Term 2 - 2020 - Day 1 begins!

What a day! Easter holidays are done and today we kicked off a brand new term in lockdown mode. We started the morning with an assembly using GOOGLE Meet for all Team 5 teachers and students - 75 of us in one hangout - what an awesome start! 

We had two subject MEETs for the day - 9.30am for Literacy and 11.30am for Maths - time enough to touch base with our students see how they have been over the break and ease them back into some kind of learning mode. It was great to see kids in the virtual flesh especially those who had gone to ground at the end of Term 1 and had not surfaced (via their blogs) during the holidays.  18 students out of 26 for Literacy; 12 out of 25 for Maths! Making a start!

The set up of our class sites followed the format from the end of Term 1 to LIMIT THE LINKS!

 and students can access their learning in just TWO CLICKS.
1) Click to the TEAM 5 site then,

2) Click on the individual teachers's learning pages:

So this is how my ROOM 2 Class learning site looks for TERM 2:

Parent feedback suggested it would help them out if we split Literacy learning into Reading and Writing - no problem!

Going forward, the key will be to provide tasks that students can for the most part tackle independently - will  be interesting to see how this goes and am at the ready to make tweaks as needed in the weeks ahead.

Looking forward to Day 2 back in the saddle tomorrow!

Remote Learning: The view from home

Day 2 of Remote Learning. A snapshot from home from our Google Meet today for Literacy. All from the comfort of her bedroom - the 'new normal' for teaching and learning spaces in lockdown.

Remote Learning: Go Live for Team 5!

As a team, we met informally after school last Friday for a quick debrief of the week that was. There was a definite vibe that schools were very likely to be shutdown at some point in the near future. Our talk soon turned into a constructive brainstorming session where we thrashed out how to  LIMIT THE LINKS  on our learning site so that access to learning at home in lockdown would be as streamlined and straightforward as possible.

Today, we reaped the benefits of this forward planning. While, we had started the week thinking we would have a good couple more days to trial and tweak things we quite simply ran out of time! So,  six of us took the plunge with our very first Google Meets and experienced our first taste of teaching and learning remotely in real time!

What a buzz! Lots of excitement as I met with my students as a group online. Students quickly learnt how to mute their microphones while I got to grips with the technical skills like finding the correct 'view' to see all of my students at once and remembering how to click RECORD for the session. Thank you for Dorothy for capturing the moment as members of our SMT came through the block to see us in action.