Parent Meetings

Parent meetings are arranged to follow 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5 years. We (the junior syndicate team) decided that it made sense for the whole junior school to follow the process through. The hope is that we will have higher parent engagement with their students learning.

I have met with many parents. We cover the latest assessment and how they are going with reading, writing and maths. We set goals as a team and give them any support materials that will help.

It is always a really positive time and I love how we always leave feeling like a team. It is a great positive experience to work with parents and the child.

Reflection: Keep working on having these happen, even outside of the markers.

Introducing Seesaw to the Children

Today I introduced Seesaw to the class in order for them to be able to take ownership of sharing their learning with their families.

I had spent some time thinking about what type of things students would need or want to share with their families. I created a poster of it and shared this with the other adults in the class, explaining what the parameters would be for children putting things on Seesaw. It is important that everyone is on the same page with this because children need work approved before it posts. We don't want work to be posted that isn't appropriate or could be silly.

I went through the following process with the class:

• Explained Seesaw and what it does / how it works
• Talked through each part of the poster and what it means. Gave examples of what they could be.
• Had a child help demonstrate the process, showing the class after each step.
• Gave the children iPads in groups so they could practise sharing something that fitted within the criteria given.
• Put the finished products up on the Active board and we went through a few examples of good ones, ones that needed a bit more info added and those that don't fit our criteria, approving those that fitted as I went. 

Reflection: The students were really engaged with the possibility of sharing work with parents and not having to ask me. The student who modelled it become the expert and he helped others. The quick learners also become experts, moving through the class helping those that got stuck. Each child was able to share one thing each. 

Next Steps: To support those that weren't there to learn how to do it. To support those that haven't quite got what to share with what they can share. To make sure all the teachers are clear on approving work. To teach this to Te Kākano so they can implement it too.

Introducing Seesaw

As E-Leader I was asked to investigate a possible online programme called Seesaw that could be relevant to our school as our new e-portfolio. I had been involved in the process of setting up a possible site based e-portfolio but this was beginning to become a very time consuming project.

I spent a day release researching it online, attempting to contact other schools who use it and experimenting with the programme. I also used a student to see what it would be like from a student perspective to record their learning and assessment. The programme looked very promising, easy to use and navigate for students and teachers and so we jumped in with both feet.

I then spent time assisting the senior students in setting up their profiles and uploading their completed assessment. I ran a teacher's toolkit time one morning to help teachers get a handle of how to sign up and use it. I sent out help videos to teachers. I also established class profiles for the junior school. During a week I made myself and my classroom available to help and support teachers in using it to upload their students work.

For parents I have communicated via Care Monkey the link for connecting to their child's profile, I have answered emails and I made sure I was able to accept each parents request via the Seesaw app.

Following the system being released to the community I have continued to help teachers use this successfully. I have done an update at staff meeting and clarified with the staff and community how each part of the school will be using it.

So far we have seen a great engagement across the board. Parents are enjoying the ability to get up-to-date information regarding assessment and they seem to love the fact that they can comment on their child's work.

Our hope is that the use of Seesaw will help parents engage with their child's learning even more.

Reflection: This process has been very successful but we need to continue to grow engagement from parents. I think some more time spent exploring what other schools are doing would be helpful too, as I keep trying to push it forward as a tool to engage parents and children in the learning process. I think there are some particular development that could be done in the juniors and there needs to be a balance between Seesaw and Google. How can we make this work so they work together and compliment, rather than feeling like another thing? It needs to be sustainable for teachers.

Next Steps: Explore the above reflections more. Investigate other schools that are using Seesaw, maybe Templeton.