Hornby Lead Teachers PLG

Friday 10th June

Hornby Lead Teachers PLG

Every term in week 6 I attend a PLG for Manaiakalani. This is such a great chance to talk with others in our cluster about what they are doing in their schools and how everything is going.

The first thing we did was watch a video about an adaptable mind. This was really inspirational - it made me think about the values we are teaching in our school and it also gave me some hope for our students future. It is nice to think that we will never be fully replaced by technology and human traits are becoming more and more important as we develop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=937iCwJd3fI

We talked about our online support person Tania Coutts and that all members of our school have access to her. I will show you how to get in contact if you would like, let me know. She is there to help support us with our tasks for students or if we have any questions.

I also signed up my class to Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu which means write to me write to others. Hopefully this will help get our blog posts looked at and give us the chance to see what else is happening in our cluster and around new zealand with learning.

We then talked about the SAMR model and how this is useful for our students and the learn, create, share model. A good idea from this was to use it in inquiry as a bit of a model.

Mark then introduced to us to a couple of resources.

A very cool Current Events page made by teachers in the MDTA program. This is linked to year levels and provides a very cool learning task for students

https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/currentevents/

And the Manaiakalani Google class on air - which is where you can go and watch teachers teaching in their class - modelling, warts and all (as Mark said). I am so keen to spend some time watching these and getting ideas!

https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/manaiakalani---google-class-onair/

Then we worked on explaining SISOMO through DLTools.

Here are some ideas on tools to use and explore

• Picktochart
• Powtoon
• Screencastify
• Google Drawing
• Mind Mup
• Thing link
• Prezi
• Build with chrome - lego
• Voki

I did mine on mindmup

These were shared to the google plus community - Hornby cluster under learn, create, share.

We then watched a video from Dorothy around create! It is not just writing or making a doc. It is about things that weren't available before now. In her blog post she says “One of the foundation goals of Manaiakalani is to"motivate our learners  to engage with the curriculum" and a significant driver for engagement has been our intentional use of modern technologies to enable creativity to play a significant part in learning and teaching opportunities.”

Here is a link to her blog post and the video

http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/create-learn-create-share-pedagogy.html

Digital Learning Objects (DLO)

AMAZING tools

PRESENTATION Google Slides Kahoot MyMaps Lucid press Canva Newspaper Clipping Generator TimeLine Hstry - Interactive Timelines Voki	VIDEO RECORD SnagIt Movenote Wevideo Screencastify Youtube Capture Stop Motion Animator Google Slides (animate) Stupeflix	MUSIC & AUDIO Incredibox (Music) Simple Audio Recorder (extension) saves audio as a wave file Soundtrap - freemium Voki - no sign in needed Online Voice Recorder - record and save to chromebook/drive	GRAPHIC ORGANISERS Bubbl.us (Brainstorm) Padlet ABCYa - Word Cloud Tagul - Word Cloud Trello ThingLink Piktochart Tag Cloud generator - Word Cloud Blendspace Flipsnack Bundlr Mindmup
DRAW Google Drawing Flaticon Gimp Pixlr InspirARTion Piskel Desmos (Graphing)	CREATIVE WRITING Booktrack Storyboard That Powtoon WriteAbout	COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Scratch Tynker Geogebra Thimble	3-D DESIGN Tinkercad Onshape - Secondary Scratch - 3D animation Cyberix 3D

If you want to know the background to Manaiakalani watch edtalk video by Pat Snedden. Well worth the hour long watch.

http://edtalks.org/video/transformational-journey-improve-student-achievement

Digi awards next term - should we be doing this… is there just too much on at the moment? Something interesting to think about and do… Do our students have enough tools to perform? Would it be good for them to be involved so that they can see what other schools are doing?

The topic this year is “Be The Change!” - it could be anything a photo or slide or video or more! So much learning! Can do it in groups!

Building Blocks To LITERACY

I had mixed feelings from my day of attending Barbara Brann's Workshop. I really enjoyed the first hour where she explained a lot of behind the scenes and the way that she founded and researched this approach.

I too was quite surprised by the number of skills children need to require in order for them to be curriculum ready. 400 skills! However it was good to see and hear how quickly these gaps children have can be identified and remedied. 

