Distance Teaching and Learning Online

Convid-19 came thick and fast at the start of week 8 of Term 1. While as a team, we were preparing for learning and teaching online, no one could predict just how fast it came about.

Luckily for us, we were up and running with our first  google meet with our literacy class at 9.30am on Tuesday 24th March. From here, we've kept in regular contact with both our literacy and numeracy students tuning in twice a day to go through learning set for them and to answer any questions they may have.

As well as this, our Team Leader Andrea Tele'a has also kept our normal daily notices with videos giving the latest updates as given on the news as well as those shared by management regarding moving the holidays forward and this being the official last week of Term 1.

The most exciting part this week was taking part in our school assembly today which was streamed live for our students. This ran through our normal assembly program of Karakia, national anthem, Duffy certificates and even sports news! Feedback from my class later on during the was incredible. They were buzzing out about assembly and really enjoyed teachers coming together online for this.

Overall, quite proud of all that we've achieved this week, the connections we've made and the learning that took place. In such unprecedented times, well done PES!

Area of Inquiry for 2020

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #2
#2:  Collaborate with your senior leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

As a school, one of our goals this year is to be singing the same tune or making sure we are on the same page. This is across all areas of learning and school life from behaviour management, to what is being implemented in classes as well as best teaching practices.

Our 2 main learning area focuses are on Maths for the first half of the year, then Reading. 

Our learning conversations in our team meetings have been mainly around Maths and how we can combine the approaches of DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiring Communities) that worked well over our last 2 years of PD, together with micro-teaching of strategies and number knowledge.

This is where I'd like to start with my CoL inquiry this year. Looking at Maths, how it can be implemented using whatever approach works best, but cater mainly to students who are still 3-4 years behind in maths.

This would be useful towards my team and wider school as we are focusing our PD sessions around maths for these first two terms of the year. I also hope to find other teachers who are inquiring into maths to share ideas and research with throughout this inquiry journey for 2020.

Inquiry Stocktake

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #1
#1: Use the ‘inquiry stocktake’ doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

Based on my inquiry around 'How can we better support students in reading who are ‘stuck’ in their learning (4+ years behind) and prepare them for college', here are some reflections points based on our stocktake list.

What worked well:

• Support and guidance from the Woolf Fisher Team
• Finding and identifying the mini-shifts in amongst the big picture
• Blog posts guide provided and noted by Fiona
• Learning conversations between our CoL teachers as well as wider staff and management
• Delving deeper into students learning behaviours BEFORE finding an intervention to try
• Getting enough evidence before the intervention. Great forward planning and prompting from our researchers

Challenges:

• Creating activities/tasks at a Year 7/8 level but catering to their reading ages which are 5-7 years old 
• Busy class timetable - being consistent throughout the Term/Year despite the busy schedule and events happening
• Research - getting into the habit of research again and making sense of it all

Additional Support I'd like:

• A spreadsheet with areas of learning and interventions that have already been tried that we can have as a starting point
• Research - Where to start, who to approach, time to do it