Wild Weed Workshop - Bridget Scully

My personal goal for my appraisal this year is to increase my knowledge of plants. 

On Sunday, I was welcomed into the wild world of edible weeds as I attended a workshop run by Bridget Scully. Apart from drinking cleaver tea last year and eating dandelion flowers as a child, I hadn’t really eaten or drunk any weeds that I knew of so I came in fresh faced with very limited knowledge.

At the back of her house, Bridget has let it run wild to see what plants pop up so it was an idyllic setting looking out at her meadow. 

Our first task was to spend a few minutes looking at a small patch of grass to see what we could identify. I could see 3 different plants but didn’t know the names of any of them. Quite daunting when we had to discuss what we saw in our patch and I was the only one who didn’t know the names of any of my plants. I soon found out one was plantain but am still mystified at the other two.

Next, we wandered around her garden and talked about the weeds we saw, their healing properties and if they were edible. Interestingly, they called calendula, chamomile, chia chia, nasturtiums, violas, borage and comfrey - weeds. I have never called them weeds. To me, they are flowers that I have grown (apart from borage - I have yet to try planting that), with calendula in particular being used on my babies as a healing cream.

So here’s what I learnt:

Borage - high in silica. Use leaves and flowers in salads

Black Nightshade - eat berries (I have HEAPS of this in my garden and thought it a menace! Berries have a currant flavour)

Calendula - it’s a weed! Who knew?

Chia chia - also a weed! You can eat the leaves as well as the berries

Comfrey - also a weed! Great for salads. It’s also called ‘knitbone’ as it was widely used to heal broken bones. Nowadays, people are more careful as if it is used on a broken bone that has not been set correctly, it will fuse bones that are misaligned. This is great to plant under trees.

Dandelion - use the flowers in salads, teas or as garnish.

Fennel - one leaf a day eases migraines

Fumitory - good for sick animals 

Lambs Quarters - Magenta Spreen - great for salads. It’s leaves are purple and green so it gives your salad more colour

Lemon balm - good for lifting your spirits. Infuse with oil to make a balm to use on cold sores

Lemon Sorrel - good for salads

Lemon verbena - makes a delicious lemony tea

Milkweed - don’t eat it! The milky part of the stalk when you pick it off heals warts. I have heaps of this in my garden (but no warts!)

Plantain - screw it up to use on bites, eczema, burns or any other skin irritation

Puha/Slow thistle - good to keep pests away

Purslane - edible. You can also steam it

Self-Heal - edible

Speedwell - edible

Yarrow - edible

Encouraging edible weeds to grow naturally in your garden.

• Dedicate some areas of your garden to wild spaces. Allow part of your lawn to grow wild. Involve the kids and create a nature sanctuary. Not only will you get to discover some new weed species but you are also creating an important habitat for lots of beneficial bugs and bees. 

• Let plants go to seed so they can scatter plant babies everywhere. The cycle of plant growth can only continue if plants are left to go to their full cycle. Allow one or two plants to go to seed and reap the rewards of self-sown plants without much effort.

• Learn how to identify plants as seedlings so you know whether those weeds coming up are useful, edible plants. Get your observation skills working. Look online or borrow a book from the library to upskill in the identification of weed species. It is a skill children pick up very easily so be sure to include them.

Important to note

• Be sure to identify any weed BEFORE consuming. If in doubt, leave it alone. Avoid any weeds from busy roadside areas where weed killers are often sprayed with reckless abandon. Only eat edible weeds that have been harvested from areas free of toxic sprays and contaminants.

• Get to know what the plants look like at each stage of their growth cycle. This will ensure you don't weed them out by accident. This is where having a messy garden is good. (My garden excels in messiness!)

• Respect the plants and only take what you need. Ask permission from the owner when you are harvesting from private property.

•  Start off slowly when you are consuming new wild edibles to ensure your body doesn't react.

Handy resources

http://juliasedibleweeds.com/

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/learning/colleges-of-science/clincis-and-services/weeds-database_home.cfm

A Year with James Wong - Grow your own drugs by James Wong

An Illustrated Guide to Common Weeds of New Zealand - Ian Popay, Paul Champion and Trevor James

Nature Earth Edible Garden Community on Facebook - join their free online community

Afterwards, we were treated to a delicious morning tea with lemon verbena tea and homemade pesto (no basil - it was all from weeds in her garden!) on sourdough bread.

Weeds I still need to know about -  Calendula, clover - red and white, elderberry, heartsease,  nasturtium, oxalis, Red Dead Nettle, violets, chickweed,  chamomile, nettle.

