Self Defense - TOD

After having a few incidents in the news recently we decided to find way to protect ourselves as a staff. We approached Highwire a local facility who offered to help us.

What I found the most interesting was even though we have a flight or fight response sometimes to fly we have to get closer to the offender (so against what I want to do). To achieved this it will be a matter of practising.

Creating a Professional Blog

How to set up a Blog about what you are doing as a professional to accelerate learning in your space.

Whether Learning or Teaching a Blog can be helpful to rewind your own learning and help others who are unsure. Here is how I set up my blog using Blogger. As way to track the six professional standards that can help others improve learning and remind you of the difference you are making.

This set of slides I presented at the latest Kootuitui Unconference.

Learning Te Reo

One of the challenges teachers always face is what to learn more of each year when there is so much we can continue to learn to help encourage and engage our students.

One of the discussion we had before posting about where we come from was talking about posting personal information on our blogs. As often a security questions can refer to Nōhea koe? Where are you from? However part of Maori cultural is understanding where people come from to help us understand each other better.

We looked at the clip, followed the transcript role playing what they learnt. Then after asking 10 or more students from within the class they were allow to create a post showing what they had learnt about other students.

Check in and see what else we learn over the term.

Google L1 Session 1 - Using Technology in the Classroom

The way students and teachers can collaborate through Google has been an interesting turn in education. Children can work on the same project on different pages or the same page in their own space. They are no longer rubbing elbows and squabbling for space.

Google Maps students can locate places and track where characters head or use them to plot trips working out which is the quickest way and does the bus take it. Creating discussion on why or why not.

I enjoy using maps to help plot the adventures of characters in my novels and locate places they can or could use, including local public facilities.

Writing Basics

Most students are familiar with writing using 'I' but they possibly haven't been taught it is first person. This is something I am aiming to correct this year during my teaching. I am planning on showing and encouraging students to use third person. By explaining it is like telling someone what occurred in a movie or favourite television program.

We wrote both first person and third adapting fairy tales then we made up a story about a plant.
Here are so examples of what the students in my class came up with.

Third Person:

A little while after they moved into the house. It was a very old house, it had an attic in the high pitched roof and a cellar under the ground. Coraline's family didn't own all of the house it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of it. There were other people who lived in the old house. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived in the flat below Coraline’s. On the ground floor they were both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. - Krystal

She called, “Hello.”

No one answered. She could smell some hot butter chicken in the cottage. Goldilocks called out again.Then she saw three chairs, an oval wooden table and three bowls. One was small, the second one was medium and one last was big. Her tummy growled. The delicious aroma too much for her. She took a bite. The first was too hot, the second one was cold and the third one was perfect. - Justyce

The long snake like path led to a small house with a roof made out of branches. The walls made out of brick and it was a gloomy day, so she went inside the house. Smelling the scent of sweet porridge as she looked at the bowls on the table. She tried the first bowl that she saw.

“YUCK it’s too cold,” Goldy said.

So she went to the next bowl and tried the porridge.

“AHH IT BURNS,” she said as she ran round and round. - Dante

First Person:

I was so sad my Step Mother and my Step Sisters went to the ball, leaving  me at home, cleaning up and cooking. ‘When do I get to go to the ball?’ I wondered. - Krystal

I was planted in a bottomless pit. I was freezing, I got planted without anything, no

water, sunlight or nutrients. It felt like I was in a chilli bin, it was that pitch black. Did I mention it was wet, because it has raining for hours. Until I got the sun over me, then  finally I was getting a bit warmer every minute. - Te Iriwhiro

I was so lonely in the pitch black soil. My mean owner never came to water me the only one who watered me was the clouds.

“Oh dear what is going on here.” I wondered to myself. “I can finally move around and relaxed.” - Breeze

“ OUCH!!!” I said.

“ Who was that And why do I feel trapped, enclosed” I wondered.

“Hmmm what to do,” I thought. “Uhhh I'll just wait.”

4 days later…

“ I'm tired of waiting, I'm going  to push myself out”.

“I'm finally free. OMG I feel so good, stretched out.”

“Woh, I am growing, out of this tiny shell. - Dante

I was a lonely seed in a pitch black hole. I had no friends. When I was buried I was watered. But right now I'll  stay put right here to be watered again.

The next day I got watered. Now I looked at myself there was something appearing out of me.

The next day I figure out what it was. It was my roots.

A few days later I grew a shoot. I wish I knew what would happen to me next.

“Would I stay like this? Or would I grow more?” - Akram