Another way to learn as/when you need it

Hi guys,

In talking to Steve this afternoon I reminded myself that I'd made a note for Judy-Anne to have access to our Online Learning Community when she needs it.

This would be a yearly subscription which would enable you to learn new skills as/when you need them. Plus you can get unlimited support inside this community, along with a wealth of other things such as templates (perhaps we could make a learning support register?).

One of the areas we discussed when we met was the need to develop a learning support register and a means for tracking/monitoring progress of students in this. Google Sheets is a great tool for this as everyone can interact on the same sheet, plus you have the ability to control what people can edit within a tab on a sheet - VERY handy!

When you are ready to, sign up for a free trial here: learningarchitects.com.join and I will upgrade you to a full member. There is an online course 'Google Sheets & Forms 1' which is perfect for setting you up.

Here is a screenshot of the homepage:



Rob

TBCS - Craig - Reflection Kaea and reading groups

I noticed yesterday how Kaea struggled to concentrate, keep up, and participate while we were reading in a group situation.
I expect with her hearing loss, that while she hears me clearly enough, she struggles to hear the other students, especially in a group situation.
(The back ground is that Kaea has refused to wear her hearing aids this year and has not brought them to school at all.)
After talking to Steve we came to the conclusion that if we could get Kaea to bring her hearing aids to school, if only to use them at reading time and take them off again, it could help her be engaged and learn more than she is at the moment.

Action plan.

Speak to Judy, Wendy, and Rrbekah about contacting the family to get the hearing aids brought to school.

23/2/2018
I spoke with Judy Larkin today who has in turn e-mailed Rebecca to find out about the hearing aid situation.

Hopefully we can see some progress soon.

28/2/2018
I spoke to Judy today and we discussed the hearing aids which haven't turned up. She was going to see if she could help to to get them in class.

14/3/18
The hearing aids turned up a week ago. When we have the gear all charged properly charged, it makes a marked difference and allows Kaea to be involved with the group and allow to hear the other students clearly.
She says I am too loud, so Judy is making an audiology appointment so the aids can be set to the correct levels and I am not so loud in her ears.
I have also learned how to ensure the aids are turned off. If they are not turned off over night, they go flat over night.

31/3/18 We had an IEP meeting with Mum, Judy, Wendy, and the educational psychologist about Kaeas behaviour and her refusal to wear her hearing aids. See here.

2/7/18
After having a bad start to the term and lots of work from Judy, Wendy and myself, Kaea is wearing her hearing aids almost full time at school. The audiologist said she needed to wear them as much as possible to allow her brain to use them effectively and to set the pathways.
Success is sweet. Not only is Kaea hearing better, but her compliance in wearing them is part of an overall improvement in her behaviour.

• 2  Following an inquiry model appropriate to my setting, and using goals and/or inquiry questions that are linked to identified priorities for my ākonga and school.
• 2  Making time to have professional discussions with colleagues.
• 2  Effective communication with ākonga and whānau about ākonga achievement, learning and well-being.
• 3  Appropriate and professional communication with colleagues, ākonga and whānau.
• 3  Engaging with whānau and ākonga to discuss ākonga well-being and achievement. Engaging in regular professional communication as appropriate. 
• 4  Observations in my classroom that focus on the learning environment.
• 4  Classroom observations with a specific focus on this standard.
• 6  Using feedback from classroom observations to improve learning programmes.

ICT Skills - accelerating literacy with iPads

I am one of the leaders of the GEG NZ (Google Educator Group) which is an online community for educators in NZ. It runs on Google Plus.

This blog post has a video from a meeting we held and is a great example of iPad usage in a junior environment.

It is quite long but well worth a watch when you get a chance ;-)

Reflection - play- Judy-Anne

One of my big recognitions over the last few weeks has been the value of spending time practising new skills.

It has been a great reminder that if I need time to practise new things so do my kids.
If I need things taught very clearly so do my kids.

Where I really noticed this was google calendar. I had been very frustrated buy it in the past and refused to use it because my personal stuff was always coming up in the school stuff. It may have been an actual glitch and it may have been that it wasn't explained clearly enough about the tick boxes and how to have just one calendar showing or three! Maybe I was loading events in the wrong place. I will never know now but I feel much more confident with the calendar now that I have watched Rob and Steve's video, had a bit of a chat with Steve and had a play with it. I have set events on my personal calendar but also on the school one. Watch out people- no stopping me now!

