Covid-19 - Distance Learning

The presence of Covid-19 in NZ had already seen community events, sports practices and games as well as whanau celebrations cancelled due to restrictions that had previously been put in place. However as of 11.59pm Wednesday night, the country was placed in lockdown, only essential businesses can operate for the next 4 weeks and schools are closed.

For the past three weeks at school, we had been educating the students about Covid-19 and the importance of having good hand hygiene practice. This means washing your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds. If students sneezed or coughed they knew to do this into their elbow. We had also been encouraging students to greet each other in non contact ways. Hand sanitiser had become a go to after each learning session and the students were becoming very aware of the word social-distancing. 

The Nanogirl videos were very helpful with this learning process and the students understood things very clearly after watching her videos. You can find the link to these videos on our Te Manga class site - click here

In anticipation of schools closing I felt quite prepared. I had decided last weekend to start planning for what distance learning might look like for my class and felt confident that most of my class would be able to manage their learning online as they have worked from the class site since the first week of school.  To help my students and whanau prepare for distance learning I prepared a home pack with a detailed newsletter for them to use at home for their learning. Click on this link to the class newsletter. I also set up a google group and have been in email contact with all my class whanau. When we were told on Monday that the country was moving into lockdown, I felt that I had given as much information as I could, so that my class and their whanau were as prepared as they could be, given the circumstances.

As this week has progressed, the Ministry of Education moved quickly to bring the school holidays forward which in effect meant that the students only had 4 learning days at home this week. I had sorted learning for the students for 2-3 weeks. It's worked out well, the students who love doing things had plenty to do and the students who don't always like to do as much could pick and choose what they wanted to do. Less stress for families. 

I have had 2 google hangout's with my class this week which have been quite fun and excellent learning too. The feel that the more practice I have at google hangouts the easier they will be. 

They also have activities to work on over the holidays if they want to which include fitness, science, art, construction and zoo visits. Here are some of the examples of what the students can do.

Check out all the activities by clicking on this link to our class site

I am planning on being offline next week to enjoy the time at home with my whanau for school holidays but I will have hangouts with three of my students who have birthdays during the holidays and I will run 2 google hangouts in Week 2 of the school holidays to get the students thinking about Term 2 - Week 1.  

Work Flow Improvements Through Google Suite

Since completing DFI last year I have found that my work flow both professionally and personally has been improved by using different applications from the google suite. I have become more confident in building my class site and have found that the students were  been able to navigate the class site successfully very early in the term.

Check out our topic work for Term 1 on our class site. 

I am part of our local basketball association and this year I set up google forms to complete all our registrations. In total we had online 43 registrations for just one of our age groups. Previously that would've meant 43 emails 43 pieces of paper but with the google form it was one spreadsheet. This saved us so much time and was a lot more accurate than previous ways we had registered players. Using google forms for all of our competition registrations saved us all so much time and created a much improved work flow for our committee.

Te Hiku_Student Achievement Data Sensemaking March 2020

The 'Wolf Fisher' Team presented their findings of the Te Hiku data (click on this link to the slide deck). This has given the cluster, areas of need to be discussed in terms of actions and changes:

• What do learners need to do more/ differently to get those outcomes?
• What do teachers need to do more/ differently to help learners achieve their outcomes?

The date has shown that reading within the cluster, needs to have a targeted approach to improve student outcomes. Some suggestions were given around authentic text selection and using the T-shaped literacy model in class.

This is something that I am interested in looking into as the premise is very similiar to the PD for ALL (Accelerated Literacy Learning). Since taking part in this PD in 2016/17 I have been very particular about the text choices made. The focus is always on high interest text but delivered in a variety of ways.