Asian Awareness at Freemans Bay School

This week I attended the Auckland Principals  Asian Aware Network. (PAAN). This network has been set up by the Asia New Zealand Foundation to support principals in preparing New Zealand students for their future in a global world. Our students today need to be prepared for a world in which Asia is highly influential.  Freemans Bay School is providing more opportunities for our students to be more 'Asia Aware" by learning more about our Asian neighbours, their culture and languages. 

We were delighted to have the opportunity to host this Shaolin workshop at school this week.
International artists from Songshan Shaolin Wushu Vocational Institute, China accompanied by musicians from Hanan University. In New Zealand care of Hanban for our Auckland Confucius Institute network of schools. This was  a spectacular not-to-be missed event and our students were delighted to have the opportunity to see and take part in the workshop and encouraged our students in their learning of Mandarin, which we teach in every class of the school.

Shaolin Concert on PhotoPeach

Learning Space Design

Last week we took 12 of our school leaders and teachers to visit three schools in Auckland. We were looking at the relationship between teaching and learning and the design of the classroom spaces.  We were interested to explore how recent built learning environments are really working. How has the design supported personalised learning or other thoughts on contemporary educational practice. What was working and what were the challenges and what would the teachers working in them do differently if they had the chance?

Such visits help us to inform our thinking about our future school design as most of our school is to be demolished and a new school built over the next two years.We believe that it is important that our educators have a role to informing our future school design to ensure that our new environments reflect the needs of future education rather than where education is  currently at.

We were impressed with the designs and the discussions.

The spaces we saw were supportive of:

• personalising learning
• inside and outside connections
• e-learning
• collaboration
• engaging learners
• linking thinking about teaching to design spaces

School design and teaching and learning tour on PhotoPeach

Technology in Our Classrooms

The second term has commenced at Freemans Bay School with excitement from teachers and students alike. I am pleased to be able to share the TVNZ clip about e-learning at Freemans Bay School. As some people said to me they found it hard to find it on the TVNZ site. Orcon have it up on YouTube. Orcon are our ISP and we can only run our blended e-learning curriculum if we have excellent service through our fibre connection.


The video shows how we use KnowledgeNET as our learning management system for students to reflect on their learning and share with their teacher, peers and parents. As you can see in the video clip, the reflections can be written, audio or video. The great thing about the video clips is that the students do not have to upload them. The system works with WYSISYG and the option is embedded in the system so the students can film off the screen camera and post!


It is a great facility and having a decent fibre connection means that several students can be doing reflections in a variety of ways to articulate their thinking about their learning. I believe that the  opportunity to reflect and to consider where to next is very powerful for learners to consolidate their learning experience. Having the video facility is also very motivating and engaging.

How do you get your students to reflect on thinking about their learning?

Framing learning through our class online learning links on KnowledgeNET

Each teacher frames the class learning through the online class learning links pages on our online learning environment, KnowledgeNET.

Students access these at school for their collaborative  and independent learning. They can of course access this from home or anywhere they happen to be. This means that the learning framework can be accessed from any place at any time.

Generally the learning links page of each class has four areas: reading, writing, maths and learning pathways - (this is our student enquiry area).

The learning links welcome page looks like this or similar.

The students click on the links to access their work - I will show the Learning Pathways link as it is associated with the next post which shows students reflecting on their learning pathway work for the term.  On this page the teachers have framed the lessons around the student enquiry on attracting birds to the school grounds. The authentic task was  to design a bird feeder.

You can also view an article written by the students on their work on creating bird feeders on our school website.http://www.freemansbay.school.nz/article/bird-feeders/111067/21504/

You can see from the photographs and the article that the students are engaged, enriched and empowered which is our vision for learning at Freemans Bay School.

I wonder how other educators have used OLEs to frame pedagogy - in particular encouraging students to reflect on their learning and their thinking - I would be interested in your sharing and feedback.

Student weekly learning reflections

Our learning is about enriching, empowering and engaging students in authentic learning tasks. As part of the weekly programme, student make reflective comments on their learning on the class authentic student centered enquiry.

This example is from a Year 3 and Year 4 composite class. They have been studying about birds and their enquiry has been around how to attract birds into our city school playground.

This group has designed bird feeders.

They have been asked to reflect on their design and what they would do change if they made another bird feeder in the future.

Here is a selection from this class blog this week.

Parents are able to check in on the class blog, view the student and teacher comments and support the learning at home.

I wonder what other strategies educators have utilised to encourage feedback from student peers, parents and teachers in an online environment. What has worked? What has been tricky? What are the challenges and successes? I look forward to your sharing.

Student reflection and feedback on KnowledgeNET Online Learning Environment

Our students have just completed their reflections on their learning goals for term 1. They could do this by video, audio or text reflection.

Here is an example of how the goals are set up.

The student is a 6 year old yr 2 student. The first column on this page is the goal in either reading, writing or maths. The second column is the learning intention for the period and the third column is the success criteria - what would it look like if the goal was achieved.

The student clicks on the area they wish to comment on. This is an example of a 6 year  old student's learning journal - notice that each area has comments on it. In this case the comments have been made between the student and the parent from home or work on the reading goals in a combination of text and video. Sometimes the dialogue goes on while the student is in class and the parent is commenting from work (having got an email notification).

Notice how the parent is giving feedback to the student about their learning as well as to the teacher. Teachers and peers can also give feedback. This framework supports collaboration, home and school learning partnerships, engagement, learning anytime and anyplace.

I am interested in finding out what other systems people have put in place in their schools to encourage student / parent partnership in schools through an on-line environment? What have been the challenges, successes? What works and what would you suggest to do differently?

Funky Friday

Our curriculum vision is to empower, enrich and engage students with their learning.

We believe that both teachers and students should be able to follow their passion or discover passion through a rich and creative contexts that are self selected.

On Fridays each week, we have our Funky Friday programme.

This gives teachers an opportunity to share with students things they are passionate about and students an opportunity to explore or discover their passions.

The electives change each term and include many options that students and teachers select.. For example, movie making, comic strips, freeform soccer, animation, rock band, engineering, enviro-schools. dance,  trash to fashion and much more.

Each week our student news team is putting together a "Photopeach" slide show to feature on our school website: www.freemansbay.school.nz

The slide show this week showcased the golf and gymnastics options on Funky Friday.

I hope you enjoy their presentation.

">Funky Friday -Gym and Golf on PhotoPeach

I think it is getting really challenging to have enrichment programmes in schools like this - particularly in an era when standards based / national testing politics is so dominant in the education right wing political arena.  Educators  have to be prepared to stand up for what they believe in to maintain such programmes around the arts, technology, science,  and other creative pursuits in schools.

I wonder what other educators thinking is around this? Do you feel that curriculums are in danger of becoming narrower - only focusing on tests through reading, writing and mathematics? Are there enough opportunities for students to develop and for teachers to share things they feel passionate about? How is this done in your school or education district? Do you think it matters and if so why / why not? What is your thinking around this?