Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe Symposium 2023

For the past few months we have been busy organising our combined symposium for 2023. Next year it is being held at the Taipa Beach Resort on Thursday 26 January. We desided as a cluster to include some local curriculum and invited the iwi to talk about the Ngati kahu area of Taipa point and how they got the land back. We have also got Mangonui school and Ian Swindel talking about the Rangikapiti Pa restoration program and Oruaiti school show casing their enviro school and how they achieved winning the award. Fraser Smith who is the ex Oturu principal is introducing the day with his good sense of humour and experience of telling stories. He has been writing lots of journal stories and books in retirement with a context to suit our local students. Steve from Google has also kindly offered to come up and present at the day. We also have Jenny Skinner presenting on the new history curriculum. So far it has all come together and is looking good and well organised thanks to a great collaborative Te Hiku team. So far we have 96 registrations. This is the site about the day.

Term 4 Te Hiku Newsletter

Writing Moderation

This year the lead teachers ran a very succseful Te Hiku writing moderation I was out with Covid so they run the day. The key feedback was 1)Moderated writing examples together, coherence across the cluster looks good. 2)Can we please change the genre for 2023, give our kids a break from writing the same prompts. 3)Standardized data needs to be administered in the correct way.

Summer Learning Journey

Another year for the summer learning Journey I created 2 activities for it one on Escape rooms which was something I had not done before so was a good oportunity to choose something I can learn from and be able to implement in my work next year. I can do a toolkit on it and also have it a part of the create activites students can do as part of the cyber smart activites. The other activity was around the artist hundertwasser which also fitted nicely into local curriculum with his toilets and building in kawakawa and the new building in Whangarei. I hope the students enjoy the activies and learning. This is the SLJ Blog that all the activies are on. I promotted the SLJ in all classes across the Te Hiku cluster this year as the summer Slump showed in our data. With what the research is showing that one student can increase up to one terms work if they participate it is something that needs to be promotted and encouraged for our students to be part off.

Cook Islands Summit

This was my hightlight of the year going to present at the first ever Raraotonga teacher Google summit. Dorothy Burt had been talking about the organisinig of the summit and asked for anyone interested in attending and presenting in the October holidays. I had said I was keen right from the start. It is a place I love to visit and thought it was a great oportunity to give back to the beautiful place by sharing my knowledge to the teachers of Rarotonga. When it finally came out and was confimed the prices where quite high being in the school holidays but I desided why not my new bathroom could wait another year. Then my husband said he did not wont to go as we had only just been over in June. So I decided to shout my daughter over being a first year teacher. This would be a good learning oportunity and a holiday at the same time. Also I would get to spend some quality time with my daughter. We stayed at the Edge water resort and there was 40 from New Zealand attending and presenting and 60 local teachers. I started off with one workshop and then got asked to do another so spent my first week of the holidays organising and preparing for these. I choose to do 2 Maths workshops one on Fractions and the other on Place Value. Being Maths I had to take over equipment and had to think about what they had avaiable on the island. Not being to sure on how good their wifi was in schools I made my workshops very hands on with activities for the teachers to explore and play. I did share some online resources and activities for the lucky schools that had acess to devices and reliable wifi. The welcoming on the first day was very special and the friendly locals made us very very welcome. I also got to see a old friend Roberta who has been over there working for 5 years. That was a very loud and lots of hugging reunion and a great way to meet all the locals. The workshops where very well recieved by the locals and we also got to attend some other workshops. The visit to the local Cultural Art center was special and Poppa Pete was a very knowledgable and respected elder. He did not hold back on his thoughts and ideas of how the country should be run. The second day we took our car out and helped set up they gave everyone that attended a prize of a set of headphones or mouse pad mats and also drew out names for other prizes. Thanks to all the sponsors. Zana(my daughter) won a drone which made her day. After more workshops till lunch time we then had a cultural afternoon we choose ukalali for the first session and got taught to play some songs and then got to dye some syrongs on the traditional carved print boards, others tried drumming and flax weaving. Then after the closing of a very special 2 days we all headed to Viamis bar for a few drinks. I am so glade I had the experience and got to share it with my daughter. We have made many new friends and got to meet partners of work collegues and got to know others on a more personal note out of the normal work. Over the next few days we swam, relaxed, walked,ate out, toured the island and swam with turtles before we headed home. It was a fantatic trip with great memories.Much better than a new bathroom.

