MIT video presentation from my ENGAGE research in 2020

Final Inquiry reflection for 2020

Final testing results and Woolf Fisher data has come in for Reading and they are promising considering the tumultuous year the children have experienced being in lockdown several times in the space of one academic year. So; Priority Learner 1 has achieved Blue Level 9, Priority Learner 1 has achieved Blue Level 9 and Priority Learner 3 has moved to Red Level 5, and Priority Learner 4 has achieved Blue Level 9 which is also instructional level 10. I am pleased to see their progress over a short duration and feel that playing ENGAGE games has contributed to their social skills, self regulation skills, language accumulation and overall literacy skills in their Year 2 level of learning and development. I hope that these children continue learning over the summer holidays in preparation for Year 3 in 2021.

ENGAGE media coverage!

I was watching The Project on TV last week and you can imagine my surprise when I saw that Jessie Mulligan had covered a story about ENGAGE in NZ! He interviewed Professor Richard Poulton and founder Jimmy McLachlan and they both talked about the roots of this research beginning with the longitudinal study from Otago University and how 1000 New Zealand families have been tracked and interviewed over a 45 year period. The ENGAGE program has been rolled out in early childhood centres and is also being trialled in low decile schools. Jimmy professes that children who learn how to self regulate at a young age are better off than those who don't. Research shows a direct link to those adults who don't; become a burden to society as they often end up in prison, or having drug/alcohol abuse problems and experience family violence. A key finding from the results of the Dunedin study is that "Childhood self-control predicts physical health, financial success, and a lack of criminal behaviour among adults", (Moffitt & Caspi, 2013). One Pasifika mother of 6 children told the story of her youngest child being different from the others - always crying, having meltdowns and not having the language to express himself. His kindergarten teacher commented that playing the ENGAGE games with his peers helps him with his social and language skills. This positive intervention of focusing on self regulation skills has a lasting impact on all young learners who are involved in the program. Playing small and whole group interactive games such as those found in the early years is fun and engaging with other children. For example, "Simon says, Snap, Memory, ball and spoon race" as well as a combination of relaxation/yoga moves to help a child learn to calm down and re-set themselves if involved in confrontation or after an emotional outburst.

Wananga 2020

On Thursday 22nd October I was privileged to be able to share my research and newly devised digital tool to a group of teaching professionals hosted by the Manaiakalani outreach program. I focused on ENGAGE which is a series of games played by young children to develop self regulation skills and increase language. I have designed a website: https://sites.google.com/ptengland.school.nz/goldengiftsin2020/home to explain how teachers can use these games in their classroom environment and the benefits it has. These videos were also shared on our Team 2 site during lockdown as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Please leave a comment after viewing my presentation. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YJek2_n8oONHiJm18nnjC3NwrqNtuSwhrYOBHyIsGWw/edit#slide=id.ga4323cda3e_0_5 This has been a rewarding experience to watch the holistic growth and cognitive development of the Year 2 children that I teach.

MIT research data

Today I asked each of my four priority learners which ENGAGE game they liked the best and why? These were there answers:

What surprised me the most was that the student who has the lowest literacy skills in the group had the most amount of comprehensive language accumulation in her reply statement!

Inquiry reflection for Term 3

These students have been participating in the ENGAGE program for the duration of this year with the exception of the lockdown period. I have observed the following shift in Reading from 3 out of 4 of my Priority Learners from the start of this year Term 1, 2020 until now. Term 1: Student H - Red 4 Student L - Magenta 1 Student P - Red 3 Student S - Red 4 Term 3: Student H - Yellow 7 Student L - Red 3 (significant absence from school) Student P - Yellow 7 Student S - Yellow 8

MIT Hui

Today our research group travelled into the Auckland CBD on different modes of transport and met at KPMG who hosted us for the day. This was the first face to face meeting we have had since our first summer hui. It has been a long time that we have been able to gather together because of being in lockdown due to COVID 19. So, the 10 of us gathered inside a conference room and had an opportunity to discuss each of our projects to date. What I enjoyed the most was listening to other teacher's progress and learning about their highlights of developing a digital tool. I was able to take on suggestions and feedback from my colleagues about what changes could be made to my website. I will have to put some time aside to plan for my research presentation for the Wananaga. I aim to get Student Voices as part of my ongoing research feedback and evaluation of the ENGAGE program.

