Beyond a Blackboard

As teachers, we know that nobody is an pedagogical island: you cannot learn within a vacuum. As such, taking inspiration from other schools is an integral part of bettering our own professional skillset. Which is exactly why I was so pleased to be able to visit and participate in a teaching environment that was so different from my own. On Friday 19th March the MDTA cohort joined our school leaders to attend a tour of Stonefields school and to participate in various workshops. This experience made me more aware of how a modern or innovative learning environment functions: my own practice will benefit from the new ideas that this trip inspired. Making Learning Explicit Explicit learning was the focus for the Stonefield teachers, ensuring that they have a firm understanding of the learning cycle and understand the terminology concerned with learning. Even in junior classes teachers would facilitate vocabulary lessons using the Stonefields learning words as a focus. To reinforce th...

Creativity is one of the fundamental ways that we, as humans, express our individuality. At this point in their lives, our children are beginning to define themselves as people within their friendship groups, the school and greater society. Essentially, creativity is a means for them to construct a sense of self. This is perhaps why the  Global Creativity Network asserts that creativity is the most fundamental of human rights, a notion supported by Manaiakalani - after all, 'Create' is part of ou r learning mo del.  As such, ou r students are given daily opportunities to express themselves in this way. The first thing that comes to mind when many people think of creativity in schools is art: painting, sculpting, drawing. This is the focus of my school this year and my students participate in art lessons a few times a week. This is, of course, a means to express ourselves creatively, but ultimately we teach the subject in a far more holistic and wide reaching ...

In the modern world where truth can often be concealed, we must be able to sift fact from fiction. This is also the case for our learners, who must make sense of the information presented from various sources on the internet. During this week's MDTA PLG, we discussed the importance of teaching critical thinking in our classrooms. We considered how this could be covered in a various subject areas, including guided reading and social sciences. Caleb , an MDTA graduate, talked us through how he fostered critical thinking skills in his learners by discussing current events with them. He described how solo taxonomy can be used to support learners in developing this skill. Solo Taxonomy Model - HookED As I attended a professional development workshop regarding solo taxonomy at the beginning of the year, I intend to foster critical thinking through the use of this framework. I have introduced various critical thinking activities to my learners, including the hexagon task from H...

Some would say that racism pervedes every aspect of New Zealand culture. But nowhere is it more important to be aware of racial prejudices than in the education section.  On Friday, Pat Snedden (chair of the Manaiakalani Education Trust) delivered a  kōrero that required us to  consider racism in New Zealand.  He began by recounting the efforts taken by Ngāti Whātua to reclaim the land that had been wrongfully taken from them. It took great  effort on the part of Ngāti Whātua, but they rose from occupying a tiny amount of land in the 50’s to reclaim their land and becoming one of the most successful iwi in New Zealand.  This reminded us of the racism that has occurred in this country and the relevance that this has to us as educators. We cannot allow racism to present itself in our hidden curriculum and we must speak out about such matters. It is so important for our learners to feel empowered and proud to be who they are. There is still much to be ...

After successfully completing a three hour exam, I am now a Google certified educator! I had completed my Google fundamentals training throughout the school holidays, so I was a little worried about taking the exam more than a month after completing the training. Despite having to go back and do a little revision, completing the training before school started meant I was much better prepared to teach in a Manaiakalani school. I found that still learnt a few things while taking the exam as it quite a large practical component. After completing some multi choice questions, you were given a temporary Google Apps for Education account and had to complete tasks using various Google tools. The tasks included assigning work in Google Classroom and working with student data in Google Sheets.                      Despite being a little anxious I passed the exam and felt that I over thought a lot of the questions. The Fundamenta...

At the start of our second MDTA day, Dorothy explained how Manaiakalani had started. Beginning with a collaboration between a few like-minded educators, an initiative to provide support to those learners who truly needed it was born. With hard work and determination, Manaiakalani eventually gained the backing of corporate giants like Google and Spark, and blossomed into a real force focused on providing forward-thinking education for children who might otherwise has missed out. This story struck a cord with me. At un iversity, my lecturers would often discuss the government's priority learners, but when it came to actually lifting achievement, there were very few real solutions offered. I remember a lecture in my third year where a few of my peers questioned this, noting that the situation sounded almost hopeless. Being an optimist (and perhaps a little naive) I was sure that someone would be attempting to do something about the situation; that we hadn't all accepted the fa...

When I first imagined a digital 1:1 classroom, I naively imagined that technology would replace all physical materials; that there would be no need for pencil and paper. Yes,we do use Chromebooks in the place of pen and paper. The keyboard acts as the main vessel for writing and paper and reading materials are stored in the cloud. However, we do still conduct lessons using physical materials, pen and paper. I taught a Science lesson this week regarding the part of the plant that our fruit and vegetables come from. I first provided my learners with some paper, pencils and various fruit and vegetables.  They started by drawing a picture of a plant on their paper, before discussing which part of the plant the items could come from.  There was a lot of rich discussion around this and with a little scaffolding the children were able to correctly place the items on their drawing. From here they began to consider other fruit and vegetables that they ate and were asked to ...