Wananga 2023

 This year thanks to our convenor John and the embarrassment of only 3 of us there last year. We had a good turn out of representatives from the Te Hiku cluster, 7 of our schools were represented and Diane from the Te Hiku Trust. 

I travelled down on Tuesday night and stayed the night. This was much better than trying to get the early flight from Kerikeri. I was fresh and alert for the day. We went over the researches presentation as a group of facilitators. We also looked at the activities we would be supporting our clusters to complete. This was a good opportunity to ask questions and clarify things that the leaders would ask. Also a good opportunity to up skill ourselves in areas we were not to sure about or experts in. The bonus was our research team on the day was only a viber chat away. 

That night we had our christmas dinner at the Panmure Yacht club and farewelled some very special people Makore, Cheryl and Anne. With a busy 2 days ahead of us I was not up to late night so we got dropped off by the wonderful Andrea in the van. 

Using the theatre this year was great to hear the speakers and a very big screen to view the slides. The theatre was comfortable and also stopped leaders from working on their computers. The presentations where to the point and perfectly timed. Then we moved to break out rooms to work as a cluster. We had great discussion and conversations around the data. Some leaders did need training in how to navigate their way around edpotentail. Our cluster realised the importance of 5 or more observations in each school to get school data and would make a better effort next year to achieve this. 

The first day was a great success and a nice surprise with an open bar thanks to BP tech. It was a real treat to sit outside in the sun catching up with leaders and colleagues over a few drinks. Then off to dinner in the restaurant which was beautiful. It was very crowded and hard to talk as it was very noisy. I snuck off after dinner for a early night with another big day ahead of us.

The next day our cluster at dinner had convinced John to carry on in the convenors role and Sacha would take it on in 2025. Which is great and I really enjoy working with John. He is collaborative and very well respected amongst the leaders and educators in Te Hiku.  

It was a fantastic event our cluster had great robust discussions and set some goals across the cluster for 2024. Our leaders that came really enjoyed the 2 days and felt they had a much better understanding of Manaiakalani and the great resources and oportunities there are available for the teachers and schools. They also realised how innovative and forward thinking Manaiakalani is and how lucky they are to be part of the fantastic program. I myself also came away feeling motivated and enthusiastic as our cluster is positive and paddling our waka in the same direction. 

Move over Jamboard FigJam is moving in.

 Google has announced that they will not be having Jamboard as one of their tools as of the end of next year. I am not a prolific user of Jamboard but I do model and use it as a collaboration tool in lots of my in class facilitation and in toolkits and presentations. 

It has been interesting to look at what is being promoted as an alternative to Jamboard. I watched an interesting presentation be Alice Keller, Laureen McCann and David Curran on Move Over Jamboard-Meet Figjam. I was very impressed with Figjam it can do so much more than Jamboard could do and it is free. You can also upgrade to the Education version for free and it was quick. You can add video and links, you can drag and drop images, google docs, slides, sheets. It has an infinite canvas which was the hardest thing to get my head around, it has no pages but you can add sections to your canvas and group them so they appear next to each other in a nice order. Even better and more helpful you can right click and get a copy link to the sections. There is also so many templates available for you to use. It had lots of fun with the extras like stamps that you can personalise, sticky notes and extra widgets and Plugins. A great tool that is easy to share with students and collaborate. A great easy to use tool. Now to investigate some of the other collaborative tools that are being suggested as an alternative to jamboard. Mural, Whimsical and Canva.

Bay of Islands Summit 2023

 This year the summit was held in the Bay of Islands and the venue was the Bay of Islands college at kawakawa. With a focus on inovation with tech, effective teaching practice and cultural capability. Unfortunaly we did not have the nice warmth of the Cook Islands. Also this year was the first 2 days of the holidays 25 and 26 September. I booked into the bay of islands accomodation and the hilghlight for me was Zana my daughter who is a teacher at Levin Intermediate was comming again and this time bringing most of her staff from her school. Monday started of with a very nice powhiri and the key note speaker was Edith the principal of BOI College. Then lots of great sessions to choose from and it was nice to choose on the day and not have to register before the event. My first presentation was creativity in Maths which was very popular and they where turning away educators as numbers where capped at 25 and the door was closed when numbers reached their limit. With lots of great feedback and thanks it was nice to have the first one over and done but also good to hear the relevance of the ideas and resources shared. The sun came out and the afternoon was beautiful as Zana and I headed off to the Waitangi treaty grounds to do the tour. Having been there many times to the education center and for eduction TOD I had not done a tour or had a good look around in many years. It was so special, the place has a very peaceful feel about it and so much Wairua. It was very suprising the amount of teachers that have never been there before. The Levin teachers loved it and where real tourists. The next day was another great day of wonderfull workshops and my other workshop Google Earth was also packed and well recieved by teachers. The panel disscussion was interesting with the big common factor being AI. Unfortunately no prizes won this year, after lots of good byes and hugs we headed home to Coopers beach in the pouring rain and very cold tempertures.  Lots of positive talk from teachers saying how good the 2 days where and how much they had got out of the 2 days I would say it was another very successful summit.

