First Days in Lockdown and Distance Teaching

A day before the lockdown, my school was preparing for distance teaching and learning. It was more or less clear for our Year 4-8 classes because their learners had been empowered by being part of the Manaiakalani 1:1 programme and most learners had their own devices.
In Year 0-3 classes we had a different situation with the devices and online learning, so we urgently had to put a plan together on how we could make sure that our students had opportunities to carry on with their learning.

Firstly, I suggested preparing educational packs that were door-delivered to all of our students within the same day. My colleagues and I worked hard to include all individual passwords for the online programmes that we usually used in our classrooms: ixl.com, students blogs, Reading Eggs, Sunshine classics and Matific. We also made sure that we covered all the main curriculum areas and tried to make their activities engaging.

Later on, we received a lot of positive feedback about our learning packs from GTS whanau and students. Some of the activities have not just been used by our Year 0-3 learners but also by their older siblings.

We did what we could to support our learners during the very first days of the lockdown. My question was what to do next?

Teaching and learning from home is a big change. Without a physical classroom, how can I engage my learners and check that students are progressing? How do I stay connected with my learners?

First, I tried to connect with my students and families via e-mails, our class blog and phone calls.  Then, following our Year 4-8's successful example, I promoted Google Hangouts. I had a lot of technical difficulties to get connected with my students and whanau. For many of them, I had to present my screen during the Hangouts and teach step-by-step how to access students' blogs, how to do blog posts, how to find and login into the online programmes. To be honest, sometimes, I felt more a family educator rather than a classroom teacher. I am very glad that I managed to reach the majority of my learners! My distance teaching has begun!

My next steps are: help our junior teachers to reach more of their learners and establish a quality distance learning programme for my class, my team and my syndicate.

My COL Inquiry 2020

Inquiry: How can I change my practice to raise student achievement in literacy by promoting deep learning that requires students to develop cognitive engagement and critical thinking across the curriculum using Learn-Create-Share?

 As a Year ⅔ teacher, I've now got my new 2020 students who were part of Play-Based Learning last year or a year before. Play-based learning was introduced to GTS a couple of years ago and nobody really knew how to run it effectively. I didn’t feel comfortable with the new arrangements and, after a number of discussions, my colleagues and I began our inquiries into the effective pedagogy: Y0-1 were doing 'free play' for a year, Y2-3 used the Learn-Create-Share model.

 Earlier this year, I analyzed Year 1-3 data from the end of 2017, 2018 and 2019 school years and noticed declining trends in students’ achievements in Reading. Same patterns were found in Writing and Maths data. Most of my year 2 learners are well below the expectations and some of year 3 students are below. Being passionate about all GTS Year ⅔ students, I also looked at two other year ⅔ classes and found the same situation. It formed and started my inquiry with a focus on improving students' outcomes in literacy.

All of my last year target students made accelerated progress and all of them achieved the desired “at and above”. This year, I plan to continue to use the LCS pedagogy to improve outcomes for my and my colleagues’ learners.

I believe that coherence in putting our students at the very centre of their learning and making their learning experiences authentic is crucial for their engagement and achievements. My hunch is that will make a difference.

I will use the Manaiakalani TAI Framework:

2019 Inquiry Stocktake

During my last year inquiry about students' intellectual and cognitive engagement, I focused on providing real opportunities for my students to become interested in their learning. I believe that my cross-curricular approach led to their increased motivation, genuine cognitive engagement and the rewarding achievement data at the end of 2019.

I’ve used the ‘Inquiry Stocktake’ doc to reflect on my TAI 2019 and think about how I can improve my teaching practice this year.

What worked well in 2019: 

cross-curricular teaching, collecting student voice and building on their interest and prior knowledge, being observed by my COL colleagues and ALiM facilitators and receiving their feedback, working with data

Last year, I used a cross-curricular approach trying to extend our inquiry learning through various reading, writing and math activities and show my students a real purpose of each part of the Learn-Create-Share process.

I believe that I developed a range of teaching strategies and created tasks, follow-up and independent activities that supported my students not to just stay engaged and motivated during our projects but retain their new knowledge and skills and be able to apply them in real life for a real purpose.
Learning from observations: It was good to have a COL observation and numerous ALIM observations followed by discussions and feedback from my COL colleagues and the AliM facilitator.
Collecting my colleagues' voice was an interesting experience as I'd never done this before. It helped me to critically reflect on my practice, feel appreciated but also plan my next steps for improvement.
Collecting student voice in T2 about relationships and in T3 about communication helped me to identify the areas to pay more attention to. I'm glad that the students were feeling safe, happy and learnt a lot in my class (according to what they said:-)
Analyzing data and effectively using it for my planning. As a result, all of my students showed great progress in all areas of learning.

Challenges that I had in 2019: 

having a Y2/3 composite class and time challenge 

Having Year 2 and 3 students in a class was a bit challenging due to their age-specific differences (same as this year). Reflecting on my 2019 TAI, I need to better control myself in order to slow down as I don't want my students to rush through their activities as it will affect their learning outcomes and experiences. On the other hand, my advanced learners also have to be continuously challenged and engaged. It requires a lot of planning and preparations. I have to remind myself that although I have high expectations for all of my students, I must keep it less challenging for my younger students to make sure they are feeling successful and motivated.

As a professional, I am constantly learning. Whether we (teachers) are learning through PD reading or during internal or external PLD sessions, we are being exposed to a lot of new and important information that is supposed to enhance our skills and knowledge. However, there's a big difference between absorbing information and putting it into practice. Without applying newly gained knowledge, the training people have received will go to waste. It's important to have a strategy and time for implementing new learning.

The support I need in 2020

I am going to reach out to other teachers who proved to be effective practitioners, members of the Woolf Fisher research team and the Manaiakalani team to help me connect with other teachers who are passionate about the integrated curriculum.
Currently, I am meeting with GTS Principal and DP fortnightly to discuss what I’m doing to support other teachers and plan the next steps.