Digital Fluency Intensive 2021

We're underway with the first online DFI cohort for 2021 and what a fantastic group of teachers, principals and deputy principals we have on board.  Sixty-eight educators from around the country will be meeting each Wednesday for the next 8 weeks to learn about the Manaiakalani pedagogy; Learn, Create, Share.  We'll also cover all the apps from the Google Education Suite supported by the pedagogy for why, how and when to use them.    I'd like to wish everyone in our cohort a very warm welcome, especially to the wonderful group in my digital bubble.  I'm looking forward to working alongside you over the coming weeks.  

The origins of the Manaiakalani programme started back in 2006 at Point England School.  Thirteen more schools in East Tamaki joined Point England School and formed the Manaiakalani cluster.  The success of this first cluster spearheaded the development of the Manaiakalani Outreach and five more clusters.  In 2021, the Manaiakalani programme is delivered in11 clusters worldwide, including one virtual cluster.  Over 100 schools are represented in the 11 clusters, including 23,000 learners in primary and secondary schools.  It's an exciting time to be involved.  

Manaiakalanai Wananga October 2020

The annual Manaiakalani Wananga is always rich with inspiring speakers.   I come away feeling motivated and full of ideas to try and implement.  One of the highlights was hearing from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre's Associate Director, Dr Aaron Wilson's.  His presentation unpacked the 2020 data from across all Manaiakalani schools nationwide and represented trends from online observation data.  

Aaron prefaced his presentation by explaining that understanding the online observation data begins with identifying student learning patterns.  Analysing these patterns helps identify strengths in teacher's practice and raises some important questions, such as retooling teaching practice, to make it more effective for students' learning.   Significant gains have been occurring with students writing, showing that after three years at Manaiakalani schools, students are making twice the expected progress in one year.   Writing achievement is showing promising results. 

However, a recurring theme within the recent data showed an over-representation of lower achievement and lower progress rates where reading is concerned.    

Aaron explained that students need to develop strong foundational reading skills in the early years of school.  Furthermore, teachers need to have the diagnostic ability to recognise students who need extra support.  They also need to know what steps to take to ensure students get the guidance they need.  

The overall reading pattern showed the trend in many schools that students can get to Year 4 with basic literacy but have irregular patterns for the preceding years.  The key goal is to disrupt this pattern by implementing high leverage practices and increasing students' reading mileage.  Aaron emphasised how teachers' planning is imperative to lift students reading using high leverage practices. 

The Shanahan & Shanahan model (see below), places basic literacy, i.e. letter recognition and phonetic sounding, as a necessary skill.  We still have some work to do to help students achieve intermediate literacy. 

Mirror texts (where students can see themselves in a text) encourages students to connect with what they are reading, making it relatable and purposeful.  

Window text, on the other hand, gives students a view into other worlds and cultures.  Window texts provide opportunities for students to recognise ethnic diversity and empathy.  The challenge for teachers is to incorporate both mirror and window texts.  Ideas to consider are;

• What opportunities are we offering students to read about non-European and non-western worlds?   
• Are our texts representative of the cultures within our class, and are we also using window texts to expose students to different cultures?   
• How can we help our students see themselves in what they're reading?  
• Plan to use texts that open students' minds to the wider world to help engage students in literacy and literacy development.  

Metacognition challenge: 

How are we developing and planning for metacognitive challenges across a range of abilities?  What support and scaffolding do we have in place?  Are these resources easily accessible from the class site? Reading in a specific subject area is a specialised skill at high school and must be taught consistently.  Teachers can help students understand by discussing specific texts with students and conversing about a text's structure.  This approach helps students to interpret the key messages or big idea.  Another teaching strategy involves having students unpack topic-specific text and to aggregate vocab pertinent to the genre.  

Class site design to aiding reading:

Aaron advocated for teachers to plan for and to include teaching strategies on their class site for students to refer to.  It would benefit students and be a resource for parents to engage with their child's learning. 

Critical Literacy:

How then might we develop students critical literacy skills?  Aaron advised critical literacy is not something that can happen spontaneously in the classroom; it needs to be deliberately planned.  Additionally, purposeful, engaging activities should be part of a teacher's planning.  These resources should be scaffolded for the best student outcomes. Teachers also need to be mindful that they are not putting a ceiling on students learning and limiting their ability.  Questions for teachers to consider are;

• Are we providing opportunities for students to evaluate multiple texts and then discuss them?
• Have we factored in planned activities for group discussion?
• Are we giving students a choice of text?
• What options and choices are we giving students to Create and show their learning?
• Have we provided a range of texts in terms of length and complexity? 

Professional development:

There is a need for systematic support to help teachers design and develop reading resources.  The recent classroom observations showed a shift in teaching practices towards multiple texts, so there is progress across our clusters.   The wero or challenge is to think about how we can work collaboratively and collectively to disrupt and improve reading outcomes.  

Our overarching goal could be for students to be reading like a writer and writing like a reader.

T-shaped literacy in high schools

In our Secondary Connect, we were very lucky to have Associate Professor Aaron Wilson with us from The University of Auckland talk about how we can develop T-Shaped literacy across our secondary school subjects.   Here are some of the key takeaways for me.   

It's important that students are able to understand the purpose of texts and importantly how authors have framed texts.  Encouraging students to determine who an authors' intended audience might be, helps readers connect with the purpose of specific.  

Students need to understand the purpose of reading specific texts,  not only for their own understanding but also to elucidate an author's perspective.   Knowing the purpose of a text is very closely linked to motivation and necessary for high-level thinking

The kinds of questions we could be prompting students with include 

• What's the viewpoint of the writer?
• What ideas is the author trying to convey?

