Thinking back on 2021....

As the 2022 school year approaches, we are very hopeful for the year ahead that it might be more like the "normal" we were used to before the pandemic began. 2021 left many "what if's" and "could have been's" in our teaching practice here in NZ mostly because of the number of days we spent in "Lockdown" due to the Covid pandemic. Thankfully, our team came together and rocked an amazing Distance Learning programme. We had a consistent group of students participating in our daily Google Meets (nearly 2/3 of the team) and online learning. 

We decided to separate our team of year 3/4 students into wider learning groups to help with the planning while at home and direct instruction that we offered to each subject area group during the week. Students were able to have a 30 minute session each day focusing on one subject area directed at their level of learning. We strongly believe that this is what helped our students maintain their excitement and enthusiasm for particiapting in our distance learning programe. 

Part of "fun" approach, was tapping into the wealth of expertise at our school and brining along four of our "Specials" teachers at school. Students were given the option to join one of four offered breakout sessions each Thursday instead of a subject area Google Meet. They had so much fun learning how to code, creating funky things with our Makerspace teacher, getting extra reading support and getting their groove on with our Sports Coordinator in her Jump Jam/Just Dance sessions. 

Each Friday, students met with their home class after our daily Team Assembly Meet. This was a great time to come together and check on the wellness of our students and play a game or two in a smaller setting. Student tasks for "Fun Friday" were always self-choice frorm a task grid and geared to things students could do at home possibly with their family. 

2021 Distance Teaching

Well, 2021 is officially upon us and we have already had two Covid related lockdowns in Auckland. During Week three of the term we were home for three days, and just went we thought things were getting back to a sense of normal, Auckland was placed under a Level 3 Lockdown once again.

This second time around made our team of teachers a little more confident with students being able to digitally learn from home since we had just received our Chromebooks (year 4s) and it appeared that many of our year 3 students were able to use a device at home during our first three day lockdown. So, the teachers of team 3 decided to take the advice from the Secretary for Eduation Iona Holsted who said, "it may be for many students that ensuring their teacher maintains a connection during this period is more important that going hard on learning." We decided that we would provide a different learning activity each day for students to take part in along with promoting the use of the various webtools that we were in the process of introducing during class: Sunshine Online, Epic Books, XtraMaths and Mathswhizz.

We were so excited when we hit a record 49 attendees during our Meet on Thursday. This is the maximum number of students that we can have on a Google Meet without having to purchase the new "premium" edition of Google apps for Education. This was a new dilema for us, as this maximum level of particpants was not part of the Google Meet platform during the 2020 school year. 

We are currently awaiting the Prime Minister's announcement at 4pm today to see whether or not Auckland will move back to Level 2 in time for us to start Week 6 back at school.

Our 49 person Google Meet Session

Level 3...Again

 About two weeks ago, the students and teachers in Auckland, New Zealand began distance learning once again as our city was put back on a Covid-19 Level 3 Lockdown. However, the feelings and anxieties felt around going back into lockdown this time around were vastly different when it came to how we were going to set up and administer Distance Learning for our students. We have done it before, and we, as individual, a teaching team and a school, learnt so much from our successes and failures the during the first lockdown.

One of the things that we were able to begin much faster this time around was having our students attend Google Meets with their high school technology teachers. The students did a fabulous job adapting to this especially since they missed their last rotation with their technology teachers, and started the new rotation learning online in their new courses. We love knowing that the high school technology teachers are working from a department page for our students to access across the grade levels. 

Student names have been covered up in compliance with our Manaiakalani Cybersmarts curriculum which teaches students that they should not share their last name publicly online. 

Distance Learning: Kahoot!

This week, we jumped back into Term 2 and my maths students are engaging in a two week continuation of our statistics unit we were in the middle of before the isolation period began.

In addition to completing learning tasks found on our class site, the students are engaging in daily Google Meets to check in for clarification purposes and to have their questions answered. One of the things that we have grown to enjoy as a class is playing Kahoot trivia together.  We decided we should still do this as a class in our Distance Learning classroom.

Click Here for Kahoot!

If you haven't tried Kahoot with your online (on in person class) I strongly suggest it for formative assessment and review purposes (or sometimes just for something fun!).  You are able to make up your own quizzes or select one that meets your needs from a rather extensive database.

Today, we used a statistics quiz as a review. It was great because I was able to display the graphs to my class after they answered the question and discuss the questions they had about the graph and question. I was also able to extend their knowledge by providing two questions that covered vocabulary and a graph that was new for them. We had great discussions during our game today.

Another very cool feature is that Kahoot provides a detailed summary of each question via email after the game has ended. Here is an example:



We will continue using these Kahoot quizzes during our distant learning to provide a platform for extension, review, formative assessment, and plan old fun with our friends!

Distance Learning: Friday Spelling Test

One of the things that we are trying to do for our students is keep things as normal as possible but from home. On a normal Friday, we have a schoolwide assembly and generally after we have a Teamwide spelling test that is administered over the PA system by our amazing office staff.

So, today we decided it would be fun to have our own Distance Learning team assembly complete with karakia, mihi and waiata as we would any other day of the school term. It was great to see so many students hop on and join us this morning, especially since it was at 9am! 

NOTE: Names have been blocked out because it is not Cybersmart to post last names online!

It was fun seeing some faces that I don't see in my general literacy and maths classes as we spent about 30 minutes together. Mrs. Flavelle from our office staff joined us and administered our spelling test. The students completed the test using a Google Form, which allowed their answers to be submitted right away. As always, the students with a perfect score will be entered into a drawing to win a special treat once we are back at school.

GOOGLE MEET TIP: 

We are learning as we go along, and one of the coolest things we have learnt is to download the Chrome Extension "Google Meet Grid View" This is a great tool when you are meeting with more than 4 students so that you are able to see everyone in one view. 

Online Distance Teaching - Covid 19

The past few weeks the world has seen dramatic change in our everyday lives. As a result of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, the teachers on Team 5 at Pt. England School spent time speculating about what it would look like if we had to teach our students from home. We then spent many hours planning, and developing what we felt would be the best way to do this while keeping in mind the daily structure and routine that our students are already accustomed to.

After receiving some advice and tips from our Manaiakalani support near the end of Week 7, we thought we had a plan to run with. We decided to change our regular team site to our distance learning plan for Week 8 so that students would be used to seeing it and working from it. We were waiting for the go ahead to introduce our students to Google Meet/Hangouts, that we thought would come after our school wide staff meeting scheduled for Monday after school before demonstrating for students what distance learning would look like the next morning (Tuesday of Week 8).

Our first Google Meet on 24/3/20 at 9am

Little did we know, life in New Zealand was about to be drastically changed after a news conference that began halfway through our lunch hour on Monday afternoon. It was announced that our nation was moving to a level 3 for 48 hours before a final isolation lock down of Level 4 for four weeks. This meant that we were no longer going to have the chance for a run through of Google Hangouts/Meet with our students before they were at home.

Our students were sent home Tuesday with a newsletter stating that school would be closed to students for the next four weeks and to staff after Wednesday. We now had 48 hours to ensure that all students had what they needed to continue learning from home.

It also meant that at 9am Tuesday morning the six teachers of Team 5 went live with our students using Google Meet.  We decided that this week would just consist of checking in with our kids twice a day checking that they were well, answering any assignment related questions, and ensuring that they understood the importance of staying at home. We are also keeping in contact with our students using Hapara Dashboard to comment on student's work and blog posts, as well as answering student questions through email.