Professional Learning, 18 January 2016
Story Park- Beyond the Basics

I was wondering if I would get anything out of this workshop but was pleasantly surprised. 
I managed to work out how to create new tags and sets, how to refine the ones we have and how to create filters.

I have since been able to put into practice what I have learnt by working together with Donna, we have refined our sets and tags and have now included a set that directly relates to our Kindergarten Vision which will make it easier for ERO to see how this is interwoven into our practice and helps strengthen it as a living document.

I have also watched a couple of the 'Teach Me' videos on You Tube which I have found interesting.

Professional Development, 18 January 2017

Giving and Receiving Feedback in the Appraisal Setting

Key points that I want to take away from this workshop were...

That giving and receiving feed back is actually one persons perspective and that everyone has a different perspective of the same thing.

When giving feedback its important to remember that the key purpose of it is...encourage, affirm and acknowledge, describe the teaching and learning and evaluate performance and drive improvement.

Some of our Tamariki have been showing an interest in Taniwha since we introduced the song 'I saw a Taniwha'. I had been thinking about how to extended this interest so set up the art table with pictures that Harry and I had googled. This inspired some amazing pictures and encouraged lots of discussions about whether Taniwha are real or not, where they live etc. So then I began to wonder how to extend this further. I came across a post on Mairtowns blog about challenging tamariki to create 3D pictures and I immediately thought that our tamariki could give this a go. I contacted Christine from Mairtown to ask for some advice about how she went about creating these works and shared with her how inspirational her posts are to me. Then I was ready to give it a go, once I mentioned the idea I suddenly had a table full of eager tamariki ready to get started.
This activity was a real challenge and required tamariki to work on their pictures for most of the day as it was a lengthy process. 

I really enjoyed working on this activity with our tamariki, watching their pictures develop, seeing how proud they were of their creations, sharing ideas and techniques with each other and the discussions that formed around what a Taniwha might be and seeing the many different ways they interpreted it. Once I managed to display the art work it was so rewarding to see the tamariki proudly showing their whanau their achievements. Click here to view email from Mairtown

• TRACY SMITHWednesday at 6:15pm

  These 3d pictures are so cool .It is a real task and a challenge for the kids but so so good for them to see the process through to the end even if it takes a day or two, and the excitement Toni has had to show me her picture shows she has really enjoyed the challenge. You teachers are always finding such cool things to extend our childrens learning. Keep up the great work teachers............... you all rock.
  And great job Toni you make me so proud the way you make something from nothing and can use your creativity and imagination to make some amazing things on a daily basis even at home as well as kindy.

  ---

• 
  Cassandra JarvieThursday at 3:06pm

  Thanks for your feedback Tracy, its great to get feedback from a parents perspective.

I have been really struggling with my pronunciation of our new karakia to start the day. This was even more evident when it was my turn to lead it this week, I got so nervous about thinking that I was going to make a mistake that it all turned to custard and came out all wrong. I felt terrible as I really want to be a great role model to our tamariki and kept thinking that if they hear the words pronounced the wrong way that its how they will learn it, I felt so awful all day about this experience and it was a real knock to my confidence.
I decided I had to get help and approached Kohine's mum Karleen asking for some support with my pronunciation, she was there for the mat time a few days previously and knew just what had happened. She was so supportive and said it was great that I was even trying and showed me on my Ipad two sights that had the karakia, one was the waiata version and the other had the words and a button to push to hear it spoken. What a fantastic help this was to me, I have been taking my Ipad home and playing both versions and practicing them and are already feeling better having reached out to Karleen. She also suggested we teach the children this karakia through waiata, that it may be easier for them to learn it this way. When I am next on mat time I will try and introduce it this way.

Today an Enviroschools cluster group of primary teachers visited our Kindergarten to experience our commitment to the natural environment. This visit gave me the opportunity to be actively involved in welcoming the visitors to our kindergarten and I lead the karakia kai to bless the food we were about to consume. This visit also provided a great opportunity to share my knowledge about our kindergarten and the areas that I am passionate about it also was great to receive feed back from the visiting teachers, hearing how they could feel the values of Enviroschools from the moment they walked through the gate, comments about how natural our equipment and furniture were and how it felt like they were entering an oasis. I think as teachers working in an environment it is easy to forget how far our kindergarten has come on its enviroschools journey and by having visitors it highlights some of the things that we are doing that have just become our daily practice. 