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Term 3 Online Toolkit

 

After attending the AMA Auckland Mathematics Association coffee morning I was introduced to CODAP. I had a play with it and could see the value and how easy it was to use. I then attended another webinar run by one of the developers Tim and got some more background and basics around the tools and what it can do. This then made me want to share the great tool with others so I created a toolkit around it. I did not have large numbers register and even less attend. With only 4 turning up I showed them the background behind it and watched the introduction video on their web page. We then had a chance to explore the tool. I also created a google form to gather some data and showed how easy it was to upload the data from the form and graph the variables. Some good questions asked: what was the difference between CODAP and google sheets? Also how you can add algebra?

Te Hiku Newsletter

 

This year I have introduced a term newsletter to the Te Hiku Cluster. The idea is to share some of the great work that is happening across our schools and celebrate the successes. Also to share some tips, tricks and up and coming google updates and new products. I have also shared them with our trust members and on our cluster site. The feedback from teachers has been very positive and the principals have given good responses. I need to look at how I can get this out to the parents, community and share it further to celebrate with the world.

July Auckland Hui

The highlight of our July Auckland Hui was the half day spent at the new Auckland Google Headquarters. They are very flash and tell a beautiful New Zealand story. Steve gave us a tour around and explained the story behind the design and then presented to us the updates in Google and whats new. We also did a lot of work around Edublogs which was good to look at lots of tips and tricks and sharing of resources created so we are not recreating the wheel. The soap boxes which cause so my stress and anxiety where a great mixture of fun, interesting and creative presentations from all the team. They are a good way to get to know each other. Friday we where based a Stonefields School and went over the research and up and coming events for the future. The reading workshops based similar to the DFI model look great for teachers to learn about quality reading lessons and pedagogy of reading. I would love to do the course to keep update and knowledgeable. We said a sad goodbye to Cam who is moving on to bigger and better things look out for her in the future of app designing. She will be missed for her fun and bubbly personality but most of all her innovative ideas and future thinking. The other great thing happening next school holidays in Rarotonga is the Google summit that Dorothy has organised which looks exciting and a great way to learn the culture of the magic island. I have registered myself to go and be part of an exciting event. 

Term 2 Toolkits

This time I decided to try a practical paper folding shape online toolkit. In the past this has been a very popular workshop being hands on and involving lots of learning around geometry.The challenge was would it be as popular online. It had been quite a while since I had facilitated this workshop so I went hunting in my Math resources and found all my paper folded shapes. I then had a practice to make sure I could follow the instructions and give support to the teachers. My next job was to look at how we could amplify and turbocharge this practical workshop with technology. The Jamboard was a good collaborative idea so all the students could be sharing the ideas together. Also the use of photos, screencastify and video to capture the voice and hear the students' understanding. I set up 2 screens so I could see everyone and manage the pace and complexity of the workshop. Unfortunately it was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I lost some teachers who struggled with the paper folding and following the visual diagrams. It is definitely a workshop that is better face to face. I did receive some feedback that was positive, a principal who had to relieve a lot due to the influenza hitting and low staff numbers, she said she used the workshop a lot as it went across all year levels and you could pull parts out and the students really enjoyed it. Maybe next time I will not try to do all the shapes while online.

Term 1 toolkits

March is here already and online toolkits for term 1 are here. I started off as wingperson for Joanne Ryken and she had 65 participants for her workshop on shared reading and T shaped literacy. Then today I presented mine to 21 keen teachers on Measurement. The more I researched into the topic the more complex and complicatted you realise it is the teach the subject. The language, attributes, units and different areas that need to be covered. The best way to teach this area is hands on practicle, investigation rich and problem based. Exposing students to the different tools and units. Experience based allowing students to develope bench marks to be able to estimate and predict. Insteed of sharing great resources and tools in the slide I created a data base for everyone to share great resources. I also linked in the MIT and class on air resources. This could then become a one stop place to find great support and teaching resources. Now to start thinking about my topic for term 2 online tool kit. Before it sneaks up on us.

Happy New Year 2022

Those holidays went far to quick but it was a very relaxing holiday, a good time to rechange the batteries and reflect on the year we had. Back in schools this week meeting lots of new teachers and students. Te Hiku had a great orientation day in January with 10 teachers attending the day at Mangonui school. It was really helpful and great to work with Jacob to present the day.It makes it so less streesful when you are planning and presenting as part of a team and not on your own. What will this year bring with the onset of Ormicon on the way, compulsory wearing of masks for students and staff year 4 and up. Also another injection needed a boaster for the Ormicon varient which we are waiting for the spread accross our comunities with it being so contagious. I thought it would be here by now but we are still waiting. When it does arrive I will be back to online facilitation as visitors will not be allowed in schools especially someone like me who visits 7 schools each week. I would hate to be the spreader.