Saturday, October 31, 2015

EdBookNZ Collaborative project Unpacking the PTC's

  






5x Teams 6 educators each unpacking the PTC’s framed with Tataiako.


Learning teachers are learning students.
  • Learn a different way.
  • Be disrupted and be disruptive
  • Revisit what it is like to be a learner with deadlines and feedback
  • Leave a legacy
  • Break out of a current education bubble (connect)
  • Learn with and from disruptive educators (collaborate)
  • Co construct a written resource for the education community (create)
  • Share with a wider audience via a hangout (celebrate)
Write a blogpost about the process (reflect)

Friday, October 30, 2015

EdBookNZ Co authored book.


Read the digital book co-authored by 10 educators for #CENZ15
This project I oversaw as part of Connected Educator month.


Thursday, October 29, 2015

Ulimasao Bilingual Education Association

On Thursday I attended a community meeting to relaunch Ulimasao Bilingual Education Association.
This is the community work I did a lot for during the early 2000. I found that I needed to earn my stripes before I could influence and have standing with the Pasefika community.
You can read all about the session on the blog that I oversee.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Ulearn: Flat Connection Global Project

 During Ulearn I presented about Kahikatea's involvemnet in the Flat Connection Project with Julie Lindsay.
My session was live streamed.
I had about 30 people attend and from the feedback I believe the session went well.


 

Thursday, October 8, 2015

ULEARN Student Voice: Questions, Reflections and Independence in the classroom.

We moved into digital classrooms by removing the sliding doors that separated our rooms. The new space became our ‘modern’ learning environment and we based our planning and assessment around the feedback we received from students. This change all happened within a year. The students told us what they wanted to learn and how they wanted to learn. We catered to their wants and needs to the best of our ability. Through this process, the students were placed at the centre of most decision making. We supported the active involvement of learners in the design and in decision-making about what is learned,  how learning occurs, and where learning takes place.
We embraced the online world with a shift to the user and to create for them a  more personalised experience using Hapara, Google Apps for Education and Edmodo.
This is my story of how: we changed the way we teach; how students approached their learning; how we monitor students progress and how we supported the learning process.
I will also share challenges we faced on the way and the successes we celebrated.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

TeachMeetNZ meets TMSydney

As part of Connected Educator Month, I ran a TeachMeetNZ session and cohosted with Matt Easterman from TM Sydney. You can check out the link to see the individual 3 minute videos from each presenter,

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Holiday learning with interested staff

In the holidays I met with Veni and we went over again how to add planning to the team site.

 
I met with Nola and showed her how to add a doc to Hapara.


I met with Elena and we covered several areas she required help with.
She also published a blogpost to reflect on her learning with Te waka reo and her learning with Te Reo.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Holiday Learning

This has already been a busy week. Three teachers took me up on a holiday session with me.

Nola had a session regarding Hapara and how to share a doc with her students.


Veni had a second session for embedding a Google Doc into his team's site.

He also attended a #FlatConnection session led by Julie Lindsay and reflected on the process here.


Elena had a technical session which included sorting out her VLN account, creating a twitter list and a blog reflection for #CENZ15 challenge. Congratulations Elena for passing 100 followers on twitter. She also wrote a reflective blog post about her Te Waka Reo journey and you can read that here.

Now for anyone else, I will share the badges page again. Let me know how you are getting on with these. I believe that lots of you can tick most of these badges. Create your own page and hyperlink to the evidence.

A reminder that October is Connected Educator Month #CENZ15. There are a few challenges for you to undertake so go to the site and check them out. I am involved with three of them. These are #TeachMeetNZ, #EdBookNZ and #EdBlogNZ.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Assessment with a Pasifika lens

Date: Friday 11 September 2015
Breakfast and seminar
Presenter: Manu Faaea-Semeatu


This breakfast seminar explored ways to enable schools to create environments that empower Pasifika students to be who and what they are with reference to National Standards and NCEA assessment tools. Manu shared several avenues of support for school leaders and teachers, as well as how to raise engagement and achievement through culturally responsive assessment.

