Star of the day

in He Puna Aranga we have a star of the day. This goes to someone in the class who has worked well, followed instructions, helped others and worked hard.
Last week Peggy and Heidi received this. Today Aaliyah became our star of the day.

Aaliyah 

Peggy 

Merit Certificate Awards

Week 32 Reflection

Mind Lab Reflection

Over the past 32 weeks I have not only reflected on my own teaching practice, but also myself as a leader.  I have not done any study since completing my teaching degree  several years ago. I have found aspects of this course challenging. It was not quite what I had expected and working full time made it even more challenging. I was the only one from the school I work in completing this course.  I couldn't bounce  around ideas or what what we had been learning.  I did, however, have opportunities to discuss different ideas with people who I was doing this course with. 

Throughout this course, I have confirmed a lot of my owning thinking and practice. As I work in a digital school, a lot of the first half of the course made me reflect on what we as a school are already doing and how advance, we are compared to other schools in my area. 

Criteria 7:
Fully registered teachers promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment.

• Key indicators:
• Demonstrate effective management of the learning setting which incorporates successful strategies to engage and motivate ākonga/learners.
• Foster trust, respect, and cooperation with and among ākonga/learners 

Within my class students have been working collaboratively with others to complete different tasks for their learning.  We have used skype, Edmodo,  and further developed their blogs where they can share their learning with a wider audience. I have looked at more hands on practical tasks such stop motion and green screening. A lot of the tools we were shown were ones that I have been using or have previously used. I have integrated the use of 3d printer as well as coding into aspects of my class program. With the use of a more hands - on approach has motivated the students I teach. 

Criteria 5:
Fully registered teachers show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning.
Key indicators:

• Actively contribute to the professional learning community.
• Undertake areas of responsibility effectively.

Throughout this course, I gained a better understanding of myself as a leader. I lead e-learning within the school I work at and at times this can be challenging. We run e-learning workshops each Wednesday after school to help develop our teachers and to give them ideas to use with their students. As a leader, you need to know the needs of others and be supportive, as stated  on the educational leaders website 'Leadership is now about empowering, transforming, and working together'. 

Parts of this course were of real interest to me. It has made me  reflect on my own teaching practice, as well as my  leadership skills and what I would like do in the future.   

Week 31 interdisciplinary connections

Week 31 interdisciplinary connections

Two of the potential connections from your map as your near future goal(s)
1: Google certified teacher: This has been a goal of mine for some time. As a leader of digital technologies (e-learning) within the school I work, I believe it is important to continually up skill myself in this area. We are also a GAFE school so another reason to do this. Several of us had started our level 1 but all decided that we would do the exam together. We were waiting for one other staff member to complete the modules. At this stage, we have not discussed doing this. After going to the GAFE summit and a workshop on the Google certified training I am determined to complete this in my own time. For myself as a leader in this area and as I would like to become a facilitator in this field I think it is important to extend my own learning and knowledge.

2: As my role within the school as SENCO I need to further develop my understanding and learning in this area. Each week I have meetings with our school health nurse, SWISS, and RTLB. I have learnt what it takes to lead meetings with outside agencies as well as questioning them for support for our students.

Benefits and challenges of working in a more interdisciplinary environment.

Like everything, there are benefits and challenges to all involved. Within an interdisciplinary environment, teachers, as well as students can learn from each others. As an interdisciplinary is about gaining knowledge in more than one way. This idea is not new, it is a way of integrated curriculum. As 'interdisciplinary, integrated, and integrative approaches are the conscious effort to provide students with more meaningful learning experiences'. Through these experiences, students are learning in a more meaningful context about the word around them, developing critical thinking skills, working collaboratively together. "The theory behind this approach is that authentic and significant learning occurs as new experiences are integrated into our scheme of meanings in such a way that those meanings are expanded and extended" (Beane, 1992, p. 49).  Interdisciplinary learning is a valuable way in which students can also develop 21st -century skills by collaborating, thinking critically, communicating as well as being creative in how they may present their own learning. Through this type of learning, students are able to use the skills they learn in one area into another. “With interdisciplinary instruction, students can become more involved in their learning and teachers can work toward eliminating discipline lines. Students can become independent, confident individuals who ‘learn how to learn’ and develop lifelong learning skills” (Duerr, 2008, p.177) as Jones, Casey (2009) states in interdisciplinary Approach - Advantages, Disadvantages, and the Future Benefits of Interdisciplinary Studies,

