Isolation Take 2 week 2

We got the news yesterday that we are still in Level 4 until Tuesday night, and then hopefully some of the country (including us) will move down to Level 3. It's a funny feeling again. I think there was always some hope that we would move to Level 3 quickly, but it's sensible not to. Auckland (and possibly Northland) will be in lockdown for a while so it is particularly difficult for them right now. We are definitely lucky being in the South Island.

I'm watching the Facebook posts of my relatives in the UK travelling around and doing the 'normal' day to day things and thinking that was the other way around a while ago, with us in Level 1 and them in lockdown. Things can change so quickly, especially with this Delta variant.

When lockdown comes there are always a range of posts that pop up on social media that make you laugh, or that are particularly good. A couple that I really like at the moment are the One Day More Corona Parody (thanks to JJ for sending this to me) and the Aranui Community Trust's TikTok that reminds people how to stay safe - love the reo and the energy in this, it's fun but gets the message across.

This week has been busy - contacting students I work with, getting long needed paperwork done and having Zoom calls and Google Meets. I do find the calls difficult sometimes when the video and audio don't match, I realise how much I lip read in these situations and wonder how it must be for those that are hard of hearing and have no hearing aids to help.

NCEA exams have moved back 2 weeks. This will give students more time to prepare, but will also place more pressure on staff as they lose time that would normally be used for planning for the next year. It's a fine balancing act and I hope that schools consider the well-being of staff as well as the well-being of students. 

I am watching the paralympics at the moment. What amazing athletes. They have overcome so much and are competing at such a high level. I have learnt a lot about the classification system - this site helped immensely and I am continually referring back to it as I watch new events. It's so sad that the Paralympics don't get as much publicity as the Olympics, but I guess that is the way with many sports - someone makes a decision as to what gets airtime or pages in the news.

The good weather meant I could get out in the garden and the longer daylight hours have been great. I'm loving the spring flowers and the blossom on the fruit trees, The rain now means that I get more genealogy done and I am working on my mother's Sagar line at the moment which has been really interesting. Lots of Barons and property, very interesting history. The photo here is of my gg grandfather's Ironmongers shop - it has been recreated in the Abbey House Museum in Kirkstall which is where the Sagar family held a lot of land. I remember my mother saying the shop was exactly how she remembered it, right down to the smell and the bench she used to sit on. I'm loving the research and the gardening.  It's a win win for any weather for me at the moment.

How do I feel this week? I was feeling ok for a while, then had a wave of OMG how am I going to manage this, then after chatting with a couple of people I felt better again. Just shows how important it is to stay connected to others during these uncertain times. Make sure you reach out and have some good conversations each day. He waka eke noa - we are all in this together.

Isolation Take 2

 So, here we are again.

We found out on Tuesday afternoon that we had one Covid case in Auckland. By midnight the whole country was in lockdown. Today we find out we are in this for a while longer - at least until the middle of next week. 

It was strange day on Tuesday. I had no idea anything had happened and I went after school to buy some cat food and the carpark at the supermarket was full! It's never full. There were so many people there, I figured at that point that something must be happening, especially when I saw a lady come out with a trolley that had a lot of toilet paper! I was surprised how few people were scanning in, knowing this was probably Covid related, but I scanned (as I always do), dashed in to get the cat food I desperately needed and then came home. To stay for quite a while as it turns out.

I don't know how I feel. Part of me is happy to have the time to get all that paperwork done for school. I quite enjoy the extra time I have to potter in the garden, have lunch at home and pat the cats, lots. I enjoy being in the quiet and having the freedom to have lunch when I want and to pop out in the garden for 30 mins when it's warm.

But I also feel strange. It's just not comfortable and I worry for so many people on so many different levels. Much of this I went through during the isolation we had last year (you can read all my blogs on that) but I feel like I'm doing all that thinking in a much shorter space of time. Back then it was all new, we were finding our way through. It took days to work out what was going on and how to manage things. This time it's all been a bit of a rush. Here we are. Bang. Back into it. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I have ways to spend my time. I'm working from home and have spent the last few work days getting some much needed paperwork sorted as well as planning for a continued lockdown. I've spent many hours on my laptop, sadly missing a programme I'd like to have to make life easier, but my work laptop is behind closed gates so I have to do without. I can still work though, as most things I do are online and I keep everything in my Google Drive. I have a website to make, some scanning to do, lots of sorting out of documents, gardening, genealogy - I can fill my time up quite happily. I even have a jigsaw here but I don't feel like doing one. Maybe it's the fact that the cat pulled the last one off the desk before it was complete (grrr), or maybe I've done enough lately.

We are lucky to have the technology we do - video chats, messaging, funny pics coming through to keep us entertained, but it's also a reminder that not everyone has that access. I think that's part of my battle. A lockdown is not equitable. Hmmm, more thinking on that.

Don't get me wrong, it is definitely the right thing to do. It just feels strange this time around for some reason and I haven't quite pinpointed it yet.

Education - where are we going and why?

 Over the last few weeks there have been a number of articles and books that have come my way about education in general and where we are heading. It's something I have been in the midst of for a long time, looking at change and how the system is working, or not. I feel very strongly about this and every time a new article comes my way I read it and am sitting here going yes, yes, but how can we get others to do the same thing?