  • Culture of continuous learning for teachers and educational leaders.
  • Respond to individual learning needs
  • A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity
  • Students in expert roles, teacher as learners
  • How do we understand this? Access for all…….
  • Engaging with families and communities
    • -church, sports clubs, get to know the families & understand where
    • -overcare and they can’t believe in themselves if you don’t believe in them first
  • Assessment that is fit for purpose
  • Assessment in relation to National Standards must follow the characteristics ogf effective assessments as outlined in NZC
    • benefits students and involves students
    • supports teaching and learning goals- triangulates the learning
    • is planned and communicated
    • is suited to the purpose- the why of needing to learn
We need to prepare chn for the future that does not yet exist.

  • Rhythm
  • Purpose
  • Comfortable
  • What were you thinking about while doing this exercise?

Listening to keep in time
New concepts need visualisation

How do we facilitate the unknown to students prior knowledge so that the unknown becomes
-the way that we do things that is conducive to Pasifika education

Culturally responsive assessment

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Updating our learning spaces.

The staff blog is a space for curating our learning. I enjoy seeing the the team blogs take their turn at the top of the RSS feed.

This week I have enjoyed reading the update of class happenings from Kowhai and from Puriri. I think how you are maintaining the team blogs have been fabulous. I get really excited when I see some of the side widgets developing. 
Check out how Andrea has created her digital modelling book and is sharing this with her children. Check out how Puriri use their blog to share their tumbles.
If you have a chance, do pop into the Emodo site. You should all have access to each team. 

Part of the MLP thinking for us and our children is getting used to communicating digitally with our children.

I have enjoyed hearing how staff are also becoming familiar with the groups on the VLN. 
A recent example of collaboration and sharing reflections has taken place with the development of the #edblognz site . As you update your own blogs I will add you to the RSS feed. I look forward to those teachers sharing what they got out from this weeks out of school professional learning. 

In addition watch for what is coming. October is known as Connected Educator Month. So on twittter look out for the #CENZ15 tag. October is also a busy time for Anna and myself as we prepare to share our learning at Ulearn. I have another TeachMeetNZ happening as part of CENZ15 and this time I am cohosting with the TMSydney team. 

In the holidays I thought I might run a half day's session for blogger. If you are interested in pimping your blog, do let me know and I will go ahead and set it up.











Saturday, August 15, 2015

Term 3 Week 4 at NPS


The highlight for me was Kowhai assembly and the children singing our new school song created by the amazing Andrea.
This is extended abstract thinking when we create.

Last Saturday we had our Kapa Haka Group perform for the launch of Sandra Morris Book.
The teachers involved in that were Ginny, Andrea, Elena and Sarah.

Sandra Morris's Discovering New Zealand Trees book launch our students mesmerized by watercolor illustrations - magic pic.twitter.com/uVBoVW25s5
— Newmarket Principal (@newmarketschool) August 8, 2015

In addition we had visitors come to us from Titirangi School and Medowbank school. This was through Belinda as they were coming to observe MLE. But we really know as Learning Pedagogy.
(Darn forgot the Grelfie- Wendy)

Hats off to Kahikatea with  their exploration into hacking the learning.


Moi?
I presented on the VLN and my interview with Pete Hall came live. You can read all about that here.


Finally the creme de la creme, Wendy shared her inquiry with us. Again demonstrating that she would not expect us to do stuff that she was not prepared to do herself. Wendy was also demonstrating extended abstract thinking when she reflected on her learning.


Tuesday, August 11, 2015

TeachMeetNZ on the VLN


On Wednesday Sonya presented on the Virtual Learning Network Webinar.

The topic was Personalising PLD using social networks.

I spoke about the work I have been doing with TeachMeetNZ.



Sunday, August 9, 2015

Differentiation

This blog post was contributed by Belinda.

Since the beginning of the year we have had professional learning in the area of Gifted and Talented leaners at Newmarket School. To view all the resources- check out our shared folder on the School Staff Site.
The sessions have been facilitated by Brooke Trenwith from Te Toi Tupu.

9th March Creating a shared understanding.

19th May The Over Excitabilities of Gifted Children.

4th August Differentiation

Our third Gifted and Talented session with Brooke was around the theme of differentiation. 





This session took place on Tuesday August the 4th. Brooke challenged us to define what differentiation was - and what it wasn’t. There was a consensus from the group when presented with scenarios designed to get us thinking about whether the strategies shown were differentiated instruction or not.


We then discussed the ways in which we establish which particular students require extension for a particular curriculum area. We talked about the importance of establishing students’ prior knowledge - both formally (pencil and paper tests) and informally (observation in discussions/scenarios).


