Monday, July 3, 2017

Supporting Teachers

Today I used what I have learnt at Manaiakalani digital fluency intensive course to support another teacher (My mentor teacher). We started off with a review of my new professional site and how I am linking my blog to the new Professional Teacher Criteria's. Then Vienna mentioned she needed support on several things. Some things I supported Vienna with was google drive, I movie and embedding a video onto a blog.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Incredible years review

This term I have been very lucky to have the opportunity to attend "Incredible Years Program" for teachers. It is a program that goes well with 'Positive Behaviour For Learning' (PB4L), as many of the philosophies which are taught line up nicely. We spent each lesson going up the pyramid in the picture, looking at a number of ways we can support students in making good decisions and their learning.

Using this pyramid each session we came up with several goals to focus on. Some of my goals were:
  • Focus on using "when... then" commands to make sure instructions are clear and simple.
  • Teach my students to give and receive a complement.
  • Use group incentives to promote teamwork.
  • Identify behaviours I can ignore while keeping students safe.
  • I give more attention to positive behaviours than to inappropriate student behaviours.


Sue and Claire who were the facilitators of the course did a wonderful job at presenting the content of the course in a fun and enjoyable way. Claire even visited my classroom to observe how I was implementing the incredible years program in my classroom. You can read the observation notes here and I must say they were so positive and a delight to read.

After Tuesday 27th June session it was time to say good bye to my fellow students, but also a quick graduation ceremony. This course has done two things to my teaching practice, first it made me feel confident in what I have been doing in my classroom and also it has given me more tools to use in my classroom.












Thursday, June 29, 2017

Last Manaiakalani Intensive Day

Today we had a brief overview of opportunities that are offered to us by Manaiakalani, which was very exciting and inspiring. Afterwards, we had a few hours to refresh and study for our google exams.

After 2 hours and 58 minutes I had past my Google Level 2 exam! Perfect! Soon you will be able to see my badge along with my Apple and Manaikalani digital fluency badge on the side of my blog.

Another interesting part of todays course was having a sneak peak at the draft copy of the digit technologies progressions, which will soon be added to the curriculum.

Finally my certificate arrived after I had to get it resent 😞



Thursday, June 8, 2017

Day 6, Manaiakalani Intensive

Agenda:


Today we spent most of the day going over sites and creating a new professional site we can use for the new teaching criteria, which are coming out in July.

The main new learning for today was learning how to image map using coding. A neat way to start learning how to get your head around html coding, although I thought it was quite time consuming compared to using google draw. If you have a look at my embedded site (Below) you can see the main buttons which I created on google draw and the one I created using image mapping. I decided to keep the google draw buttons, as I did not have to edit the image as much. so the image mapping washed out the colours a lot.





Friday, June 2, 2017

Day 5, Manaiakalani Intensive Day

Agenda:


Today we stated looking at using sites and how to use them in the classroom. We use Magpie's Baking Day as a start to creating a week unit around bread.
To brainstorm ideas for our unit the year 1 - 3 teachers used padlet. a neat tool for grouping and sharing ideas with a team. Using what we came up with I created a quick draft on google docs for my site.
Some key things to remember when using google sites to keep it aesthetically pleasing are to use a white back, keep to 3 colours, use the same font and use the rule of thirds. This is just a simple guide for creating a website and can be changed.

Here is my unit for Magpie's Baking Day you can click on the buttons to look at the different activities.


Thursday, May 25, 2017

Day 4, Manaiakalani Intensive


Agenda:


Netbooks
A very interesting activity was the digital dig, great way to get students familiar with using the chrome browser. You can have a go at it here 2017 Digital Dig

Here is a copy of my own digital dig 

I-Pads
as today was about looking into the digital devices which our students use it was the junior teachers turn to show the seniors how its done. The 3 junior teachers shared 1 EE activity each (2 maths and 1 reading). I shared the "Keep trying" activity. Here is an are the EE which I completed.




