Distance Learning - Week 2-3

The past two weeks have whizzed by even though I have only left my road 3 times! I'm finding that teaching from home has it challenges and benefits and each day I am thankful that our school is part of Manaiakalani Outreach. I find myself continually going back into my DFI folder to use some tool or trick to make teaching from home more effective and I have also found the 'Teachers Using Google Suite for Education' Group on Facebook helpful too. 

ANZAC Day looked a little different this year in my home 'classroom'. I set up an ANZAC Day page on our class site with plenty of different choices for the students to make in their learning. During the week we discussed the different ways that we could commemorate ANZAC Day at home and on Friday 24th April our first google hangout of the day was all about ANZAC Day. I encouraged the students to wear a poppy, wear red or bring something that they had made during the week. It was a very bright hangout.

This was my ANZAC Day backdrop during our google hangout and my ANZAC commemorations that I shared with the class.

Reflections on Week 2-3:

Positives: 

• Adding a meeting code to our hangouts has meant that students can not join the hangout if I am not there.
• 15-17 students join our first google hangout of the day, everyday.
• Most students connect to at least one of our google hangouts each day.
• More students are starting to share their learning on their blog without prompting. 
• Students have commented that they have watched my 'how to blog' videos. They are using the videos to help them instead of emailing me.
• A few of the students who needed support from their whanau to access their learning are not needing as much help now as they have become confident using our class site.
• Students are more willing to share their learning during our google hangouts.
• Sharing the document link in the chat works better for the students than looking for the link on the class site.

Challenges: 

• Some students are not prepared to take part in learning during group sessions and think they are just there to say hello. I need to work on this still - I need to be clear with the group session expectations as I am with the whole class sessions.
• A few students are pushing boundaries during the hangouts. It is tricky as I am glad they are joining in, but they need to remember that there are expectations as they are joining our online classroom.
• I will reiterate expectations verbally and with a visual.
• Each student has quite different expectations of what home learning looks like in their homes. 
• I have listened to and read a lot about the expectations on teachers, students and whanau during this unusual time. The most important thing to consider is is everyone okay? Being encouraging and kind is the first and foremost thought for our me in our class. I have realised quickly that I can encourage, engage and try to motivate the students using the class site and our google hangouts however it comes down to their whanau as to what they will actually do each week. Adding pressure and anxiety during an already stressful situation is not what the students or their families need. For this reason, I will continue to run a full learning programme via our class site and hangout. I will encourage, support and suggest but not pressure the students in the learning that they do.