1903 - Primary School Teacher Auckland



Person / Group

Auckland Primary School
Teacher

Person / Group

Auckland Primary School
Teacher

Date

23 Mar 2019

Notes

Tell me about your class:

  • Year 5,6 mostly girls

  • 10,11 years old



  • Typical day involves managing class workload, assessment, planning

  • Last thing they did was a project about cultural inclusion - Primary problem with this was that it was really vague, and they don’t know what they want - goals from ERO



  • Current goals are to raise grades at the tail end of Pasifika students - Increase representation at top end of the achievement spectrum

  • Only starting this year with the digital technology requirement



  • Digital passport - mindlab

  • Mindlab is qualifying teachers in digital technologies

  • All the teachers at good shepherd have done the mindlab course

  • Primarily watching videos and asking quiz at the end



Tell me about the onboarding process for guests / volunteers

For guest speakers, Usually just send an email to admin / principal

Last thing they did this for was a project on renewable energy, they had the person that installed their school solar system explain how it worked, and how electricity works



Kids currently learn computational thinking on paper, already learning what algorithms are





Ministry says you have these objectives but doesn’t say how to achieve them

School curriculum

For juniors there’s a year 1-3 program but how to do them



Other Notes:

  • Someone to basically tell us what they need to know and how to space it out - only limited time to teach it and it’s crammed along subject

  • Only one hour a week for tech

  • Kids are more like blank slates at this stage

  • Hardest part is the introduction

  • Preparing them for high school

  • Had to be in context with whatever their teaching atm

  • Hands on activities when speakers visit

  • From year 5, to six they jumped from scratch to HTML and css

  • You don’t have to plan when someone visits your class

  • No lesson plan needed

  • Staff room visits

  • They have this hideous computer program to load information in - etap - one and a half hour staff meeting

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  • A lot of time teachers aren’t given enough material

  • They aren’t given “here is all you need for the subject”

  • The ideal course package

  • Here is all the equipment you need

  • Composting is easy to get resources

  • Hard to get electronics, magnets, hard to get equipment

  • High schools and intermediates get resources but primaries don’t

  • Lacking certifications as well

  • Can’t get microscopes

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  • Before chrome books some of the systems were 6+ years old

  • IT guy only comes in once a week but the type of IT support schools can afford is terrible

  • Lesson plan

  • Finishing growth mindset

  • SunSmart, drowning

  • Science focus once a term

  •  

  • Draw an inspiration phrase

  • Informational reports and writing

  • RE, religious education is hard to tie into tech

  • Financial focus next term with maths

  • Teachers find it hard to teach things that they can’t see the usefulness or utility in

  • If they aren’t confident in something they either avoid it or bring someone else in to do it

  • Contacting schools directly

  • Teachers hate LinkedIn - can’t find jobs that way

  • Jobs legally have to be in the education gazette

Questions / Followup Actions