Beyond a Blackboard

Like most new teachers, I tend to find school trips pretty stressful. I take frequent head counts of the children, have a bit of a korero beforehand about my expectations and how the day will run and I keep my tamariki close to me at all times. However, up until this point my school trips have been pretty simple to manage. I have often been accompanied by several other classes (and teachers) and I often only have to guide my students through an enclosed and controlled area, such as a museum or theatre. That all changed this week as I escorted the year sevens from my class on a week long camp to the Bay of Islands. This camp would involve kayaking, spending the night in the bush and visiting numerous locations. The thought of this was pretty daunting and I even had a few nightmares in the week leading up to the camp! I was all too aware of the headlines about disasters that had occurred during school camps. I was also a little worried that my students would begin to forget some of t...

I have done so much learning this term and can already think of so much I would change or do differently when I enter the first term next year. However, it has been a pretty successful first term and I have really enjoyed my time with the children. I have found that our inquiry lessons have been pretty successful this term. The children were interested in the topic of global warming and the environment and we covered a lot of content by integrating reading, writing, health and social studies. We also created  and shared art that illustrated our view on environmental issues and I was impressed by the ideas that the students had and their creativity. I have seen a lot of success in reading in particular, as my students have been able to meet the learning intention and create some wonderful DLOs in response to the text that they have read. I can tell that the students have been engaged, as they have consistently met deadlines, completed reading tasks at home and have f...

It can be a bit of a mission creating a PCT folder as a beginning teacher, but I have found my PCT Google Site far more efficient to use than an old ring binder! Once I set up my pages, I have found it fairly manageable to simply drop in digital reflections, observations, samples of student work and the like. In todays MDTA PLG we were given time and support to develop this website. I have followed the Manaiakalani template quite closely to create this site and have attached all of my evidence pages which can be accessed through the top bar. I have a page for each of the professionally certified teacher criteria and for other evidence of my practice such as my meeting minutes, reflections and release logs. Although the focus of this PLG was to ensure that this site was up to date, I found myself reflecting back on the year and considering some of the opportunities that we have been given. We discussed how much of our professional learning aligns with the criteria and I consider...

As an adult it is easy to forget how much fun it is to be creative, to mould plasticine or create a story with figurines. During this weeks MDTA day I reconnected with my inner child and had a blast - this could be my favourite session yet! Our aim for the day was to create a claymation video to support an aspect of our students learning.  This term my learners have been studying the native bush and we recently went on a trip to Arataki. I decided that this would be a fun topic to use as the focus of my claymation. Here is the process I followed to create my video: Step One: Planning I started by creating a storyboard of my video to ensure that I had a clear idea of what I would be filming. As our learners have also been looking at narratives I wanted to structure my video just like a narrative, with an orientation, problem and resolution. I also included information about the type of shots I would take, the characters and scenery I would need to include. Here is an examp...

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 ...

I once read that teachers should aim to take one 'great' lesson a day, while the rest are 'routine' or follow the norm for the subject. This 'great' lesson might require extra planning, resources or an activity that is new and exciting for the learners. I believe that the idea was to ensure that children felt engaged at school and so that they had something to recount excitedly at the end of the day. However, I have soon discovered that this method does not support reluctant learners, who are not engaged by the 'routine' lesson. I have found that some of my students have particular disdain for certain subjects and struggle to actively participate in these lessons. If I attempted to deliver a 'routine' lesson, I would lose their focus. There is a myriad of reasons as to why these students are not engaged by "routine" lessons,  including the Tamaki Redevelopment. This development is very visible for our tamariki, who are confronted wi...

Despite being at the beginning of my teaching career, I have seen my fair share of reluctant writers.  I have taught students who would flee the classroom at the start of writing lessons, or who would struggle to put any ideas to paper. During my final practicum, I noticed how much more engaged the students were when they had the opportunity to work on a computer.  It became possible to motivate the students to edit and publish their work and much time was saved as the students did not need to copy their work onto a new sheet of paper for 'publishing'.  Through the use of google docs, I can now check the revision history of my students work to view the changes that they have made during the editing phase of the writing process. I can make digital suggestions to my students work (which I have been doing while holding conferences with students where possible) and I can leave feedback in the form of comments. The comments function can also be used for peer feedback...

Although I have always felt privileged to be part of the MDTA,  I felt particularly fortunate as the children started to fill the classroom on my first day. I began to feel nervous and questioned what I had learnt over the last few years. Did I remember how to be a teacher?  Was there a school norm regarding the children's entrance to the classroom? I had spoken to other beginning teachers that morning, and found that they shared my anxiety.  Yet I was not alone and I took comfort in my mentors confidence. She began the day by explaining that we would be co -teaching the class and introduced herself with a letter addressed to our learners. I followed suit and gained confidence as I read. I even received a round of applause at the end of my recital, which further put my mind at ease. The remainder of the day ran smoothly and I felt that we had a successful first week. I certainly feel far less stressed than my peers outside of the MDTA! I also feel very fo...

18th January 2016         T his was our first day together as the 2016 Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy (MDTA) cohort. As a team building activity we embarked on a 12 kilometer walk. During this walk visited the schools in the Manaiakalani cluster, notable landmarks and public buildings. Throughout our journey we considered the various socio-economic, political and environmental factors that had an impact on our community. A large part of this was concerned with the Tāmaki housing redevelopment. This development is particularly apparent at my school, which is currently surrounded by areas of vacant land where houses once stood. These absent houses are also representative of whānau and children who were part of my school community. However, we also witnessed the rate of construction of the new houses and predicted that it would not be long before new buildings and families occupy the empty land. We discussed this redevelopment in great detail and I will ...