Update on my website!

ENGAGE support!

I was so thrilled to hear that our support staff at school are also being trained to use the ENGAGE program with the children they are allocated to support with their learning and behaviour in the classroom! Our Deputy Principal showed them my ENGAGE videos that I made during the lockdown and this helped them to visualise how to use the games with children and also to use the consistent language as well. I am in the process of updating my website as I have new videos and information to add to it now. Watch this space...

Creating a website from scratch!

Here is a sneak peek of my ENGAGE GIFTS website that has been designed for other teachers to use as a digital tool to help them implement ENGAGE games in their own classrooms.

It has 7 teacher directed and 7 matching child centred "how - to" videos explaining the rules of the games and what language is used to support children's language development. The website has been created to highlight the value and importance of this program which is to enhance children's self management and cognitive skills in a social setting. Overall, this contributes to their cognitive development and language accumulation over a significant period of time such as one year of learning.

Pass the kiwi!

After the return to school with the observance of 1 metre spacing it was important to keep the children engaged and active as they were seated at their tables for longer times than usual throughout the day. Here is a snippet of a game called "Pass the beanbag" which we adapted by using a soft toy kiwi!

ENGAGE games with Mrs Carter.

Team 2 Literacy recount of My favourite ENGAGE game! Today we played "Pass the beanbag" and we used Mrs Carter's soft toy kiwi to throw around to a friend. It was so much fun!

MIT Hui: Feedback on website design thinking

Today I was brave enough to share my prototype with my teaching colleagues from MIT:2020! They all made some worthwhile suggestions about my newly designed website to share online. This prompted me to think back to my original "Achievement Challenge" which was: Teachers need a digital tool for the ongoing collection, analysis and sharing of ENGAGE data. This research project has been designed to support other teachers who will be using the ENGAGE games in their classroom with students on a daily basis. So in my introduction I included parents, this has now been deleted as I need to solely focus on teachers. I had also included other videos of my story telling and creating science experiments (during the lockdown) which was off the topic and have since been removed. However, these are still available to view on the Team 2 site at PES. https://sites.google.com/s/1EUBYK8aQdRkpBXasd5QHqXVb1q2hb9Uk/p/1gvleo_u7KxkZkP-6hiWkKEXILMEqnV0k/edit I now aim to add new videos of children participating in the ENGAGE videos at school and include a tutorial video for teachers on how to use the data collection spreadsheet on a weekly basis. This will help teachers to identify next steps in regards to children's key competencies and self management skills within a school environment. I would also like to include some more relevant research to support the idea that children's well being and holistic/emotional development needs to be nurtured and encouraged in a social setting. You can view the comments made below that influenced my decision to change my prototype and refine it accordingly.

T2 Week 6: ENGAGE face to face!

