Moving into Remote Learning

A week ago, I arrived at school to a class of 7 children. At 2:00pm that same day, we had heard that New Zealand was moving into level 3 of the Covid-19 response and schools would be shut to children by the end of the day. We are fortunate to be a 1:1 chromebook school for all children year 4 to 8 but we still had the challenge of getting these chromebooks home before New Zealand moved into level 4 on the Wednesday night. We managed it!

On Wednesday at 9am, we moved into our first day of remote learning, starting with a google hangout (also known as google meet) with our class. We pushed these hangouts out to the children via our school site.

Each of the teachers in team 4 now have their own remote learning page.

On this page (click the image above), the children can access their learning for the day as well as the links to the google hangouts which will occur throughout each day. The hangouts have been a chance for the children to connect, ask questions and to be shown their learning for the day.

While the children are working on their tasks, I have been opening up the google docs which they are working on and leaving comments to support them. When they post their learning to their blog, I have been leaving comments to encourage them and get them thinking deeper about their learning. 

I feel that the first three days of teaching remotely have been a real success. The children have been engaged, completing tasks and have picked up on the new structure of learning. Whānau have been highly involved and supportive in their children's learning too which has shown from the quality and effort being put into each of the tasks. 

A highlight of Friday was the holding of school assembly remotely. This was led by our Principal, Russell Burt. Routine and structure is so important and continuing to have all these normal school events is highly valuable to ensuring our children continue to learn throughout this isolation period. 

The Manaiakalani pedagogy has allowed us as a community to move seemlessly into this remote learning. Our children are continuing to learn, create and share whilst they continue to be connected with others, have ubiquitous opportunities, empowered in their learning and their learning being visible.