Manaiakalani & Outreach Wananga 2020 - From Theory to Reality.

Always an absolute pleasure to be welcomed to the Wananga by Point England School Akonga. 

From Programme to Movement.

Pat Snedden, MET Chair.

Spoke about the unique capability, responsibility and adaptation we have been required to be in leading the way for our communities in a time that hadn't been foreseen a year ago. Paid a great tribute to the innovation and moral purpose undertaken.

We need to communicate the ideas. WFRC is seeing that students outside the Manaiakalani umbrella are struggling and stressed. It's not fair that they are getting a raw deal through no fault of their own. 

Manaikalani has been approached by the government to be the commissioning agent for digital efficiency in low decile communities in New Zealand. Delivering foundation digital skills training for adults. All of the things that we take for granted, internet banking, digital communication, etc... Ways of getting our parents to have more skills and connectivity to get training in these skills. This will be free for our whanau.

WFRC

 Aaron 

 Online Observations and Q & A

The whole purpose of the data collected is for it to be used ina formative capacity in order to inform practice and changes needed. They redesigned the tool and ensured the reliability of the tool in an extraordinary year in education.

Initially, the patterns are looked at in regard to what the data is saying about student achievement and then looking for patterns around teaching.

Reading:

Having a relentless focus on reading.

The pattern of achievement is lower and so is the rate of progress. We need to disrupt the pattern. We have very strong evidence of acceleration in the early years of education. They start well below but make massive progress at getting closer to the norm. It's an intriguing pattern where the line tapers off after year 4. 

Shanahan & Shanahan Model of Literacy Development.

Basic Literacy: Decoding letting identification etc.

Intermediate Literacy: Being able to comprehend the text. Knowing the conventions of a variety of text types etc.

Disciplinary Literacy: Where the literacy demands become very subject-specific and specialised texts and vocabulary.

What it means for us is that we know that many of our children don't have those foundational skills. We need to intervene and get help for those kids. We need to be looking ahead at what they are going to need to be able to move towards. Our teaching is sufficient to meet the needs of what they are doing up to year 4, but not sufficient to enable them to progress to Intermediate Literacy. This is why High Leverage Practices have been identified. We need more of them to be seen in our classrooms to see a shift.

We know about all these things. The power of talking. These are the principles that underpin the interventions that need to be made.

In the junior years of that solid foundation, this is what that would look like:

Reflecting on the data that is informed by that framework...

Teachers were asked for access to their sites, texts, planning frameworks etc. The information was observed across a whole week instead of the 30-minute snapshot that was used prior to this. Aaron has recognised that this gave them a wider criticality about the planning of the lesson. The quality of planning for the discussions taking place. To develop critical literacy, their needs to be deliberate acts of teaching and discussions. The spontaneous discussion will never be enough. 

Limited opportunities to read extended texts (100pages or more than one hour of film). The majority of the texts were short texts. Q: What would be the optimal balance and how could this balance be more affected?

Q: Do we have a balance of exposure to a range of literary texts at different year levels?

Evidence of an increase in multiple text use, which hasn't been seen previously.

The texts that we are reading predominantly represent the dominant cultures. whereas the overall ethnicity breakdown sees Mōari 36%, Pasifik 16%, Asian 9%, NZE/Pakeha 36% and Other 3%. 

A mirror text is where you read the text and it reflects me. It's like my community. 
A window text gives an outward view of a world different form me.
Ideally we want a text to be both a mirror and window text.

What opportunities do our ākonga have to have that window and mirror of non-European cultures around the world?

 What is the text diet that our students are being offered? Is it optimum to accelerate reading?

The majority of class sites showed no evidence of any focus on audience and purpose within that one week. It doesn't mean its not happening, it could be that its done face to face. This aspect is really important in developing critical literacy skills. It's imperative. Audience and purpose are vital.

Strong focus on vocabulary. Not a visible focus on poetic devices. Texts tend to get more figurative as they develop complexity. Minimal evidence of the teaching of the structure of texts for that one week. This could be coming up when teachers are modelling. Is it enough when it should be evident in planned activities.

The emphasis didn't go past plot. Limited ideas of characterisation, atmosphere and some thinking about the ideas.

This needs to be planned and emphasised. If it's not visible to WFRC and they are looking hard for it, then how obvious is it really for our ākonga?

Most class sites showed no evidence of any focus on inference, analysis, critical literacy or critical thinking. We need to analyse all of our tasks and what's on offer for our kids and going it a nudge. Is it enough?