If you know anything about these weeds, please tell me in the comments below.

A picture of each weed would have been very useful for me but apparently I have to remember them myself (or google it I guess).

If you want to know anything more about Bridget Scully, check out her website; www.natureearth.co.nz

Learning-Focused Relationships - AFL - Allan Powell

Learning Intentions:

• To understand what a 'learning-focused' relationship is and the role of teacher and student in developing relationships most conducive to learning 
• To know what a ‘learning-focused’ relationship is and how it is fundamental to quality learning happening. 
• To understand the different types of relationship that can exist between teachers and students (that may limit a ‘learning focus’). 
• To have some practical ways of finding out the extent to which a class (or school) is ‘learning focused’. 
• To have some practical ways in which teachers and leaders can deliberately build a stronger learning focus.

As Allan had already observed my teaching and given me feedback, I was familiar with a lot of what was covered in this workshop. I already have Student Voice to work from and know that I need to make the students more involved in our next steps. The locus of control still needs to shift from me to them. 

It was great to have time to reflect on what is happening in our classes and what we want to improve. Having the students critique my lessons is a great way for me to make changes in repsonse to their feedback. It also show the students how I can also learn from feedback, gives them ownership of future lessons and I will be able to model the process using think alouds. 

Assessment and Moderation Workshop - Bruce Moody

The main purpose of assessment is to gain evidence of the students achievement and next teaching steps. However, some people think assessment is about producing standardised numbers where we can create graphs etc from it.

Why standardised?  Data driven assessments became the focus and assessment was ad hoc. As stated in NZ Assessment Mathematics Standards:

“Assessments need to be meaningful for students.”

“Teachers need to choose a range of assessments that give their students the best opportunities to demonstrate achievement.” 

We are trying to get the best out of the students and report on that in a fair and accurate manner. Therefore, we need to choose a range of assessments that give students the best opportunity to demonstrate their achievement. Ensure it is fair and accurate. We cannot go back to ad hoc.

When a child freezes or has a bad day, choose a different day. A different question. 

Think about what is the best way for the student:

For 5 year olds, talk to them.

Some older students may want to write it down or maybe oral is better for them.

Relaxed situations show better maths.

Utilise structures we already have so assessment isn’t an intrusion or stressful environment.

It needs to show what they could do independently. (Stress - students will use the most primitive strategy. Encourage them to use 'Smart Maths.') 

Assess in small groups. It needs to be managemable for the teacher and learning should not stop just because you are assessing. Bruce had a whiteboard. "This is my number and this is your number and this is yours (all different)." Students couldn’t look across at each other and copy. They were relaxed.

Students can half their whiteboards - when students have finished they could move on to the next quesion on the other half of their whiteboard. Once again, every student's number was different.  

You don’t have to use the exact same questions as the assessment.

Use the math progressions by Bruce (use 'like' questions with the idea of the MATHS as being the focus. Use different context but maths has to be the same.). 

"Add your number with mine and see what that is.

You’ve got $36, you’ve got $78 etc and I’ve got an $8 bag of persimmons for sale. How many bags can you get?" There's no sticky beaking and copying but they are all doing the same maths.

Capturing evidence - take photos of their working out on a whiteboard or written on a piece of paper.

If they get it wrong and if I believe they can get them right because they've got it right before, come back in a couple of days. Do it as part of a lesson rather than making extra work.

Bruce advised that he wouldn’t assess three groups in one day.

Remember about using NEMP tasks and there are great problems on the TKI website.

Lester Flockton created this pyramid (based on the healthy food pyramid)

The yellow zone, if we get it right it, is the public face of the learning.

To capture evidence for a 5 year old, make it verbal, then annotate on a Google Doc (I asked questions like this and a tick chart of children who could answer this). 

Moderation:

We all have the same key progressions we can refer to. There are different ways of being able to do this. If we moderate and iron out the progression, it shows us what it looks like before we teach it. This also ensures teachers are on the same page.

Digital Practicum

I was delighted to be given the opportunity to become a ‘digital associate’ for some of Auckland Univeristy Graduate Diploma in Teaching students between June 15th-June 26th. 

The form of the practicum is:

1.     The students will have an introduction to Manaiakalani pedagogies by AP Rebecca Jesson.

2.     Me organising a Google Meet on June 15th to introduce them to my class and to give them a brief to work on.

3.     The university then supports the students to use Google Sites to create a task that meets the brief.

4.     I will meet with the students again on the 25th or 26th June (or early the following week) to see what they have made and to provide them with some oral feedback on what they have done.