Te Hiku 4th Film Festival

Another very successful Te Hiku Film festival. On Wednesday 13 September we held our 4th Film Festival at the Te Ahu Cinema in Kaitaia. We had three sessions during the day for the schools to attend and a 5:30 pm session for the Whanau and prize giving. We had 14 3 minute movies from 8 of our 9 schools. This year we did not have a theme or topic we left in open with the idea that teachers would embed movie making into their teaching and learning throughout the year and choose one for the festival. This did not happen; they all waited until term 3 to start their films. Some schools did integrate it into their learning topic. I just love watching the reactions of the students on the red carpet even the cool kids transform into a star role as soon as they step on it. The cheering, laughing, clapping and yelling from the audience is also fantastic to hear. Watching the students look at themselves on the big screen through the gaps of their fingers over their faces, pointing and yelling each other's names as they appear. This is what makes all the hard work and time to organise it so worthwhile. We had a mixture of genres of movies from music videos, documentaries, humour and history. Our winning film this year was from Mangonui School which was a music video to go with the song they had written and composed. They had also used an AI app to get great effects. These were the winners at the prize giving. Best Film 2023 – Mangonui School-"Get Down With Us" Second best Film –(2nd equal) Kaingaroa School-The River & Ngataki School-Tumatahina Trophy for most creative school display-Ahipara School Best Script – Tumatahina Best Camerawork –Mangonui School - “Get Down With Us” Best lead Actor – Matteo Noema-Wakarua -who played Manu Ahipara School Best supporting Actor-Jimmy Heighway -Whaea Jasmine Best Ensemble Cast – Tumatahina This is the link to our Te Hiku Site where you access all the movies from. 

It was a very long day but so worth it when you watch the very creative movies and see those faces on and off the screen.

Term 3 online toolkit Getting Creative in Maths.

Another toolkit completted, I have noticed in my searching cluster sites and the edublog search there is not alot of create happening in Mathematics and statistics.So I desided to put together a workshop to look at how we can get creative in Maths. I looked at all the amazing tools we are already using and how we can transfer them across the the math curriculum. I linked in past toolkits for teachers to watch and learn from if needed. Where I could find examples on blog posts I also linked them in as exemplars. Again there was a high registration number in the 50s as maths is something teachers want. Fiona Fox our new Maths Facilitator was my wing person and shared her expertise. Fiona is in the process of writing the MPI that will be out for trial next Feb. she commented on alot of great ideas she got out of the workshop she can embedd into the MPI. The feedback was great and teachers loved the resources and creative ideas they can introduce in the maths and statistic curriculum.

