As I reflect on the opportunity to be part of the Manaiakalani Innovated Teacher program for 2021 I am in awe of my own growth as an educator. It has been at times challenging but overall an extremely rewarding experience. I have had the pleasure to work alongside innovative teachers and made new professional friendships from across New Zealand. A huge shout out to Matt for his support and listening ear throughout our journey and to Dorothy, Jenny and all the others that sit behind the MET team.
Below is an overview of some keys moments of reflection during this inquiry.
Earlier the year we entered the Resene Wall Worthy Competition which gives you a chance to paint a mural in your local community that celebrates a local hero, tells a story about your area or communicates a nature or conservation theme. Below is our entry.
Place – Turanganui-a-Kiwa
Our mural tells the story of how our place was once a kai basket for iwi that lived in this area where our school now resides. The stream was abundant with the fish kanae, hence its name Waikanae, the raupo that the pukeko lived amongst, kumara that was planted from the arrival of one of the first waka – Horouta. It shows the environment that the toroa and karearea birds soar through, with the sun (Gizzy) and the four winds that visit. These stories were shared with us from the local iwi and have influenced our school so much so, that we have incorporated the birds and winds into our school values and brand.
Yay! we were one of 10 winners from schools across New Zealand. Now the real work begins. The logistics of creating a mural the size of a building was our first stumbling block. We brainstormed many ways to upscale the design. Our Principal took on the challenge and changed the scale and drew it directly on to the sheets of Ply. Then we were off.... not quite! Covid lock down hit again! As we reassessed the mural and timeframe in order to get it completed on time we made the decision to switch it from a student project to a teacher project, which turned out to be the best thing! We have come together as a staff to create our story and leave a legacy for our students.
Exploring and levelling up is always fun and the Toolkit sessions with the Manaiakalani Team provide just that. In this toolkit lesson I learnt how to help students to tell stories, create and explore with Google Earth. I will a lot of practice to learn about the world with Voyager. I like the way you can tour the world with a collection of map-based stories. Explore topics like travel, culture, nature, and history. Start Quizzes, Find Carmen Sandiego and even view data layers. At the click of a button you can begin Exploring.
So excited to level up my skills and implement this in the classroom. How cool would it be to create your own local stories and share them with your community. Let's get practicing. If you have any tips or tricks that your have discovered please leave a comment below. :)
We came together face to face in regional clusters or from far and wide online during this wānanga. Here are a few notes I recorded from today's session.
Pat Sneddon - Amplifying the learn, create and share - Pat shares an important message especially in these challenging times and the impact of Covid 19 has had on our communities. Manaiakalani learn, create, share pedagogy has helped close the gap when in online learning and demonstrates just how important it is to maintain and build on this pedagogy in our current changing environment.
Dr Rebecca Jesson - I always enjoy listening to Dr Rebecca Jesson. She has a wealth of knowledge and I always walk away with another gem or to or a different perspective to investigate. She spoke about the importance of the purpose of the 'why' behind reading and the importance to fine and review.
Looking at the data
Interrogate evidence of strengths and needs
Identify strategies likely to work, based on research evidence
Close interrogation of implementation - so that strategies adjusted to learners’ strengths needs
Refine and review
Design with the end in mind
This model was developed this year bringing together elements of the Manaiakalani pedagogy, high leverage practises and digital affordances and has informed the observations, questionnaires and these recommendations.
T-shaped Literacy
The importance of purposeful text to go of surfaceand depth
Up until recently, the selections were not chosen to build knowledge from one lesson to another. The units of study, five or six weekly lessons, were all too frequently a hodgepodge of selections organized under a vague theme, such as serendipity or adventures. Fortunately, the most recent versions of core programs present units of instruction with unified themes and selections that build knowledge over several lessons (LaVenia, 2019).
The importance of higher order questioning and extended discussions.
Students are invited to speak and students build on from each other to extend the discussion. The importance of teaching discussion skills.
Learn, Create, Share
Reflecting on my own professional practice and exploring ways I can implement more SHARE opportunities in our team
Currently our students have the opportunity to share within reading groups, use of blog to share across the team and give feedback to others, creating to share e.g poster or direct action of their learning.
How can we increase the SHARE platform in our school community?
It's MIT time... after an informative morning the time came to share our pre-recorded MIT Pecha Kucha. It was a surreal feeling sitting with our cluster watching myself online. It all went well and I feel painted a good overall summary of my journey this year. I am proud to be amongst a great cohort of teachers during this 2021 MIT inquiry and each and everyone of our tools or websites will be valuable resources in the future. GO TEAM!
With the ongoing COVID level changes and Manaiakalani HQ in lockdown our wananga presentations have gone from live face to face in Auckland, to live online from Auckland to pre recorded and shared in our own regional clusters on the 30th November. With the ongoing support from Matt (MIT mentor and digital guru) I created my Pecha Kucha in Google Slides, downloaded as a PNG, uploaded into iMovie, recorded audio, added to iMovie and then edited! Whew!!!
I will not be giving up my day job any time soon to become a video editor.
After many takes (many, many, many takes...), splits and cuts to remove unnecessary gaps to keep it within the correct time frame and aligning each still shot with the correct video recording, the completed video is done albeit with a few obvious edits.
The biggest challenge now is to sit in the wananga and watch myself on the screen with our Tairawhiti Cluster.
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