Place Value toolkit

 We had term four toolkits this week after the last high registrations and popular demand for maths I decided to do another math toolkit this time around place Value. I spent some of my non-contact time in the holidays researching and looking at the digital resources available. It was valuable to look at the work I covered as a maths facilitator 4 years ago and what is out there and being researched today and it is still the same misconceptions and a lot of the same activities. The only difference is the digital access to online manipulatives and materials and lots of videos so the work becomes multimodal. So I connected what we were facilitating over 4 years ago with the digital resources available today.  There is also a big focus on mixed ability groups and rich mathematical questions with the context connected to the student's interests, culture, and community.  It was a great workshop with over 66 registered and over 50 attending. 

 

 This is some of the feedback from the participants. There seems to be a high need for maths PLD across our schools. Manaiakalani is in the process of creating a maths expert role in maths for the clusters to focus on maths and PLD. 

Wananga 2021

 With current times we are in with Covid and Auckland still being in Lockdown week 21 the Maniakalani Wananga was moved to an online platform. We meet as a team on Thursday before to prepare for the day. The Northland team met at Lees house in Kerikeri which was the first time face-to-face as a team all year. It was so nice to see each other face to face you don't realize how much you miss it till it happens. 

This was a great day to prepare for the Wananga as we would be leading the clusters for the day. It was good to be prepared and knowledgeable about the day and the research quoted. 

Te Hiku cluster met at Paparore school with 7 of our 10 schools represented with principal and lead teachers present. It was a long day of listening to presenters and an hour near the end for us to unpack our data and set goals for 2022.  The MIT presentations were great and I am looking forward to investigating these in more detail. The research team did great job feedback on the data and the new system edpotential is a clear tool for understanding the data and graphs. 

Lockdown August 2021

 Still in lockdown Level 4 across the country day 12 currently 53 new cases today and a total of 562 active cases in the community. We had been doing so well as a country my husband and I even got a holiday to the beautiful Cook Islands. The delta strain is spreading at a very faster rate and is much easier to catch. Lucky we are fully vaccinated and Liam had his first one last week. 

The cases are mainly in Auckland and a few in Wellington. We also had the panic of my son Liam had been in Auckland the weekend before the first case and had been to places of interest so he had a test but luckily came back negative. This caused a lot of anxiety and worry in our household. Also, my daughter was in Wellington on her last teaching practice for her bachelor of teaching degree which is now an online learning teacher practice. 

The announcement today is allowing Northland to drop to level 3 on Friday if there are no new cases and the wastewater is clear. The problem with this lockdown is it is winter and raining so hard to get out for walks down the beach. So feeling very trapped in the house I have even had some anxiety. 

We have not had as much call-up and help needed from the schools this time, which I should see as a positive they are able to carry on the fantastic teaching online. With the great visible learning on their sites, they can transfer across to learning from home easily. 

I have missed the regular hangout meets we had last time which just gave us the connection and reassurance. Also being able to see faces, share feelings, and talk about what each facilitator was doing. I feel quite lost this time as I am on my own as a facilitator up here so have no team to call on and connect with. 

So have spent the time to upskill myself and learn new resources and create ideas. I Completed some of the apple teacher training and read their informative books. Had fun with the green screen on iMovie. It was so easy and I can use it to create in the classrooms with the students. 

Fractions Online Toolkit

 Having these online toolkits during lockdown I didn't think we would get as many participants with busy households and changes to distance learning. I choose to do another maths toolkit as they are very popular and have high turnouts. That alerts me to the lack of maths PLD currently and teacher concerns and need for ideas, pedagogical and content knowledge. It was a subject of Fractions the hardest area of maths to teach the area that students find hard to gain the conceptual understanding. So I unpacked the misconceptions of teaching fractions. This was nothing new, looking at the current research and websites like Youcube, nrich, and nzmaths. They are the same misconceptions and same concerns as to when I was a maths facilitator 4 years ago. I focused with a real emphasis on the language of maths and transferring what we do in literacy across the maths. Also starting of with understanding with multi representations using materials hands-on and technology manipulatives. Then introducing the symbols. Also context and real-life examples that relate to your students. They need to understand why we need to learn Fractions. 

Unpacking the key ideas for the teachers and the progressions through the levels helps to see the big picture and the connections. Especially to multiplication and division. The feedback from the teachers was positive and they enjoyed lots of the resources that they can use in their distance learning.  

As a Manaiakalani cluster, we have all these great resources for literacy and sites for teachers to refer to but we have nothing for Maths. I am looking at putting together a site for maths. With research, resources, exemplars for teachers. 

