Ways to Use Screencastify

One of my favorite tools great for gathering student's voice, and sharing the learning. This free download has multi ways to use the tool. Great for rewindable learning.

Kaikohkohe Cluster day Presentation

Treaty of Waitangi

Kia Ora,
With the Treaty of Waitangi day creeping up on us very quickly and schools starting back shortly I wanted to share some resources.
What a great way to start the year and build relationships and get to know your students.
Also remembering it is part of the key principles of our curriculum.

"The curriculum acknowledges the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the bicultural foundations of Aotearoa New Zealand. All students have the opportunity to acquire knowledge of te reo Māori me ōna tikanga."

The New Zealand Curriculum, p 9

Tiki (Te Kete Ipurangi) has some knowledgeable resources, information, and videos that can be used. 

Treaty 2U from Te Papa

Waitangi Tribunal Resources 

Manata Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage

NZ History

Top Teaching Tasks Blog
Interactively explore the document
Treaty of Waitangi Grounds Education resources
National Library 


Get creative with your students writing ebooks, videos, animations, posters, multi-modal sites, drama, or art.

Classroom Climate

Positive, warm, welcoming classroom climate.

Creating positive growth mindsets Carol Dweck. 

High Expectations

Teachers need to move away from ability grouping!!!!!

High Expectations

The Te Hiku cluster has Christine Rubie-Davis coming to take PLD with the cluster this year. Some of the outcomes of the research from Woolf Fisher was the need for

• Student Agency
• Critical Thinking
• Better Design of tasks
• Not constraining the ‘top learners’ to help them accelerate/progress at (their) speed

I like the ideas of teachers having :

• high expectations for all students
• clear learning goals and how to achieve them.
• flexible groupings
• warm, positive classroom environments

I am looking forward to working with Christine and learning new practices, beliefs, verbal and non-verbal behavior to model in the classrooms.

Removing Backgrounds from Photos

Cutting Objects Out with Few Clicks

PhotoScissors Online provides an extremely easy way to cut a background an image. Instead of trying to accurately enclose a region with the Lasso or Magic Wand tools in cumbersome professional graphical editors, you quickly mark areas you want to cut out and areas you would like to preserve, and the program automatically does the rest. Thanks to optimized analysis of the clipping edges, you don't have to hunt for pixels trying to select an unwanted background. PhotoScissors is easy background removal with minimum efforts!

Remove.bg

Happy New Year! 2019

2019 has begun and I know it will be a great year.

My second year into my job, which was a year of intensive learning and growing. I learned a lot and am looking forward to starting this year off knowing what to expect and a lot better organized.

With my health scare of cancer and going through the hell of radiation, chemo and a major operation to remove cancer. I had the best Christmas present anyone could wish for the pathology results came back all clear they got all cancer and it had not spread anywhere else. So one more operation in Feb or March to reverse the ileostomy and then back to a cancer-free life. This has made me realise how short life can be, I intend to treasure my time with family and friends. Don't stress the small stuff. Enjoy life, you don't know when it will end. There is always someone worse off then you so be thankful.

One of my goals for 2019 is to share on my blog more regular. So hopefully I will grow my audience. Looking forward to feedback and feedforward in the up and coming year.