From the hour talk there were a few things/ideas that stood out to me:

• Framework not a programme,
• Children learn from doing - information comes from our senses. They learn by doing, playing, touching and investigating not by being told!
• Building blocks should look different everywhere as it is not a programme it is a framework
• Every Child enters the road to literacy in a different place
• Place for explicit teaching
• Beginning level of the framework is really important as if we start children at the skills level we run the risk of the children not having the prior 200 skills in place
• Literacy doesn’t exist in little boxes here and there it is involved in everything we do.
• Needs to be contextualised e.g.pencil grip used throughout the day not just at handwriting time, sight words - children need to be able to recognise it in print, form a sentence
• Listening domain focuses a lot on rhythm - have lots of music and moving, be able to feel the rhythm by moving e.g pull a word apart and then pull together

With the building blocks framework there are three keywords that Barbara kept referring back to:

• Connect
• Contextualise
• Challenge

After Barbara had presented to us we got the opportunity to see Barabara do the Listening and Talking domain in a classroom with quite capable year 0/1 students. The work she was doing with the children was amazing but it left me thinking (How will this work with MY students and I wished she had been able to come to our school and use our children as a model).

I was disappointed however as I saw how excited and eager Rebecca and Alison had come back from their day at the course. It appeared that the ‘in class work’ they saw Barabara doing was quite different to our day with her. Barbara kept referring back on the previous day so I felt an injustice as I was not aware of what she was on about. To me the day I attended built on the previous days workshop. Alison and Rebecca were lucky enough to see Barabara doing Casey the Caterpillar - This is the one thing I really wanted to see Barbara doing, as my group I had been doing this with in class was struggling to do it and understand it. I wanted to see how she delivered it and be able to ask her all the questions I had. I know Kerrin an RTLB filmed different parts of the previous days workshop so I am hoping she had managed to film the Casey part.

It was good being able to see and hear Barbara in person as we had tried to watch some of her videos that go with this framework but we found them hard to watch. It was interesting to hear from others teachers at other schools who also felt the same from these videos but found her talk in person to be so different and engaging!

At school in the afternoons we have started doing the moving part of the building blocks which focuses on children’s gross motor skills. After attending this I feel like we could put this part into our daily fitness programme and have our two afternoon group that operate working on one of the other domains. I am looking forward to the meeting we have as a team this Wednesday afternoon with Lisa and Kerrin to discuss our next steps and where we feel like we need to go next.

Overall it was really good to be able to meet Barbara and hear the background to the framework but I felt disappointed that I didn’t come back to school buzzing like Alison and Rebecca did. I feel let down. I know if I had seen the parts that Rebecca and Alison saw I would feel quite differently.

Barbara is due to come back in September, I feel it would be really good to be able to talk to the RTLBs and see if she can use our school and our children as models.

Building Blocks Inspiration!

What an inspirational morning with Barbara Brann! Wow! I now understand so much more about the building blocks framework and the progression from school entry to being curriculum ready. I can see that there are ways to fill in any gaps the children may have as they arrive at school

The talk of RYTHMN was huge. Getting the children to move their bodies in many different ways to letters within words encouraging them to cross their mid-line – clapping is out.

Barbara is adamant that Handwriting should be up and running as soon as possible as it provides so many links to all aspects to children’s learning. Handwriting is started using a blackboard and chalk as children can control the chalk easily, use their whole arm or hand movement to form shapes and the board gives drag when writing.

Using the book Casey the Caterpillar being the foundation to it all. Barbara brought the book to life – reading and introducing the basic letter shapes to the children in a little group she taught. The 5 year olds had never been read the book before and 25 minutes later they were able to recognize and state the shape of many letters.  eg tall stick, tunnel, possum tail

And finally a real gem from Barbara  ….. the most important word to every child is their NAME. The letters in their name! Their special name.

What a morning … so much to buzz about! Fantastic!

Trans Tasman Principals' conference

This week I have been in Auckland attending the joint NZ and Australia Principals' conference, it has been a great week, I will be heading back with lots to ponder.

Hekia Parata - Minster of education always addresses this conference and the key message I took from her speech was that we must continue to be passionate and strive to ensure EVERY child receives the highest quality education, this is not a new message but what are we doing to make sure that this can be achieved.

