KET 2019 - Teacher Only Day @ Waitangi

Pat Snedden welcomed us in via a link and we were able to hear him inspire us by talking about about the importance of our work in the KET and how it supports the wider network.  He discussed the importance of both our MET and KET vacancies and the need we have to fill them so that we could access as much support as possible.

Following Pat's welcome, we had Mark Osborne as a Key note speaker.  He discussed the 'maker movement' and again inspired us all to be not consumers of technology, knowledge and everything that this world has to offer but rather creators/innovators of it.  He further inspired us to do this in our classrooms and to get our kids inspired and motivated in this endevour.

We then broke into our first workshop.

Workshop 1 - Enhancing writing

This is one that I got asked to run, initially back in November 2018, following my presentation in AKL at the principals wananga.  This was a great opportunity to present the tool I had created in 2018 to teachers within our cluster and to have them work through a portion of if.

Unfortunately due to WiFi issues at the venue this was more frustrating than anything.  We had lots of people attend this workshop, but only some were able to access and begin using the framework and support materials within the site.  

However Feedback from those that were involved, enjoyed the workshop, were excited about the framework and resource, and could see lots of opportunities to use this in their teaching practice (regardless of the age they were teaching).  So this was a success.  SHAME ABOUT THE WIFI!

Workshop 2 - The Maker Movement (Mark Osborne)

Following this workshop my next workshop was to attend the one by Mark Osborne based around the maker movement.  This was lots of fun, with lots of hands on examples and problem solving.  Can't wait to get my hands on the presentation he shared with us, so watch this space.

3 HUGE successes in 1 day!

After being off work with sick kids for a few days I returned to the classroom yesterday.

Success Story 1.  After morning Karakia (prayers) and morning notices we headed back to class straight back to class routines.  As we are a collaborative learning space we have 2 teachers (3 from 9 some mornings each week) one teacher takes the morning roll and discusses what will happen throughout the day (also time to share news), The other teacher (me) runs a very short sharp accelerated writing group session (10 mins).  Today after not having this morning writing routine the group of students who I work with were Very eager, Very excited and Very motivated to write!  in their own words "We love writing" and "We missed this writing".  And ALL the students achieved their writing goals during this writing time and were ready to share their examples with the rest of the class to help their peers succeed in their writing today.  4 of these students went on to exceed the writing goals and pushed themselves to write more than they were expected.

What makes this even more of a success story is that at the beginning of this term (only 6 weeks ago) these were our Year 1 writers who we had identified as targets because we didn't think they would be able to write at the level we would want them to be at, by the end of the year.  1 child has been diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, and began school a year later than his peers (still classified as a year 1), 1 child normally spends more time distracting those around him and himself.  All 7 children had previously struggled to either formulate or retain a simple sentence they wanted to write, and only 1 of the 7 children knew all of her alphabet letters and sounds prior to starting with this group.  This meant that sounding out words previously had been VERY hit and miss.

Success Story 2.  This relates to one of our Autism children.  We have had a teacher who has been doing her masters on Austium, observing and doing a case study on this child as part of her masters.  Today her message was quite clear... "I can't help you or suggest anything more than what you are already doing as a team for this child.  He is highly supported and has improved immensely from when he started at Ohaeawai Primary".

This type of feedback affirms and validates all the extra effort and time we have spent in integrating this child into our classroom, and provides reassurance that while we will still have battles ahead, as long as we all keep our mind on the prize we will get there together.  It also helps us as educators to actually sit back and actually go ... Yes, big changes have happened.

Success Story 3.  Recently I posted a blog post to our Kaikohekohe Google+ Community and also shared it on twitter, although I received some feedback from this sharing, following the toolkit a teacher brought up this recent sharing and discussed reading through our blog.  She had been able to find writing exemplars and resources that we had made in class and that we had posted onto our class blog so our students could share and help each other.  This Teacher then went on to ask if I thought it would be OK if she used this to help her class learn about this topic.  My response of course was ...

"OF COURSE - THAT'S WHAT HAVING A BLOG IS ALL ABOUT!"

