Te Kahui Tai Kura o Te Hiku Across School Leader

When I first started as an Across School Leader for our Kahu Ako, I was tentative in my role and unsure of the journey I was undertaking. I am part of a team of four Across School Leaders and I believe that as a collaborative team of professionals, we are starting to find our way! It seems to be that whenever we bring different groups of teachers together, the conversations and connections that take place are dynamic and develop relationships across our Kahui Ako. Surely this is key to strengthening collaboration across our kura.

Our Within School teachers are an amazing group of teachers who are willing to share their experiences in their own kura with others. Together we have furthered our understanding of the Spiral of Inquiry and inquiries based on this model are happening across our Kahui Ako. Our Student Agency Survey was completed by many of our schools and it due to be repeated early in term four. I look forward to working with as many groups from across our Kahu Ako and collaborating to improve Teaching, Learning. Transitions and Hauora across our Kahui Ako.

Inquiry: Acceleration v Remediation

During the last several years, our Intermediate Department has grappled with accelerating our students in writing. We have viewed our writing data with concern and have tried many different strategies to accelerate our students progress. We ran our inquiries for a year and got some small shifts, but no true acceleration.

Then.....I read the book by Suzy Pepper Rollins titled 'Learning in the Fast Lane" and I knew that this could possibly be the game changer for both our students and ourselves. We began to implement some of the strategies outlined in the book. We developed our own learning walls and vocabulary (word, meaning, picture) that we front loaded the students with.

 We shared exemplars and the AsTTle rubrics to develop student agency in the learning process. We wrote with Chromebooks and used our Google Site to share the learning with our students. Our Writing Inquiry ran for 10 weeks and when the teachers met to look at our data pre and post inquiry, we were amazed by what we found. In 10 weeks, our students moved several sub levels, with one moving two curriculum levels! All students made huge shifts (up to two curriculum levels) in vocabulary, spelling and punctuation rubric scores.

As a team of teachers, we are excited by this collaborative inquiry and will continue to use these new strategies that have changed our practice and accelerated our students achievement in writing. Collaboration and new learning for both teachers and students is vital for acceleration!

Independent Ubiquitous Learning

Independent, ubiquitous learning!!!

I have often observed the students in class over the last few weeks. Yes, I actually have the time to stand back and watch!!! The students in my class are accessing their learning from the class site and are able to create digital Learning objects's that show their thinking and understanding. They have the ability to present their learning in different ways and be as creative as they want to be with slide shows, screencastify, Google drawings and even a Google doc. As they begin to take their chrome books home, it will be interesting to see if they take up the opportunities to continue with their learning anytime, anywhere. These are exciting times for our learners!

Reading

Create:
Our focus for reading has been on the 'Create'  part of the student inquiry Learn Create Share. Our learning focus has been Survival. The students have been learning about how living things survive in their environment.

They have used some of the Google Apps for education and their chrome book  to create their digital learning object:

• Making their own animation
• Finding out about the water cycle or the carbon cycle or photosynthesis- they will show their learning in a Google drawing
• Taking photos of their work and describing their learning

The students were so engaged with their learning and it was so awesome to see them creating so that 

they can share their learning.

Student Blogging

Student Blogging

It has been an exciting week for the students who work with me in our modern learning environment for reading and writing. We have been working with our Manaiakalani Outreach Facilitator, Kerry, on our student blogs. The students had prepared a personal profile and chosen some pictures to add to their first blog. It was so amazing to see them beginning to share their learning in this way.

We have been working from my Google site for quite a while now and I am amazed by the way they have accepted the challenge of managing their work in a digital format. Sometimes they will lose a piece of work that they have forgotten to file in the correct folder, but as the student's experience grows, there is always someone to help find  the missing document! This is the beginning of an exciting journey at Taipa Area School and it is one that I am proud to be part of. My admiration for my students grows on a daily basis...they are incredible digital learners!!

The Final DFI

The Final DFI
Today has been a day to reflect and look back on what we have achieved over the past nine weeks. Over the last term it has been amazing to witness the growth of our group of teachers and the distance we have travelled in the digital world. A three hour exam did not put us off....it showed us what we can do well and what we still need to work on> Does that sound about right? Teaching as inquiry for professionals! I have learned so much and am looking forward to using all of aour Google apps with my students in the coming years!!

Go Manaiakalani!

Google Apps - Work Smarter not Harder!

Working Smart

Today was all about working smarter, not harder. There were lots of handy tips and apps to use to make a teacher's life a little easier! We looked at Google Calendar, Google Hangouts and Gmail. Although these were tools that I have used in the past, I was not using them to their full potential!! Obviously this was a huge surprise!!

Google Hangouts was something I used to chat with colleagues and I had never joined a group hangout before and it was so much fun. Screen sharing is awesome and I can't wait to share this experience with my students!! Learning and lots of fun!! This would be a great way to share learning!!

I had begun to use Google Calendar more this year to help me stay on track with my meetings and commitments. I have been creating events and inviting people to meetings. This taught me a few new handy hints and let me change settings and themes. Google Calendar has become a tool I use all of the time.

Gmail is something that I use all day everyday! It was great to go into settings and set up new labels and delete labels I have never used. Using labels has become so much easier than when I first started using Gmail. I found it very user friendly!!!

It was a really great session today and I am feeling confident using these Google Apps.