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...