My reflection looks at the impact of being in lockdown for 7 weeks that has had on our students. The high level of engagement of learning from our Year 2 learners returning to school has been incredible. The children have increased their knowledge and understanding of story writing for meaning and this has included sight words as well as using correct punctuation. Some of the children were participating in an online daily journal during the lockdown period which I think has contributed to their overall literacy skills and comprehension of writing sentences. This rapid increase of language accumulation is significant due to the fact that only some of the children were continuing to read books such as (Sunshine online) from our Team 2 site that was less structured than core curriculum school subject areas such as Reading, Writing and Maths... My main focus throughout Week 6 was to carry out daily ENGAGE games with all of our Year 2 learners as a whole (approximately 40 children aged 6 - 7 years old). The session began with a simple relaxation breathing exercise (Pick a pretend flower from the garden and smell it with your nose, now breath in and out 3 times...). Then I introduced an ENGAGE game such as "Simon Says" and outlined the instructions before it started. All the children joined in enthusiastically and had lots of fun! They didn't mind missing out, or not being the winner and there were no issues of non-compliance. We didn't have any incidents of emotional outbursts or tantrums, and there were no behaviour challenges. These children have shown how resilient they are despite all of the upheaval and changing circumstances they have found themselves in due to COVID - 19. They have adapted well and coped with a change to their inside environment such as being seated in a new and different place and not physically touching anyone else! I feel that having this in place as a consistent approach became an expectation that the children became used to and therefore did not reject. After about 10 minutes the children were verbally disappointed to stop the games and continue with other learning in the day. I know that there have been other Junior teachers doing ENGAGE games with their Year 1 students in single cell classrooms, which I would like to collate data and reflections from as soon as possible. My only regret is that I completely forgot to ask another teacher to record this, which is what I aim to do in Week 7 (next week). Our children have shown so much resilience and adaptability of their environment, due to the fact that our Team 2 roll was only 50%, we decided to plan and teach collaboratively every day. Writing in the morning, followed by Reading and Maths after morning tea. The afternoon block was scheduled for Art/Science/PE sessions. My final thoughts are that children in "Our Space" have been happy, engaged in their learning and kept safe in their first week back at school.

Participation and feedback of an ENGAGE game!

Hey Miss Carter. Its me Finau and Catherine and I played your engage called Jack in the box. You told us to sit on the ground and start forming yourself into a little box. After that you told us to pop out. Catherine just started laughing and I was like what so funny and she said she laughed because of how you were jumping and how she was jumping.I think that was the best game for Catherine. What was your favourite engage game? Take care From Finau.

Participation feedback of ENGAGE during the lockdown!

Hi Miss Carter, its me Finau and just want to say what an amazing idea to do yoga during the lockdown. Me and my sister Catherine checked it out and we saw you doing yoga. We loved all the poses you did. My favourite yoga pose was V shape one and Catherine loved the Lion pose. What was your favourite pose? Stay safe in your bubble, From Finau.

MIT research connections

So I had the privilege to meet with Jimmy McLauchlan via a Zoom call last week and wanted to share our meaningful korero around the value of the ENGAGE program that he has been involved with over the past 5 years of research. Since implementing the ENGAGE program over a 7 week period, prior to lockdown I have found that the children's engagement, interest and participation has definitely increased. I explained to Jimmy that I regularly use relaxation breathing techniques with my students as it helps them to calm down and refocus before structured learning takes place throughout the day. I try to use at least one game on a busy day and up to 30 mins of games in total which is the recommendation in order for this program to be effective. I often find that the students need to have a game to participate in during "transition times" throughout the day as well as when they get hungry before scheduled meal breaks such as morning tea and lunchtime. We discussed how much teachers are finding the games useful and how their students are responding to them throughout the day as they do require some preparation. I also shared my Google survey that I have created and am looking forward to reviewing the results. I can relate to the purpose of combining a child's holistic well-being with learning self-regulations skills in order to interact with their peers and manage themselves independently in a school environment. I shared some ideas around future games which could include Te Reo Maori and Pasifika games, language with a focus on cultural observances that the children are experienced with in their home environment and then make translations on new cards so teachers can use them in the classroom. I'm looking forward to this new direction and hope to use them when we can return to school life again. Depending on whether New Zealand comes out of Level 4 lockdown in response to COVID - 19? Kia kaha, stay safe in your Bubbles.

MIT: research continues...

So despite New Zealand being in national lockdown for a 30 day period; I decided to take my MIT research on a slightly different tack and record the teachers experience of their involvement with ENGAGE in the classroom prior to the COVID - 19 epidemic. I created a Google Form survey which asks questions pertaining to games played/used in the classroom and the initial responses that children have made? I will collate these answers in their graph formations once all the teachers who participated in the ENGAGE PLD workshops have submitted their form to me. Then I will include this data collection as part of my feedback in the final presentation of my research towards the end of this year.

ENGAGE game: 5,4,3,2,1

For this game you will need to find something that you can eat and place it near you; such as a piece of fruit and also something that you can smell such as a flower from the garden. Here are the instructions for this game:

Relaxing Yoga with Mrs Carter!