DFI Journey - Day 3

 DFI - Day 3

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

I really enjoyed Dorothy's presentation today regarding the Manaiakalani pedagogy. I loved the idea of Hanga (It's all about the Hook) and how our children can be creative to show their learning. I enjoyed reading the different quotes especially 'Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.'

I know when I went to school (just before the dinosaurs roamed) and even when my own children went to school, templates were the thing and sometimes you couldn't tell who's work it was as they were all identical. When I started/finished my Early Childhood training my philosophy evolved that I would not be a template teacher and I was interested to see how tamariki would have the opportunity to be creative and expressive when I was employed by Rāwhiti School. I feel that our school give our students the opportunity to be creative and expressive in a wide variety of ways but what warmed my heart was that in Rongo-mā-tāne we don't do templates and each child's individuality is expressed through their creativity. I'm not sure if this has always been the practice of RMT or if it has been since the school has been involved with Manaiakalani.

We also have a Maker Space which is where everyone else's trash becomes another person's treasure. The perseverance, problem-solving, communication with their peers, taking responsibility for their own or their peers learning is always evident while children are in this space. Isn't creativity a great way to learn all of these dispositions :).

NOTE: Want to add any quotes from Teacher Tom, Pennie Brownlee or Kimberley Crisp that support this pedagogy.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I was able to use some different Goggle apps to increase my confidence rather than just 'using the same old norm.' I was interested to use Google Draw and how I was able to create my own button by using the different tools of: explore, linking to my blog, masking an object, resizing my page, downloading it as a .png image, and finally inserting it into my blog :).

Now when my team talk about creating buttons and masking an object, I will have some idea of what they are actually talking about :).

I also learnt how to create a simple animation using Google Slides. Mine was very basic (see below) but it is a start. Over lockdown last year I created some different slides (scratch slides) to put onto Seesaw for our children to interact with but I've never tried to use them for animation :).

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

Last year our team made up some playlists in Youtube for our learners but I totally forgot about them until today. This will be great to use once again with my learners and I've even added some extra playlists such as audiobooks which I feel will be a great tool to have with the upcoming winter months. It will also make my life easier rather than having to search for an appropriate song/story while the children are waiting. Now to just remember that I have it set up! 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I think having more practice on how to create and insert different objects into blogs will certainly help me. I always second guess myself when it is my time to write a blog post for the Rongo-mā-tāne studio and spend more time than necessary as I'm worried about how it will look, read and be presented for the wider school community.

Online learning session -

Today's online learning session was good but I'm so glad that I am in the face-to-face cohort. I felt absolutely exhausted by 10.30am and was ready for a 'nana nap'. No wonder I was completely brain dead by 5.00pm after a full day of DFI then a maths planning staff meeting afterwards. 

It was certainly good to refresh my memory of how to join a Google Meet and share my screen with my tutor teacher as it's something I don't have to do that regularly. I did miss the social aspect of our usual DFI day and talking with other colleagues. 

I think I prefer having one-to-one help with a person standing directly next to me as when I was having trouble with inserting my 'About Me' drawing slide, I was feeling a bit blah about how long it was taking and why did I feel that it wasn't working at all. I certainly felt frustrated with myself where I think if one of our tutors were standing next to me they could actually have done it while I watched. I think I'm just that kind of learner