One of our goals at our conference was to try and access a local person from our community that we could ask advice from regarding Maori culture.This afternoon we had a meeting with George Hawera who has offered to support us with our quest to find out about local Maori legends, waiata and tikanga so we can provide our tamariki with a more holistic and meaningful experience here at kindergarten. George said he was just as excited to be working with us as we were with him as it directly impacts on his grandson Tawera. We were able to ask George for assistance with protocol, waiata and contacts in our wider community.
As a team we have been looking for a farewell karakia to match with our changes to our mat time routine in the mornings, George had prepared a booklet of things that he thought would be useful for us and he included a farewell karakia that we could use. However it does mention the Heavenly Father and we are aware that there are many different religions that make up Aotearoa. We feel that it wouldn't be appropriate to include this in our karakia so will leave this out, as the karakia starts with these two words but also reads fine without them we will check with George to see if he feels it is appropriate to use an adapted version.  I acknowledged to George that on my reo journey I have often been hesitant to speak te reo in fear of making mistakes, George was very supportive and said as long as I try my best and use reo every day improvement will come. He also used the example start with two words use them lots then they will become four, four will grow to eight, eight will grow to ten and so on. He said that to keep reo alive it needs to be used. I found this to be powerful advice and will challenge myself to keep increasing my vocabulary each week, slowly building and increasing my knowledge, I have a strong desire to improve so that I can be a  role model to nga tamariki. I think its important that our tamariki see that teachers are learners too.
When we asked George if  he had any ideas about why we struggle to get our Maori whanau to enrol at kindergarten he said that he thought it was a generational thing, that many whanau have not had positive experiences at school and this has impacted heavily on the way they view education for their tamariki. I had never considered this view and felt it made a lot of sense. I felt sad that as a country we have many generations that this has negatively impacted, making me even more aware of why it is so important as an educator that we strive for best practice and help our Maori akonga thrive.

Today I made my first attempt at leading the morning karakia at mat time, I was grateful for Donna's support by my side. I'm glad I found the courage to try as I had been feeling quite anxious about it and explained to our tamariki that I am learning and that I needed to go slow. Once I finished Christian told me I did well and that I just needed to speed it up! This made us all laugh and I told him that yes that was my aim that I will be working towards. I think its important that our tamariki see us trying, learning and making mistakes as this is exactly what we expect of them.

This afternoon we had another meeting with Tina Taylor regarding our blog progress. I was able to ask her to show me how to work through the technical glitches that I was having and now I just need to practice them again. I was able to try linking, share with me and learnt about the app for my Ipad but we couldn't find it when I went to down load it. Over all this session help clarify a few issues and learn a few new tips. Tina will meet with us again at the start of next year. Through these sessions I am making steady progress towards running a efficient blog, I hope with time and practice that my posts will become more reflective about my practice.

I also asked about streamlining the labels tab so we can tag more than one criteria to each post. Tina said that it could be done by a reconfiguration of our layout. We may look at doing this in the future.

I have just learnt how to copy and past a blog post so I can link it to more than one criterion. To do this I hold somewhere on the document, select all and then copy. Open new post and hold and paste. These might seem like very basic things to many but are new to me, I feel like I'm learning more each time I explore the IPad and seek the guidance from my team when I have exhausted all opinions that are obvious to me. I am viewing the IPad more as a useful tool rather than sometihing that I was putting in the too hard basket and found frustrating. I feel so much more confident now with my abilities to use it for many different purposes. Part of my success to date I feel is due to the fact that I have been doing what Donna from Papakua West suggested and that was just to take it home and play with it. This was great advice and I have been challenging my self to do something new with it most nights.

