Manaiakalani Film Festival

Such an air of excitement at school today with the students looking forward to seeing not only our school's entries into the Manaiakalani Film Festival, but other schools from around our cluster.

The MDTA cohort switched days to be at the Film Festival for the entire day and I was fortunate to watch both my entry and others from the cohort and Stonefields.  What a fantastic array of films that were on display!

This was the first time that the film that I had been creating with a group from my hub was going to be shared with others.  I was extremely proud of two of my learners who had created the story from an idea that they had for our break through exhibition as they presented their film today.  They spoke with such confidence and passion and their film was a hit with the audience from both the sessions it screened at.

You can watch Rubbish Busters in its entirety here and if you could, please leave a comment for the group as they would love some feedback from their audience!

Manaiakalani Hui

Yesterday we were fortunate to attend the fifth annual Manaiakalani Hui which was a great opportunity to connect with colleagues and other members of our cluster.  It was a jam packed agenda so I attempted to both sketchnote and tweet over the day to see if that helped me synthesise the information.

Multitasking is not my forte so here are my outtakes via sketchnotes from the day:

The first item on the agenda was a presentation from our Manaiakalani Ambassadors which are student representatives from our schools who presented an element of their learning from the year so far.  Their deft knowledge of the "learn/create/share" pedagogy and the pride and confidence in which they presented was admirable and something that I would like to strive towards creating with the learners I teach.

The part that I found the most interesting was the presentations from the Spark MIT Innovative Teachers - these are colleagues within the cluster who shared their current enquiries with us.  A lot of these revolved around both motivation and literacy - both topics that I am currently investigating for potential focuses for next year's dissertation.  Again I found these presenters incredibly proud of the learning they are creating - this opportunity is available for me in my third year of teaching so something to investigate over the next year as an option for 2018!

Russell Burt presented the group wth an interesting notion that there are 47,000 plus jobs in the technology sectors which we need to be preparing our learners with the skills to work in such positions.  By keeping the open lens on how we can expose learners to opportunities in which they learn these skills is paramount - a very scary but also exciting challenge for the years ahead!

We were fortunate to have Rebecca, Aaron and Stuart from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre come present to us - some analogies and acronyms have stuck with me like "Students who can do harder things with harder tests at an earlier age" and L.I.F.T (Learning Ideas From Text).  Again I am excited and inspired about how to bring more critical literacy skills into my practice and am grateful for the support and the information that is provided to our cluster on a regular basis.

After lunch, it was great to learn more about the outreach programmes especially after having made connections from today.  How can we use these networks to share resources and ideas freely to better support our learners in the drive to learn today's skills for tomorrow's jobs?  We were also challenged by both Russell and Pat Sneddon to keep reassessing the status quo and using the skills we have from moving from below to at and transfer these over to the movement of learners from at to above.

A very thought provoking day - check out Twitter for more insights from other attendees - #Manaiakalani

Teaching Inquiry - First Thoughts

As I begin to form my first teaching inquiry, I am thinking about how I can create shift with my Year 3 learners with their writing.

Literacy is my passion and I am constantly looking for ways that I can model both engagement and exciting with the writing process with my learners.  I feel it is important for me to be a role model for my learners with writing as this is the subject that I experience the most resistance from my groups and their voices represent that of mine when I was at school.

"I don't know what to write about!"

"I don't enjoy writing - it is boring!"

"I am not good at writing!"

This are snippets of conversations I have on a daily basis and while it does sadden me, I intend to use this as motivation to look for ways to win the small battles and chip away at the underlying issues.  I know this is a marathon, not a sprint so intend to use this to build the inquiry.

I know I am not alone in this - last night, Hub 1 and 2 ran a workshop for parents who were looking for ways to help build their children's confidence in writing and how to support what they are learning at school.  This is a great insight into how I can connect with families more and use these relationships to help tailor my planning to the individual needs of my learners.

PLG - Insights and Immersion...

Today sparked the first of our Digital Immersion days - every Friday the MDTA cohort join Dorothy Burt and Anne Sinclair at Tamaki campus for the day to connect and share with each other our learnings from the week and gain skills in the digital space within our spaces.

We began with a reconnect with our community and faced the reality of our community which was a great insight into why our programme was created and how we can use the skills we are building our capability in to help support our learners with their own learning.

The digital aspect of today was a look at Google Drive and Documents with some great tips on how to effectively use these in our teaching practice.

We were then able to reflect from the day using Google Draw - I am not the worlds best artist so I will be challenging myself to take risks with the visual arts and learn alongside my learners.

I was interested to see how many touch points learners in our community have in relation to a "regular" learner in another community.  To meet learners in our community, and especially as a newcomer, I would not be aware of some of these aspects of our learners lives and how myself as a teacher can play a small part of their lives (in their perception).  I can see how building visible connections with my learners and their families can not only empower the learners while at school, but also empower my own teaching practice to be reactive to the community.  I think having this awareness is key to aid me with these relationships and help me develop a responsive pedagogy to the needs of my learners.

Connecting with the Community

Tonight was "Meet The Teacher" night so I was feeling a bit nervous as I would be presenting to parents at two sessions.  Luckily I was presenting as part of a group and the team were awesome at setting me up for success with the information that I was presenting.

We had a pretty impressive turn out, especially in the second session and it was great to have dialogues with individual families as they moved around the hub.  I think part of my nervousness was down to my perception that I am a beginning teacher and I may have not the appropriate experience to answer queries at this stage.  However the majority of the questions that came my way was more about who I am as an individual, my background and how am I connecting with the learners and the school.

Our families have a huge amount of pride in the school and it was evident to see when they spoke of their child's achievements so far.  It was also beneficial for me to listen to some of the questions that came from families in relation to the use of devices in the learning spaces.  There is some natural concern that the devices will be the focus while the students are in the classroom so I need to be conscious to remind myself that it is another tool in the space and how it complements my pedagogy.

It was really awesome to see that families stayed afterwards to enjoy a picnic as well as the waterslide (very popular and the kids were so patient while waiting in line!) and other games and activities we had put out for everyone.

While it was a long day, I was glad that I was able to make these connections with the community and look forward to growing them during my time at the school.