Kickstart Conference 2016

Hi All,

When I first started working in Distance Education 3 years ago I really struggled with letting go of the every day teaching.  The main reason for this was that I was still responsible for my students reaching National Standards but the majority of the teaching was out of my hands and being done by untrained home tutors.  One way my school attempts to remedy this situation is by holding an annual conference, which not only up skills our parents and home tutors, but also allows our students to participate in learning experiences that are taken for granted by schools on the coast.

It takes 6 to 10 months to plan and organise this event and costs a minimum of $25 000.  This is paid for out of the annual school budget, parents and the school's Parent Liaison Officer applying for grants.  We are very lucky that there is many national sporting organisations in Australia that will send out representatives to work with our students for minimal costs.  This year we had 70 home tutors and 85 children attend for the 3 days, with some driving up to 5 hours to get here.  This will be the first time parents, home tutors and students will meet their teachers, even though school started a week before.  In fact some teachers will never meet their students face to face, due to the large, isolated areas Distance Education covers.

For the three days the parents and students are separated, as our school grounds is too small to accommodate everyone. The students are organised by age groupings and are supervised by teachers as they rotate through a range of activities, with a focus on sports, arts and health and safety.  The majority of our students live on large properties with unfenced dams, rivers and creeks so a big part of school events is the teaching of swimming and survival skills. 

This year the students also participated in hockey, lantern making, weaving and gymnastics.  A lot of time is also spent on team building activities to ensure the students are learning socially appropriate ways to share, turn take and play with each other.

These seven hour days don't seem to exhaust them either as they are all revved up for night time activities!

While the children are playing the adults are learning.  There is a mixture of teacher lead sessions and guest speakers.  These sessions need to meet the needs of beginning to 10 year experienced home tutors who have  limited or no ICT skills and students ranging from Prep to Year 10 .   Also due to the impact of working large properties, in the middle of a drought, we are also mindful that many of our families are needing social and emotional support outside of the classroom as well. 

Some of the sessions this year focused on reading, sight words, ICT support, web-conferencing, mental and emotional wellbeing, personal goal setting and Back to Front Maths and misconceptions with guest speaker Tierney Kennedy. 

As an experienced teacher I held two sessions.  One was about the implementation of our school's phonemic spelling program 'Soundwaves' and the other was about the importance of creating word walls to help build up student vocabulary and understanding.  Both of these presentations can be downloaded from my TpT store by clicking on the links. 

Click on link to download Soundwaves presentation

 

Click on link to download Word Walls presentation

 

I also created a set of IWB games that the home tutors could use to practice the spelling pattern for the week.  These can be done individually or with a class of students. In fact I use them as warm ups before our English lessons everyday.  They are made using PowerPoint and are completely editable.

 

Click on link to download IWB spelling games templates

  

The week of Kickstart Conference is an extremely busy and tiring week for all involved. It is a time for me to connect with not only my students but also their home tutors.  In no other school setting is it more obvious, and vital, that teaching and learning is about partnerships and give and take.  It's nearly taken me three years but I think I can actually now say my relationship with my home tutors is blossoming.  I have stepped away from the mantle of being the expert in the classroom and now see myself as a mentor and an equal of  those with less knowledge and experience in teaching. 

 

Lots of good things to come...I'm sure!! 

 

 

Establishing Expectation and Goal Setting!

Hi All,

This blog is a little late for the beginning of the Australian school year, but just in time for the start of Term 2.  Many would think that teaching in an online environment would mean no behavioural problems.  And yes, to a certain extend, this is correct due to the lack of physical contact, but how do you get a child, who can be up to 10 hours away, to stay on task and participate?  Would you believe it's actually the same as any other classroom?

I always get my students to establish the learning and behavioural expectations and consequences for our classroom.  This way they have ownership and responsibility for their own actions.

I start the discussion through the use of a picture book to cue the class into types of appropriate behaviours.  My favourite is 'No, David!' by David Shannon.  The behaviours David uses in the classroom seem so extreme and are therefore funny to children in the lower years, which gives a great positive vibe to the discussion, and allow you to have an in-joke for the rest of the year about 'David-like' behaviours.  However, avoid this book at all costs if you have a David in your class!!

This year I used a downloadable book from Heidisongs called 'Wiggles learns the rules at school'.  Basically Wiggles does a series of wrong behaviours and the children in the class teach him the correct way.  It is a very simple, repetitive book but it does have a printable dog puppet and a small version of the book that can be sent home.  Great for the early years! 

We then brainstorm the sorts of behaviours we should be using in our classroom to ensure everyone is having the best opportunity to learn.  I write these behaviours under the headings of personal, classroom and playground and then lead the children identifying no more than SIX expectations that we can use to ensure everyone is feeling safe at school and can successfully learn.  The typical expectations in an online community come down those that encourage courtesy and manners and hold the learner to be personally responsible for their own learning, rather than on the physical expectations.

Click on link to go to Heidisongs website.

At the start of every lesson I go through these expectations as a reminder and at the beginning of every term we discuss if we need to add or take from the list.

While establishing classroom expectations the students also set the positive and negative consequences for their learning.  Negative tend to be along the lines of warnings on-air and parent phone calls.  Positives are the typical stickers and reward boxes as well as using our web conference tools to give claps and praise.  This year I have also included positive reward postcards to acknowledge achievement.   I mail these out to the students along with their sticker reward charts.

 

    Click to download Positive Postcards             Click to download Reward Charts

 

In previous year I will admit I have been a little lax in student goal setting.  However, after much summer reading, I have come to realise its importance in helping students to have control over their own learning and empower them to become independent learners and risk takers.  At the end of Week 1 I had each student tell me their goal for reading, writing and maths.  There is no time limits on these goals, as each student identifies when they believe they have achieved it.  I have the goals displayed on the wall of my office and each child receives a PowerPoint of their goals.  The aim is that every five weeks, or sooner, I will have an extremely quick conference (phone call)  with each child and if they are ready to move up the goal arrow they tell me and explain why.  As they move up there is less and less adult assistance until they are doing their goal independently  Once they have reached the top of the arrow they receive a reward postcard and choose a new goal.   Goal setting for the teacher is also important and my goal, after the Easter Holidays, is to actually have those conferences!  You can click on the links below to download each of the goal setting packs I use with my students.

 

 

                Maths Goals                          Reading Goals                       Writing Goals

 

 

So that's the first of five blogs to be written this weekend.  My next blog will be all about our annual school  'Kickstart Conference'.  Till then.