Introduction - New Zealand went into level 4 lockdown on 25th March. For the next four weeks, all schools and businesses would be closed and social distancing would be in effect while the nation worked to slow and stop the transmission of COVID 19. For teachers, this meant that we had to change how we delivered content to our students, met the needs of our students (both academic and wellbeing), as well as fulfilling PD and management requirements.
At Rāwhiti School we were well placed for this. Being in our third year of Manaiakalani, we have had extensive PD that supports the delivery of a digital curriculum. Our students are set up with Gmail, Google Drive and blogs, and teachers have Hapara to monitor student work.
Here are my thoughts on how effective distance learning has been.
Workload - In our studio, we are fortunate enough to have four teachers. Everyone took responsibility for one curriculum area to post onto our
studio learning site. My responsibility has been maths. Each day I have made a Google Slide with a series of maths activities and problems. These are all optional and levelled with entry questions set to Level 2 of the NZ curriculum and harder questions set to around Level 3 or early 4. Rather than having the same maths focus for a week, each day has a different focus. This has ranged from number knowledge practice to strand problem solving and investigation.
Marking maths work and commenting on blogs has taken up the majority of my workday. By using Hapara Teacher Dashboard it is easy enough to see who has completed a daily task. Having said that, only about 25% of our students have correctly copied the tasks from our learning site and successfully placed the work into their Google Drive.
My question here is what else can we do to make sure our students are using digital learning to its full potential? Clearly, the instructions and videos put onto the site to access the learning has not reached the majority of students. It may be that there are students who are accessing the learning but who are not filing their work or blogging it correctly. I can only give feedback on work that I can access.
It is also worth noting that, like many teachers, I have children of my own. My boys are 7 and 5 years old. My wife also works from home. Being the "teacher" has meant that I have taken on the responsibility for my children's learning too. To make this engaging for my boys often takes time away from my teaching. It is a difficult balance to achieve, with some days being better than others.
Connecting with Families - The last part of each workweek has been taken up with contacting families to check on whanau and student wellbeing. I have been able to regularly connect with most families. Many have appreciated the contact, many have questions. Often I would chat with parents about how they were managing and what school would look like for the foreseeable future. Those that I couldn't contact by phone I have emailed.
To be perfectly honest I find making these phone calls difficult. Many families are under a lot of pressure. At times it felt as though my calls added to this, as clear as I tried to be with my communication. In part, this is due to nearly all our distance learning is conducted through the internet. Several families do not have a device suitable for the work being set.
Google Meets - My first Google Meet with students was at the end of Term 1. No one attended. Not to be deterred, I hosted another one at the start of Term 2. I wanted to connect with my kaiawhina so I sent a mass email to both students and parents. This time I have about 14 students attend. It was a pleasant catch-up and I was impressed with how quickly my students followed Google Meet protocols.
I now regularly host a Google Meet every Tuesday and Friday to discuss maths and other learning. There is often about 10 students attending these with various questions. The most common questions are around how to make a copy of the maths work, and how to file it correctly.
Independence - I have been impressed by the independence and initiative of those students who have accessed the distance learning. The work they are producing is creative. One area that can be improved is having students show how they solve the mathematics problems. Some students are showing how they turn the word problems into equations, most students are putting just the answer to the problem. How can I make my expectation for visible problem solving clearer?
The Future - What can we take away from this experience when "normality" resumes and we are back in the studio with our students?
- Giving choice to students so they choose the work they do
- Stick to a theme
- Have a range of work for different abilities
- Posting work to the learning site
- More students need a suitable device for home - how can we make this happen?
- Students need near-constant blogging and commenting - everything needs to go onto their blog each week
- Can a version of our planning be loaded to our learning sites to support independent learners or those who are unable to get to school?
Here is a painting I did of the view south towards Banks Peninsular from New Brighton Pier. Just because.
