PRT and Inquiry

Today was a lot more challenging for me as I felt the teaching was at a much quicker pace, with not as much practice time as last week. I think I may be feeling like this because most things today were new to me. Hangouts Hangouts was great to learn about. I have a hangout meeting scheduled with my principal. I managed to send the invitation and write the title. My own children often discuss google hangouts and how they are keeping in touch with their friends. Sometimes I think they prefer to speak to their friends by this means! I'm looking forward to teaching this particular task to the three year 5 children in my class. Learn  Create Share The message I took from Dorothy this morning was the effective use of a teacher within the digital classroom. Because I do not have a digital classroom, my thoughts always go back to my own children. "Any teacher that could be replaced by a computer, should be". Children will always need a teacher to keep them motivat...

Manaiakalani has such an interesting origin. It was eye opening the small amount of space in the Tamati Basin that housed so many people and schools. What a great incentive for the community to come together to provide devices and internet to the local tamariki. An important part of this introduction for myself was the quote "We did not come to school to teach teachers" by a Manaiakalani learner. I am probably a bit guilty of asking children questions about digital technology both at school and at home with my own children. I shouldn't need to do this and children shouldn't feel like they have to stop what they're doing and help me when this is their time to shine. The shortcuts learnt today will make my professional life a lot easier. I can see a lot of time being saved knowing the little tricks for chrome, drive and docs. As I continue to use these in my professional life, I will discover more of what's available to use in the classroom. My learners will...

In the past two weeks I've been introducing te reo waiata into the classroom. Kōtuku class loves music and dancing and they've embraced the opportunity to explore more of this. I'm not familiar with many songs, having spent a long time away from New Zealand, but the children are more than happy to teach me. This 'side' learning has worked great at increasing the ako in the classroom. We are all up there copying the actions, pausing, going back, again and again and everyone is having a good time. Some children are singing the whole song while they're learning the actions, and others (like myself) are fumbling through the actions. Next term we are focusing on the local area and people. We will look at how Māori came to Lake Brunner and learn stories of the local area. I aim to learn more about the area and it's history. This will enable me to find out local waiata and work towards taking some sort of kapa haka group during lunchtime once a week. This may tak...