lwal111

So here it is... My last week of Mind Lab! What a journey! It has definitely pushed the limits of my motivation, sleep and professional learning, but it's finally here. So, a reflection is necessary. Whilst a 2017 has made it's presence known both personally and professionally, I feel there's been several milestones! I've learnt a lot in both spheres of life this year and feel even more ready to attack Term 4 and beyond into 2018! The theories of learning have been a great learning curve and made me think carefully of how I can adapt my teaching, but there's been many little barriers this year in the shape of 30 Year 1/2 kids, a lack of resources to enable digital learning until recently and finding the time to test out new ideas. Mind Lab has been like the PD day course you've been on and coming back refreshed with new ideas and a new outlook on how you could run your class, only that's happened weekly with very little time to put things into motion in ...

One side to this week's activity was to discuss the collaboration with different people and agencies. As a junior school teacher I have collaborated with staff, outside agencies for behaviour, public health nurses, specialist learning difficulties and speech language therapists, all in one term, as well as the collaboration that goes into planning and teaching in day to day classroom life.  I know that different professionals are integral to having an interdisciplinary curriculum and I wanted to focus on my current teaching partners. I am currently the only single cell class in a collaborative school and so sometimes the physical walls do prevent collaboration in day to day life, as much as we try our hardest. We don't plan together unless it's a unit on science or sport, where most of the time we do a unit together but there's little discussion about it filtering into other curriculum areas, despite my designed planning format asking for those links to be recorded. ...

Social media is a big part of the modern society and whilst I am in two minds over using the more traditional sites in class with students (Facebook, Twitter etc), I enjoy using our class blog and Seesaw. Many sites have a minimum age and whilst the children might not be directly using it, I feel that it kind of breaks the rules that we teach and expect the class to follow in our Cyber Safety lessons! I think that it is important to teach the safety, but not necessarily how to use it in class, especially when there are options such as Seesaw specifically designed for education. My school uses Blogger for our class blogs and when our students reach Year 5 they are entrusted with an individual learning blog. In the junior school we use Seesaw to communicate and share work with parents and class mates, as well as posting on our class blog as a team of Year 1/2s. I, however, use social media a lot to benefit my own professional learning. I mainly use Facebook as it links into my own da...

I am your child's teacher, not your friend. I feel that one of the ethical issues arising in the modern world is our use of social media and the boundaries around it. We all know as individuals not to post incriminating, explicit photos and posts as we are unsure of what others may interpret from it, be it parents, friends, employers etc., but where do our boundaries kick in as teachers? I was always taught cyber safe practice as 'if you wouldn't want everyone seeing it, never put it online', but where does this personal social media page become something that leeches into your professional life? A friend of mine recently left her teaching position and that evening was flooded with friend requests from parents from her class on her Facebook page.  Where does the line get drawn, and should we really need to teach this to functioning adults? Yes we create a relationship with these parents and their kids, but you might have a good working relationship with your ...

I believe I practice a culturally responsive pedagogy as I value and develop learning activities that use  cultural characteristics, opinions and experiences as the basis for practice ( Gay, 2001 ). Having taught across many different cultures in one class, it is about being inclusive and I operate with a Universal Design for Learning approach. I believe that what can be useful for one students' opinion, culture, experience or ability can be a positive for another, no matter the difference.  As I have spent much of my teaching career in a multicultural classroom with as many as 15 ethnicities in one space, I involve as many different world views as I can, and give students the time and space to explore different ideas as equal but different.   If we are to be culturally responsive, we must acknowledge the experiences, cultural viewpoint and ideals that all students, not just Māori enter our classroom with. Russell Bishop discussed cultural responsiveness with regard to...

The OECD (2016) says that education is being affected by different trends, two of these being globalisation and technology. Becoming a global citizen is being brought into education through the use of digital technology. Currently my 1:1 class and I are working on substituting books for iPads to enable the students to learn how to manipulate a device, type and troubleshoot simple issues independently. We have begun to use Google Slides to write, with the motivation for writing and their work linked to parents each week with a comment.  In time, students are given a school-monitored blog where they share their learning with the world, getting opinions, ideas and new learning and become global citizens.  This global learning programme gives students the means to connect across the globe with other learners and to access other cultures and countries views and issues. They can become problem solvers in an authentic context, find information to assist them and enable them to b...

Before embarking on this blog post, I feel I am in two minds over a lot of these key ideas, and think I should warn the readers that I pose as many questions as I might answer, so here goes! The contrast between working at 3 different decile rated schools lead me to believe that firstly, the decile system is misinforming (as many teachers already attest to!) and I do not wish to rely on this as data, however I have taught in decile 1, 2 and now 5. The broad generalisation of many NZers is that a lower decile equals a school that is expected show lower achievement, less engagement with family and whānau and more behavioural issues displayed in students due to their home life. I can honestly say that the difference in the three schools I have taught at are minimal and it has actually been harder going at the 'higher' decile school in a 'more affluent area'. I believe that whatever the decile and whatever socioeconomic status the community and school holds, that i...

Activity 1: My practice within the community I have a fairly small physical community of practice and find that information shared within my colleague group at my current school is anecdotal for the majority of time. We have a small staff and we are fairly informal with each other and speak freely - the good, the bad and the ugly are often shared around our staffroom table. However, in terms of online communities, there are vast depths of knowledge available to us through using the primary teachers facebook page. This is a place where we share ideas, projects, successes, ask questions, gauge a situation we might be having, support each other even though we're strangers and get several thousands of other view points. Wegner (2000) speaks about there being three different elements and these can be clearly seen across my teaching communities: Joint enterprise - the sharing and developing an understanding of what the community needs within the context of the school environment,...

Welcome to my first post! In 2017 I have embarked on a new Postgraduate Certificate through the Mind Lab by Unitec. I am studying Digital and Collaborative Teaching (Applied Practice), and will be documenting part of my learning through this blog. Currently I am working through a research project centred around developing self regulation and it's effects in the classroom. More specifically I am researching the question: How does the 21st Century skill of problem solving develop self regulation in learning interactions in the classroom? If you have any particular strengths in this area, or know of some great research pieces, I'd love to hear about them, so do leave a comment! Laura :)