Collaboration- we are great at doing this personally, with people we know and get on with well, are we doing it well enough professionally?



There were many strong themes around Maori learners, Hoana Pearson who is the national facilitator of the Maori Achievement Collaborative (MAC)

Are students culture, identity and language reflected in our classrooms?
We need to change the hearts and minds to change the actions of leaders to better meet the needs of Maori.
She spoke of "Pakeha paralysis"  Many leaders wanting to make the change but unsure how to go about this.
"We have to be courageous"
"Feel the fear and do it anyway"
She made a good point that we try in all other curriculum areas, make mistakes and try again, why should it be different for Maori language and culture.
Hoana shared two sad and concerning examples of what is still happening in our very own NZ schools.
1) A teacher who had shortened a students name to Jane because it was too long and complicated to pronounce...shocking.
2) A graduate student was asked how she is being culturally responsive and her response was "I have koru's on my CV"  it is sad to think that this is still happening in NZ.

I went to taster talks on "What works for Maori, works for all"  What I have learnt and feel strongly about is that it is vital that a large number of things are put in place to reach this goal.  Karakia, Waiata more regularly, teaching Reo, teaching tikanga, signage, incidentally spoken with staff, Hangi, whanau hui.  It is the strength of all of these areas that will get us there, not simply doing in isolation.  We are making some good progress with this.


Michael Henderson spoke about culture, he was fantastic.  He works with huge organisations all over the world, including the All Blacks.  He re visits every year because every year is new for that team, those players in that season, cyclic like school settings.
The real revelation here for me was he described culture as a verb not a noun, living and breathing.
It is peoples RESPONSE to the vision, the values, the beliefs that define your culture.
If language goes, culture follows, we have a vital role in ensuring that our Maori language is not lost.





Bill Martin and John Edwards who have written "schools that deliver" (which is on its way)
They spoke of Tuckman's work on the life cycle of a school - see diagram.  Sadly most schools spend far too much time moving from Forming- Storming and reverting back to Forming.  We need to spend as much time as possible in the performing stage.  I think we have  a great staff culture here and spend much more time working at the norming and performing stages.  It takes work but if the right culture and environment is in place, this can succeed.

They also talked about the Learning Pit, which emphasises the need for ALL learners to spend time in the pit before real learning can occur.  It made me think - Do we take learners into the pit?  Do they know that this is ok and normal?  Did we ensure that we take learners out of the pit?  This could be a great things for senior school students to reflect on.  We need to be very careful that we don't assume that everyone understood the message as we are all aware of the different rates at which students progress, therefore move in and out of the pit at very different times.

















Cam Calkoen was the last speaker and he had a clear message.  Despite being born with Cerebal Palsy, his determination and will to succeed has carried him throughout his life time.  He had a message of being slow and steady.  Dream big, achieve more!

Hornby Cluster Toolkits

Hornby Cluster Toolkits

As part of our professional learning and development as a cluster, Mark Maddren who is our Manaiakalani Outreach Programme go to guy, organises teachers from within our cluster to run toolkits.  These sessions go for one hour and are to support our learning which impacts on and improves learning for our children.  

I have attended these in the past and have always admired those who share what they are doing.  As with all professional development, you come away with ideas you know will benefit your students and you as a teacher.

This term, Mark suggested that somebody could share some learning from the recent Google Summit.  I was a little reluctant as I thought what might be new and exciting learning for me, could be old news for other people.  

After some thought and discussion, I decided to look at it as a time for me to share some of the things I have been able to use and out in place since returning to school post summit.  Although this helped me to have a clear picture of what I was to be sharing, I was still worried that attendees might be bored and walk out thinking that was a waste of time.

After a couple of 'Where is my dongle?' moments, we were able to start with our group of teachers and Principal from Gilberthorpe, Templeton and Hornby Primary.  

The presentation included some tools to support learning, some to make our own online lives easier and some things just for fun.  

Have a look here to see what we covered:

The learning for me here, is that often we think we don't have anything worthy to share or we doubt ourselves about what we know and do.  I am still pondering on this as far as my own self belief etc goes, but I am glad to have had the opportunity to share things that I am passionate about and am motivated and excited about this journey.