We have been playing with the camera on our ipads, exploring at framing and lighting in particular. The children have practised deciding if they are good photos and deleting them if not. Portia also discovered the kaleidoscope function on photobooth so we played with that. then we challenged the rest of the school to guess what we had photographed. (cast to tv at assembly)
My next challenge is to find a better way to get photos from room 1 ipads to a folder to share easily. I ended up emailing to myself and then putting in a folder. Must be a better way. Maybe I need to set up the room 1 account on mine also then I will have them all and can save those I want to my drive- certainly don't want hem all!

Reflection - Judy-Anne - Week 3

Having started the year being really pleases with how little work I felt I had to do 'after hours' I ended last week feeling quite overwhelmed by how much I still had to do. While keeping on top of basic planning and marking was attainable the displays, readings, learner support register and meetings with various agencies, BOT and Meet the Teacher expectations were quite stressful.

I am thankful that Steve is a thoughtful principal, considering the wellbeing of his staff. He organised a release day for Craig then suggested that we could use the reliever in both rooms. This gave me a chance to finally meet with Craig to have him comfortable with his reading planning as well as meet with Mel so I could feel more comfortable with my preschool playdate planning.

I realise this is a profession where there is always more which could be done, more to learn or a better way to do things. I am obviously slow to learn but there are some strategies which are helping already and I have more to work on.

• set a time limit for leaving school, in general we are working on leaving by 5pm
• do important stuff first
• do a little often
• ask for time / help
• set a time limit on problem solving- thanks for this idea Rob
• delegate- it was good to look at our staff responsibilities, reassign and redefine for the year. I am good at saying yes and taking responsibility for things that aren't my responsibility
• using the expertise of others- ie ask for help!
• use the repeat function on the calendar- so much quicker than having to cut and paste repeating items. Set and forget or spray and walk away!

TBCS - Craig - Reading - Reflection

I started the year feeling a little under prepared. I had a good understanding about the Lexia and Reading Plus programmes from last year and had them sorted and operational for the start of the term. The thing I was not sorted with was reading groups. Judy-Anne and I had meant to get together, but it had never happened. Thank the Lord for C.R.T days!
I had a C.R.T Day on Tuesday, and Judy-Anne put her class with mine so we had the morning together to sort out what I was meant to do and how to achieve it.

The groups were established from data gathered at the end of last year. Only one student had no data to work from, so we went from her level on Lexia, which as it turned out was far below her reading level. This  became a blessing because although we will have to do a running record on her, she has realised how far below her level she is working on Lexia and has determined to catch up, which is great.

One problem I ran into was that one of my groups has 6 students in it and we do not have many sets of journals with 6 or more. It became a real problem till I had an epiphany. Sunshine online has a great reading resource of journals at the levels I need and because every student in my class has a device, they can all access the same journal at the same time. The added bonus is the extra activities attached to each journal.

I have also given each student access to sunshine classics to use for homework reading if they do not have a novel they wish to read. I have set up each account with books at their individual levels.

My big teaching books were set up using the rocket reading sheets.

I will report on how things progress.

Judy-Anne and I also discussed Spelling essential lists and the Gloss test.

• 2  Making time to have professional discussions with colleagues.
• 2  Observing and learning from experienced teachers.
• 3  Understanding and using existing models of effective practice (e.g., Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia)
• 4  Discussing my practice with colleagues and being open to new ideas.
• 4  Observing other teachers practices and approaches in the establishment of an inclusive and supportive learning environment.
• 5  Structuring learning tasks so that all ākonga experience a degree of success, but also ensuring that they are required to stretch themselves to fully succeed.
• 6  Observing other teachers’ use of resources and teaching strategies.
• 6  Seeking advice and feedback from colleagues on planning units, useful resources, and strategies to enhance ākonga interest and engagement.

ICT Skills - teacher planning template

I have a wide range of templates for teachers and school leaders to use.

This planning template is the most popular with teachers.

Sign up for a tutorial and get your own copy...

TBCS - Craig - Reflection - Troubleshooting - February 18

What did I learn today?