Like everything, there are the disadvantages. With an interdisciplinary environment, teachers need to be flexible in the way in which they deliver the curriculum. We all have strengths in different areas and bring a different understanding of content. This can, therefore, have an effect on students' learning. If students have no prior knowledge or very little on a particular topic/ skills this can also affect their learning.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/integrated-curriculum-definition-benefits-examples.html

References:
Jones, Casey (2009) "Interdisciplinary Approach - Advantages, Disadvantages, and the Future Benefits of Interdisciplinary Studies," ESSAI: Vol. 7, Article 26. Available at: http://dc.cod.edu/essai/vol7/iss1/26

Class notes:

One of the most important skills you will need to learn is to become “self-aware” as a teaching professional and to understand the context of your own discipline: its strengths and its limitations. When you can clearly define our actions as a teaching practitioner and the context of your practice you will able to move across disciplines to other areas of practice where you can make informed contributions to the practice of your own current and future practice along with emerging practice disciplines.

Interdisciplinary practice allows individuals who are based in their practice discipline(s) to focus on collaboration and participate in finding solutions to the increasingly complex problems occurring in the world today. When working in an interdisciplinary manner we need to draw on multiple perspectives, practices, epistemologies and methodologies to identify how these can be utilized to solve real world problems.

Week 30 - APC - Professional Online Social Networks

Week 30 - APC - Professional Online Social Networks

Using social online networks in teaching and/or professional development

What are some key features of social media that are beneficial for teaching and learning? Why?

There are many different forms of social media. Facebook, twitter, pinterest, snapchat, twitter, instagram, VLN and  blogger just to name a few. In some ways they are similar but also are very different.

Through social media, we can collaborate easily with others in our learning as well as projects. I have used social media for several years and have made connects with other teachers and classrooms. Through these interactions we have completed different online projects with our classes. These opportunities open new doors and learning for all. Most of the students we teach today have the access to digital technologies outside of the class, whether it is a parent's cell phone, tablet or computer. As educators, we need to teach children how to use social media in a positive way and to show them how it can help them and their learning. Social media can be an effective way for students to have a voice and extend their own learning. According to Dr. Richard J. Light (Harvard School of Education) that people learn most effectively when they interact with other learners. The Light’s report added that social media, as a technology that is deemed “cool,” can attract younger learners. Social media platforms enable many engaging classroom activities, including “communities of practice” where learners can interact and share ideas.

As Stephen Todd (Social Media in 21st Century Learning February 2015) writes on his blog 'It's no secret that today that the best way for students to learn is "to design engaging, meaningful, and authentic work and technology-enhanced learning experiences"and bring them into the classroom.  The most effective way of doing this is through the incorporation of social media-based activities'.

Class blog
Class Twitter

Two social media platforms that I personal use and use with my class.
Blogger is a great tool not only for students, but also teachers. For students it offers a platform where they can share their learning with a wider audience and get feedback not only from their peers but also their parents and other teachers and adults. Therefore, it gives them an authentic audience. Teachers can use blogger to document their own learning and to learn from others. It also gives us an audience for our own learning. You can also follow different blogs that you like and find useful. By following different blogs you can also continue to learn from these people,  but also voice your thoughts to them. The students that I teach all have their own blog and we also have a class  blog where we share what we have been doing.

Twitter is a way in which we can follow other teachers and educational groups. I have found as a teacher, I have gained more ideas and knowledge by following different groups. I have also had the opportunity to meet some of the people that I had followed on twitter. Twitter is also a powerful classroom tool. It is a way in which students can quickly share their own learning with others. They can also join in with online conversation with other students such as kidsedchatnz where different questions are posed and students answer them. 

How do/would you use social media to enhance your professional development? Why?

‘’Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all’’– Pericles 

Using social media can have many benefits as a teacher:

1: It is an easy way to find relevant and up to date information. 

2: you can join in with conversations with a variety of people across different countries.

3: It is free PD as most social media sites have no charge. 

Over the past few years I have participated in different forms of social media as a way to further my own knowledge as well as to gain ideas and advice from others. As Lexie Hoskins (2015) said in her article, 'Why should teachers use social media for professional development?''Educators from around the world can communicate directly and instantly with each other. They can discuss curriculum planning, different teaching strategies or seek support from their peers like never before'. 

I joined several different groups on VLN several years ago and until recently actively joined in with different discussions. Through this group you receive emails when there has been updated. I still read these.

