TAI20 The Nature and Extent of the Student Challenge: Whānau Voice

I have been collecting parent voice through the method of Talanoa. This method allows whānau to speak openly without the expectation to answer questions in a forced and directed way. These conversations are a way to listen to whānau and the messages they are sharing in a comfortable natural way.
All three pieces of whānau voice were collected through long comfortable conversations in natural environments with other whānau members present. This information was given by them without prompting or questioning. 

One mum talked about the impact of helping her children do their learning during the lockdown:
"I wasn't aware of the impact of what was going on at home was having on the children's achievement. They didn't use to be like this. (This is referring to an extremely difficult situation the family has been through).

They are at a 5-year-old level. I don't want them falling further behind. It wasn't only me it was the older siblings helping them.

I'm glad all the growling at them to do their work has paid off. It was hard work.

I have noticed they have changed. They are happy kids. They come home from school all talking at once wanting to tell me about their day."

Another mum discussed how she loved working with her daughter during the lockdown: 

"I want to keep working with her. I can see the progress she is making. We don't do the projects as we don't have the things you need but we do reading, writing and maths. I haven't paid much attention to their leaning before but now I'm reading and doing things with my younger children too."

Discussion during a home visit with Samoan whānau: 
"We don't feel safe coming back to school yet. We are learning through our bible studies and the church band. We are doing things together as a small family group. I am teaching them about God's ways. The children use my hotspot to go on their site in the evening after they have done their jobs." As we were talking the children were playing doctors with a toy medical kit.

My reflection of whānau voice is 

• The impact high levels of stress in the home setting has on students self-regulation and uptake of new learning at school. As illustrated above whānau may not be aware of the impact stressful home situations have on children's learning. Once made aware of this whanau made changes to their family interactions and gave more support with their children's learning.
• Families have limited resources at home however during the lockdown, having learning visible on the class site allowed whānau to become more involved in their child's learning and they could see the progress their child was making. This was a motivating factor for some whānau and they wanted to continue helping their child with their learning after the lockdown.
• It is easy to look at education and views of success through a Pakeha lense. However, it is important to step out of our cultural world view into the world views of our students. I need to gain a deeper understanding of  Māori and Pasifika beliefs of success, values and education if I am to truly look at achievement and what we measure as success. 

Reflection Of Engagement With Learning During Lockdown

I have written a quick summary of how a selection of my students connected and engaged with online learning during the lockdown and reflected of the differences between families. Learning was provided via our class site and students were able to connect with me during two hangouts each day. The class site provided tasks across the curriculum, including high-interest hands-on inquiry tasks. Instructions and models were given using explain everything videos, teacher videos, audio and written instructions.

Student's 21 and 22 couldn't connect to hangouts but completed most of the tasks on the class site. They especially enjoyed the hands-on inquiry tasks that I had made videos for. They shared their video's with me via google drive. I was amazed at how much work they had done on their return to school as their mum had found it hard to motivate them to do work at the start of lockdown. The hands-on videos were a motivator.

Student's 7 and 16 had not connected at all during level 1. However, during level 2 they returned to school to work from school. This shows the need for some students to be at school.

Student 2 independently connected to each hangout but didn't complete the set work without the support from his parents. He has continued to be motivated and is participating and contributing but has fallen back a bit in his reading.

Students 6 and 13 connected to each hangout and were self-motivated in their learning completing most online learning tasks. Both had support from parents. These are the two highest academically achieving students in the class.

Student 3 worked with mum each day. Mum realised the difficulties he has retaining information and concentration. She now wants to continue supporting him with his learning at home and at school and has seen a huge shift in his eagerness to learn and confidence to talk about his ideas.

Student 5 worked with her mum and sister a year younger each day, They worked through the phonics, reading, writing and maths activities on the site. They left the hands-on activities as they didn't have the materials to do them.

Student 19 connected later into lockdown with help from the teacher. Dad helped with the hands-on inquiry activities and they connected each day to share their learning via hangouts. He also had help from other family members. Dad relied on my verbal instructions, videos and audio to follow the instructions for learning activities as he is unable to read written instructions.

Students 10, 11 and 14 were uncontactable during the lockdown. These families didn't answer phone calls. One of these families has not since returned to school. One family has discussed that they were unable to get their child to do any school work.