Partnership leaves North schools well prepared

Our recent experience of Covid19 and the urgent shift to online learning highlighted the need for teachers to be digitally fluent.   Bay of Islands College teachers can feel proud of the fact they were prepared and ready to cope with this change.  Over the past three years, the school has embraced the challenge to move from an analogue traditional classroom to a digital environment. 
Their efforts were highlighted in the Northland Age this week.  

The four Northland primary schools and one secondary school that make up the Kaikohekohe Education Network had no idea how fortuitous their six-year partnership with the Manaiakalani Education Trust was going to be until the Covid19 lockdown entered their lives.   Read the full article here...

Get creative with google slides and animation

Google animations are a great way to engage students with their learning and will easily give them another way to show their understanding.  Here are some ideas where you could include animations in your lessons;

• To show a cycle or process
• Retell a story 
• Re-enact a historical event
• Demonstrate a scientific concept or experiment
• Explain how to solve a math problem
• Show their understanding of Geometry 
• Define a vocabulary term 
• Create a visual journey of a trip
• Create a timeline

There's always a bit of fun to be had when making animations.  Using google slides, duplicate the first slide, move the objects a little and repeat this process until you have at least 10 - 15 slides.  The car animation below has 35 slides.  The more slides you have the more you can adjust your timing and your animation will run smoothly.  The final trick is publishing the slides to the web.  Choose the embed code if you want to post your animation on your blog, select small so it will fit nicely in your blog post and adjust the timing of your animation to make it run faster.

Covid19 and our wellbeing

I thoroughly enjoyed the Ministry of Education's recent webinar on Wellbeing with
Chief Education Scientific Advisor Stuart McNaughton, Associate Professor Melinda Webber, Teachers Raiha Johnson (Waverley School), Jason Swann (Otahuhu Primary), and Maya Edmunds the Head Girl at Onehunga High School.

I felt the overall wellbeing themes from the panel today were about re-establishing connections, building on everyone's' learned experiences from Covid19,  being patient and kind to one another.

The changes that occurred during the Covid19 Lockdown have significantly impacted all of our lives in varying ways.  Consequently, work and school life will be different as we move back into Level 2 for teachers, students, support staff and the wider community.  Forgive the cliché ‘it won't be business as usual’ but we're not going back to what we had before.
I see this as a prime opportunity for schools to re-evaluate how they do things, what's working, what we should keep and what we should change.

First and foremost when schools reopen on Monday, it will be important to focus on rebuilding connections with teachers, students and the supportive wider community of our schools.  We'll need to be patient and focused on the positive. We also need to be offering reassurance to our students and above all to empathise, by being kind with each other.  Stuart McNaughton advised, routines will be really important for those returning to school and will give students a sense of normality and stability which will help them reintegrate back into school life.  Being adaptable, agile and responsive to students’ needs will be key to developing a connected and supportive culture. 

McNaughton also pointed out that some students will have experienced significant stress during the lockdown period and may continue to do so as they come back to school.  Some will be impacted by the digital divide and may feel excluded from learning, particularly if they did not have access to a device or the internet.  Let's remove those assumptions that every student has been able to access their learning through technology and be prepared to catch some students up.

Spend time inviting students to share their experiences.  Helping them to find connections with one another will encourage them to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance.  What can we learn from our student's whanau and how can we make our learning more inclusive with families?  Nurturing connections with whanau and including them in future planning will help develop a strong community based on shared principles.
How can we turbo-charge technology to connect with whanau?  Visible learning through class sites, class and individual student blogs is one way parents can keep up to date with what’s happening at school.

Melinda Webber reminded us to look for what gains students have made during this time.  What key competencies would have happened at home?  Things like resilience within whanau, communication skills built with one another and the opportunity for students' to observe other people's perspectives.  How timely that the Covid19 Lockdown occurred in the lead up to Matariki.  This is often a time of reflection,  so ask students, what did they learn about their whanau during this time of social distancing?  What are they grateful for?  What are their goals for the year? Who can they work with to achieve their goals?

For those students who did participate in online classes, what was their experience of learning online like? Many of our students were engaging in an online class in Google Meet for the first time.   What new skills did they learn, what did they struggle with?  Shared experiences provide purposeful conversation starters that will hopefully encourage students to open up and feel connected. 

In the virtual classes I was involved in, I found many of the high school students were reluctant to have their camera on, some were shy to talk or share their learning via screen-sharing.  Spending time developing student's confidence for communicating in video conferencing is something we’ll have to include in our lessons. Manaiakalani's Cybsermart programme helps students develop these skills and gives them opportunities to learn about the differences between public-private sharing.

Maya Edmunds, the Head Girl of Onehunga High School spoke so well about her own experiences and encouraged teachers to show they care about their students.  Let them know you value their opinions and ask them to contribute to the design of your lessons.
It’s a really valuable time to be gathering student voices about what they enjoyed and what they found challenging to help us evaluate and make improvements.

I have enjoyed my time working from home supporting teachers within the Manaiakalani Outreach programme.  My days have been packed with Google Hangout Meets all over the country facilitating with the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive and providing professional development for my individual teachers.   I work with a dynamic team who have helped me to feel connected, valued and part of a collective that is really making a difference in people's lives. 

In terms of my own well being during this time, I've been able to develop a better life/work balance.  For me that has meant, spending more time with my husband, being able to exercise every day and take time out in the fresh air.  I've come to appreciate what I treasure most and what I can live without and I'm looking forward to seeing a positive change in education, one that is more inclusive for everyone.

Covid19 Wellbeing Guide

Python programme to guess your age

I've been playing around with Python this week and this time I've written a programme that can guess how old you will be in any given year. Click the run button and give it a go.  I love to hear how you found it or have any ideas for extending on this.