Term 4 - Lockdown!

 Wowee, what a year so far.

I never would have thought that this lockdown would go for so long, however I feel very blessed to work alongside teachers that want the best for our learners.  Our kids have been attending our online meets.  That's right all our learning is online, lucky we're a digital school ;)

In our Year 7&8 block we are planning collaboratively and all of our learning for our children goes on our class site.  We generally have 3 google meets a day; Team Assembly, Literacy and Maths.  We also have tech meets, home class meets, Hauora/Well being meets and my favourite; Electives.  Click here for an example of what we do for electives.

If I've written to much and you have got bored, atleast READ THIS part below, these are games/activities that have really helped our team during lockdown.  Use them if, like us you are in lockdown!

Things that have helped us:

Scattergories Game - Cast this screen on your meet and get the kids to guess the answers.

Kahoot - If you haven't already heard of this, Google it. My kids love it!

Electives - Teach something your passion about, learners choose what they want to do.

Bus Stop - Short version of Scattegories, make your own categories, only do 4, when they have it, they yell "Bus Stop".

Karaoke - Put a YouTube video on and see if kids know the next words.

TikTok - Learn a short dance together.

Drama - Act out a scene on the meet (my learners love this, especially the boys)!

Drawing - Put a YouTube tutorial video up and just have time to chat.

As teachers we always firstly cater for the wellbeing of our children, during lockdown should this change?

Absolutely not, if anything we should be catering for it more now than ever.  Let's make sure as a team of teachers in Aotearoa that we aren't forcing learning upon our children, remember to check in, still have time for your learners, have a laugh, spend an extra 5 minutes on your meet playing an extra game, our learners will appreciate it!

PLEASE if you have anything else that your learners have enjoyed, comment below, lets share, we are all here for our tamariki!

Lessgo, we got this!

Term 2 - How's it going?

This week I've started to realise my kids are enjoying maths a whole lot more. 

I'm a shocker for getting stuck into a group, today I was with a group for 45 minutes because we were just flying and I totally forgot about how much time I spent with these kids, forgot about my other 3 groups (face palm).  I have a simple solution - timer.  I'm going to try and use a timer and do 20 minutes per rotation.  Lets see how that goes.

Rotations are working really well

Keeping it simple is the best, my biggest learning so far is getting kids to actually MOVE AROUND the classroom with the kids.  Each desk group is a different rotation, so the kids get a chance to move around and do all the different activities.

We had our first meeting and I was challenged "now that your children are engaged, what's next?", let's accelerate these children, the most acceleration they are getting is when they are with me, my learners need to be retaining what they are learning, this is why i'm using a modelling book.  All the learning that we are doing goes into the group modelling book, then the learners take these modelling books with them to help them solve the follow up activities.

My next step is to research and have more conversations about how to best teach fractions, and use the correct vocabulary during this!  If you have any tips, please help us out!

2021 Inquiry

 I'm Back!

After 2 years in the incredible Cook Islands i'm very grateful to be teaching back at Pt England School.

This year I'm inquiring into maths, I have literacy extension and feel like these learners will be able to accelerate, however, my maths class are behind where they need to be, because of this I'm choosing to inquire into my maths teaching to see how I can accelerate their achievement.

I do think that my learners are engaged in their learning, however, feel like they are lacking in several different areas that are holding them back from achieving. 

My Question 

How can I accelerate maths achievement for my learners by engagement, online tools with using what I've been taught from DMIC also?

I'm going to keep it short and simple. 

I have 4 rotations.

- Teacher

- Follow Up Activity

- Khan Academy

- Prodigy

The digital tools I'll be using to start with are Khan academy and Prodigy, my learners are loving Prodigy and I'll keep this positive attitude towards it up.

This works perfectly with my 4 groups.  I'm going to use modelling books for each group this year and get my learners referring back to these as much as possible.  I'll do this for a term, see how I go.

Keep posted!