Maths design group

With great appreciation and recognition of experince I was invited to be part of the Manaiakalani Maths design group. A group of maths experts accross all the Manaiakalani clusters are meeting with the research team in Auckland this week. We where given 3 readings to read and unpack before we meet. I am really looking forward to the 2 days and will share some of the outcomes. This is a real need accross schools with varied types of mathematics and satistics teaching being implemented. I am also looking froward to again working with Fiona Fox a previous work collegue and good friend who is leading the Maths Research at Manaiakalani. Using Culturally embedded problem-solving tasks to promote equity within mathematical inquiry communities. Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Five practices for helping teachers move beyond show and tell. BES Effective pedagogy in mathematics Using Culturally embedded problem-solving tasks to promote equity within mathematical inquiry communities. Home and cultural contexts and connections. Strength based approach Understanding the cultural values and beliefs which shapes the students Transformative approach-mathematical practices and the use of contextually based problem solving tasks. Home cultures and values become learning tools Complex and challenging problem solving tasks Make connections between different pieces of maths, devise their own solution strategies and explore different solution pathways. High level reasoning and justification. Engagement. Students see maths in their everyday lives. Contextual tasks-Relationships and connectedness Cultural connectedness=active participants Discourse-student voice, teacher questioning to gain deeper learning and conceptual understanding. Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Five practices for helping teachers move beyond show and tell. anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and making connections between student responses. facilitating mathematical discussions that are launched through cognitively demanding mathematical tasks—problems that promote conceptual understanding and the development of thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving skills (Doyle, 1983, 1988; Henning-sen & Stein, 1997; Hiebert & Wearne, 1993; Stein, Grover, & Henningsen,1996). Teachers require content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of students as learners (1) anticipating likely student responses to cognitively demanding mathematical tasks, (2) monitoring students’ responses to the tasks during the explore phase, (3) selecting particular students to present their mathematical responses during the discuss-and-summarize phase, (4) purposefully sequencing the student responses that will be displayed, and (5) helping the class make mathematical connections between different students’ responses and between students’ responses and the key ideas. Launch-explore-discuss By giving teachers a roadmap engaging their students in the discussion of a cognitively challenging mathematical task. BES Effective pedagogy in mathematics 1. An ethic of care, Trusting classroom communities, High realistic expectations, think, reason, communicate, reflect upon, and critique the mathematics they encounter; respecting and valuing the mathematics and the cultures that students bring to the classroom. Safe environment. Inclusive classroom. Teachers care. Connections to culture and home. 2. Arranging for learning, Independently, whole class, pairs, groups. Mixed ability groups. encourage higher level thinking. 3. Building on students’ thinking, students’ current knowledge and interests at the centre of their instructional decision making. Engaging students and the ability to extend through posing questions, and designing new tasks to challenge and extend thinking. Mistakes are building blocks. 4. Worthwhile mathematical tasks, design learning experiences and tasks to engage and extend mathematical thinking that connects to concepts, understanding and meaning. Think for themselves. Think deeply about math ideas and connections. students to make and test conjectures, pose problems, look for patterns, and explore alternative solution paths. Open-ended and Effective teachers understand that the tasks and examples they select influence how students come to view, develop, use, and make sense of mathematics. modelling tasks, in particular, require students to interpret a context and then to make sense of the embedded mathematics. Students need opportunities to practice what they are learning, whether it be to improve their computational fluency, problem solving skills, or conceptual understanding. Skill development can often be incorporated into “doing” mathematics; 5. Making connections, Multi connections within and across different areas and real life. Multi solutions and representations. 6. Assessment for learning, Range of assessment tasks to make students thinking visible. Formal and informal. Teacher questioning. Feedback. Self and peer assessment. 7. Mathematical Communication, Explain and justify, defend positions, examine conjectures, disagreements, and counterarguments. learn how to use mathematical ideas, language, and methods. As attention shifts from procedural rules to making sense of mathematics, students become less preoccupied with finding the answers and more with the thinking that leads to the answers.students to communicate their ideas orally, in writing, and by using a variety of representations. 8. Mathematical language, use and understanding of the terminology that is endorsed by the wider mathematical community. They do this by making links between mathematical language, students’ intuitive understandings, and the home language.Explicit language instruction. Link to home language and multilingual 9. Tools and representations, range of representations and tools to support their students’ mathematical development. Thinking tools. New technologies. 10. Teacher knowledge, Teacher content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.

DFI Term 2

DFI has just come to an end for term 2 which is sad as I really enjoy being a coach one day a week. I get to work with a great team of coaches that include other Manaiakalani facilitators and also teachers from schools. As a team we meet on a Wednesday afternoon for planning and had a reflection meeting after the day on a Thursday. This term I had a much bigger bubble group with a mixture of secondary, primary and junior teachers. I also had a wide level of expertise in the group. Just like in a classroom I had a mixed ability group of learners and just like in the classroom I spent more time with the lower level experts than with my top level experts. I was challenged regularly by the secondary teacher as there planning is done for them and their class site is set up for them so they did not have any input into that. Which I did ask how they differentiated the learning and catered for all the different learning needs in the class. Which they said was there job to do in the classroom teaching. As a primary trained teacher I strugle with this. But it was not my job to debate this kind of set up I was there to coach DFI. Some of the bubble group struggled with the blogging and reflecting on the day which we had to disscuss the point of us being role models for our students and experiencing how some of the students feel. Through ignoring the moaning, complainng and loud sighing they did complete their 9 blog posts. The one embarrassing moment that one of my bubble group got caught, (thought they had there camera turned off had told us they where not feeling well) was laid back in the lazy boy playing on the playstation. I was speechless (which does not happen very often) and didn't quite know what to say. But one of the others in the bubble group unmuted and loudly commented you forgot to turn off your camera and we can see you playing on your playstation Obviously not as sick as you said you where. Nothing else was needed to be said. The fun of working online in others houses. I also challenged myself this DFI round and had ago at presenting aspects I have not presented before. I am not part of the DFI next term as the day clashes with a busy day so I might be able to be part of term 4 DFI. Everyday on DFI there is always something new to learn and share. A new update or tip. Thanks Vicki and the team for another great DFI.