What you will notice is how every family was different in the way they connected and engaged in the learning. Each family had very individual circumstances and experiences during lockdown which influenced how and in which ways they connected with the learning activities provided. As a junior teacher, it was a huge job ringing each family on a regular base to help them connect. At times you felt like a stalker especially with those at-risk families that had seemed to have disappeared off our radar. However, those conversations and the talking through technical issues helping families to connect to google meet is what built the relationships that I now have with many of my families. I am so incredibly proud of my parents that lead their children's learning at home. Especially as many of them were facing their own challenges during lock-down. The difference they have made in their children's learning is so obvious now we are back in the classroom. These students are confident, happy and ploughing ahead with their learning.

Some families did not connect at all and for whatever reasons and have not completed any set learning tasks via google sites. Each child had an iPad and internet access. It is not my place to judge as I know the challenges many of our families have on a daily basis. This experience has left me continuing to wonder about ways in which I can better connect with these parents and help them if this situation was to arise again.

MIT and TAI2020 Gaining a Greater Understanding of Māori and Pasifika Perspectives of Play

It is a common perception that play is a normal way for children to learn about themselves and their environment and that the learning and development that happens through play reflect the social and cultural contexts in which the child lives. Also, that play is important for the holistic development of the child. (Bruce, 2001; Leaupepe, 2011)

The ENGAGE Programme takes this further by showing the importance games can make as a catalyst for developing self-regulation skills needed to navigate successfully through life.

My proposed project outcome is to create an online platform to connect our Māori and Pasifika whanau with the Engage programme that our schools are incorporating into their daily curriculum.

However, Leaupepe (2011) indicates through her research into Pasifika Perceptions of Play that the above common viewpoint may not a Pasifika viewpoint. Her paper illustrates the perception of play can sometimes be seen as inappropriate and taking children's time away from more productive activities like helping around the house.  Contribution/ service is a hugely important value in Pasifika cultures. 

If this is the case then will whanau see the value in the ENGAGE programme, and be willing to learn more about it through the proposed website?


To gain further insight into a Māori and Pasifika view regarding play I meet with Maori and Pasifika teaching colleagues using the Pasifika method of Talanoa. 

My Colleague Talking From a Māori Perspective:

"Games are viewed as learning- you are learning as you play, through play learning is achieved. Maori believe should be enjoyable because through play learning is achieved.

What memories do you have of play as a child?


"Marbles, pūrerehua, ti rakau, poi, spinning top hit with a harakeke, pole with ropes like a swing, kōruru (cow knuckle bones), and calabashes,"

What games do you play as a family at home? Are they different from when you were a child?


"Video games, more electronic games. The Whakawhanaunga, the intimacy, wairua, the spiritual connection has been lost. It is missing, noho ngātahi (being together as one)"

What are the positives about helping your child learn at home?

"Whakawhanaungatanga , spiritual connection. We are very kanohi ki te kanohi."

Two Of My Colleagues Talking From a Pasifika Perspective

Some families are strict and children have to do what they are told to do. Others allow for time to do something and spending time together as a family and play. 
Traditionally games are competitive... egg and spoon races, sack races.

The conversation turned to opportunities and challenges of sharing the ENGAGE programme with families and expecting them to implement the games at home. 

It was mentioned that it can be difficult to have the drive, and daily routines and there is the distraction of social media e.g.facebook, this takes time away from spending time interacting with children. They said that there is the risk that they will say they will do things that the school recommends but in reality when they get home it probably won't happen. 

School is school, and home is home. It is polite to say the right things and families don't necessarily say what they think. When discussing ways of sharing... Culturally, if it is fun families will come especially if it is something simple ..... food and their children performing.... bring families in to share. 


My Reflection after meeting with colleagues:

• It is important to value Whakawhanaungatanga and embed this value throughout the process and within the prototype.
• Include Maori games such as ti rakau 
• Incorporate competitive games
• Students demonstrate games as an incentive for parents to connect.
• Launch an online platform through a celebration for our Pasifika community, sharing food and cultural performances.

