Manaiakalani Staff PD - Cybersmart

This afternoon, we had our Staff PD with Manaiakalani facilitator Fiona Grant reminding us of incorporating 'Being Cybersmart' ethos within our teaching practice.  Manaiakalani celebrates its 10 years + of implementing and growing 'CyberSmart' in a 'Learn, create, share' context.  Outstanding!

As our schools are evolving and interchanging with covid-19 disruptions and hybrid learning, still with 21st Century skills (critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication) alongside 'cyber-smart' learning, this practice at an early stage in our learners education journey, will help develop and manage themselves as effective digital citizens. 

Manaiakalani have outlined 10 'smart' goals to assist our learners to manage or grow themselves in student engagement and agency.  Some of the Cybersmart learning such as 'Smart learners, smart media, smart relationships etc' can stand alone or integrate.

Within my class context, we have a tendency to  reinforce keeping a 'smart learner & smart footprint', as well as 'smart surfing'.  This prompt reminds the learner that they're using their google surfing for educational purposes/research, as well as locating appropriate authentic websites that will provide a genuine answers for their work.  Next it will inform all our learners that they're not invisible onsite and creating a classroom environment for 'smart learners'.  

Cybersmart online platforms

We have the few learners who deter away from staying focus on their work online.  A positive from 'cybersmart learning' is our learners watch out for each other, and gently prompt the other learners to be on the 'right place' site.

Most of our learners have been given choice to research topics of their own accord.  They've started to write/record sites that they've used to find their information.  This is reinforced that all information onsite must be 'attributed' or referenced for others to use the site.  

As of next year - will incorporate Cybersmart learning in my planning and take a look at other cybersmart ideas that will grow our learners not just in the classroom but in their own context.  

I wonder what the next 10 years will look like for our Cybersmart learners?

Tohatoha Online Staff Meeting

Manaiakalani facilitated a 'Tohatoha' online Shared staff Meeting with approx 500 teachers across the country. Our group was facilitated by Christine (Team leader for Year 7&8 - Glen Taylor School), she shared her rich experiences used within her class and team and extended to one of our Teacher PD incorporating Culturally Responsive practice. It wasn't just 'ethnicity' teaching but 'student-led' learning.

Analysing Writing Data - what can I do?

It's that time of the year ... Report Writing! 

Today during our staff meeting we've been looking through Edpotential - a new platform to accessing data from Manaiakalani Cluster right through to our team 4 data.   This is our e-asTTle writing graph. 

From this data - as a team we looked at the following questions:

1. Can you see any trend/s we can be confident about?

• A general trend towards the norm, but not quite matching as high. MELAA had a huge shift up - what caused this? Who are the students? 
• Asian students are tracking above the norm
• Y5-Y6 Maori were below the PES norm and Pasifika data, but in Y6-7 they were above 

2. What do you think is going on?

• Summer drop off

• Focusing more heavily on writing when testing comes around, but not throughout the year

• Differences sometimes affected by students in the cohort

• Some of our bright students left at the end of the year e.g. Izyn, Israel Te Maro, Izzy and Isaiah etc

• During lockdown - most students did not select or do the writing task. Mostly focused on the reading and maths tasks. 

3. What are the most obvious challenges inhibiting our children’s progress? (stick to things we can control or make a difference to)

• Spelling

• Building specific vocabulary

• Punctuation - basics e.g. capital letters, full stops, commas, speech marks

• Organisation - clear orientation, body of text with events, conclusion. Linking ideas between and within paragraphs

4. What can we do that we are actually in charge of?

• Analyse data trends in PAT, STAR & easTTle data - where are the gaps?

• Start explanation writing sooner (or other genres) to support shift to that genre in Year 7

• Offering more opportunity for writing in class - particularly tasks which focus on engagement to encourage more buy-in from hesitant students

Using Tanya Mundy's MIT 'create writers' this has guided me to build their skills.

Since analysing my class data for this year, I've started this week for writing to include more 'basic' skills to help with how to use Capital letters. With nouns - what is a noun and why we need it to construct a simple sentence. 

As a warm up, we will be using 'Pobble 365' for 10 minutes, applying a skill in their writing eg: using speech marks, punctuation, organisation etc ... Will look at different genre's of writing to build our learner's repertoire writing. Watch this space - to see our learner's progress!

Post Covid - Inquiry 2022

Returning back to the classroom has caused mixed emotions fulled with anxieties as well as anticipation with both myself and our learners.  One thing I've noticed with this group of learners, is the cultural richness and capital they bring to our space.  However are a-lot more 'shyer' students.  

Not 100% sure if it's due to unfamiliar surroundings, beginning of the year or establishing the relationships of 'tauira' (both teacher and learner) or maybe the restrictions of covid.   

With Post covid it has caused our 'masks' to stay on (nose to chin), social distancing and almost silence within our classroom.  However to develop our learners to attain key elements of 21st Century skills: to be 'critical thinkers', 'collaborate with others', 'creative flair, problem solving' and clear communicators (AJ Rotherham, DT Willingham - American Educator, 2010).

Referring to the OECD "Ten Principles for Effective and Equitable Educational Recovery from COVID" it describes the recovery ecosystem:  the centre is the student with their families.  Our teachers play an instrumental part for our learners to achieve academic success.

As a professional educator how can I recover/develop towards effective & equitable education:

-  provide targeted support to meet student's learning, social and emotional needs

- co-design a robust digital learning infrastructure with teachers and stakeholders

- Encourage a collaborative culture of innovation

- Learning from national and international evidence. (OECD 2021).