5.     If possible,  the children that I wrote the brief for will try the activity and let the students see the outcomes.

6.     The student teachers see/comment on the learners’ blogs during the fortnight they are with me.

This is a wonderful opportunity for the students to see digital pedagogies and to learn about teaching in all modes.

At our first Google Meet, I explained how our Class Site worked and how I use the digital space for teaching and learning. I showed them how to access the student’s blogs (a ‘virtual tour’) and told them about how I set up things online for the students to learn with/from. It was so refreshing to see their youth and enthusiasm. I also gave them a short class description and then gave them their brief. The meeting fnished with the opportunity for the student teachers to ask me questions. They didn't have any which made me think I had either explained everything incredibly well or bamboozled them and they needed time to process what I had said! I suspect the latter - I did get a little carried away with my explanations! 

I had already created a shared folder for us to access everything. This is where the recording of our Google Meet went in case they needed to replay it (rewindable learning is fabulous for people of all ages!), a copy of the brief and then a Screencastily of me explaining my Class Site and how it worked again. I also included a Google Doc with everyone's contact information, links to our Class Site and Class Blog, and an explanation on how to access the students individual blogs.

Their brief is:

I have a workshop group that has merged since Lockdown. Half of them are just being introduced to decimals now and the other half were introduced to the idea of adding tenths just before Lockdown. They could solve problems such as 3.4+4.5 and were working on moving past a whole number e.g. 3.4+4.8 (they were not independent with this). They can still do 3.4+4.5 but every now and again when they are looking at decimals I hear them call 5.14 “five point fourteen” and then correct themselves. It looks like they haven’t retained what the decimal point means and the concepts of tenths and thousandths. This is why this workshop group is coming together. 

I am excited to see what they come up with.

Multplication and Division - Bruce Moody

There are two views regarding multplication and division. One view is that multiplication comes from repeated addition. The other view comes from a different way of thinking about number; it isn't subsequential. It is repetitive. 
It takes years to develop this. 

When talking about doubles, get the students to see them as copies rather than 4+4 =
e.g. I have 4 and Sarah has the same. 

In multiplication we have two counts going on. It is important that we drop skip couningt and turn it into multiplication in Year 3. 
5 x 6 = 30 not 5, 10 etc.
If we asked the problem "I have 3 kete and there are 2 kumara in each kete. How many kumara are there?"
Our eyes see 3 objects (kete), but the second count is inside - there are two kumara (second count is 2,4,6). 
The inside (kumara) and the outside (kete) count. 
The first check point is "Does the students see both counts?"
If they cannot think multiplicatively the student will not be able to do division.

Arrays 
The curriculum says wait until Level 3 to use arrays.
For early stories, use the terms 'groups of', 'bags of', 'teams of' … this is the natural (this is where we start). 

Students need to have 2x and 5x  This is a must have. (until the students have this without skip counting you cannot move on.)
They can then use isomorphism (same structure). 

Use a T chart - 
Hands     Fingers
    4               20
    5               25

7                        35
    8               40

6 hands must be 30 because it is in the middle of the two - the students do not need to go back and recount in 5s. Using a T Chart will break the cycle of skip counting especially if you challenge them to a race. It's like a holding a mirror up. Tell the students you will solve the probelm using the old way of skip counting. They can solve it using the new way. Which way is faster?

Suggested scenarios:
Buying dominoes pizzas at $5 each.
Players on the court in a basketball game (5 on at a time). 
Bags of potatoes 5kgs in a bag. How many kg altogether? 

Challenge the students to races - teacher skip counts and students use facts. This show the students that skip counting is slow. Then turn the modelling book over without the answers. Students will continue to beat the teacher. 
This is the aim for the end of Year 3.

For Year 4s (deriving multplication facts):
For 3 times use two groups with an extra group.
Use the commutative law.
Use the 2s to build the 3s and 4s. 

Bring out material again for these extensions. 
If I gave 4 people $7 each (physically hand then a$5 note and $2 each) in pairs how much have you got? $14 
Link to doubles.
How much for all 4 of you? 28. How many groups of $7 have I got? 4 x 7 = 28 
Maybe only 1 or two scenarios in one lesson. 

Think - in my story as a teacher what does it look like? We don’t want students to misunderstand. Have the model before the deriving. If the model was incorrect, the deriving will be wrong too. 
Show me what 6 groups of 2 looks like. 

