Evidence - we do work in the holidays!

Above is a photo of Claire from St Bernadettes, Anna from Hornby High School and myself meeting on the first Wednesday of the holidays to put together the Teacher Inquiries for our Term 4 presentation. 

As School Leaders it has been our job to lead a group of teachers from the cluster in their Teacher Inquiry on Prior Knowledge. We have lead three meetings over the year and in the final term, it is our job to present the findings of the teachers. 

We spent almost two hours going over the work the teachers had sent us and putting it together on a Google Site. We really impressed with the quality and creativity the teachers showed in their presentations, as well as the evidence that shows that adding Prior Knowledge to the students learning process is increasing their understanding. 

You can check out the site we created here.

We've had to do a little bit of chasing around access so that all are seen and are now all fixed. Kelsey Morgan, our 'manager' sent us this email to congratulate us on what we had done.

It has been an interesting process leading other teachers from different schools as you only make connections with them a few times. It was a good thing to do and it has grown my confidence in speaking in front of other adults and leading them. It seems much harder than dealing with a room full of children. 

Data and the Board

As part of my role as School Leader I have had to attend Woolf Fisher data days alongside the Principal. Part of learning to understand and read the data is also being able to share the data with others.

Earlier in the year, I ran a staff meeting going over the Reading, Math and Junior data. I had assisted the Literacy Leader in sharing the Writing Data in her own session so I didn't need to share the Writing Data.

The staff meeting was a positive time, helping us focus as staff on what we need to do to improve how we teach different areas in order to help our students accelerate even more of their learning. Being able to lead the discussion, give the teachers a chance to really look at the data and draw their own conclusions from the data and discuss thoughts, ideas and solutions together.

Data is hard. Once you get past actually reading and understanding it, it can feel a bit overwhelming. There are lots of questions you need to ask about data. With this sort of data, it is also a snapshot in time and so it can be hard to know what comes into shape the data. It also can be confronting as a teacher to see raw data that tells you that your students aren't doing as well as you would want them to be doing. Especially when you are looking at a whole year's worth of data. When they plateau or even go backwards it isn't great. What do you do about that as a teacher, team or staff?

Following on from this staff meeting I was asked to present literacy data to the board. I did this on Tuesday the 24th of September. It had been a few months since the staff meeting so it took a bit of time to re-visit the data from early in the year and work out what is important for the Board to know. 

I produced the following presentation for the board and we spent 15 minutes going over it.

Again, it was confronting showing our board that currently many of our students are failing in literacy. They asked questions around why this might be, particularly with the difference between the Year 2 massive gains and the extremely low achievement of the Year 3 - 5 students. A few members of the board were quick to say it was because of the devices. This might be the case, but there is also a lot of other things that could have affected their learning; developmental levels, high needs of class, teaching methods, timing of tests, type of tests and the abilities to sit these types of tests, teachers competency, paper vs computer, attitude to tests ... the list could go on.

It is my belief that we can only do what we can do, making sure our students have exposure to these tests, create a growth mindset around tests, teach the skills to best sit these type of tests, make sure it is at the same time as the other schools are sitting them (so we compare like with like) but most of all recognise that for some of this data it is only one piece. A PTA Reading Test is one test on one day and our Linc-Ed data allows for a larger range of information to help shape the level our students are at. However, it is important to know how we are going and what we are doing with our teaching in the classroom. We don't want to teach to the test because that doesn't benefit students in the long run.

But what other things can we do to create a classroom where our students can achieve no matter what the activity or assessment? That's our job as teachers and it is the job of the Board to make sure we are asking these questions.

3 hour exam ... are you for real?

Today is the day where we complete our 9 week Digital Fluency Intensive. Intense it has been, challenging, stretching, even easy at times but most importantly lots of fun. I have loved getting to know other teachers, networking, sharing ideas, hearing the struggles and hearing the celebrations. It has truly been the best PD I've ever had. 

But first, the exam. We knew coming into the Intensive that we would finish with a Google Educator Exam. It is a 3 hour exam, practising the skills learnt on the course. 

Many people were feeling really nervous, and even though I had decided not to stress about it as the time approached to begin I started to get nervous energy coursing through my body. It is amazing how we feel as adults before something like this. How do our students feel before they sit down for a PAT Test or E-Asttle? But it is good to be in the Learning Pit and it is good to have these feelings. Getting in the arena is the big battle! And here I am, in the arena. 

