Longworth Education conference: Ready 4 Learning presentation

 Presented by Andrea Ford and Carolynn Masson 

Ready for Learning 

Key foundation skills necessary 

Hearing

Speaking

Seeing 

Print 

Moving 

Key Competencies 

Developing Automaticity 

So not taking up any space in their brain 

 Cognitive overload can happen when children have not developed automaticity in their foundation skills 

Moving

Fine motor skills 

Lots of opportunities- playdough, ripping

Gross motor skills-crossing midline, jumping, balancing, skipping, hopping 

Balance- core stability- important for learning 

Crossing Midline- zip up school bags, putting shoes on 

Tripod hold 

Palmar grip 

Deliberately teach how to hold a pencil 

Change before 7 to hold a pencil otherwise it will be permanent 

Crossing midline activities- drawing figure 8 with one hand, obstacle course, hopscotch, playing at the playground, cutting with scissors, threading 

Speaking 

Modeling by a child who has good oral language 

Feeding the language that the children need when talking 

Learning through a play environment provides great opportunities to develop oral language 

Refer to the book 

Hearing 

Being able to hear environmental sounds around them is important before learning phonics 

Rhyming, hearing the rhythm, being read to in the classroom and home 

Working memory 

3 instructions and being able to follow them 

Movement video-Go noodles, Picking up objects, naming them, rhyming activities

Seeing 

Visual discriminations - being able to discriminate visuals

Visual memory- hold an image and know what the difference is  

What the children can discriminate or not 

Puzzles, dominos, matching objects, making patterns 

Print 

How often we expose print to the children 

Concepts of print-explicit teaching- reading to the children, children were understanding the importance of this 

Read and feed - reading while the children are eating 

Connecting to key competencies-- teaching sharing, kindness, eye spy 

NZ Key Competencies 

Managing self and Relating to others 

Altogether Autism PL session

 Altogether Autism 

What is Autism? 

Life long condition, born with Autism, diagnosed at possibly 3, provide strategies does not have cure. Experiencing the world in a different way. 

ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder 

Disorder: negative 

Takiwātanga: Maori way of explaining 

In my/his/her own time and space, positive maori view about Autism. 

Te Reo Hāpai: book written by Nā keri Opai 

Characteristics (Social communication, interaction, restriction/repetitive thinking, behaviour, Sensory) 

Don't really way high functioning/low functioning, more like on a spectrum 

uses levels 1-3 

We don't call it Aspergers, all under Autism. Depending who is diagnosing and what manual they are using. 

Girls- they mask it and they are diagnosed later than boys. Girls tend to imitate others' play. 

Around the teenage years, they can't mask it later. 

Focus on the strengths 

Executive Functioning 

Help to be organised, plan, remember instructions, understand complex or abstract concepts, deal with change. Working memory 

Calming down activity 

What does Anxiety look like? Avoid new situations, no friendships/relationships, Misunderstood and seen as 'difficult' 

Children indicating how they are feeling, and what colour they are now, and after intervention/calming down 

Meltdown or Tantrum 

Meltdown is a medical event. The person does not have control over the behaviour. They can hurt themselves or others. They wanna hide, don't want to be the centre of the attention. 

Meltdown Stages 

1-Build up: pacing, fidgeting -trying to cope with the stressors and anxiety 

(Intervene early, introduce a break,  safe calm down place, physical activities tearing paper, squeezing the ball, staying calm, don't touch the person) 

Meltdown strategies 

Protect everyone, use a few words, protect the child's mana, exit strategy, no power struggle 

Recovery (either catch it before happening or after) 

Relax, Reconnect, Reflect, Recharge, Re-prepare 

Talking to other children who are autistic about the incidents too so that they will feel connected again. 

Shutdown- a child doesn't  internalise it 

Draw pictures and let the child know the change or what is happening now and next 

Behaviour=Communication 

Form of communication. 

Helping them to be independent. If they can't get their needs met, and can't communicate, the behaviour happens. 

Can't -find out whys. Is there a stressor? Is there a need to meet him? Skill deficit? Does he know how to tidy up? 

Sensory-friendly environment 

Sensory sensitivity- can't focus on one sense 

Check the physical part first 

Vestibular: Sense of balance 

Proprioception: knowing where the body parts are in the space (Spatial Awareness) Body GPS 

Hypo- need more of that 

Hyper- too sensitive, need less of it 

Interoception: internal senses, something that is happening inside your body 

knowing how the body is feeling 

Becoming anxious- they don't make the link between feeling anxious and why it is happening/ what is making them feel like that 

Creating a sensory profile 

Stimming: repetitive body movements, movements of objects

To calm us down and soothe us 

Stigmatisation- does this matter? 

