Hāpara Champion Scholar

Happy New Year everyone!

Very happy to announce that I am now a Hāpara Champion Scholar! Really enjoyed the opportunity to grow my knowledge and confidence in using the Hāpara tools, and looking forward to use these new skills to support teachers and learners!

Te Wiki o te reo Māori 2021... from lockdown

Kia ora koutou, 

Māori Language Week has looked a little different this year with being in lockdown. My wife Chloe, also a teacher, asked me for some support with creating a video for her to share with their NE/Y1 syndicate at school to help the little ones at her school learn some basic reo Māori. It was a lot of fun!

Here's our video!

Manaiakalani Share Staff Meeting - Term 3

Kia ora koutou,

It was a real pleasure to facilitate a couple of really rich conversations with 2 brilliant groups of educators on Monday and this afternoon. Monday's session was with a group of secondary school Maths teachers and Wednesday was a discussion around Writing with Year 6-8 teachers. These two discussions were 2 of almost 60 that happened across the country. Click on this link to check out the Photo album with all of the screenshots from each group!

Ngā mihi 

Monday's group of Secondary Maths teachers

Wednesday's discussion around writing at Year 6-8 level

Learn - Create - Share journey with Mercer School

Kia ora koutou, 

I am really excited to be supporting Mercer School with their journey of discovery of understanding Manaiakalani. A small school, but one with such a lovely feel to it. Fiona Grant and I were made to feel so welcome on our first visit to the school during the first week of the recent holidays. We had the chance to give the staff an introduction into what Manaiakalani is all about, and some examples of our kaupapa in action. 

They have a wonderful staff, led by Paula Faitala, a former member of Senior Leadership at Glen Taylor School in Glen Innes. Paula has been in her role at Mercer for 4 years and has done a brilliant job amercing herself in the local community and history of the local area. In fact, as part of this process, she, along with the Board of Trustees and local haapu, have made the decision to change the name of the school to Te Paina School. Below is the information provided to the local community regarding their decision to change the name.

The letter to the school's community, outlining the context for the name change

It is such a privilege for me to be part of this process of journeying with this awesome school in the process of changing their name. Aotearoa history is a particular passion of mine. During my time studying at Laidlaw, we went for a trip down through the Waikato to visit some of the sites that were central to the Waikato Wars, guided by Tereora Crane, now a Senior Education Specialist with National Library. Starting at Pokeno, our first stop was the Mangatawhiri Stream. "Where's that?", you might be thinking to yourself. Like most, I had never heard of this stream, nor understood its significance to our nation's history. It's under the bridge that you drive over on SH1, just before you get to Mercer. It's not signposted, it's not marked. The vast majority of people will have driven over the bridge without ever knowing what was below them. As it happens, the stream was the mark at which King Tāwhiao (the then Māori King) said to the British forces said to come no further. These forces had already taken land all the way from what is now Māngere Bridge, South. Tāwhiao said that if the forces crossed the stream into the Waikato, that it would be war. They did, and the rest is history. 

Standing around in our group on the edge of the stream at Mangatawhiri, Tereora was explaining the significance of this spot to us. "If this were America, there would be a monument, tourist centre and gift shop...". That line is one that I will not soon forget.

From there, we headed further South, working our way down through the likes of Meremere, Rangariri, Te Awamutu and eventually Rangiaowhia. Below is a photo of our group standing in front of the church and urupa at Rangiaowhia. Below is a photo of our group standing outside the church at Rangiowhia.

With regards to Mercer School themselves and their journey to rebranding their school, I am so heartened by what they are doing. This whole idea of name changing, removing statues, etc has been a big one in our society over the last couple of years, and a conversation which I think we should be including our students in. Having spoken to Paula and the other staff at the school, this is something that the school are very much aware of with their journey forwards.

I'm so excited to be part of this process moving forward! Below are some shots of our teacher only day today.

Ngā mihi  

The awesome teaching staff at Te Paina School

The awesome teaching staff at Te Paina School

Imagine having this view outside your classroom each day!

Math Whiteboard

Kia ora koutou, 

I was very fortunate to be able to attend an online demonstration of the new Math Whiteboard with Dr Donald Carney from mathwhiteboard.com and Chris Betcher from Google for Education. Dr Carney took us through a very comprehensive demonstration of the new tool and ways in which it could be used in a range of different classrooms and across year levels. 

