Friday, March 27, 2020

Student post of the week: Day One - how's it going by Jahzara

Congratulations to Jahzara of Room 3!  This weeks blog post of the week for Room 3!
Please visit her blog here to read more of her writing.   Malo aupito Jahzara!

I started my morning with a light breakfast and waited for time to pass by, 8:30 hit and I read our daily timetable. I said the school karakia and sang a little hymn. Then got straight into work. I had a little look at our reading work and waited for 9:00am to pass so I could request to join the hangout with Miss Tapuke. Finally I was able to join! Miss Tapuke explained our what our tasks were for the week. She then gave us time to ask our questions. After that we all said our goodbye's and set off to work. I read our group story again so I could have a better understanding of the story. Our story was called 'Moriori: A Story Of Survival.

I answered a few of the questions and well it was time to watch PENN. But because I was at home and no one was at school, there was no PENN. So I decided to watch something off our school Archives. I then had a little snack for morning tea and had a little break then did the bingo sheet Mrs Tele'a handed us. Later on I did some of my maths work. Had a flick through the presentation and answered a few of the questions. 12:20pm came around and it was time to call Mrs Stone about our maths work.

She explained our tasks just like Miss Tapuke did! We did a small workshop with each other, answering a few of the questions together and showing each other strategies of solving them. The call with Mrs stone and room 11 maths class was a bit Tragic. It was really noisy! But it was still a lot of fun :) Mrs stone then removed us from the call and again, we did our work.

It was then lunch time! I had a pie! It was amazing :) I had a little play outside on our trampoline and also played around with my younger sister Eva. 2:00 hit and it was the end of my lunch break :) It was time to do some home class learning. Usually we do FIOP (finish it off properly), Blog commenting or our inquiry work which is Te Whare Tapa Wha. So I decided to do FIOP. I eventually got to finish some work off and finally it was 3:00pm which means school was officially over!

I had an amazing day, I'm still not used to learning at home but I'll have to get used to it eventually.

Stay safe everybody and hope you had an amazing day! God bless you all xox

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Day 1: Distance Learning

Talofa lava to our teachers!    We farewelled our children yesterday afternoon hastily due to the late but important announcement that we were moving very quickly into level 3 then 4 mode to stop Covid-19 from spreading.

During our final korero, I shared with the children that they were heading home no for a normal holiday but rather to go home AND actually STAY in their homes.  The idea of hanging out with neighbours...picking up a mate to go bike riding, hang at the beach, for a feed of fish'n chips etc was not going to happen.  The Prime Minister has instructed us 4 weeks of isolation in our whare's!

We had prepared our children with a few changes made to our team learning site which followed the Kawa of care for the learner from Manaiakalani of 'Limiting the Links'.   So all connections for students were from our front page to their ONE page that hosted daily/weekly learning.

I'm stoked to share here that while some children did not attend the days we shared this new set up - they got online still - Day 1 of distance learning and got to the 2 hangouts - meets we set up across our team of 6 classes.

I must say seeing them pop up to join meet and then hearing student voices across the block of classes was a choice moment!   So good!   A style of learning children are accustomed to BUT this time no teacher body with to them - instead live on screen woo hoo!
Here's a screen capture of one google meet we - for maths.   Had 8 at this very moment on live.  Our team focus for these early days to simply connect with our learners, check in that they're doing ok, chat about how they were coping with the change AND then a bit of maths and literacy.  I know it'll shift into more academic content soon but priority right now is support our children with this sudden shift in life.  I'm pretty proud of our children, whanau and teachers right now!

DFI - cohort 1 of Auckland, I got to put into practice our learning around google meets, even turned the captions on AND fortunately had Dorothy Burt walk through to give me 1-1 guidance on some things I needed at that very moment!   Yes - bit mā...things Dorothy and Gerard had already told us lol - hand on face emoji right here eek!

Hows that??  3 weeks of DFI then immediately into distance learning putting into practice what we've just learned - phewww!

Looking forward to connecting with my learners today.  9am with our literacy groups then 12.30pm with our maths groups.