For Year 5 & 6s (deriving and extending):
4 groups of 9 lollies story - Provide 4 film cannisters with 10 "lollies" in each cannister. How many lollies do I take out? - 4  how many will be left? 36 
4 x 9 = 36 
6 tens - 6 = 54 
Get students to see the pattern. 
Can extend up to 17 x 9 for older students 170-17 = 153. 
Using the model to extend. 

Year 6s need to be able to handle 
6x 17 

Division with reminders - needed for Year 6s 
"Violet was a terrible tagger and she wrote her name everywhere - what was the 53rd letter she wrote?" (6 letters in her name 8x6 =48 5th letter would be e) 
Stop students who start to write it - "Stop, how many letters are there?" Scaffold with questions.

Year 6s 7x8 = 56 
70 x 8 = 560 
(powers of 10 problems) 

Non unit fraction of a set - ⅗ of 30 
7/10 of 70 

They could get to 23x 34 but this is more for Year 7s.

Triangle Facts Handout.
Students see that they know their facts or they don’t.
Students highlight the facts they already know. 
There isn’t that many to learn is there.


Make the connection between 6x2 and 2x6 - investigate the communicative law of multiplication. 

9 squares handout

The students can make all times tables in order 

3

6

9

12

Division:

Addition and subtraction are opposites of each other so are division and multiplication

12 blocks all green

What are they - broccoli

Each student can have different colours 

Put them in bags by joining them together - students can decide how many go in each bag. 

Think about 12 multiplicatively. Hold up your bag, how many broccoli in a bag, how many bags have you got? How many brocolic did you start with? 

Division does not make the number smaller, it repackages them. 

I walked into a class the other day and I counted 30 fingers in the air, how many hands were there?

Use the T chart they have made in the past - get them to make the link.

T Shaped Literacy - Aaron Wilson

Often, as teachers, we endeavour to cover too many aspects when teaching reading. Students studying a novel might cover the plot, major characters and minor characters, themes, language, structure and setting, and conflict. These elements would have more or less the same weight afforded to them. It is not helpful to try to cover everything about every text as time is spread thinly across a wide range of learning focuses. T Shaped Literacy narrows the focus but widens the range of texts. 
Reading widely around a topic will help students to build vocabulary and background knowledge. This is scaffolded by the teacher. Reading selected passages allows students to learn close reading skills and build specific knowledge. Diving deeper into the texts with the teacher gives students opportunities to clarify meaning, have their own thoughts and opinions strengthened or challenged, and synthesise and apply ideas.
The reason behind using multiple texts is that by engaging with the same underlying concept in different texts and contexts, students facilitate deeper understanding and better transfer. Simpler texts can act as scaffolds that students can add deeper meaning to. Complementary texts support students to understand a key underlying idea. Competing texts require students to resolve disagreements and make judgements which can be cognitively challenging.

Another aspect of the T-shaped approach is identifying what the narrow focus should be. This could be in the shape of a moral dilemma or something topical such as 'Black Lives Matter.' 
Using graphic organisers helps students see similarities and differences between the texts they are reading which enables them to justify thoughts and opinions by cross referencing texts.

I was shown the T-Shaped Literacy Model a few years ago by Kath Jones when our school was involved with A.L.L. (although she referred to it as 'multi-modal' with added 'provocation') so it is something I have been working on for a few years. I was shown it again last year as part of DFI. Delving deeper into texts with the teacher and creating lively discussions and conversations between students is key to unlocking deeper understanding. Kath also made the point that it is necessary to specifically teach the other reading comprehension startegies outlined in the Effective Literacy Practices Handbook so students have the skills necessary to analyse and synthesise. Providing a thought provoking question or topic ensures the students make new meaning. 
My problem always lies in finding the supporting texts online. I always end up down a rabbit hole.

Hāpara Champion Eduactor Online Course - Randy Fairfield

Hāpara Champion Educator is the first of three certification levels in the Hāpara Champion Certification Programme. The Hāpara Champion Educator course is designed for beginning Hāpara customers with the purpose of learning how to use the Hāpara Suite meaningfully and thoughtfully from the point-of-view of a classroom teacher. The goal of the Hāpara Champion Educator course is to develop the basic proficiency to confidently leverage Hāpara in a 21st century classroom in a meaningful, student-centered way. 
This course was very challenging from a time perspective but extremely worthwhile. I have now added more skills so I can use Hāpara to it's full potential. 
Here are some tips and thoughts from me and the team at Hāpara.