Like many New Zealand teachers I joined the primary teacher's facebook page. This page has been a great way to share resources as well as ask for advice.

I follow several people/ groups on Twitter and find this one of the most beneficial ways of learning. Not only do people share what they are doing, but also links to interesting readings as well as ideas that you can use within your class. I also like the opportunities in which you can join in with different conversations and share your own learning with others. 

I also have a feedly page where I can follow different blogs and websites. This is another way in which I can develop myself as a teacher. Through some of the blogs / sites that I follow I have gained new knowledge of what is happening in the wider worlds, as well as ideas I can share/ teach the students in my class. I have also found different online course that can be done and many are free. This is just another way that you can up skill yourself as a teacher. 

I use social media as a means to up skill myself as I know I can find new ideas, whether it is related to e-learning/ digital technologies (Which is a passion of mine), or literacy, maths etc. I can also find the latest research and ideas which I use to further enhance my knowledge and understanding. Another reason to use social media as a means to further develop your own learning as that often schools PD is based around a whole school development and not personalized to your own learning. Therefore, as a professional we should be further up skilling ourselves. Through the use of social media, we are gaining up to date free, relevant information that is generally practical and of interests to our needs.  'Professional learning for educators is a lifelong endeavor, sustained through one’s career and evolving largely as a result of practice-based experiences'; Karen Melhuish; 2013

References:
Stephen Todd (Social Media in 21st Century Learning February 2015) http://stephentod.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/social-media-in-21st-century-learning.html  
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/study-suggests-social-media-has-place-in-classrooms.shtml 
Karen Melhuish; 2013 Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning  http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Class notes:

A study investigating social media use in teaching (Silius et al., 2010) showed that student motivation for social media can enhance study. While this study was conducted with university students, its implications can be applied to other contexts as learners of any age have substantial access to social media networks.

Week 29 Influence of Laws and Ethics on professional practice

Week 29 Influence of Laws and Ethics

The Education Council Code of Ethics for Certficated Teachers 

The professional interactions of teachers are governed by four fundamental principles:

• Autonomy to treat people with rights that are to be honoured and defended
• Justice to share power and prevent the abuse of power
• Responsible care to do good and minimise harm to others
• Truth to be honest with others and self.

The NZ teachers council has a site about teachers and social media

'Social media can be an effective tool for engaging with learners and communicating with parents, whānau and communities. Teachers who model good social media use will grow learners who apply positive, respectful values in their interactions on social media platforms.'

As teachers we use social media in our personal lives as will as within a school context. We need to watch what we put on and what we share with our students. 

• Explain the dilemma and discuss either: an actual situation that you have knowledge of, and how it was resolved.

I work in a school that is fully digital. We have rules and expectations in place for our students when using the internet. The students also sign an internet agreement and know the consequences for breaking the rules.

At school I have a  year 5/6 girls only class. A while a go I had a parent come to me to inform me that another child had been sending mean messages through animal jam, which is an online game. This is not a program that we have approved  during school time and this incident occurred out of school hours. I informed the parent that I would go  over how we behave on the internet and what had happened was not appropriate. All had been good for sometime. then a couple of weeks ago at night an email popped up from one of my students saying 'mean'. I opened the email to find a google doc which had screen shots of emails that had been sent to this child. As we have the haarapa teacher dashboard I could open this up and see if the child had been doing this. I opened her emails and saw the sent emails. I contacted the child's parents to arrange a meeting the following day. At this meeting I first talked to them about what had happened and showed them the emails. We also looked at the child's history and could see she had been on the emails during this time. The parents did confirm she was on her computer at this time but thought she was on minecraft. When we asked the child about it she said she had not sent any emails to another child and would not send anything so mean to another child. We showed her the emails that were sent from her email and her history. She still said it was not her. As a consequence at school she had a reflection and also had to write an apology letter to the other child. At home her parents have stopped her from using her computer at home and it has to stay at school. If students do this during school time or are on sites that we have not approved we take their computers off them for a certain length of time. We did not this time as this incident had happened out of school hours. I also contacted the other child's parents to inform them of what we had happened and what we had done. 

In class we once again went over our school internet guidelines and discussed about keeping safe on the internet. 

Even though these incidents happened out side of school hours they still happened using a school account. I feel we dealt with the incident well

Class notes

Ethics are learned behaviours shaped by a range of societal influences such as school, work, community, family, church, the arts, culture and sports. Our individual interpretation of ethics helps shape our ideas about justice, morality and virtue.

