studio.code.org/s/course1/stage/6/puzzle/1

This clip has the best explanation of computational thinking and we need to give our students opportunities to think in a such a way and how we are doing it every day without even knowing it.

Today we were given opportunities to explore different computational sites and wow.. This got my brain thinking.

Check out what I explored today.

Using Minecraft




https://studio.code.org/s/aquatic/stage/1/puzzle/1




Today we tried coding and my group, we explored a coding programme called Scratch.




This was an enjoyable exploration and definitely got me thinking about my students and how this programme could be used and adapted for my year 2's and 3's.

Me personally, I am only good a basics, and it was fun. I enjoyed Minecraft the best and trialing different explicit steps to move my character. I think scratch would be the next level of coding for my students.

Today, there was lots of discussion, advice and tips regarding our google level 1 exam next week that we/I would have to registered and of course prepare for. This is something I / we are nervous and excited about. 
This term has been fast as we have covered so much and my understanding of Manaiakalani pedagogy of LEARN, CREATE, SHARE.
I am good at learning, and sharing and will continue to learn about Create and the different media usage to share my students learning.
So, let the study preparation begin for the exam that I will take next week on Thursday as I have parents conferences next week Tuesday and Wednesday.

Have a fantastic week everyone.

DFI - Week 7 - Devices

DFI - Week 7 - Devices

Cyber Smart

Another exploration in the Kaupapa of Manaiakalani and today it was Being Cyber Smart. This outlines the points of empowering our students / learners.
Exposing our them to experiences of the real world such as blogging and people reading and commenting on their blogs.
Being cyber smart is for us educators is to guide our students / learners in real authentic experiences and how to be  safe and confident.
The internet world has positive and negative impacts and it is important to give our learners the skills to be cyber smart.

As I reflect on the importance of helping the learners be cyber smart, I need to start at the basics of 'kawa' of care and building smartness from there.

Exploring Devices
Today we experienced what it is like using a chrome book and how it works. I am so used to a MAC. This was interesting and wow, I know what our students go through using this device. 
This was interesting using the chrome book stimulator as well.

Chrome Books

 using chrome book stimulator to explore a chrome book.

Ipads - Using Explain Everything App

screenshot of task playing around on an ipad using explain everything app.

Now this was really interesting exploring Explain Everything on an Ipad. I have never used Explain Everything app and this was fun to explore and use, but not fun trying to save, and print and send to me.

I love the buttons and exploration of creating art, work and  learning. However trying to save it, send it, access it to print was interesting. 

This is the process I want to be really good at so that I can either 1 - add to class blog or 1 - print and display in class. 

This will be a exploring process for me to learn and practice and be better at. 

CREATE

For today's create, 
Using EE (Explain Everything) repurpose a cyber smart lesson.

Using EE cover 1 of the cyber smart concepts for your learners.

check out what I created.

I think I'm cool now because I'm getting good at adding embedded code on HTLM on here. LOL.

This was a cool experience, and I had to keep it simple for my learners. I was experience issues such as saving it, accessing it, emailing it, and of course, using 2 ipads and my laptop. 
Using the whiteboard EE website was good and I was trying to video and save to my drive and having it accessible for all, opening new window and getting the embed code. WOW... did you guys get it??

APPLICATION

I look forward to exploring this more in depth and making attempts to add to my teaching program next week. I enjoy learning through the struggle and I experience what my learners go through.

I love how my learners also figure it how and teach me.

On wards and upwards to using Explain Everything.

DFI - Week 6 - Enabling Access

DFI - Week 6 - Enabling Access

As we begin another week of new learning, we discuss in our learning bubbles with references to WWW.
What has worked for me since the last time we met? 
What hasn't worked or made sense?
What do I need help with?

As I reflect on last week and the learning and building of google sites, this was really helped me with managing my work load and work flow.
Since the beginning of the year and the end of March (since lockdown 4) I have been working on my class site and have watched it evolved as my knowledge developed creating slides and embedding them.
Because I am using my class google site frequently everything makes sense and this week I was lucky enough that I didn't really need help.

However previous weeks and lessons

Enabling Access and being Connected

Our Kaupapa of the day - Connected. The points that stood out for me is the emphasis of connect. It is one of the four elements that stands with the pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share.
Having the default visible, the shared language of Ako - visible, empowered, connected and ubiquitous.
Tihi Mai - Tuhi Atu
Write to me - Write to others.

LEARN CREATE SHARE

Today was a follow up on google sites. We had the opportunity to explore sites for varies year levels, schools and topics and thinking about the Engagement and User experience. 

Exploring these google class sites was really good and we got the think about the usefulness of it, the access, visibility, the learning, creating and sharing. Keeping in mind the visual and the user experience.

With this knowledge, our own google class site we got to share and our colleagues giving us feedback for improvement.

Screenshoot of my class - Room 11's learning space

link here

My class site is an ongoing developing site and I am always making changes to improve the use for my students.
I got great feedback and my goal is for me to continue to create and develop  Multimodal content, Multi-text content, creating student agency and empowerment over their learning, rewindable learning, using photos that are current as well.
Always remember to check sharing access too, making it accessible to anyone with a link.



Today's session was great. I love exploring the kaupapa of Manaiakalani as it helps me to have a better understanding of the pedagogy of our teaching with the support of technology. Everything is making sense.
Our facilitators are amazing and my little bubble group is awesome.
Thank you so much to our facilitators and colleagues whom I am on this journey with as we explore these tech tools to enhance our teaching practice and knowledge and managing our personal life to make things easier.

'Meitaki Ma'ata'