Learning to add a link

Today I showed Dianne how to put Google Drive and Google Docs onto her IPad. She then said that she had another problem and wasn't sure how to add a link to her blog post. I wasn't sure how to do this either so together we began working out what to do. The first problem I came across was how to highlight and copy the URLs so you can put them in as a link. I know how to do this on my lap top but just couldn't work it out. So I went to Safari and typed in a search and discovered by holding my finger down on the URLs it would copy it. Next problem was how to paste it to my link, Dianne worked this one out and together we felt rather clever!

Through this experience I have gained new skills and knowledge that will help me document my blog with links, this will be a helpful reference point for in the future if I want to revisit articles that I have found useful. 

Click here to see my first URL Link

First post from my IPad

This is the first post from my IPad, I have worked out how to find my blog and pin it to my bookmarks tab so I will beable to easily access it in the future. Yesterday I talked with a primary teacher at Tuakau Primary who is also using blogger for her appraisal. I found it helpful to bounce ideas off her, finding out what sort of things she posts and which criteria she is finding challenging and whether they were similar to the ones I am. She shared something encouraging with me, she said she was told that there is no such thing as a good or bad post, that it is your appraisal and that as long as you are showing growth and working towards that right things it will be ok. She said the appraisal is yours and it needs to be relevant to you. I found this reassuring as for a long time I have worried if I am doing things 'right' so now I am just going to focus on getting posts done to the best of my abilities continuing to grow and gain confidence in this new appraisal process.

Today we went over to the new entrant class to learn about what methods they use to teach children to write. I was interested to see if they followed a certain program and was excited to discover it was 'Letter Land', this was the program that my children used when they first started school. With this new knowledge and hints on Apps to download on the Ipad I feel that I will be able to better support children at kindergarten who are showing an interest in writing and letter formation. I now know what language to use and a better idea of letter direction and look forward to putting this new knowledge into practice with the children. It is so valuable to be strengthening our relationship with Katrina the new entrant teacher, being able to share our knowledge on children that have gone to Tuakau Primary and her giving us feed back about their progress. She also said that our children are well prepared for school and are eager to learn.

After having a conversation with Dianne about how we are going to take notes at our up in coming conference on our Ipad I decided to have a go at problem solving this issue. I started experimenting and exploring different areas, firstly installing the notes app thinking that this might be the answer but it wasn't. Then I installed google drive and discovered that this bought me a step closer but I knew that I probably would need Google docs as well. So I down loaded this app and discovered it worked, wow I felt great finally I am able to share something that I had learnt on the Ipad with the rest of my team. By sorting this out I will now be able to take notes on my Ipad at the conference on my Ipad that I will be able to directly link to areas of my appraisal blog. What a huge step for me...and it feels great! My next step will be to see if I can record children's learning that I've extended on my Ipad and include photos as it happens and add it to my blog, fingers crossed it works!

Draft Evidence Gudie to Registered Teacher Criteria
Tina Taylor forwarded this document to us today, as I have begun reading it I can see how it will become a useful document that I can use as a guide for when recording evidence. It has all ready triggered some ideas of what I could record with things that have happened over the last couple of weeks. This is still an area that I need to work on and I feel I am just at the start of the journey, I will continue to seek help and guidance from colleagues. But I know that this is something that I just have to adjust to. I think that by starting the blog it will stream line and simplify the recording of my evidence. I am looking forward to starting my new appraisal next term as this blog and evidence guide has helped my confidence and I know what direction I need to be travelling in.

Learning to blog

Today we are learning to use Blogger. We are learning to add images, links, label it to our PTC and schedule. This will help to make recording my PTC quicker and more efficient. I am excited about this new way of documenting.