I, of course, panicked as soon as I saw the first question. In fairness, it was on Google Classroom and we don't use that. Thankfully we could use the 'Review Later' button and I moved on and felt calmer as I hit questions I was confident in. 

The exam is split into two parts; multi-choice and practical scenarios. The practical scenarios were much easier as they were doing activities and once you got into the swing of things it felt just like what we normally do every day. I finished with just an hour to spare and only three questions to review. The hardest part was pushing the submit button. But submit I did and then the nervous wait ...

Whew ... 

So, the end is here. I have learnt so much and strengthened my own knowledge of what I can do. I have been reminded of the WHY of why we are doing this. Having the input around the pedagogy has been the standout me. Dorothy's wisdom has allowed me to engage again with the WHY again and given me the words to be able to explain this learning to others. I really don't understand why people feel so resistant to it. Learn Create Share is so powerful and it truly changes the students learn as well as the way I teach. I see the benefits of this, not just because the data tell us it works but because I can see the engagement in my own students. 

Sometimes it can feel like adults don't understand this process but it isn't about them, it is about the students. The evidence is in the classroom though. I received an email from a colleague who worked in our school a few years ago and they left because they couldn't see how it would work in a digital environment. They said this:

"By the way. What a stunning programme you are running in Rimu. I have had a glimpse of what you have been talking about all along but did not have the vision to understand."

It was so gratifying but humbling to receive this email. We run a good programme. Our students are happy and engaged. They are learning. The use of digital is enhancing and engaging them in ways a worksheet never could. Learning is interesting and exciting and they want to be at school. 

TURBOCHARGE! 

That is what this DFI has helped me to do; personally, in my teaching, in my role as School Leader, in my next steps as a teacher and as a Learn Create Share advocate. It is exciting and I can't wait to see what the next steps look like. 

Empowering our learning ... with maps, sheets and forms.

Empower!

Empowered                  

Used to use an agency but now use empowered. Empowered means to empower our learners… shock horror.

80% of the community in Manaiakalani live with an income of $19,000 per annum. And they make it work, but they are the working poor. We are not just talking about whanau on benefits these families are working and trying to juggle childcare, bills and life. However, it is quite disempowering.

5+ a day back and forth conversations make a difference to the oral language and blogging also strengthens this (5+ a blogasation).

If you want to EMPOWER our children then you can’t cherry-pick which you do. All of the following need to be part of the journey:

It has been really great having Dorothy Burt with us in person. She has a wealth of knowledge and she was able to download some of it to us. It was especially helpful in having the tips and tricks for our exam next week. Some people are feeling pretty worried about it but I am going into it with a positive attitude (assuming I can get on because I did have some technical difficulties with signing up today).

The rest of the day was exploring My Maps, Forms and Sheets. On the surface, these don't sound too thrilling but in actual fact we had a number of 'WOW' moments. There are a number of ways to use all of them, in life and in the classroom (which is also life but you know what I mean). 

For My Maps, I've started creating a My Map of our trip to Wellington for our Year 7/8 Camp. This I'll be able to share with whanau so they can see what we are doing (and how much walking they will be doing).

We did create this one with data from a Google Form.

In Forms, we created something for people to fill in. It was pretty fun. I had a go creating something for students to give feedback. This is the table that all the DFI team shared their Forms, you could always have a play if you wanted. The Block NZ is an important social question at present. 

Share your name and link your form below! Have a go at completing each other’s forms
Dorothy
Mel Raisin	Would you rather
Kelsey	Do You Wanna Taco 'bout It?
Alethea D	The Call of the Wilderness
Kathy L	Weekends
Rebecca	How do you take your coffee?
Melissa	All about me sandpit student form
Paula	Finding out about you
Helen	PBL choice for my hub student form
Angela	The Block NZ
Harry Romana	DFI Practice Form
Jess	Animals
Angela	Pets
Kellen	Softball form (students)
Nicole	Colours
Sharon	Thumbs up or Thumbs down?
Bernard Adams	Inquiry Term 4:  Student form
Kimberley	Genius Hour
Sharon T	Personal reading
Lucy	Breakfast eating habits
Tracey	Which Gymnastics leotard do you prefer for our Belfast Gym Team?