The first and third success stories relate directly to my MIT inquiry and the tool I am creating help myself and other teachers within the Kaikohekohe Cluster to accelerating our children's writing.



Watch this blog for updates over the next mouth or so for on my tools prototype as I will post it here and ask my readers for feedback/ideas/feed forward on how to make it more useful.  EXCITING!!!

GarageBand workshop

Last night was our our Kaikohekohe Clusters Term 3 Tool-kits.  This continues to be a great opportunity to connect with other professionals from within our cluster and across a wide range of year levels and experiences.  Last nights tool-kits included;

Although there weren't a huge amount of tool-kits the tool-kits on offer reflected our clusters current needs and also offered opportunities for professional growth for everyone.  Kaikohekohe Cluster ROCKS!  

On Friday afternoon I got the call from the amazing Raewyn, asking me to run a tool-kit on GarageBand.  So in between having 3 sick kids, doing GST returns, and trying to catch up on MIT bits I also created a presentation to use for this Garage band workshop.

Below is a link to an 'answergarden' brainstorm that anyone who is reading this blog can add their ideas to (for the next week).  It asks the question "How could we use GarageBand in our classroom?"

At the end we had a bit of fun together recording us having a conversation about who we were, what we were doing and why we were in the GarageBand workshop.  Will upload this over the next few days.  

Thanks to all the attendee's

Please make sure you share them to me - I would love to hear your personal & classroom creations!

Blogging to Accelerate Writing

Here is another strategy I am trialing for the remainder of this term.  This came about as a result of a combination of things.  Firstly we recently had maths week, and as something different we posted each days questions on the blog so students could access them at home (we had a teacher strike day on that week) and email them directly to me.  This worked fantastic and really excited the children in Team Maunga.  On the Friday I had also planned to be our doing more research and work on my MIT inquiry.  Part of this day I spent talking to children in the class.  One of the questions I was particularly interest in finding out about was "What could I (and the other teachers in Team Maunga) do to help YOU WANT to write?"  Interesting some of the children started by just telling us that the things we normally do in class.  But when pushed to think about things we don't already do there were a few stand out ideas that became discussion points for groups of children being questioned.

Some of their ideas included:  Having more time to write, having their own blog that they could write about anything on, and also writing challenges (similar to our maths challenges).  So ... Last week be began our first writing challenge (based on a topic/idea that they already had covered in class).  This was hugely successful with children enjoying being able to work on this both in school and at home.  Team Maunga all I can say ... IS YOU ROCK MY WORLD.

Here is both last weeks challenge and this weeks one.  Feel free to visit our class blog and comment on it with your own response!

Past students inspiring visit

Today our school had a visit from a past student who shifted away from his beloved Kaikohe town to live in Abu Dubai with his family about 5-6 years ago.   He spoke to the whole school about how when he left our school he felt like he was 'the man' and that he could do anything.  When in-fact he still had a lot of learning left to do.

He is now 15 and has done much of that learning, and wanted to give back to a school and community that he and his family hold dear.  While he realises his learning journey is not over he wanted to inspire the children in our school that they to had a lot more learning to do and that it is something to embrace.

He also told stories of many of the teachers who are still there, and how they had inspired him as he undertook this journey and how they have helped him to reach his ultimate goal.  Hearing him talk about the brief period of time I had taught him (while doing a 5 week stint of relieving for another teacher) truly made me feel humble and honoured.  Humbled that he had remembered me and honoured that I could have been apart of such an amazing learning journey.

It also made me remember all the mixed emotions that this brief period of relieving had evoked.  At the time my daughter was only 5 months old and me being me agreed to make this happen.  In hind site this really was crazy, and exhausting.  Between planning, feeding my 3 kids and getting 2 off to a different school, dropping of a baby to my sister in law, Breast feeding and making sure my little one had enough for the rest of the day (which meant extra work during the day and night to make this happen), planning, teaching, doing duties, attending staff meetings and all the other things that go with being both a teacher and a mum.  It really was challenging.

However to have even 1 past student visit who only knew me in that brief instance to remember me (and hug me as soon as he saw me) and be able to reflect on how I had impacted on his life...

It was ...

inspiring.

My six word story for today is ...