• I still have lots to learn!
• Google tasks can make to do things accessible to calendar
• Google Keep can scan and type printed info and with labels it can help help to organise.
• Google keep is more personal while Blogger is the place if you want to share.
• How to formulate a reflection.

So what?

• The more tools I have, the more choice I have to accomplish a task and the more time it should save in the long run.
• This should make my students more excited about their learning.

Next steps:

• Practice google tasks, Keep, and calendar.
• Sort out how to save photos to google photo.
• Make sure room ipad is linked to student account. (room3@ tas...)
• See Geoff to sort out the offline problem extention.

• 2  Undertaking PLD and further professional reading.
• 2  Engaging with school-wide inquiry approaches as expected.
• 2  Ongoing active involvement in a school/community of schools or other professional learning communities (PLC).
• 2  Attending and contributing to PLD opportunities within and beyond my school.
• 3  Participation in professional development (PLD), both in school and through outside agencies. Working with colleagues to enact the new learning. 

Reflection - Trouble shooting - Judy-Anne

What did I learn today?
It was very hard to focus with other things going on eg the carpet guy arriving to fix the carpet in my room.
It was good to be reminded that there is a lot involved in this so we need to take time and explore different aspects. We won't get it all at once.
I learnt more about taking and dealing with photos
Use blogger for reflections, use Google Keep for some important documents and  lists / tasks, sheets for learner Support register.

So what?
This is something I need to talk about with the class as it is very easy to get distracted from your learning, and sometimes you just need to go with the distraction.
The kids also need time to explore different things on the ipad.

Photos- think about what constitutes a good photo, teach about it, play, delete the rubbish ones.

What next?

• Tutorials from Rob eg forms, sheets
• Play with google keep
• Learn about taking good photos, practise taking good photos, delete bad photos.
• Organise the ipads so that the children's ones are backing up and syncing to room1@tasbaychristian.school.nz rather than my email. 
• Make it a habit  for the kids to always sort photos and delete the bad ones. 
• Make labels / flow charts for taking photos  (framing, lighting, focus, delete)

Reflection - Steve - Troubleshooting

What did I learn today?
Blogger is best used for our appraisal process, as we can use the labels to guide the teachers criteria.
This is a shared reflective space that can be used across the whole staff.
Calendar- tasks will be more effective than my current use of the notes.
Google suite access for the students by class.
Once we understand how to reflect (which we tend to do almost subconsciously with our students) we can make it a more formal approach to teach it.

So What?
I have a way forward to start the development of our appraisal system. The tag options will mean that it covers more than just reflection.
Still so much to do, one day at a time.
I am stuck on keeping my head above the water, wanting it done yesterday so it is more effective.

Next Steps
Practise and play.

Education Council Standards for the Teaching Profession

The Education Council has released the new Standards for the Teaching Profession, which is named 'Our Code, Our Standards'.

This is in my view a useful document because they have simplified the ways in which various indicators of quality practice are grouped so that they have gone from 12 criteria and now have 6 areas of standard, each with up to 7 indicators that elaborate what each standard comprises of.

These are:

1. Te Tiriti o Waitangi
2. Professional learning
3. Professional relationships
4. Learning-focussed culture
5. Design for learning
6. Teaching

PLD Touch Base - 7 Feb

Items discussed:

1. Using Google Slideshow (Craig) - how to capture student reflections
2. Setting up iPads to manage photos (Judy-Anne) - discussed the need to set up a class Google account so that photos
3. Health Consultation - Rob to get Steve example form to adapt and use
4. What makes a quality reflection - for conferencing a student
1. Is it better than last time?
2. How do you think you did?
3. What did you do well?
4. What are some areas you think you might need to improve in?
5. What is your goal for next time? What is the one thing you are going to improve on?
6. How can I help you?
5. What makes a quality professional reflection?
1. How well did it go?
2. How well did the kids learn? why?
3. How does it fit into what I already know/believe/do?
4. What would I do differently next time?
5. What might my/our next steps be...?
6. Dealing with 'to dos' - looked at tasks/reminders in Google Calendar, plus Google Keep as a great note taking/list making tool
7. Ways to manage learning support register - suggest Google Sheet.
8. Where to next: 20th Feb meeting is focussed on teacher inquiry, then Rob will be at the school 13-16 March.

Next steps:

1. Craig - 
2. Judy-Anne - 
3. Steve - 

How to use Google Calendars