Finally, we spent some time pulling data out of our student blogs. I'm not entirely convinced I've harnessed the power of the data yet. I pulled all the date from our Year 7&8 students blogs. Below you can see the data that I have to work with. I have managed to use Sparkline to create the little graphs so you can see the tracking of their blog posting. I have also worked out the averages across the years, they are at the bottom of each column. 

I made this graph to show the totals for each student. It is quite visual and shows the tracking for each individual student.

Do you have any suggestions for what I could do with the data? Ideally, I want it to motivate the students. I know that Angela was looking at individual blogs for data, which is also a powerful motivator. You could check out her blog .

It is sad to think that next week is our last week. I have loved this learning and networking. What a shame it will all be over next week. 

Drones, hand held cameras, live YouTube and Me!

Today started with Kent from Point England introducing us to some pretty cool tech. Drones, handheld cameras and VidiUPro, all to be able to Live Stream. You can check out the presentation here: Presentation

Point England use Live Streaming to be able to include family members who are working, unable to attend or live overseas in the events and school life. They stream sports, performances, class items and other school events. Whanau simply join the link and watch what is happening live. St Francis of Assisi senior class has also used it to share learning one day. They didn't have the same equipment, they used teacher MacBooks to stream.

We had our own experience of failure today with Dorothy's link to us suffering from the dropouts and then having an alarm. Ironically it was about Connection ... but next week will be Connecting in person with Dorothy, as she is coming down to Christchurch.

Some notes from her chat with us:

• Being connected digitally is a way of empowering the learners and we can do it because the learning is shared and visible. It extends from the individual, potentially to the world.
• This is an inclusive model and again, taps into the human instinct to SHARE and to be connected with other human beings.
• Diversity is celebrated - what ties us together is the language of Learn Create Share
• Digital turbo-charges but face to face is also just as important. Digital allows us to do more or include those that can’t be there.

“If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals.” - Dorothy Burt

You will often find the words connected and share tied together in Manaiakalani resources and events- it is impossible to have one without the other. Because connection is a two way, two-person action. You have to give to get. If you want others to share with you, then you need to be a sharing kinda person.

Powerful learning, creating and sharing comes into it's own supporting a Connected network when teaching and learning is visible. Connectedness is powerful when teaching and learning is visible, learners (and teachers) have been empowered (have agency), and ubiquity is supported.

The rest of the time was spent exploring YouTube, Google Drawings & Google Slides. We saw some pretty great examples of Pick a Path and Animations made on Google Slides. Examples of planning in the Juniors and the Seniors done on slides. Comments can be kept private so that only those that have editing rights can see them. This can be powerful so you don't need to keep separate planning and teacher notes. 

I had a good play on Google Drawing and created myself. I've seen a number of my students do this and I have wondered if I could do it too. I don't think it is that amazing but I'm proud of myself. 

I think it can be challenging for our students to learn how to use a tool like Google Drawing. Even learning to manipulate the tools to create the shapes is hard. But it is important to learn, because 'we don't Learn Google Share, we Learn Create Share'. I think we as teachers need to model this more than we currently do, or at least I do. 

- quote, Mark Maddren.

So my aim this week is to try and show my students more examples of me being in the learning pit. 

Is it a bird, is it a plane ... no, it's a site!

Sup ... yo ... hey ... opps ... I mean Kia ora, hello, welcome to this week's blog. We have the privilege to have Clarelle, from Point England with us. Clarelle has been teaching at Point England for four years. She also had an awesome TIGER top!

Dorothy took us through visible learning. This is such an important part of the vision of Manaiakalani. The power of learning being visible and available to everyone; students, whanau, community and the world means that the students are provided with an authentic audience for their work. It also means whanau can be connected to the classroom which goes beyond simply walking into the classroom and finding a book. 

Visible Teaching removes the surprise element, time upfront and the learning rewindable for afterwards but also in advance. - Accessible - online, shared visibly to anyone with the link, removing password barriers. Available - everything the learner needs is present - no scrambling to share material, activities etc at the last minute. Advance - BEFORE it is needed, before the deadlines.

We know how excited students get when they find comments on their blogs from a parent or another family member or even a random person. This also counts for what they are working on. Knowing that Mum, Dad, Whanau care enough to look and talk or comment means that their work is valued. And that is what children want ... to be valued and for their work to be valued.

