Lockdown teaching

 As term 3 draws to a close and we are still in alert level 3 in Auckland I have taken some time to reflect what we have been producing for our team content wise. The things that have worked well are changing the topic up each day for the students and giving them the option to decide which order they can complete the daily tasks each day. Having access to an article and response to text each day has also been a big highlight with my class and they have enjoyed learning something new each day. As a team we have been pondering how to make this accessible to all of our learners and the differentiated reading levels of our students. This so something that we will spend the holidays working on and trying to structure this in a way that hopefully will make the transition to level 2 (hopefully next term) a little bit easier on our students. 

We have continued to use the model of a new topic each day with collaborative planning across the team. This has ensured that each of our students have access to quality reading, writing and maths tasks each day. Continuing on with having four facts each day this allows every student to feel like they have accomplished some learning today while doing reading and research at the same time. We have found that numbers of our students have been dropping off towards the end of the term so have decided to have this last week as a fun movie learning week which the students have been really excited about!

Reading with small groups during our google meets has been really effective and the students have loved coming together in smaller groups to read aloud and discuss the stories and articles that we have been looking at. 

Hopefully next term we will be able to reenter our classes and try and regain some sense of normality with our learning. This term has definitely been an interesting one and we are really hoping that we will be able to get back to level 2 close to the beginning of the term. Due to the uncertainty we will continue to be ready to teach online but I know like many of my fellow Auckland teachers we would love to be back in the class with our learners as soon as possible!

Inquiry during lockdown

We are currently in lockdown which has seen a bit of a set back with my inquiry. During our last CoL meeting we were asked to think about how we can continue on our inquiry during lockdown and I have gained some great insight into how I can still work on this while completing remote learning from some of the other CoL teachers. 

In the next few weeks before the end of term I am going to try and have break out sessions with each of my reading groups using online texts. This will still give the students the opportunity to read with me at least once a week and have targeted follow up activities related to what they have been learning for that day. 

What are the challenges?
Some of the challenges that I have seen so far especially with my target group is these group of learners tend to be the ones not turning up to our google meets online. I can see that some of them are still blogging the learning from the class site but are not turning up to our scheduled google meet times. I can see that it is a challenging time for many of our students and their whanāu at this time and will continue to see what I can do to keep up learner engagement and getting the students online to google meets. 

Class site and word work:
As a team we have been planning collectivity on the site and trying to keep the students engaged and turning up to our google meets and completing the learning online. We have done this through having a different topic for the students to learn about each day. They will need to turn up to the class site each morning to see that the learning is. We have continued to focus on vocabulary by having word work for the day. Each day the students will have a new word to learn where they will have to find the definition of the word and think about how they can use this in their reading and writing for the day. 

Response to text:
Another thing we have been working on as a team is to give students the opportunity to access a different reading each day. This article is teacher created about the topic that we are learning about for the day. With my class we have been reading this on our 9am meets where students are given the opportunity to read aloud. After these we have created a number of response to text questions that the students will need to answer. These include multiple choice answer as well as written answers related to what they have just read.  I have found that by going through the as a class on our 11am meet most of my students will complete this activity so they can answer the questions online. I have also made it so those who potentially need more help with this type of questioning can follow along and fill out the answers as we are learning as well.  I have found that most of the students love this and love being able to share what answers they got with everyone on the meet. 

Next steps:
I am going to continue on having the response to text sessions as well as focusing on word work each day in my online sessions. I am also going to include as best as possible online guided reading sessions for each of my reading groups so that students are being given differentiated texts to read each week. I am going to try and keep this model similar to how we would have run reading in class to try and keep a little bit of normality in our class with these interesting times that we are facing. 

In reflection I think it is so important for our students to be working at their own pace as there will be many things going on at home as well. My learners who do turn up to meets are really excited to continue on with learning and seem to really enjoy the smaller reading group times that we have completed so far. So this is something that I will continue to work on. Student wellbeing is first and foremost the most important part of our online learning along with still trying to balance student achievement and to try and continue on with my inquiry.