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.