I think we would all agree that the current system of education does not fit everyone, there will never be a one size fits all, but the question is, when are we going to change what we are doing so we cater for more of our young people. I wrote a blog about this in 2018 - nothing seems to have changed in that time and I wonder when, or if, anything will. There seem to be a bunch of people keen to move forward, but then a group definitely keen to stay put, or even go backwards! One of the podcasts I listened to this week even comments on the way the NCEA changes that are currently in progress are actually taking us back a step. This podcast is a conversation with Bevan Holloway, the founder of SMATA, ex HOD of English at Wellington Girls College. This podcast talks about the concept of 'play' in a secondary school and the experiences that schools can offer that challenge what many would consider traditional secondary school. Well worth a listen. It reminded me of my blog around the Lifelong Kindergarten - play being an important part of learning at any age.

I think that the education system that has been around in the same format for a very long time has not kept up with what students or the current employment system needs. There is a great blog by Robin Sutton published this week about this very thing - I love the title:

Our educational purpose: compliant economic units, or creative human beings?

He says "There was a general view that education didn’t meet the needs of the group of young people who are most at risk." I believe we have known this for a while but not all schools are trying to do anything radical about it and when they do, they are often slammed for being too radical, or not focusing on the qualifications at the end.

Derek Wenmoth's Futuremakers blog Pedagogy of Compliance talks about our actual system of schooling and Frederick Taylor's pedagogy vs John Dewey. It gives a good background of how we got to where we are but also challenges us to move forward and make change, to take risks and to move forward. Derek is always writing about the future and what we could be doing and his Futuremakers site has more to read on this very topic. I look forward to his blogs -  I read them and say yes, yes, yes....

As the world is slowly moving on from Covid19 there have been many articles around changing the education system to better cater for needs of students. Many young people excelled by working from home - others wanted to be in a school environment. It brings up many questions about what we are wanting to achieve and how students learn. Time to revolutionize our education system is an article around schooling in Massachusetts but is relevant to us in New Zealand as well. It challenges educators to:

 "create the conditions necessary to meet students where they are, and move toward student-centered, whole-learner approaches that are trauma-informed and more responsive to individual students’ needs."

So, where to from here?

The system needs to change. This will not happen overnight, but we can make it happen, one small step at a time. Keep pushing those boundaries, keep challenging each other, keep sharing information and ideas so we can move forward.

Genealogy

 

I love the school holidays. Apart from having a break from a busy time at work, it gives me the opportunity to get stuck into some genealogy - I mean hours and hours of it! I can quite easily spend 8-10 hours a day just researching and sorting and puzzling through things. My poor garden does get a bit neglected and I find myself hoping for rain so I don't feel too guilty!

These holidays gave me the chance to tidy up some lines with the main purpose being able to try and track some DNA matches. You get matches with all sorts of people and often I find that we can't work out who that common ancestor is. So my goal was to set up something that meant that others could see where they might fit on my tree and hopefully be able to connect a few dots.

This fan chart started last year when I decided to do something for my children for Christmas. I did both my tree and the McLachlan tree, giving them a fairly full idea of their ancestry on both sides of the family. Both had gaps with dates not complete, or names missing, so I decided to work on filling in some of these on my line. Although there are still a few gaps and a couple of "I'm fairly sure" guesses, it is looking a lot more complete than the one I did last year. 

This is a printout from MyHeritage. I don't put my tree online generally, but found this was a really good way to present this information so I've put the basics up there, enough just to print this out. The limitations are that you can only have 250 people in your tree for free, I'm sitting on 241 with the Eason and McLachlan trees, so I won't be putting much more up there - maybe a few gap fillers if I find them. I do like the way it looks - it's very clean.

After doing the fan chart, I thought I'd see what the next generation looks like. As I couldn't do this in MyHeritage due to numbers, I used Charting Companion. I've used this a lot in the past for full circles of lines and did a number of descendant circles for the McLachlan Reunion in 2013.

I did a circle for each of the lines that came out to New Zealand and did them in different colours, but hadn't done an ancestor one until today.

The difficulty is that I have my Sagar and Eason lines in different files. I decided not to join them together early on in my research and they have stayed apart. It's something I'll have a think about - it would be useful when putting pretty things together but when I'm researching, the files get very large. The Eason one in particular, because I'm doing a One Name Study, it has Eason's from all over the world. Having my Sagar line in there could get a little confusing I think.

Anyway, I did the Eason and Sagar lines to see what they looked like - taking them out the 8 generations back. They are not pretty yet, but I just wanted to see what was missing and this certainly gives me a really good view.

I'm missing a fair bit, not the Eason name itself, as I know I have more even further back, but many of the others need filling in.

The question is always - how far do you go? These are my great great great (x lots) grandparents, but often in lines that we don't always think of. Most of us research our name (generally paternal line) or our maternal line, but then once again following the paternal grandfather. It's interesting to follow different lines back and often see where some of those obscure middle names have come from!