Some of my highlights and hot takes:

• each whiteboard has its own unique URL 
• no accounts or sign ins needed 
• collaboration in real time on the same whiteboard
• a range of different ways to work on the whiteboard; drawing, text, maths drawing, etc
• high level algebraic graphs and drawings can be easily and autonomously inserted as the user is typing or drawing
• order of operation equations are colour-coded as you work through the equation. If an error is made in a row, that row's colour will change

I am really excited to see how this brilliant new tool is going to be used by teachers of Maths.

Check it out for yourselves at mathwhiteboard.com

Ngā mihi 

Dr Carney's presentation

 

the landing page when you launch a new whiteboard

demonstrating that the same whiteboard can be open by two people at the same time on different devices

order of operations being demonstrated with colour-coding as each step is made

the ability to drag and drop a PDF worksheet file from your desktop straight into the whiteboard

making your worksheets interactive and collaborative in real time between teacher and learner

Looking back at my journey to becoming an educator

Kia ora koutou, 

I was pleased to be able to get access to my original MyPortfolio account which I used during my time training to be a teacher from 2013 to 2014 and then again in 2017 to 2018. My hope was that I would be able to get access to this content again and that it wouldn't be lost. Needless to say, I was very happy to be able to get into it again. 

I will gradually work at getting it transferred over onto this blog over the coming time, and will backdate it to the dates in which the original content was posted. I will also curate the posts to the 'From my time at University' page on my blog so that all of those posts are in the same place. 

I look forward to taking a trip back down memory lane to remind myself of what was going through young Jeremy's mind!

Ngā mihi 

Changing image upload format for iPhone

Kia ora koutou, 

I have made a quick screen recording of how you can change the settings that control the format which images are uploaded with on an iPhone. By default, images are uploaded as an HEIC or High Efficiency Image Format which is not easily compatible for Google Drive, especially if your plan is to embed the images into your Site. 

To change the setting, all that needs to be done is to follow the process of Settings - Camera - Formats - Most Compatible.

If you're an iPhone user, check out the screen recording below to change this setting.

Ngā mihi 

T-shaped Literacy: Skills for Juniors - Dr Rebecca Jesson @ Pt England School, Mon 21st June 2021

Kia ora koutou, 

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to hear from Dr Rebecca Jesson on the fundamentals of what effective T-shaped literacy looks like in Junior classes. T-shaped literacy is an area which I am interested in learning more about, having first heard about the concept within in the last year. In all honesty, it's a concept that I have struggled to understand, never really having an opportunity to see it in practice. Without the chance to see it being modelled in person and without an example of a teacher plan being implemented in person, it never really clicked with me.

That said, I really enjoyed the way that Dr Jesson broke the presentation down into practical steps and 'how to' do t-shaped literacy for early readers. Speaking to other facilitators who attended, they were all in agreement that it would have been really beneficial for junior teachers.  

A realisation that I made during the presentation was the fact that I had been getting confused between the idea of 'topic' vs 'theme' when it comes to putting together a set of texts. I was prompted to reflect on what are the transferable ideas? What can be taken from text 1 and applied across texts 2, 3, 4, etc?

All in all, a really helpful talk that I thoroughly enjoyed. Dr Jesson is a fountain of knowledge in this area, and I am looking forward to further opportunities of hearing her speak again in the future. 

Click on the screenshots of the Slides and YouTube video below to revisit Dr Jesson's content.

Ngā mihi 

Dr Jesson presenting her content

Kent Somerville's impressive livestream set up

Link to Dr Jesson's Slides 

live stream of the event

Progression of my Google Sites - Then vs Now

Kia ora koutou, 

It's that point in our DFI cohorts where we are beginning to look at Google Sites. Week 5 of DFI focuses on Multi-modal/Multi-textual sites, and Week 6 provides an opportunity for participants to create or work on their class or subject sites. 

Often as facilitators, we encounter teachers who feel intimidated by the exemplar sites that we reference in the content of DFI, thinking that their site is inadequate or not as good as those which they are looking at on the screen. 

I think it's important to remember that each person starts somewhere, and that everyone learns and progresses at their own pace. With this in mind, I had a hunt and came across the first site that I created in my first year of teaching. It was simple, uninteresting and very 'meat and potatoes' for what my class of Year 3&4 kids needed to help with their learning. 

Check out the screenshots below to compare and contrast from where I started to where I am now! 👇

My first class site - before I began in a Manaiakalani school

My first site as a Manaiakalani teacher

My most recent site from 2021 before I began full time with Manaiakalani