Ethics are not a single topic you can study in isolation but are a foundation upon which you live and practice. Everything you do, every decision you make, has ethics at its core, driving or motivating your actions and decisions. 

Week 28: Indigenous knowledge & Cultural responsiveness

Indigenous knowledge & Cultural responsiveness
My views on indigenous knowledge and cultural responsive pedagogy.

Being culturally responsive is acknowledging others cultures , religions and beliefs. Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994).

According to Ladson-Billings, G. (1994), some characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are:

1. Positive perspectives on parents and families
2. Communication of high expectations
3. Learning within the context of culture
4. Student-centered instruction
5. Culturally mediated instruction
6. Reshaping the curriculum
7. Teacher as facilitator

Definition of culturally responsive according to wikipeida; Culturally relevant or responsive teaching is a pedagogy grounded in teachers' displaying cultural competence: skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. They enable each student to relate course content to his or her cultural context.

School vision, mission, and core values

Within the school I work, this year we employed a teacher to develop a maori curriculum for our school. One of the purposes of this was to develop 'Te Reo Maori across the school as well as our Maori students and Whanu feeling part of our school community. By developing and acknowledging our maori students though their own cultural we are hoping to lift their achievement. Through this development we are  acknowledge the diversity of our communities cultural background and unique position. As a school we want to know who our Māori learners are in the wider context of school and home, in order to develop holistic, authentic and inclusive learning goals for all our learners. We are working towards building stronger relationships with our Maori community. We have been developing programs to support Te Reo and our maori students. A focus this year is also developing the language across our staff to become confident uses of Te Reo Maori. According to Ka Hikitia.

'When the vision is realised, all Māori students will:

•  have their identity, language and culture valued and included in  teaching and  learning in ways that support them to engage and achieve success
•  know their potential and feel  supported to set goals and take action to enjoy success have experienced teaching and  learning that is relevant, engaging, rewarding and positive 
• have gained the skills, knowledge  and qualifications they need to achieve success in Te Reo Māori, New Zealand and the wider world' 

As a school we are working together to build our own understanding and knowledge around our Maori learners and looking at how we can support them t=in meaning ways to achieve their own goals. 

This year we have change d our class names and they have been given a Maori name. We were also shared what each of the names meant. These were also shared with the students.

E.G. He Puna Kawenga - Room 14 Audio

“Kawenga” describes the embedded practices, knowledge and skills from one’s learning journey which they take with them in preparation of greater things.

He Puna Tutuki - Room 15 Audio

“Tutuki” describes the completion of something, accomplishment of something and the achievements made or milestones reached.

Area to work on:

As a school we have come a long way this year in developing Cultural responsiveness within our school, but we still have a long one to go. One of the areas I believe that still needs  development would be school wide activities. Even though we do have a few such as  school wide assembly each week and once a term house meetings. We also have a school wide cross country.  Some classes work together (buddy classes) and this is a good way to build relationships between teachers and different students as well as student & student relationships. This year the school has reset up a parents group and they have just organised a puanga celebrations for the school community. 

We have only started this journey this year. Our charter reflects the vision and ideas the school has. At times things can be difficult to implement due to changes of staff and after reflection of what is working and what needs improving.

References:

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishing Co.

Class notes

Culture is not merely a question of ethnicity, but also beliefs, spirituality, age, gender, and sexual orientation.(Shaw, White & Deed, 2013, p. 6-7). As we operate in the society, we interpret the world and interact with others through our cultural lens. More often that it should be, we make the assumptions towards those who we consider are different from our own cultural background.  

Aotearoa New Zealand Today

Today Aotearoa New Zealand is often viewed as a Pasifikanation, and is increasingly culturally diverse. Those of European origin only make up 67 percent of the population. Maori comprise 14.6 percent with the remainder being made up largely of Pasifika nations (6.9 percent), Asians (9.2 percent) and various others (1.7 percent) (Findsen, 2012). The fact that this is now a multicultural society places Māori, as Tāngata Whenua (people of the land) as possibly in an even more marginalised position.

Although it was hard fought, and not fully recognised until the 1970s, Aotearoa New Zealand is now a bicultural nation within which resides a multicultural society.

Culturally responsive teaching practice

Culture is not exclusive to race and/or ethnicity. It also refers the unique features of a community; its demographic makeup, including location, age, gender, language/s spoken, local history, industry and economics.