Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe Symposium

A great, successful day! We didn't have to good of a start with arriving at 8 am to set up the power was off. As everyone was arriving and with us about to start the room was very dark and still no power. The power company was contacted and no time could be given as they were still trying to find the fault. With a chat with the big wigs and presenters we choose to go ahead with Fraser the keynote speaker to start in the dark. He was given permission to carry on over his time if the power was still off. Options where discussed to moving to Oruaiti school where the power was on. We decided to wait and be optimistic the power will come back on in time. So in true Northland style we laughed and carried on with hope. Someone was on our side with 10 minutes to go with the keynote speaker, the power came on. With a big cheer from our crowd of enthusiastic teachers the day was to go as planned. It was a fantastic day with great presenters and lots of learning happening. The conversations from the teachers was very positive and lots of thank-yous. The food for morning tea and lunch was also to a good standard and lots of it. When we packed up at the end of the day and everyone headed off home with their knowledge kete full. I have to admit I was relieved and exhausted. There is a huge amount of work and organsiation that goes to setting up a day like this for 155 teachers. You don't realise the pressure that is put on your shoulders for it to be successful. Then to add an extra stress I had to head home and get organised for a big dinner out for 15 people for my son's 21st dinner. I can admit I slept well that night.

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?