When looking at blogs, what was the highest level of thinking required of students on their blogs? The reason they're not elevating is that the level of task expectation on the site. we can't expect the students to exceed the limits of the task that has been set up on the site. We are creating a ceiling. 

Is working hard the same as thinking hard?

There was a minimal representation of rewindable tasks evident within that week.

If we are going to push the expectation for students to. be more dialogic then there should be more planned discussion visible. There is still a propensity for DLO's to default to slides, with minimal extension. Minimal opportunities for choice and agency over text and task. Most choice was over order of task.

Oral language  - South Hornby have had a massive focus on its and are seeing success. They assess oral language on school entry. Do we do this?

At the time this data was coming back there was a caveat that we were trying to get our kids back and engaged. It may explain the time we are at, but we need to move it forward. It's matching evidence to practice. 

Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers

Accelerating Reading Comprehension through questioning

Sarah Daly

Noticed that Levels 22-23 (Purple, Gold, Silver) became stagnant and there was a struggle to progress. Assessments up to then are generally literal and it is a big jump from there, particularly for ESOL students.

Learning Through Listening

Alethea Dejong

How to enable students to listen to each other in an independent group. Talk Moves and DIMIC maths helped develop strategies to address these problems however they didn't teach students the skills to listen. Teaching "response" and "initiation". explicitly teaching listening behaviours and expectations.

How can we develop students to be better writers?

Tanya Mundy

Is as a teacher, we can't get motivated to write, then how can we motivate our students to write. After undertaking a writers course as an adult, she wondered why these skills couldn't be taught to students.

Device & Finance Procurement for 2021

Acer Insurance:

3 Years
2 Repair claims

1 Replacement

Explain Everything licence is cheaper.

Devices for Livestream

Order here

Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers

Transitioning students

Kiriwai Tapuke

Utilising Te Whare Tapa Wha to help develop connections with students to assist with effective transitioning for students. 

Algebra as a key pathway to senior math

Angela Seyb

Weaknesses in ākonga arriving at high school with little algebraic thinking. Children often have a misunderstanding of variables. The trinity between graph, equations and tables. Big Ideas were developed that learners needed to understand. They needed to engage the students, utilising Jo Boaler etc. Focusing on Mathematical Literacy and problem-solving. DESMOS as a tool. The focus was on Level 2,3 & 4 resources.

Ka Rere te Reo

Kerianna Stirling

Having students struggling to understand the language that is being spoken in the classroom makes it very difficult to learn. Oral language is more than speaking and listening. It shapes every aspect of our lives. Created an online tool for teachers to assist students in developing their oral language.

Reflecting on 2018-2020, looking to 2021 and beyond - Dorothy Burt

2020: From Theory to Reality. Where we've seen the theory of the Manaiakalani principles become the reality for schools throughout the country.

Committed to providing the framework for what learning looks like in a future-focused framework. The memorandum of Understanding reflects the seven strands that are crucial to the foundation and roof that is secure to enable us to be safe within.

This year saw us having to leap at the challenge to this with the bot that began to attack our ākonga's blogs. As a team we reacted swiftly and strongly.

In the centre of our houses, we are able to insert our own flair. He Pātaka Matihiko: A food storehouse.

The whakatauki talks of eating and eating well, but once you've eaten you store away the leftovers for later eating. While being known as a warring people, Māori were also great planners. They had to plan for the future, planting etc.

I te Ipurangi - Cybersmart

Atamai - being sharp of mind, open-minded and deep thinking.

Learn. Create. Share. are the walls and floors.

Below are the pillars to keep our kai safe. If the roof is not secure your food will spoil and go to waste.

The knowledge within your Pātaka is up to you.

Challenge: We have ShakeOut drills, Lockdown prep... we also need to Meet Up. Access the barriers to accessing learners when they are with us. Use the time between now and the end of the year to ensure our kids are ready in case it happens again. Practising the protocols and procedures.

DFI 2021.

there will be one face-to-face and three online DFI's. It is recognising that it's not just abut not being digitally savvy, some people aren't suited to showing up...

Summer Learning Journey

It's being extended to 6 weeks of learning. It's being collaboratively designed by our teachers. Volunteers are writing 2 activities each.

Virtual Cluster

A new initiative for individual schools who don't have the consensus of their wider cluster. Schools interested can apply to join this virtual cluster with the support of the Manaiakalani Network. Contact Jenny Oxley.

Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers

Develop a digital Tool for enhancing engagement

Sonali Carter

Impacts on self-regulation with deficits from a wide range of aspects. Developing key social skills to enhance their presence in the classroom. Developing engage activities and games to teach skills to priority learners. These showed a clear development in students using full sentence answers rather than two-word combinations. Consideration was given to student experiences in lockdown, with thoughts about who was caring for them while parents may be working and how this may have impacted. (Does this link with Theraplay?)

Partnering with Whanau to implement the school-based engage programme at home.

Jo Gormly

Many students have experiences at home which impact their ability to engage at school. Regulation Difficulties etc. Could teaching self-regulation skills be the tool for raising student achievement? Research shows play is about how a child learns about themselves and their environment. Is this a true reflection of our Pasifika community beliefs? The heritage languages of the students are utilised.

The Challenge/Provocation

In our classes, we have learners with multiple learning needs and many who need the foundations. The challenge is to build them alongside more sophisticated comprehension skills as well. There is still a need for a relentless focus for accelerating reading. The pattern for reading has stayed the same. If we don't change our teaching and the classroom experiences then we won't change the pattern. REading like a writer and writing like a reader.

We need to seriously consider what we do about Mathematics.

We need to be thinking about our windows and mirrors. How are we going to engage our readers in reading if they are not seeing themselves reflected in the reading at a proportional level. We need to look at the representation of texts and activities for Pasifika students and our diverse learners to engage them in literature development.

We need to pay particular attention to the floor and ceiling. We need to raise the ceiling so that all of those cognitive aspects are challenging our learners. If we shift the task then the learners will meet them. It can't just happen in one house or in one room. We need to put the responsibility on all individual teachers and bring everybody together so that every individual isn't having to locate the resources to reflect their class. They can be pooled and collated. As leaders, our challenge is to create opportunities to create these resources and environments. It's about Reading development and sophisticated literacy.

Take Away Pondering:

How can we capture the engagement of tasks such as Sumdog and prodigy, but use it to specifically target acceleration in developing Mathematical knowledge in our learners?

Student Design for Learning

What are DLOs?

Digital entity or content object using ‘different media modalities (and often interactivity) to represent data, information, reality, concepts and ideas…designed to afford educational reuse. - Churchill, 2007, p.484

 

Student Design for Learning (SDL)

The potential for enhancing learning, by the process and the product. How potentially can we think of all of those principals (MAPIC) in designing learning for students that enhances the potential for learning through the DLO.

Student Multi-Modal Design for learning

Authentic purpose / Audience.

Creating a Prescribed Checklist to include in the task:

The items in the checklist are design features.

The features will help others learn from the video.

We control the constrains of the task by designing what we include or don't include. e.g. adding in key vocabulary that you want them to include in the checklist.

The Five Modes

A mode, quite simply, is a means of communicating. According to the New London Group, there are five modes of communication: visual, linguistic, spatial, aural, and gestural.

UM Letlad

New Tools:

(Online voice recorder)

So What?

• How much do we utilise the blog comments of peers in their own class for feedback etc?
• Nudge tasks and expectations. We need to give students opportunities to create media for sharing.
• Moving from Slides to Screencastify. 
  
  
  
• Getting students to use their voice to explain their thinking in their own words.
• Students nudging up their poetry posts... how can they include audio? 
• Reading aloud and using their own voice etc - 
• ScreenCastify, highlighting the poetic devices.
• GO back and look at "Interactions" slides.

Murray Gadd observation

8 steps to get a good a good writing lesson

1. Helping the kids to develop a topic (What are we gonna write about)
2. Develop the content. (I know what I'm gonna write about... possible content.)
3. Establish a task... (Am I going to use the content to persuade/inform)
4. Develop some success criteria (What am i going to have to good at to do this well?)
5. Demonstrate How to get ready/prepare/plan etc
6. Differentiate - who can have a go at doing this by themselves? WHo needs guidance/modelling etc
7. Teacher Roving (Who do I need to got to and what conversations do i need to have a long the way.
8. Sharing/celebrating

Instead of starting with the topic, establish the emphasis on content rather than the purpose of the lesson.

Emphasis on Topic for writing rather than the tool for writing.

Lock all that in your head, cos we're gonna use all of this.

Restorative Practice

I'm pretty certain that, even if you've been dwelling under a rock for the past few years, if you've been anywhere near an education setting, then you will have heard about Restorative Practices.