Need to give the same feeling 

Stimming -appropriate at any age 

Communication

Strategies for communication 

You have the person's attention

Avoid complicated instructions

Keep your language clear, polite

Allow them time to process 

Visual cues 

Have important conversations in a quiet area 

Profile books to communicate with other colleagues about the child 

Visuals

First and then visuals 

First(Less motivated) and then (Motivated activity)

Social Stories 

Transitions, individualized, simples sentences 

Going on a trip, new situations 

Video Self-modelling 

Around routines, transitions, new situations, learn a new skill, break it down to the step  

Supporting other teachers with ICT needs

Over the last 4 weeks, I have been creating little how to videos for teachers so that it will be really helpful for the teachers to navigate themselves during the time of online learning.
First thing I did was download Screencastify which allows me to record the desktop of my laptop. This way, I can show people how I am doing certain things on my laptop without videoing myself with a phone.
I have created videos about how to use Sunshine Classics and how to upload a video on Blogger. More helpful Seesaw videos were added as well.
I have shared this with the whole school so that the teachers can have access to it and saved it on our drive. 
I think I find myself always wanting to up skill myself and learn new things. I like to be creative and using Seesaw, I can add some creative aspects to it in terms of how I present the activities to the children and families.
I have also really enjoyed working with other teachers and communicate about how other people are doing certain things online and learn from each other. This itself has been a great professional development. I think that I feel more confident about using Google drive, Seesaw, Screencastify, Vimeo, and IMovie.
When I go back to school, I would really like to keep up the use of Seesaw with the children. Now the children have had some chances to use Seesaw and how they can communicate with me or others, I think this might encourage and extend the use of Seesaw in the classroom.

Diabetic course at the hospital

As we have a child who has a type 1 diabetes, I went to do the training at the hospital. I have had a child with Type 1 in a previous centre and have done the same course before so I was familiar with the contents but it was very refreshing to do this again and bring back the memory. I have also learnt some new things, and this time we were able to do the GlucaGen training as well.

Reflection on the science conference

Going to this science conference for 3 days with Edie has been very valuable and eye-opening experience. I really did not know what to expect for this conference and I feel that I have learnt so much about what science learning is about and what Edie has been trying to work on with the support from Royal Society Te Aparangi.

Sharing our science experience with others and listening to other people experiences have been really beneficial to understand how we can teach science and get the children to feel really excited and be engaged in the science experiences.

There were a lot of opportunities to discuss, share ideas and hear thought provoking ideas, and I really enjoyed this part. I like how Jen said about how teachers say that science is everywhere, but we as teachers have professional responsibilities to teach our children and that we need to know what we are about to teach.

Over the 3 days, I thought a lot about myself as a teacher, science teaching and science in our school. I have never really thought myself as a science person, someone who is really interested in science although I do have some interest areas like sustainability, insects and looking after our environment. If I really want my children to think like a scientist or act like a scientist, first of all, I need to establish their ideas about scientists. Then, we can establish and explore our ideas about scientist. When we know that we are all scientists and we all do what scientists do in our daily lives, I can then use the language like "I like the way you are thinking like a scientist!" Using words like observing, describing, and gathering data in my practice is also really important so that it is explicit teaching and they will understand what these actions mean. I feel that I know where I want to start from next year with my new group of children to explore science in a more explicit way.

Listening to Edie and sharing ideas with her has been so valuable and I have learnt so much from her for the last 3 days and have felt her passion in teaching science. I didn't know how much time and effort Edie has put in order to create the past unit plans. It was so great to work together to develop the next year's unit and we were very excited to share this with our group and get some feedback.

New year and adapting a new routine in the classroom

After listening to Anaru's workshop last year, I really wanted to incorporate his idea about classroom paepae. He explained how clasroom paepae welcomes everyone in the classroom, celebrates the biculturalism, and settle down the children in the morning for learning.

For my new entrant classroom, I wanted it to be simple and easy to learn for the children. I printed out and laminated the labels that said "kaikarakia" and "kaikorero". In the morning, children might express their interests in being these roles, and I help them with the words that they said. Kaikaraki will greet to the children and start the karakia. At this moment, we are learning the karakia. I say one line and the children repeat after me. Kaikorero thanks the kaikarakia and greet to the children and the teacher and do their pepeha.

It has been really wonderful to have this ritual and everyone respects this time. When we did not do the karakia on one morning because we needed to go to the assembly, one child said "Yoshie, you forgot to do the karakia!" so this tells me that it is a part of us and our day and it also reminded me that we need to do this everyday. If we needed to go somewhere, then we will start the paepae a little bit early so we will have enough time to do this.

I am hoping that we will be able to do this without so much of my help later this term or in term 2. I would love to see our children leading the paepae.

PTCs

Adding PTC labels.