We were then challenged to consider the levels of challenge we provide for our students by describing the activities we use to extend our students across the curriculum.


The Maker Model was then introduced. Some of us were familiar with the model, for others it was a new concept. This model describes how lessons can be differentiated in terms of PROCESS, CONTENT, PRODUCT & LEARNING ENVIRONMENT. We learned that it is not necessary to differentiate on all dimensions simultaneously.


Next we looked at the differences between extension, acceleration and enrichment, and what this means with regard to our gifted students.


Planning for differentiation was next on the agenda. We looked at the importance of providing a hierarchy of questioning: factual, conceptual, and provocative, in order to establish the levels of thinking in the class. It was stressed that we must ensure that we are planned for content, processes and products that allow for abstract/conceptual thinking - vital for our gifted students.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Engaging Pasifika Learners

On Monday 6th of August
Staff took part in a session with Manu Faaea-Semeatu from CORE Education.
The focus of the session was about our pasifika learners.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Newmarket Rotary



On Monday 27th of July, the Newmarket Rotary group met with Wendy, Sonya and Waveney.
They asked for an update about the 3Dprinter that was donated to our school.

Here are the slides from our update.


Cluster Meeting

On Monday 27th of July, Wendy and Sonya met with principals and lead teachers in the local school area to discuss elearning and our direction.
If you want to catch up on our discussion, here are the minutes. 

Saturday, July 25, 2015

EducampAKL

On Saturday 25th of July, three teachers from Newmarket School attended #EducampAKL.
Sonya, Waveney and Belinda.
You can read Sonya's reflection here.

The conference began with a smackdown to establish areas of group interest. 
We then wrote our topics that interested us on post it and these were sorted into groups for sessions of interest.




Both Waveney and I got up and shared something of interest in the Smackdown.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Term 3 Wk 1 Staff Meeting

On Monday the 20th July Staff Meeting.

Virginia shared about the upcoming cultural festival.



 Sonya shared about Clubs and Activities.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

TeachMeetNZ 2015 Session 2


On Saturday TeachMeetNZ session went live.
We had Natasha Walden who works with the RTLBs share 'My Experience as a Gamer'. For the session there were 8x New Zealand educators sharing their passion. To read more, check out Sonya's reflection. 

Thanks to Virginia too who was there supporting as timekeeper, back up host and giving feedback. I also mention Waveney tweeting a storm as all the tweets contributed to the session trending on twitter.

Remember staff, if you wish to join me in a live streamed Google Hangout like
Let me know. What you will get out of it is the chance to connect with New Zealand Educators nationally, you will create a presentation and share it via Google+ Hangout, you will understand how twitter works for your professional learning, you will receive a digital certificate and digital badges for your professional portfolio and most importantly you will learn heaps and have huge fun

My absolute goal is to run a Newmarket only one. So think about it.

Imagine a team sharing their learning journey in the new classroom setups.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Digital Learning Spaces

Yesterday we had a group of teachers and Alison, principal visit us from Kohia Terrace School. We also had Hazel @HazelAbraham1, who is on a study sabbatical join us.
Virginia had asked what their visit focus would be to help us frame our thinking. The group was a little bigger than what we had realised but that was fine too as school visits like this allows our teachers to share their learning and to consolidate their thinking and you know how keen I am on teachers sharing their learning.

Anna shared Kahikatea's learning with google using Hapara and Edmodo. She also shared her ongoing professional learning with mindlab and how she was developing her teacher's digital portfolio. She shared the learning that both Waveney and she had recently undertaken presenting at the GAFE conference. 

Ginny spoke about general learning and shared what she learnt from our recent Singapore conference attendance with regards to using 1 device between groups. She also spoke about our school's current expectation about teachers being visible online using a variety of tools such as Twitter, VLN, POND, Edmodo and blogging. 

Both teachers spoke about how they were continually reflecting using their blogs.

I put in a TeachMeetNZ plug and highlighted the recent learning of Belinda using Google Hangout and then her blog to reflect her learning. I shared what Ginny spoke about and showed them our curated teacher's space where our learning is transparent. I reminded them that everyone must be on the same journey including the principal, if we were expected to reflect using blogs, so was Wendy, if we were expected to be in these spaces, so was Wendy and I shared how Wendy was doing both. 