Side note, I used embed to insert these videos. Much quicker than having to upload to Youtube.



Create
Making meaning of content
Using Screencastify on a Chromebook
Sharing is about authentic audience and feedback
Your task is to choose ONE of these for a screencastify commentary
  1. Sign into blogger and explore your learners’ blog statistics. Choose the child with the most views and record your thoughts about why they might be attracting views and the type of comments they receive
  2. Read this on P18 about The 4 Fundamentals of Feedback to students With the doc open talk about one of the 4 points and give example/s of when you have done this with learners
Choose a blog post and discuss the type of comment you would leave on this post using the Manaiakalani feedback mantra “Positive, Thoughtful, Helpful’
















Wednesday, May 24, 2017

TESOL PD - Run by me

I ran a workshop for the teachers at Glenbrae Primary as a series of PD session going over TESOL strategies to help support our students. My session was on how to use picture dictation and dramatised dictation to empower our students, particularly ESOL students in speaking, listening and reading. Have a look at the notes I created and shared with my colleagues below.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Day 3, Manaiakalani Intensive

The days agenda,

Agenda:

Connecting with each other

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Learn: Digital content introduction

10:00 Morning Tea

Learn: Digital content introduction

Hapara Teacher Dashboard

12:30 Lunch

Create: Making meaning of content

Share: Embed an#heading=h.jmngsigkryz1d Rewind Content

3:00 Weekend


File:Hangouts Icon.png - Wikimedia CommonsFile:Antu google-keep.svg - Wikimedia Commons

How am I going to use google keep and hangouts in my classroom?
I am looking forward to using google keep in my classroom by taking a picture of what i want to use and using the transfer tool to change it into text.

Google hangouts is going to be useful for organising meetings I cannot make or possibly organising reading times with their buddy classes.









Thursday, May 11, 2017

Day 2, Digital Immersion Intensive

Today we looked at using google forms and google sheets to improve workflow.

We looked at many creative ways teachers have used forms and sheets in the classroom. One very interesting way we could use forms is creating a 'choose your own adventure'.


‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Google Forms
Let’s take a look at the steps you would take to create Interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Google Forms:
  1. Make a plan for the possible paths Forms users can take (possibly in a Doc).
  2. Create and title a new form.
  3. Before adding questions, add new pages to your form. Use your plan to know how many pages you’ll need.
  4. Be sure to name and describe your pages.
  5. Go back to page one, and edit the first multiple choice question. Click the option labeled, “Go to page based on answer.”
  6. Use the option to guide Forms users to specific pages based on selected answers.
  7. Continue adding this type of question to all pages until your plan is complete.
Learn more about the steps above in this Doc. Utilising Google Forms in this way can make differentiation possible. Check out how one teacher is using interactive Google Forms to differentiate the learning in her room in this blog post.

Another exciting way we can incoroporate sheets and forms into our learning is importing the information we gathered into other applications, such as google maps.

I created a form to find out where other people in the class want to go travelling. I used the information in the google sheet to import onto a map.

Here is the map of where we want to go travelling,





  • What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? I am looking forward to using google forms to gain more students voice in the classroom.
  • What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? The different add-ons we used today with google sheets is going to greatly increase workflow. Some of the add-ons we looked at were flubaroo and rowcall.
  • What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life? Looking forward to using google sheets more in my personal life to organise big events.







Thursday, May 4, 2017

Day 1, Digital Immersion Intensive

Day 1.
Today was the first day of the Manaiakalani Digital Intensive, The day's purpose was to familiarise ourselves with google docs, apps and Hapara.
Here is a link to the day's agenda.

I was able to take away a many new tools, which I will be able to use both inside and outside the classroom to accelerate my students learning and development. Including many of the tools which I have listed in my venn diagram below.


Supporting Teachers

Today I used what I have learnt at Manaiakalani digital fluency intensive course to support another teacher (My mentor teacher). We start...