Appraisal documentation with Tina Taylor at Tuakau Primary

I have struggled to get my head around the new appraisal documentation, finding the paper work overwhelming and putting this in the too hard basket even though I know this isn’t the answer. I asked one of the teachers from Tuakau Primary how they are documenting their appraisals and she shared with me that it is carried out using a blog post format. This seemed simple to me I could see how it would reduce a lot of the paper work and doubling up that is expected of us at present. I organised a meeting with the Deputy Principal Tina Taylor who had set up the appraisal system for the school and asked Dianne and Donna to come along with me. I thought this way we could all hear first-hand how this is achieved, I thought this system was much more user friendly and effective compared to our current system and Dianne and Donna agreed seeing many benefits. As a team we were able to discuss different aspects that we thought would be useful with Tina. We then approached Dianne Akast to see if she thought we would be able to use this system and are now waiting to hear back from her. I was hoping that we would be able to start this new system or something similar at the start of term three, but this is looking very unlikely due to the association’s indecision so far. It was a relief to discover that there were other ways of recording this process and that I was able to share this discovery with the rest of my team, I hope we will get a positive our come shortly.

Updated 24 July 2016

Goal Progress Summary

Cassandra Jarvie, 22nd July 2016

Goal 1: By November 2016 I will have a greater knowledge and understanding of Tataiako.

So that the cultural competencies within this document are more visible in my daily practice and documentation.

Goal 2: By June 2016 I will have further developed skills and knowledge using technology to enable me to create Multimedia presentations for use in the documentation of children’s learning.

Summary of Evidence

Goal 1 Tataiako

 PMI Workshop

 Korero based on the cultural compentcies of Tataiako

 PPM Meeting

Goal 2 IPad

 Creating an IMovie

 Creating a learning story using my IPad

Planned steps and areas to develop

Goal 1

Reflect on the work that we have done as a team using the Y framework, What does Tataiako Look like, Feel like and Sound like? How will this influence your future practice?

Have the diagram of the competencies of Tataiako visible as a reminder for you when documenting children’s learning and this may also help you continuing to develop deeper understandings of the cultural competencies.

Attend the TRCC conference on Tataiako to strengthen your understandings further.

Goal 2

Add a reflection on the I Movie and the story you created using Pages, how you shared the skills and knowledge that you learnt with colleagues. This could be evidence towards your goal and criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal practice (Ako) and 5: Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning (Wananga)

Continue to experiment and explore a variety of apps available and then reflect on which ones work best for you.

Write up your discussions with Donna from Papakura West and trial her suggestions.

Five out of five leadership 20, 21 July 2016

Over the two days we held discussions about engaging parents and Whanau, negotiating successful transitions and growing others. Aspects that I pulled out of these discussions were how I deal with these different aspects in my practice and how I would rate my effectiveness. I found the questions very confronting but in a good way, it made me think deeply about my practice and ideas on areas to work on. On one of the slides Barbara had a very clear and simple diagram about taitiakao and I could see how by simplifying the words it became clearer to me and it would be a useful tool in my documentation. It made me rethink how the priority outcomes in our kindergarten vision are documented through the children’s portfolios and whether my learning stories are reflecting enough of these important outcomes.

Barbra had some useful tips about giving feedback to others that I will try and use in my practice…to ask permission before offering feedback to others, ask each other for their view of a situation as everyone views things differently, to try and be more open about sharing feelings to get a new perspective for different outcomes.

Progress update with Dianne 20 July 2016

Today Dianne and I had a meeting to discuss how my appraisal is progressing. I said that I had been really struggling with the new documentation and trying to record evidence. She said I was on the right track and triggered my memory of a couple of events that I could record as evidence. Dianne suggested that I no longer record evidence on the association templates as she was fairly sure that this was going to be changing. I felt this lifted a huge weight off my shoulders and felt fresh energy towards my appraisal. I am going to try and commit to a small amount of time each week to work on my appraisal so it doesn’t feel quite as daunting.

IPad advice from Donna at Papakura West Kindergarten 19 July 2016

Today I was able to get some fresh advice on using my iPad in areas where I had struck problems. I took my IPad to the staff hui and approached Donna for some advice. She was able to show me how to get the top writing off my pages layouts when I go to upload them onto Story Park. This had been a frustration for quite some time and Donna’s tips made it look so easy. She also shared with me a couple of techniques as to how to upload on to Story Park and how to down load movies to put onto a USB stick. I am looking forward to trying out her techniques once back after term break, she also showed me apps that she uses regularly.