Also ... sharing online and with the world is powerful and leads to all sorts of wonderful things happening. Check out this video to see how being online found a special audience.

The rest of the session was spent exploring sites. We spent some time analysing sites; what was great about the way they look and about the way they function. Then we had a turn sharing our own sites for analysis.

It is amazing how quickly you realise that it isn't the way you thought it was and all the things you need to do to make it more user-friendly and visible. I know I thought I had made sure all the things were available for others but it turns out they weren't. Sad face!

Thankfully, the timetable allowed us time to have a good tidy up and a cleanup. I spent far to much time sorting the header for the home page. Note to self: simple is best! and if it starts to take longer than 20 minutes its time to do something else.

The finished product isn't terrible, it looks better than it did. (Should have taken a photo of the original but I didn't).

Angela did a lot of sorting the folders out so that they were available online. This means all the work for this year is now freely available. I did a lot of 'zhuzhing' of buttons and things, working on the flow of pages and making media available from the site too. The biggest changes were to the blogger page. I wonder if any of the students will notice?

It has felt really good to be able to get things sorted. Often I notice that things need fixing but I run out of time or forget about them. What a gift this course is for the teachers who are attending.

Explain Everything 0 - Screencastify 1

Today we have been exploring Hapara - Teacher Dashboard, Cybersmart Curriculum, iPads & Chromebooks, Explain Everything and Screencastify.

Hapara - Teacher Dashboard
Whilst I know quite a bit about how to use it, due to using it for a few years, there were a few things that I discovered.

• You can access the shared folders from Hapara, which is helpful if you can't find the document or the student has called it something weird, or you have student who makes multiple copies of the same document.
• We explored the 'Share Links' button which allows you to either lock students into particular sites or allows them to explore the internet but not particular sites. There are real advantages for both of these tools in the classroom, particularly if you were wanting to direct them to say a reading activity using a newspaper site but not wanting them to explore further than a particular page.

Cybersmart Curriculum

Reviewing the Cybersmart Curriculum reminded me that I need to spend some time on the YMS
Curriculum to highlight some of these things. Looking at our curriculum has made me realise that the Learn Create Share pedagogy is highlighted but needs to be unpacked more. I'll see if I can find some time for this ... 

We also need to work out how to balance the curriculum in a classroom where the children potentially spend 4 years. It is important to keep it fresh for them.

iPads/Chromebooks

Kindly Te Pihinga lent us some iPads to have a play on. We spent a bit of time looking at this slide. That was great to go over the basics. In terms of my role as School Leader, I feel a bit disconnected with what the iPad classes are doing and how they are implementing the use of these devices. My guess would be that they aren't being used to there fullest potential but I could be wrong. Looking at all the information in the slide gives me an idea of how we move forward, however, it comes back to that time thing again. I'll add it to the list ...

We didn't play with Chromebooks but the Digi Dig was a good process to go through. Important learning: anything that is a short cut on a Chromebook that uses control, on a Mac is simply command. Boom town!

Explain Everything/Screencastify

Our explores today were around these two apps. I have some experience with both but in limited ways. I had spent last night creating two explain everythings for a math lesson but was having trouble working out how to get it into my lesson slide. A quick conversation with the experts (Kelsey and Mark) and a couple of tips on screencastify and I've been able to redo what I was trying to do last night using screencastify.

We also discovered a published work of 50 ideas for using screencasitfy in education. This has some great things in it and inspired Angela to try something new for her math lesson. I have magpied her idea and am also going to use it. It is really great to be able to share ideas and spark off each other.

My aim for this coming week is to see how the students find using screencastify to enhance their understanding of a strategy. Is anyone else trying screencastify for their learners?

Is it scratchy in here?

Did you know that sharing is a really important part of the Learn, Create, Share circle? I know when we first started this journey a number of years ago we didn't really understand that it was to be more than just a blog post of perfectly finished work. What we have discovered and learnt is that we don't just share to finish our learning, we actually share to learn. The brilliant thing about having a blog allows us and our students to share even further than just parents and teachers.

Something that really stood out to me was Dorothy sharing this:

As teachers, we ask our children to write for an audience and there is a compulsory audience who is forced or paid to listen or read this. An authentic audience is someone who chooses to listen/read your work.