Reinvesting and Rebounding

Another fantasic article looking at the main areas to support student acceleration. It also has great articles linked to reserach to back up the findings. It is again reiterating what is being said by many researchers and educators. For my current position it emphasizes the word coach to support the delibrate role of expert teaching. Also the importance of data being data-directed, data-informed, and data-infused. We need to know what is happening is working. Also the student at the center is the most important focusing on the way they best learn and focus the teaching to support this through professional learning communities. Making the content we teach and implement discipline-specific and context-specific. The co-facilitation where teachers are teaching and modeling not just me is important as it Provides multiple opportunities for teachers to engage in the new approaches, interventions, or strategies they plan to implement in their own classrooms with feedback and feedfroward important to bring about change and improvement to practice. Not only comming from the teacher, and facilitator but importantly also the students. Looking at the deliberate acts one I think I need to change is making the task shorter and achievable in the time I am in the class. The environment of the practice allows for the individual to focus on the exercise, task, or experience. To achive this they need time, space, and resources for the teachers to implement the SMART goal in their classroom. Time is the big factor with our 1 hour a week in the class. So changing my task to shorter and achievable in the hour will make a difference. Some of the teachers are good at finishing of the tasks during time I am not in the classroom which allows for the lesson to be effective. Others do not and the time of a week between each lesson removes alot of the motivation and engagement in making the lesson worthwhile. This is an easy to read and thought provoking reasearch and I am looking forward to looking at tsome of the links to other research. When I have the time, which is one of the benifits of lockdown.

Create Staff meeting Term 2

It was very rewarding to see the journey and sucess stories that the Te Hiku schools have come. The students voice is good to hear from their thoughts and ideas. Watching the Oruaiti school video reminded me of the Elwyn Richardson early years video we had showen for our create staff meeting. It was interesting to see the comparison to the 1960s and to now. Some of the students in the video have a geniology contections to the historical Early years video with their great grandparents present in the old video. The improvement in the video and editing skills was a great to see how professional they are.I am going to share this on the Te Hiku site and also with the Te Hiku trust. I also shared it as a celebration at our end of year hui in Auckland.

Online Toolkits term 2

Term 2 online toolkits I choose to do another tips and tricks workshop my last one on email was very popular so I desided to create another one around tabs and bookmarks. Especially with the new group your tabs introduced which makes life alot easier for someone with many tabs open. Puting these together allows the time to investigate and research the new extensions and options available.It also is a good reminder to me of all options available that I don't use but may be helpful to me in organsing my workload and time saving. We do have a habit of sticking to what you know well and what works well. It is great to take the risk of introducing something new and trying it out. The feed back was great and teachers also enjoy the process of being able to follow along and try out the processes. The extra time at the end gives teachers the precious time to tame those tabs and organise those bookmarks. Time which is a precious thing for teachers. Now to think what I will do for term 3 online toolkits.

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

While on our end of term visit to Auckland we got to attend and present at the Manaiakalani teacher Only Day. It was a great way to finish of the end of term. Lee and I presented Panui from Ngapuhi. It was great to share some of what we are doing up North in the Far North clusters. I was lucky to have Gemma Fleet from Kaingaroa school to share her very sucssefull literacy program from 2020. We where also lucky to hear Dr Dr. Rae Siʻilata and Kyla Hansell the key note speaker who was very inspirational and made you really think about bi lingual language and culture in reading and literacy. It was great to hear the explain everthing experts and have a reminder of the creative ways to use the tool in reading. The other workshop I went to was Georgie and Kiri going over the Reading Observation tool which was good to hear again and have more clarification and analysis of the parts of the tool. It was a great day and I am lookimg forward to looking at the other presentations. It was a great day to end a week of learning and reflecting in Auckland.

Toolkit Tidy that Email

This was a good toolkit to do as it forced me to tidy my own email. It also allowed me to think about what was some of the key tips and points teachers needed to learn and know to tidy there emails. It encouraged me to look at the updates and changes that have been put in place by google. Often I am to busy to read in detail about every update. My favourite is being able to colour my labels.

Hapara Champion Scholar Completted

I enrolled last yar after completting the Hapara Champion Educator course to have ago at the Scholar course. It was a great course that involved alot of work but was very worthwhile doing. I got to unpack the ISTE standards and find artifacts that relate to some of them so got to see some great resources from other teachers completting the course. We also got to write our teaching philosophy and reflect on each others. Giving feddback and feedforward on each others. It was great to get a chance to dive deeply into my personal thoughts and pedagogical practice. Also to dive deeply into the Hapara standards and goals and how they fit with my personal thoughts. This is something that we should regularly do as over time and with changes in the world yours ideas and thoughts change. I enjoyed the course so much I have enrolled to do the next course later in the year the Hapara trainer.

Combined Teacher Only Day

We have had a great start to the year with a Combined Te Hiku and Kiakohekohe cluster Teacher Only Day at the Treaty of Waitangi grounds.This is the first time we have combined together for this day. We had around 140 teachers come for the day. Being the first day back for teachers the request was not to have our teachers being spoke at for long periods of time. The teachers wanted hands on practicle based activities that where not for to long. We put an agenda together at the end of last year utilising on local talents and experts. Thanks to Monica and her great team from the education centre at the TOW and also the great staff from Tautoro School who bought along there resources and shared the great teaching and learning they are presenting at their school. The day was made more special being held at such a spiricial and sacrid place. The feedback and conversation were very positive and enthusiastic. Nexts years TOD will be combinded again and be held in the Te Hiku cluster area we have started conversations allready as it will be hard to bet the great day we had this year. This was the agenda for the day and some photos.