References

Bruce, T. (2001). Learning through play: Babies, toddlers and the foundation years (pp. 112-124). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Leaupepe, M. (2011). Pasifika perspectives of play: challenges and responsibilities. Peer-Reviewed Paper: Vol2, Num4-March 2011, The University of Auckland.

MIT May 7th Meet- What impact did this meet have on my thinking and planning?

With the COVID-19 lockdown came pressure and extra work as educators moving into a completely digital way of teaching and learning. Also came the extra work as SENCO helping our whanau navigate their way through this period.

My passion and excitement from our hui one week prior to lockdown turned to frustration and zero output as I became time poor, extremely busy with the extra lockdown workload.

I entered the meeting feeling frustrated and feeling like I was failing. 

However, the meeting quickly allowed me to gain a positive perspective.

What we have just gone through as educators is unprecedented. We have had to change how we teach and connect with our leaners, and deal with situations that are new to everyone. Being kind to myself is not something that comes easy to me and this is what I needed to do.

Taking the pressure off myself has allowed the passion and excitement to return in a natural way. Since returning to school, being open again to this journey and where it is taking me,  has made me look at the project with new eyes.

I have returned to the empathise phase of the project with the learnings I have gained from the COVID experience connecting with whānau. Exploring the 'partnership' aspect of the challenge focus as become key, as it was the partnership between home and school during lockdown that fueled our successful teaching and learning opportunities during that time.

Constructing Learning Using SOLO

I just found this old post about using SOLO Taxonomy with my students.
Thought I would repost as my team begins to plan our next topic of inquiry.

Constructing learning using SOLO is not just a one-way street. Sometimes you need to make a U-turn to pick up that missing jigsaw puzzle piece, or that key ingredient that you didn't see the relevance of until you needed it.

When planning using SOLO, I make sure students have the opportunities to climb to the top of the mountain, to feel the exhilaration and excitement, and view of possibilities that lay before them. But I also make sure that they have to keep going back down to get extra resources, information, skills and experiences that they need to extend them further in their journey.

My overall goal is to facilitate inquisitive learners who dive deeper under the surface of learning. That is not just satisfied with being told that something is 'just so', but to explore their wonderings about it and find out why it is like it is. I want them to know the purpose of the skills they are learning, the relevance in the real world and when to use their skills most effectively in real-life situations. 'Why?' is my favourite word.

Here is a fantastic clip that explains SOLO using lego blocks.

TAI2020 'Say And Do Activities' In An Online Learning Environment

How does 'saying and doing' look learning online?

My inquiry over the last two years has been to grow student's oral language through an intensive oral language programme implemented across our junior school. 

One of the main changes to our teaching has been 'hands-on tasks' whereby the students talk about what they are doing as they do it, using vocabulary and phrases modelled by the teacher.

Moving into lockdown has made me and my team think about how this could look using a digital platform.

Some other challenges we were facing:

• Engaging students in their learning, with feedback from parents that they were finding it hard to get their children to focus on their learning at home.  
• The age of the students as they are too young to follow written instructions, we needed learning activities to be easy for them to understand, independently, without needing help from an adult.
• Not knowing if students were connecting with the leaning site at home as it has been hard to contact some families.

Evidence of Learning

• Videos shared with me via email, often through older siblings show engagement and connecting with learning online.
• Videos show children talking about what they are doing.
• They have understood the instructions and learning about concepts and contexts outside of their daily worlds.
• Use of correct sentence structures as they teach others how to do the activity.

Here are some examples of moving our intensive oral language acquisition programme online...

TAI2020 Tools, Measures And Approaches Used In My Teaching As Inquiry

This blog post identifies the tools, measures and approaches used In my inquiry to gain a detailed profile of student achievement.

How am I going to get an accurate profile of students' learning in relation to the challenge?

I will be using the combi list developed by Dr Jannie Van Hees to measure language development factors of all students within my class and a focus group from the other 3 junior classes. This assessment tool measures factors important in language development using the scale of Yes/Sometimes/No.  
The tool measures

• Willingness to communicate
• Communication with teacher/adults
• Participation in discourse
• Contribution to the discussion or discourse
• Benefits from feedback

Initially, I was going to gather data at the end of Term 1 however, because of lockdown I will now collect data term two. this will give me data collection points evenly spaced out over the two years.