Where to next? I think if schools put in requests to visit us then lets create a shared Doc of questions they are searching answers for. I also think it would be great to have feedback from visitors so I will create a generic form as this will also help us track our learning. 


Thursday, June 11, 2015

Sonya's Malu

Sonya's malu shared today.

O lau Malu. from Sonya Van Schaijik

If you want to read the blogpost, here it is too.
http://sonyavanschaijik.com/2015/01/03/o-lau-malu/

A Week in the Life

Sonya presented and shared what Newmarket Students Travelwise children have been doing as part of the 'Flat Connection - A Week in the Life' celebration

ELLP Reading

On Monday Sonya ran a staff meeting about reading moderation for our English Language Learners.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Newmarket in 3D





















Tonight Wendy, Waveney and myself attended a Rotary central meeting at AUT.
Waveney and I shared our school's journey with the 3D printer donated to us by the Newmarket Rotary club.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Visible Learning

It has been a busy week where a lot of visible learning has taken place.
At our staff meeting   Aspects of Effective Practice
We had a student share her Leadership Passport and she shared how she had been gathering evidence of her learning. Eileen shared how she had been mentoring the student in gathering evidence.
We had Anna share the presentation that she put together for the MOA cluster.


In addition I loved seeing how Ginny made her learning visible by sharing her Pepeha. So do check it out.






Wednesday, May 6, 2015

MOA Cluster

On Wednesday 6th of May we had 40 educators visit us from the Moa Cluster in South Taranaki. 
The three schools involved were Matapu, Opunake, Auroa.

They were with us from 9.00am until 11.00am.
I forgot to get a photo of all the vans in the top carpark.

Connections were made via twitter from Myles Webb @NZwaikato so it was great to meet up with him again. I found out that they are #3Dprinting buffs so it was fabulous to have Heath Chittenden @macca24129 spend time with me and give me a quick demo of our brand new printer. 

In addition to this dedicated group of educators breaking outside their echochamber, we had Hazel Abraham  from Herekino School who is on an an educational sabbatical.

Below you can check out the slides from the day created by our hosting teachers and principal.
I also forgot to get a photo of the scrumptious morning tea coordinated by Gayle.











Saturday, April 18, 2015

Video is the new text, a Q & A session with Sonya.

This session is a Q & A session about Youtube. Let Sonya Van Schaijik know your burning technical questions and she will endeavour to answer them during the session. Bring your youtube account and channel and join her and she showed some tips that have learnt along the way of creating nearly 80x 3 min clips of teacher’s stories.

Connect Collaborate Co-Create Celebrate with like-minded educators using Google+ Hangout

TeachMeetNZ is a professional learning community and environment that provides asynchronous and synchronous opportunities for New Zealand teachers to connect, collaborate, create and celebrate with other educational professionals beyond their own school communities. Sonya Van Schaijik showed how she plans for and runs a #TeachMeetNZ event using Google+ Hangout. Live global guests joined the hangout. Then participants were invited to a hangout and were shown how to stream and record a google+ hangout.

Making Learning Visible using Student Voice and Digital Badges.

At Newmarket School we are using a variety of google tools to amplify student voice such as blogger and google apps for education. This year student badges have been created as part of our Positive Behaviour for Learning Journey. Waveney Bryant will share with you how student voice is conveyed through a Leadership Passport and through the allocation of digital badges. Children can download the badge onto their google drive and add them to their portfolio. The use of badges keeps the learning visible.

You can read her blog reflection here about presenting at the GAFEsummit 2015.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Connecting the dots: Using Hapara - Teacher Dashboard Session Description


What happens when you ask for something and actually get it? Shock. Awe. Panic. Excitement. Most of all, the overwhelming realisation that your practice is about to take a huge turn and will most likely never be the same again. This is Anna Speir's story of making the leap into one to one devices and starting our school's first digital classroom, using Hapara - Teacher Dashboard and her challenges and successes along the way.

Here is Anna's reflection from the GafeSummit that she presented at.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Mind Lab


Exciting to see Dr Wendy Kofoed from Newmarket School featured in the current edition of Interface.


Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Belinda Hitchman

On Saturday 21st of March Belinda Hitchman took part in a National collaborative science project.
Here you can see her slides on the TeachMeetNZ site.