Zoe's Teaching Standards Site

This term I have attended and helped out at a few sporting events involving LAS students. Apart from our own athletics and swimming events, I have gone to the South Otago Athletics and South Otago Swimming Championships.  This is a great chance to watch and help our LAS students compete against students from other schools. 

 Last night we held our School Expo evening. This was an awesome opportunity to showcase what we are doing at LAS and get feedback from parents on strategic planning. I held a Digi Tech session in my class and was great to have some students to help out. I had 13/23 students present at the evening.  I had some great conversations with parents and it was awesome for them to see what equipment we have at school and how we are using DT.  The night also started with a hangi and welcome by the kapahaka. 

 Taking my class on camp is always the big highlight of the year. It is a great chance to see children in a different environment and see how they cope with new experiences and being challenges.  This year's camp was to Berwick Camp last week. It was a fantastic week, with great weather. Camp is always a great chance to interact with parents on a different scale too.  I had a great group of parents who were all very helpful. The kids were fantastic and all came out of their comfort zones and tried something new. 

 Yesterday we held our annual classroom information evenings. This was a great opportunity to discuss some housekeeping for the year and get everybody on the same page. I also held my camp meeting at this time too which was a good draw card for my parents. I ended up getting 11 parents that came along.

 On Monday 10th August I travelled to Alex for a Digital Technologies meeting with the other lead teachers of DT from Maniototo and Roxburgh Area Schools. Anne Keneally was facilitating the meeting from CORE Education.  The day was a great chance to get together with Anne, Katrina and Adelle in person after having our weekly Zoom meetings. Throughout the day we went over the Progress Outcomes for Computational Thinking (CT) and Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes (DDDO). This was useful to give me some ideas about where to start with the LAS staff. It was also good for us to break down the language in the progress outcomes too.  After this we had a lot of playing time with different devices to see how we could use these in our classrooms in an authentic context. I really enjoyed the Bee-Bots and found that using the maps gave a more authentic context for the classroom. 

On the 5th August my class had the annual netball tournament in Balclutha against schools from South Otago. The whole class attended and we had 3 teams playing. I managed a team which was great. The team I took got better as the day went on and they played with great sportsmanship. 

Recently I have taken on the lead teacher role of Digital Technology here at LAS where I will guide the staff through the new progress outcomes and how we can use digital technology in our classrooms.  Meetings have been an hour long and we have been having one meeting a week. Anne has led these meetings. In the first meeting I felt very out of my depth and had no real idea what I was supposed to be doing. Each zoom meeting we have had since I have learned more and felt far more comfortable and aware of what I need to be doing.  Since our day in Alex I have implemented a lot of my learning into my classroom practice and have also led a staff meeting on DT.  Zoom meetings we have had this term have been on:  22nd July, 28th July, 6th August, 3rd September, 9th September, 23rd September.