I will also use running record data to show student achievement in reading. This will also be taken in Term 2. running record data over time shows the rate of progress as well as shows oral reading accuracy, analysis of errors made and reading comprehension. However, for the purpose of this specific data gathering, I will focus on the rate of progress over time.

PELP data was helpful to see the growth in language development in both first language and English, although this is time-consuming to do across the whole school I will do it within my class and like the combi list, for the target students in the other junior classes. I will gain data in the number of words spoken in heritage language and English to see if teaching in culturally responsive ways has an impact on language development.

All the above assessments will have to be put on hold during the lockdown. Although initially disappointed that I am unable to collect this data at present during the lockdown. As mentioned above, collecting it Term 2 will show data collection at evenly spaced out intervals. Data points over the two year period will thereby be Term 2 2019, Term 4 2019, Term 2 2020 and Term 4 2020.

One source of data that I can collect from some students at present is student voice. Some of my students with low oral language levels are not connecting but I am going to take this opportunity to gain student voice from those students that are. It will also be a great opportunity to gain whanau voice as well.

Why do I choose these approaches?

I'm choosing these approaches to show patterns of achievement and effects of changes of practice over a period of two years. Consistency in data gathering will hopefully give me an understanding of the effectiveness of my change in practice, however, a change I want to make this year to my inquiry is sampling throughout Term 2 and 3 to see if desired change is happening. If it isn't then I can fail fast and change what I am doing. 

Moving Into Lockdown

I wanted to write a post regarding my own experiences as an educator this week as we quickly moved from Level 3 to Level 4 in the fight against Covid-19.

In this unprecedented time, we have all seen changes that only a few months ago we couldn't have dreamed of happening. After seeing the heartbreaking news stories from countries like China, Italy and Iran and the insanely quick spread of the virus it still felt unreal until the borders closed. Then with the announcement on Monday of preparing to move into lockdown... we suddenly needed to move into top gear to prepare for schools to close and us all to go into isolation.

Monday: Sitting in our MIT PLG via hangouts at home, many of us trying out hangouts for the first time we were excited about the opportunities this tool could provide students and teachers. We were inspired by Matt's class site and shown how he would teach if (when) we went into lockdown. For me I was super excited.... how would hangouts look for a junior class where the little ones can't yet read and need that face to face contact, lots of modelling and oral instructions? I envisioned my phonics lessons being continued over hangouts and the connection students could still have with each other.

We left the hangout at 1pm to listen to the Priministers announcement that on Wednesday at 12pm we would be in lockdown and to prepare.

I think everyone processed that news in different ways. For me I felt emotional, my instant reaction was a concern for my little students who I love dearly.... my second response was to buy hair dye and my third response was that I needed to buy wood so I could work on my house while in isolation. It is funny the thoughts you have in times like this.

I also felt very far away from my school, working from home (I live 100kms away from my school and commute each day) and felt like I needed to be there.

Tuesday: Arriving at school it was suddenly all on.... how do we prepare our students for learning at home when they aren't with us to hear it. How can little ones access their learning without devices or wifi at home? What do we need to give them so they can continue to write and read and explore the world outside their four walls during this time?
For us junior teachers it looked different than the senior teachers. They could print out worksheets that they could read. Anything like that would need parent help with for our little ones and we can not rely on that happening for some of our children.
We put together packs with writing books, stationary books, ready to read books that we could attach the audio to our class site, plus these are free books provided by the ministry. We also included whiteboards and a ball, ballons and Engage activity cards for them to play at home.
Tensions were heightened as we were stepping into the unknown.

Wednesday: Getting ready for shut down day. Getting the go-ahead that we could deliver the school iPads to our families was a huge relief. This meant equity for some of our junior students. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough iPads for the whole of the Junior school so the decision was made that they would just be for Year 2 and Year 3. We also had out IT technician coming in at 3pm to try and connect them to the cluster wifi. What a crazy afternoon! I started delivering learning packs and iPads to whānau at 5:30pm and dropped off the last of them around 8pm. Whanau were so thankful. We still have 8 that need to be delivered by courier.....but this means our little ones have a way of connecting yippee!

