Preparing Fabric for Slouch Beanies

I’ve been preparing (cutting out to size) a range of Polar Fleece colours for Slouch Beanies. This has taken me over two different release periods to finish preparing with 6-7 different colours cut out. As each student needs two different colours to make their Beanie, this is very time consuming. There are three different camo prints students can choose from and 5 block (plain) colours - maroon, fluro yellow, black, pink, and green. If they want to use a camo they then get to choose a block colour. In the past, some students have chosen 2 of the block colours rather than a camo. I'm excited about the green as it really pops and would be easy to spot when worn - it's just a thicker fleece and may prove harder to stitch. 

I will take pictures of finished Beanies asap.

                             

Relieving in Room 6

 10-10:20

These students were all on chromebooks working on Google Classroom tasks, mostly on Education Perfect Literacy or Numeracy.

I did a quick walk around to see what they were all up to and invited students to the teacher's desk if they needed a hand. One student was already seated by the teacher's desk working on a measurement task. He showed me how to look at your ranking and I asked everyone to have a look at their current rank/points to compare at the end of the day. I then got them to have a quick brain break - stand up touch your toes and then buddy up. Facing their partner I asked them to use their right hand to touch their partner's right shoulder. Quite amusing how long it took some student's to figure this out and others who got it straight away. They then did Paper, Scissors, Rock best of three and back to their work on Chromebooks.

I liked reading some of the quotes Mrs E had on the wall.

Culture, Identity, and Language Workshop

Culture, Identity and Language in an Intermediate/Middle School Context.

A Wero – A Challenge – A Disruption to thinking and Practice. 

3:20 - 4:45

Anaru began with us doing our school Karakia and then his mihi. The slides will be shared with us after the workshop.

Section One: Whanaungatanga, What is  MAC, School Vision, Values and Motto, My knowledge and abilities - Te Ao Maaori. 

The importance of knowing who we are - Sharing about ourselves. Where are we from, where we grew up, our first ancestors. our schools/kura. What are we trying to grow at our school. Noo whea? Ko wai? 

We spent about 30 mins with each staff member doing a quick mihi and using a Kohatu to place on a picture of the waka our ancestors arrived on. 

MAC - Maaori Achievement Criteria - an organisation that is in over 20% of NZ Schools.  MAC is about incorporating Te Ao Maaori in NZ schools to raise Maaori achievement. 

The Maaori Sidesteps - NZ . We watched this YouTube clip about place names being pronounced incorrectly and how people pronounce place names to find them on Google Maps. Great irony when the main characters are pronouncing the number 'one' and 'Christchurch' incorrectly. Pronunciation is so important - you can insult people if you pronounce things incorrectly. 

We should be able to share our school values in both English and Te Reo. 

What do I feel confident and capable in doing now in relation to Te Ao Maaori? What would I like to be able to do?

Lastly we watched Jai from Dillworth's speech addressing stereotyping of Maaori and the Maaori culture. WOW

What does it mean to be Maaori? What is the origin of the word? Reflect on what we hear about Maaori - what do we see in the media, what do we hear? What are words or descriptors that come to mind we we think of Maaori? Be honest... is it negative or positive? 

What words describe Maui? How is Maui viewed? What is positive about Maui? 

How well do we know our tamariki Maaori? How well do our tamariki Maaori know who they are? Know their own story? How well do we know the world our tamariki Maaori walk in?

Preparing Pencil Case Fabric

Preparing the fabric for pencil cases is very time consuming and can be quite monotonous. I cut the fabric into 30x40 rectangles, using an electronic cutter that saves me so much time. I am conscious of waste, cutting each piece as approximate as possible and then overlocking the two shorts sides - each piece is overlocked one after the other and then snipped to place in a neat pile. I've cut 24 of each print (5 different prints) to cover 85 year 7s in this cycle and ordered enough zips to cover 66 Outside School (OS) year 7's also. I then place 4-6 pieces of each print into class piles with a range of coloured zips. I find this ensures each group has a range of the prints to choose from, rather than one group taking all the favourites, such as the camo prints. 

I had left over fabric from last year, when lockdowns interrupted the last cycle and I wasn't able to teach the OS's year 7's to use a sewing machine (I had prepared the fabric during the first week of the holidays and we went into lockdown that Thursday until November 17th). I've decided to save these fabrics for the current OS classes because they were all ready sorted into piles of 22.

This is what the Fabric looks like when it arrives...

Outside Schools

 Started with the first class of Outside Schools today - there are now only two schools sending students, when usually there would be four. As a team we went through the student information we were given and split the students into five groups - we now offer digital tech with Mrs. Palmer and still have: Fabric, Hard Materials, Moulding, and Food Tech.

The fifth group has meant that we have been able to split the students into smaller, more manageable groups and hopefully ensure the success of a higher number of students.

The second change we made was to keep the same class with us for a total of eight lessons. We used to see two groups a day, however we discussed the benefits of staying with the same teacher/subject for successive lessons. We have all agreed to trial this and feedback and revise if needed.

This morning I prepared by writing each student's name on a piece of tape - to help me identify and use their names throughout the lesson - and popped a booklet and blue bag by their names. Ngahinapouri on the left and Te Pahu were on the right.

This system worked really well when the students eventually got into my room and I found it really helpful to be able to address each student by their name as the lesson progressed.

Thank goodness we started with all the groups lined up out the front, so we could see how many were in each line and ensure we had the correct students in each group. There were a couple of no shows - either having left the school or not coming today for a variety of reasons. We did, however have a couple of students on our roles that were from Paterangi who had mistakenly been left on the list. 

During morning tea, I popped out with my coffee and said hello to the two ladies who had accompanied Ngahinapouri. One will remain as a teacher aide and the other will come one more time - I believe she was the mother of the student who required the teacher aide. I observed students from TAI and Outside Schools saying hi from afar to an old friend or neighbour - nice to see they were following our guidelines about distance and not physically interacting. It was also nice to see the kids playing a range of games outside!

Overall this was a really great start to Outside Schools and I thoroughly enjoyed having the same group for two lessons. I felt like we achieved a decent amount of work and they were engaged for the majority of the time. A positive sign when they were leaving was loads of thank you's and happy students :-)

Office Staff Request

The ladies in the office called me just before our TOD with a request to help them out with their new shredder - it came with a plastic bag for the shredded paper to fall into, which kept ripping. The plastic bag was held together with tape! I took some measurements and used calico to create a very basic drawstring bag. It fits well, and so far so good. I'm sure I will be called to attend to any repairs as and when needed.