Manaiakalani Digital Student Teacher Practicum

I have been lucky enough to be a part of the Manaiakalai Digital Teacher Practicum 2020.  Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst, Graduate Diploma of Education Students from The University of Auckland were given the task of creating an online learning site to meet the needs of our students.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of being an online tutor teacher, especially after just going through the lockdown journey. Sharing some of my own learning with others about to embark on their teaching career and reflecting on what has been effective for my students learning online at home has strengthened my beliefs about effective teaching online.

Here is our journey over the last few weeks:

Designing The Brief

First I set about creating a brief for my student teachers. This process in itself was a great opportunity for me to reflect on what has worked for me and my students over the COVID period learning online at home. Summarising the needs of my students gave me the opportunity to really think about where they are right now with their learning and what I would like them to achieve next.
I have had my students for a year and a half and know them and their needs extremely well. However, articulating these needs to my students in the brief was so important as knowing your students allows you to create effective learning tasks that are just right for the individual learner. The students hadn't met the learners and I really had to think "What do these teachers need to know about my children in order to create a successful learning opportunity?"

They certainly didn't have an easy task. Our student's needs are complex...




Delivering The Brief

It was really exciting meeting Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst over Google Hangouts. Their enthusiasm and passion for what they are doing was instantly evident. As I started going through my brief I was sure I was overloading them with info.
I was on a release that day so took my laptop into my classroom and airplayed the hangout so my class could introduce themselves. This was brilliant as the class remembered this when it came to introducing them to the learning site. I left the hangout thinking what a huge task this was for our student teachers and at the same time super excited to see what the results would be.
I also invited them to school to see for themselves the effectiveness of the site as I delivered it to my students two weeks later.

Receiving The Site and Giving Initial Feedback

Fun With Fractions Learning Site

Wow! I was completely blown away. These guys had totally nailed the brief. Every element was covered from making hands-on learning activity videos to creating tasks whereby students could work together in groups. They understood that my students working at home may have limited resources and valued my oral language focus across the curriculum. They even made a video using some Samoan. The learning tasks are rich activities that build on students prior knowledge and the whole site scaffolds the students learning and allows for multiple entry and exit points. They also hit the nail on the head in terms of pitching the site at the correct level. This is hard to do when you don't know the learners and have limited classroom experience.

Sharing The Learning Site With My Students

Luke, Gabby and Eugene came to school to see the learning in action

Summary

Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst met the brief to an exceptional standard. It is an engaging and fun site that allows our students to explore fractions through hands-on language experience activities. The videos were amazing. They gave clear and simple instructions including the use of new vocabulary reused and recycled throughout the site. The children were then able to independently do the activities and revisit the learning over and over again if needed. They thought about the brief and showed a clear understanding of my students and their learning needs and how to create rich ‘hands-on’ learning activities online using video. 

They took into account the limited resources that many of my students have at home (including making sure they can access learning without having one on one support from parents), their culture and language, the fact that our students learn best working together.

I loved how they acknowledge our focus on accelerating oral language acquisition by explicitly teaching new vocabulary and concepts. 

The games are a fantastic resource for teachers to use and the lesson plan is a great extra.

The children loved the site. They were extremely engaged and it was pitched at exactly the right level. The activities challenged them and scaffolded the learning perfectly.

There is so much content on the site that we will be exploring it for weeks after the holidays. I have also left it on our class site so they can continue to access it over the holidays if they wish to. 

It was wonderful to have Luke, Gabby, and Eugine join us to introduce the site to my class. They were able to see how fantastically it worked in reality. They instantly built a rapport with the students and the children thought they were wonderful.

We have been very lucky to be given this fantastic teaching and learning resource and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of working with Gabby, Luke, Eugene and Rachel. Your site really does fit the brief perfectly!

I wish you all the best with the rest of your year and the beginnings of an exciting teaching career ahead.