Thursday: First day of lockdown. My Acting Principal who is leading us through this time has been amazing. He prioritised what we need to know and do during the next few weeks. Amongst all the admin involved with closing down a school, on the top of the list was ensuring support systems were set up for our vulnerable families, we also needed upskilling our staff so we can use hangouts via our class sites. I feel so lucky that we are already a digital school within the Manaiakalani cluster, therefore, we have been preparing for something like this for years without knowing. However, hangouts was a frontier that we had not needed to explore until now. How exciting that this tool is going to allow us to teach in new and exciting ways during this time.


Friday: the realities of the difficulties our families are going to face during his time became real as our first case that required agency support occurred. Having agencies working remotely is going to be difficult. As a whole staff, we connected over hangouts and I felt very proud of all my colleagues as they worked hard to quickly upskill and think outside of the box in terms of their new teaching practice.


My personal reflection as I took a walk around my 'block', which consists of a beautiful beach and bush track, was a vastly different reality of lockdown for many of my students and their families. My school is within a community that battles social, economic, housing and health issues. There are some things I can't impact however there are things I can... and that is what I'm going to do. Watch this space as I delve into the world of distance teaching.

TAI2020 How might my inquiry make a powerful contribution to school wide goals and cluster goals?

Collaboration With Senior Management and Colleagues 

Main Points

1) Is my current inquiry still relevant and current in regards to school-wide goals and cluster goals?

• Yes, it aligns with our school-wide focus of developing students oral language across the Junior school and across our school.
• Yes, it fits within our localised curriculum focus on oral language acquisition to address the needs of our school community.

2) How might it make a powerful contribution to these goals?

• Students acquiring oral language within their early schooling will create foundations to build on as they move through their schooling.
• We may not see expected results within their first few years as students acquire oral language but it is hoped that putting in the mahi at this level will show better results in student achievement as students move through their schooling.

3) Other points of discussion

• The inquiry needs to be shared more effectively across the school. Feedback from senior school teachers was that better communication of changes in our curriculum and teacher practice is needed so that effective practice can be better shared across the whole school.

TAI2020 Stocktake Of My Inquiry

As I move into the second year of my CoL inquiry into creating an intensive oral language acquisition programme across our Junior school, my first task is to do a stocktake of my inquiry so far.

Aspects of inquiry	What worked well	Challenges	Additional support that would be helpful
Utilising the student's strengths in their first language, working in bilingual and multilingual ways, creating Talanoa, and working in partnership with families will help build students English language and literacy.	Taking part in the Pasifika Early Literacy Programme (PELP) has changed my own practice as well as my teams practice in how to teach in culturally responsive ways. Students are extremely engaged and empowered when we use heritage languages within the classroom.	-Continuing to develop an understanding of the diverse Pasifika cultures within our classrooms. -Connecting with Pasifika families to create strong home-school partnerships	Connecting with Pasifika teachers within our CoL to gain a stronger understanding of the Pasifika cultures of our students.
Developing oral language through short high-interest topics and real-life experiences, with a focus on intensive oral language acquisition, will create an environment of language in abundance.	-Do and say oral language activities, using and reusing new vocabulary. -Recycling vocabulary many times and across contexts over a few days. -Insisting students try, and creating an environment where talking is cherished and important. -Students that participated in this programme, as well as PELP, showed increased progress compared to peers that only did PELP.	-Students ability to listen, many students don't have the self-regulation skills to listen and this affects their ability to uptake new vocabulary. -Funding for trips to experience opportunities outside of their daily world.	ENGAGE Programme Active listening activities
A collaborative inquiry across the junior school (Years 1-3) will grow professional capital across the school. The shared inquiry will allow all students across the junior school to benefit from the effectiveness of changed practice and allow teachers to learn from and with each other. It will hopefully also enable an effective changed practice to become sustainable.	-Growing professional practice across my team instead of only within my classroom. -Working through the inquiry process together has allowed them to better understand the teaching as inquiry process.	-Staff changeover -Beginning Teachers within the team who are learning the foundation skills of teaching may have felt overwhelmed by the PLD. -Team members different levels of uptake. -Ensuring the whole school is aware of the inquiry taking place and sharing of new learning across the school.	-More staff meetings to share inquiry -Planning time with Teacher Aides to collaboratively plan our practice.