This is so true. The students know and expect that we will read there work. In fact, they get frustrated when we don't read it, but they don't always have an expectation that anyone else should care about their work. But seeing the excitement on their faces when someone they don't know or someone they really care about, particularly an adult, writes on their blog helps us understand why it is so important to share with that wider audience. Authenticity is what these students need, in a world where nothing is really that authentic ... and they know that.

Do you agree?

Computational Thinking! 

This is something I've done two PD's in before, however, because I am not using it in my classroom I have forgotten most things. Because I am Learn Create Share leader and using digital technologies in the classroom then this is something I haven't thought much about. But today has been a good reminder that we have to teach this from next year and that you don't need to much stuff to be able to teach it. No need for fancy robots (though that would be fun).

We started by doing an unplugged exercise where we were sorted, just like a computer algorithm. In this exercise, we had to google the distance to where we were born and then 6 at a time got sorted from furthest to closest. It was pretty easy and you can see how that would be quick to do in a classroom with any sort of data.

Getting Sorted:

Kawana came to us from the Pam Fergusson Trust, who are working with teachers to get ready for the new digital technology curriculum. Kawana has a background in computer science and is passionate about helping Maori young people access this area. You can check more out at https://trailblazers.pamfergusson.org.nz/

A key part of today's learning was around exploring the concepts of computational thinking. This involved thinking about ethics and morals, understanding binary and the practical side of using different types of apps. We also spend some time looking at the new Digital Readiness site that the government has put together for teachers before the 2020 launch. 

My biggest learning was around using scratch to make something. This is definitely a learning pit area for me. I have spent a tiny bit of time exploring but it has been a couple of years. It is logical and involves problem-solving (as all math really is) and it wasn't as hard or as complicated as I remember it being. You can check out my process in the slide below. 

There is much that I've learnt that we can use in the classroom. In fact, we have put Computational Thinking into our Tuesday plan for Term 4, a great way to do some creative problem-solving in a different way. I am looking forward to this.

What do you to introduce computational thinking in your classroom? 

Three is a magic number for making sites about dung

Despite feeling a bit under the weather I was looking forward to another Tuesday of learning, and I haven't been let down.

We met Danni Stone, our Year 7/8 Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu partner from Point England. She was here to teach us all about Google Sites. It was lovely to meet her and to make the face to face connection. She is very knowledgable and helpful, also willing to share her journey of how things have evolved over the 5 plus years she has been on this Learn Create Share journey.

Dorothy introduced us to today's theme of create. Create is such a powerful tool to use. I took many notes as she spoke but here are a couple of standouts:

• Creativity is a doing word … the whole parts of our body, not just a screen.
• The digital world can give us a world that turbocharges our creativity … but it isn’t the be-all and end-all … it is one part of the wedge. (see graphic to see the different parts of the wedge)
• Digital can capture the creativity.
• We don’t want our learners to be consumers, we want them to be creators. 
• Students that take more responsibility for selecting topics to learn about and this lead to accelerated learning. 
• Create: empowering through choice, information/knowledge, developing skills, building capacity & scaffolding.

"Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery. In children, creativity develops from their experiences with the process, rather than concern for the finished product. Creativity is not to be confused with talent, skill, or intelligence. Creativity is not about doing something better than others, it is about thinking, exploring, discovering, and imagining" (Kohl, 2008).

All this information has made me ask the question: 

Does our YMS belief mean that we only think it is about the digital? Do we ignore the other wedges of creativity from the classes that are using digital devices more than the juniors?

Sadly, we don't get much time to verbally process this information. Sometimes I wonder if it would help me work through what we are already doing in our class/school before we move on. I know my brain can be like a sieve and things come and go as fast as Katy Perry changes her hairstyle.

(or Mel Raisin 😊😊)

The rest of the day was spent with Danni taking us through Google Sites. I have some experience using sites but it was great having some sandpit time. The tips on this slide are fantastic, especially the size for headers and buttons.

In anticipation of the opportunity to do some creating, I had brought along a new Sharp Reading resource on Insects. We have been able to create our own site which we will be able to use for half our class for reading next week. It was great to be working on it with my fab work wife. Angela hasn't had a lot of time on creating sites and I think she found it helpful.

It was also interesting learning about Dung Beetles. We aren't quite happy with it but the bones are there. A bit of tweaking and we will be away.

Our Site

What do you think about it? What would you suggest?