Well, it has been an interesting Week 6 of Term 2. We returned to school this week to a new kind of normal. Here are some of our Level 2 changes:

• Te Pihi kids were excellent at sanitising their hands as they entered the class and also as they left the class. 
• Only one person in the toilets/bathroom area at a time.
• Most came to school in cars, and were picked up by parents or grandparents in the afternoons, as the adults were encouraged to stay in their cars and not to come in to the classes. Some of our kids had to be very brave coming into class all by themselves and they did it! 
• When the parents picked up their kids, they drove around the cones on the field to the pickup point.
• The bus brought a few children to school and they had their own assigned seats. Sir was also travelling on the bus to and from school.
• School hours changed too. We started earlier at 8am, had a shorter, earlier lunch time and finished at 2pm. 
• When we arrived at school, we all did quiet colouring in instead of playing outside.
• Playtimes were divided into Junior and Senior times, so there was enough room for everyone to have plenty of space in the school playground. We had to keep a metre away from everyone else whenever we could, even when we lined up.
• Morning tea and lunch were eaten inside. Then we went outside for some fresh air and a quick play.
• Instead of all sharing the equipment like Lego and blocks, each child chose a container which they played with and then kept in their bubble for the whole day.
• We did our reading online with our i-pads, two people at a time with the teachers.
• Home reading was from our online PM readers.
• No full school assembly. We had our own class assembly on Friday afternoon.
• When we were in our class, there was no big furniture! The kids sat in their own taped 'square bubble' on the floor with a cushion, a toy, their book box and a plastic bag of their own work books, pencil, rubber, colouring pencils.

Te Pihi had a fantastic Level 2 week coming back to school with all these changes! Well done everyone, it's great to be back at last, even if things are different just for a little bit longer! We've got this!

Reading lesson with Michele

We've done 50 nights of reading!

25 nights of reading. Smile Lloyd!

75 nights of reading! Super heroes!

100 nights of reading, class certificates and values award! Tino pai!

DFI Day 9 Revision & Exam!

So, I have spent most of the week revising some area of our DFI skills learnt over the past 8 weeks, thank goodness for the rewindable learning! Have also been revising via Brett Perillo on YouTube Google Educators Prep.
Labelled & organised all the notes I've jotted down each week so I could locate what I need quickly.

Registering for the exam was a bit stressful as we needed a voucher code to proceed. Kerry came to light with some unused ones and we were in!

Early start today, had to leave home at 7am, as I sat the exam at school. My first exam in 40 years was a bit daunting!! The introduction today calmed our nerves and we were given some more exam hints by Jeremy who had already sat his exam.
We began the exam quite calmly with a fairly quick run through the multi-choice section. The scenarios section took up the whole of the remainder of the given time! In fact I skipped about 3 sections towards the end, knowing that I was running out of time! Fully intended to go back to do those ones but couldn't beat the clock. Hei aha! It is what it is...!
Some areas I wasn't too familiar with or we hadn't covered in depth, but I know that there has been a huge shift in my attitude towards digital learning, my knowledge, my skill level and my confidence. The Covid-19 Lockdown has forced me into putting my digital skills into practice. It's also forced me into doing the DFI course remotely from home and made me solve the problems I have encountered. Had I not been on the DFI course I think I may have been sneakily driving around & delivering reading books, worksheets & maths booklets to all my class whanau letterboxes!! Instead two thirds of my class have been engaging on-line with Google Hangouts, following their set work on the weekly learning slides for reading, writing and maths, engaging in new PE and topic videos I have embedded into our site, emailing photos of their home learning activities, parents, grandparents and whanau have learnt how to access our on-line learning, children have been reading their assigned PM E-readers on-line.
So when we return to school I plan to keep up my skills by implementing many of the great digital 'power tools' I have learnt.
All in all I am so grateful that we were on DFI at this critical time in NZ's educational history when all our classes began on-line learning from their homes!

DFI Day 8 Computational Thinking

Woah! This one was a challenge! Not only to the brain cells, but also to the comfort zone, values and thoughts towards the future!

The day began with a valuable talk from Dorothy about EMPOWERED learners, teachers and whanau. Especially relevant in this lockdown time of distance learning and how we have managed to empower our whole school whanau through technology. It has given a lot of people control of their own learning back, at a time when control seemed to have been taken away from us all. I agree that EMPOWERMENT is a much better word than AGENCY.

Gerhard then talked about the future of technology and showed us some programming and robots that have already been designed, built and are in use. We were challenged by the decision making part of programming when given different scenarios, which showed and confirmed the need for human emotion and feeling.

Kerry took us through the COMPUTATIONAL THINKING  part of the DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES CURRICULUM. She broke it down perfectly and made it clear that computational thinking is giving and following clear instructions.
I liked the phrase that 'Learners need to be creators and innovative designers, not just consumers'.
We then looked at RARANGA MATIHIKO
I took a deeper look into Kia Takatu which is a digitial readiness programme based on Maui and Mahuika, the Goddess of Fire. I liked the analogy of the scale of proficiency going from ignite up to blaze! After taking a self-readiness survey I was pleased to see I achieved 'some burns and some blazes' This could be adapted in class as we're always telling the kids "You're on fire!" when they achieve well.

Was also interested in CSUnplugged Computer Science without a computer. I can see that I could use this in my class to help with giving and following explicit instructions.

This led us into some CODING and I had a tutu with Lightbot, Scratch Junior, Minecraft and Kodable. I am sure my 5 and 6 year olds will be able to switch on faster than me and teach me some more skills. We already have this on our junior ipads, so I will be incorporating this when we return to school. The children could create story boards for our shared books as part of our reading rotation.





We discussed registering for next week's exam. Eeeeek!!! I have a few things to practice in the coming week...

We had time in the afternoon to sign up to Scratch Junior and complete the 10 block challenge. With Venessa's help, I discovered I was de-bugging which is going through the code and checking that each action works. Some hiccups trying to save and share the result, but will keep working on that.
A big day of learning!