Task 1
Course Objectives
1) Learn how to access the Hāpara Suite and navigate the HCE Course Units.


2) Join the Hāpara Champion Educator course in the Hapara community, introduce yourself to your cohort, and actively engage in the community.

3) Experience Hāpara Workspace from the standpoint of a learner.

I made my required 3 posts on Hāpara. It was quite daunting sharing a Google Sheet I use for students being accountable for their blogging as there a lot of whizzy computer people on there with far better skills than me.

Task 2
OBJECTIVES: Hāpara Highlights
1) Learn how to navigate and use the toolbars and menus of Highlights.

2) Master sending links and messages to students.

3) Get comfortable with the features of the Activity Viewer.

4) Learn how to take "snaps," interpret them, and use them to give feedback.

Highlights can be used foster a productive digital classroom and build positive, respectful relationships with your students. I can click on the 3 dots on their tile, scroll down the drop down box and send them a positive and encouraging message on how they are working today. I can pause their screens to gain attention whilst giving instructions or reminders to my learners. I can make sure the lessons are focused by checking what tabs they have open on their screens and removing the ones that are distracting them.

The Activity Viewer gives you a whole-class record of all the tabs currently and previously open during a Highlights session. It starts “recording” when you click on the Highlights tab and will ends when you close Highlights or refresh your browser. The Activity Viewer can record class browsing for a period of time and gather evidence of browsing behavior. From here, you can see who has (or had) a tab open and take a Snap of that activity to review later. You can also close tabs in the Unique Activity section.
The Activity Viewer allows the teacher to passively monitor, which frees them up to focus on instruction and building relationships while students are working in a digital environment. 

The Guide Browsing feature in Highlights, provides a couple of options to limit what students can view. Focused Browsing limits what students can see for a period of time. You can limit their browsing to just one page or give them larger parameters in which to work. Filtered Browsing is another option to consider when there is a need to limit what students can view. Filtered Browsing allows you to prevent students from visiting certain sites during a set time.  

Both Focused and Filtered Browsing can be lifesavers, but they can also be abused. It’s important to strike a balance between safety and trust; and important to use student devices as more than expensive pieces of paper.

Scheduled browsing can be used to:

1. Organise my learners so they are where they need to be and we are not wasting time with them trying to find the correct website.

2. Duplicate the session if I do the same thing every week e.g. a weekly online quiz. I can copy it and make minor edits if needed.

3. I can schedule different share links or focus sessions when I know in advance I am going to be away for the day or at a meeting during class time. It’s really great for planning ahead.

Scheduled Browsing can be such a helpful way to build routine into your classroom, save time that otherwise might be lost during digital transitions, and assist substitute teachers during planned absences. Every minute of instruction counts!

Task 3

OBJECTIVES: Hāpara Dashboard

1) Learn how to navigate and use the toolbars and menus of Teacher Dashboard.

2) Master SmartShare--to send files to individuals, groups, or classes.

3) Get comfortable sorting and searching student cards.

4) Understand the differences between Dashboard and Sharing tabs.

5) Develop a philosophy on using "the power of Dashboard."

6) Create a Best Practices Implementation Plan for using Dashboard in your classroom, school, or district.

By using the Teacher Dashboard tab I can organise the students into easily identifiable groups I have made by creating a group and colour coding it.This means I can share files directly to their group. I can easily edit these groups and switch students from group to group when required.

I can promote positive interactions with my students by opening up the doc they are working on and using the ‘comments’ button to make positive, helpful and thoughtful comments on their work.

I can create an overall better learning environment by providing timely feedback on current assignments to focus students on immediate tasks. 

This is timely as with Lockdown (due to COVID-19) I am now teaching remotely and teaching students how to thrive in a digital environment is more important than ever! 

Task 4

OBJECTIVES: Hāpara Workspace

1) Experience and explore Workspace as a teacher.

2) Explore exemplary Workspaces to source ideas for your lessons.

3) Create a Workspace to use with your students.

4) Share that Workspace with your HCE peers, and review others' shared Workspaces.

This task was a lot of fun. Hāpara is very user friendly and it's simialr to Google Sites in that students learning is ubiquitous, visible and accessible from anywhere the students and teachers are able to login to their school account.

I was able to rename the columns into Learning Intention, Learn, Create, Share to show the students workflow and align with our schools Manaiakalani kaupapa. All websites, YouTube clips and necessary information can be loaded for students to access directly from their groups or class task. Assignments can be given due dates, are submitted and returned by the teacher with timely feedback. 

It's a one-stop shop!