Lock Down Level 4

I thought I would take this time just after lockdown level 4 in New Zealand to reflect on some of the things that I did during lockdown to keep my learners engaged and wanting to learn. We had a template and way of how we were going to run things in our team organised if this was something that did end up happening. So with the change in alert levels it was a relatively fast transition from teaching in the classroom to teaching from my office from home. 

The first few weeks were about finding the right balance between what they learners were going to be able to achieve and how much work to put on the site to keep them engaged and wanting to learn. I tried to keep the content and flow as similar as possible to what my learners were used to in the classroom so it made the transition easier. Each day I would add a morning video to introduce the topic for the day and give the learns a chance to see what was expected of them before the first meet. 

As a team we decided that we should have at least 3-4 meets a day to keep the learners engaged and give the chance to offer help when needed as well as answer any questions that the learners may have had. We had set times for our morning intro at 9am and then the last catch up at 2pm. The rest was left to what we felt our classes needed. 

I was really impressed with the turn out of my class attending meets. I had about 65-70% of my learners on meets and engaging with the learning throughout lockdown. 

After the holidays:

We did have a period of time in the holidays to reflect on how we could make the work easier for the learners to access and how to continue teaching as much as we could from home. ANZAC day was during this lockdown so I decided to have an ANZAC themed week. I also wanted to give the learners different content and ways of writing to make it more engaging and fun. 

Parrant's Pantry

This is where the idea of Parrant's Pantry came from! I decided to show myself doing some baking at home. This was something that my learners could do at home as well and also give them a video to watch and follow and write instructions. The learners loved it. I did only create a few episodes as I didn't want it to be too repetitive however I know others in my team used this template for there classes too. Check out Parrant's Pantry ANZAC biscuits below. 

Once we moved to alert level 3 I returned to bubble school and Matt Goodwin took over my classes online learning. I helped to create some resources and attended some of the classes online google meets however my focus became my learners at bubble school. 

If you would like access to any of the activities and work that I completed during lock down please check out this link to see my weeks 1-3 where I was teaching from home. The rest of my classes work is under Mr Goodwin as this is where I retuned to school.