We all like to think that we are being fair and just when dealing with situations and individual students... That we've built these great relationships with learners and whānau alike... But if we are honest, there is always that one individual who doesn't fit the mould with what works for all the others. The one that we don't have the same relationship with.

I've been delving into restorative practices with a specific lens of late. I'm finding a specific individual tricky. They have come to us with a history of "stuff", some known... a lot unknown. I've been discussing their situation with our RTLB, who has pointed me in the direction of all of this.

Restorative Practice is a relational approach to school life grounded in beliefs about equality, dignity, mana and the potential of all people.

If I'm brutally honest, I'm not treating this individual with as much mana and respect as I should. I've been becoming frustrated at their lack of empathy for others... yet where has my empathy for her been?

A useful way of looking at how the restorative approach works within a school community is the Social Discipline Window (Figure 1). This model’s four quadrants identify four sets of attitudes and responses to behaviour.

The top left quadrant is high on structure and expectations but low on support and care. This results in a punitive and authoritarian approach in which actions are done to others.

The bottom right quadrant is high on support and care but low on structure and expectations, resulting in approaches that appear permissive and rescuing and that do things for others.

The bottom left quadrant is low on both expectations and care. It is inherently neglectful and does not do much at all.

The top right quadrant is high on both structure and support. This approach most often results in respectful problem solving, collaboration, ownership of issues, and restoration with others.

What next?

I need to try Restorative Circles. (Book 3)

Restorative Circles support all staff and students to develop and manage relationships and create opportunities for effective teaching and learning time. They are a semi-formal practice requiring some preparation. They provide teachers with a range of processes to build relationships with and between all people in a school community, maintain those relationships, and enhance positive communication.

Restorative Conferencing is a process that provides schools with ways to repair harm and restore relationships. It uses the stories of those involved in an incident and the people close to it (e.g. students, staff and whanau) to:

• explore what has happened and who has been affected
• hold those who have caused harm accountable for their actions
• provide support to those who have been harmed, and others involved.

Why is this important?

Schools have a critical role in forming future citizens, and when schools teach and model restorative ways of handling conflict and wrongdoing, they contribute significantly to the creation of a more peaceful, humane and democratic society

Redefining Learning for a Rāhui

Today was a day like no other in my teaching career.  I have huddled under a desk (Yes I had one then!) while my classroom was upended with an Earthquake. - It was only when allowed back near it, I realised the levels of damage as scanning the room for anything other than learners wasn't a priority at that moment in time.

Today Term two began with me rolling out of bed, past the jug to throw a coffee together and then hitting the couch. I set myself up with my laptop on the ottoman in front, a diffuser nearby sending a calming aroma throughout the house.

There was a slight panic as I attempted to email a link to parents through Hero, which we have literally just migrated to from Linc Ed. The migration has had a few glitches, included not transferring some emails across! As always when using a new tool, it's a little different from what you're used to. I couldn't find how to send it to just my class. A mayday call to my team had that sorted and I was away.

I waited...

I spent a little time commenting on the few blog posts that had been put up on individual blogs over the last week or so. Paperwork was caught up on. And I waited...

My big lesson for the day came with a screencastify to help one of my class members siblings get access to his blog. He should have had it bookmarked prior to the rāhui, however, somehow slipped through the cracks. After sending instructions via email... then messaging him step by step... I took a few moments to make a screencastify. This is were my lesson came in. You may have noted when I described the start of my day that at no point did I mention having a shower or getting dressed. I spent the day in my dressing gown with my hair looking like it hasn't been done in days (Maybe it hasn't...?)

In the interest of documenting this momentous occasion, I'll post it here... in a bid to remind me never to repeat this again!

My best friend today... something I have come to rely on quite a lot, is my daughters A4 school whiteboard. I'm using this for all sorts of things, from draft timetabling to scriptwriting and note-taking. I need this in my life right now!

My high for today was watching my daughter participating in the Les Mills Kids exercises on the Learning Channel (Sky Channel 502) today. It was great and she was right into it.

Her 11-year-old brother, on the other hand: "I'm having no part in that!"

To prepare for this Learning time we are posting a video each morning and outlining tasks for that day. Here's yesterday's video:

Tomorrow, I want to set a few challenges to grasp how much engagement I actually have. I want kids to email or message me. I've also scheduled a Google Meet to touch base with them. It'll be interesting to see how many touch base.