So, both the Sagar and Eason lines have now spread into Metcalfe, Gildon, Holmes, Anderson, Hill and Phillipson lines and it only gets bigger from there!

In working my way back I am finding all sorts of interesting things, some unusual middle names (I finally found where the Avern came from in my GG Grandmother's name) and some interesting forenames - Mr Brown White is definitely one for the books!

So, next step is to fill in the next generation all round I think. It would be good to get a few more filled out - I won't be going back down every line, but it would be nice to have as many of my 5 x great grandparents names.

Part of me hopes it will rain all next week.....

Books - Executive Function "Dysfunction" - Strategies for educators and parents

Another book in my holiday reading list, another one from the Dunedin University Bookshop. This book by Rebecca A. Moyes gives a good insight into executive function, what it is, some strategies to help educators and parents, and she uses real examples to explain difficulties that can arise when it is dysfunctional. Executive function is about the neuropsychological processes that impact self regulation. We see it often in students who have a lack of time management skills, lack of attention, or behavioural difficulties. These are my notes, with a few more links to go deeper into topics.

Behavioural Inhibition

This is where students don't seem to be aware of social laws that govern behaviour. Examples could be of inappropriate conversations, or sharing of information. Extreme examples are those with Tourette's Syndrome who are not able to control voicing out loud what they are  thinking. Those with Alzheimers can also make inappropriate comments due to deterioration of executive function. It's important to work out if behaviour at school is because of noncompliance or if it is because they are not competent in this area. If it's about competency, then they need to be taught self management skills rather than be disciplined. This book gives lots of examples of what this can look like and offers lesson plans for teaching students to refrain from using negative words and perseverative talk (always on a certain topic eg trains).

Those with a large executive function deficit appear to be ones that struggle with change in routine, Children with ASD often struggle and can use visual supports for transitions to help with this. Some children also experience 'rule-governed' behaviour, perseverating on the rules (a lesson plan to help this is included). Sometimes what could be seen to be extreme inflexibility and stubbornness could be a sign of executive function disorder. The Stroop test (words saying colours in different colours) can be highly effective in identifying deficits, as can the Wisconsin Card Sorting test.

Theory of Mind

This is the ability to understand other's beliefs and how they are different to yourself. It's being able to understand how someone else feels and why. This chapter includes a lesson plan to help teach theory of mind through emotions pictures.

Working Memory

4 types of memory are described:

Sensory memory - brief, lasts a few seconds - eg my lips are dry, I need a drink

Immediate memory - 30 sec to a few minutes - eg instruction at school to use T for true and F for false - need immediate memory to recall this.

Rehearsal memory - up to 4 hours - eg repeating statements or actions so you can access it later

Long short term memory - 1 hour to 2 days - Can increase this by the use of mnemonics eg EGBDF for note naming. This is a step into long term memory.

Students forget 90% of what is earned in class within 30 days and most of it within the first few hours of a class. To improve memory recall you need to repeat important things less than 30 seconds after you say them, again within the hour, then review over time. To help support this you can use songs, chants, visual and tactile experiences. This chapter gives a good list of how to help support students with working memory deficits.

Organisational skills, time management, planning, and decision making

Most of this is self explanatory, talking a lot about graphic organisers. I have seen this Freeology site before but it is mentioned here as well and reminded me of it, so many great free resources. One comment really resonated with me:

"Educators must adapt work so that it is appropriate for the students. Otherwise, problem behaviours and anxiety levels will most likely escalate."

Initiation and Motivation

Sometimes what can seem like a lack of motivation is a lack of the ability to initiate which is part of executive function deficit. Students may need reinforcers or a list of steps. Motivation is also an executive function but it's about being able to actually do the task. There is a discussion about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation including some needing rewards or reinforcers to get work done. Many think it isn't fair that some get rewards and some don't, but some children need these to succeed, it's about what the reward is, and for come it could be a perseveration as a reward.

Self talk and emotional supports

This chapter unpacks stress and the effect it has as well as about having good coping mechanisms. There is a stress detective worksheet to identify what activities cause stress and a stress meter to help identify levels of stress. A useful chapter with lots of ideas and worksheets.

Attention

This chapter unpacks a lot about how there are different types of attention issues. Many are unpacked more on this Misunderstood Minds website which is one theory about how we pay attention. This  chapter gives some good strategies on how to help improve attention, including food and water, reinforcers and technology.

I did enjoy this book. It has a lot of examples and good practical ideas. It is reasonably short which helps when you are reading heaps and I found it easy to read. On the way through, doing more research, I found this great site called Understood - lots of info on here about all sorts of things, I'll spend some time having a look through. Meanwhile, for now, I'll finish my blog with the same anonymous quote that she uses in the book:

"If they can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn."

Books - Autism Spectrum Disorder in Aotearoa New Zealand: Promising practices and interesting issues

The holidays give me time to read some books, some for pleasure and some for work. Over the last week or so I have been reading Autism Spectrum Disorder in Aotearoa New Zealand: Promising practices and interesting issues edited by Jill Bevan-Brown and Vijaya Dharan. This book caught my attention before Christmas while looking through the University Bookshop in Dunedin with my friend Tara. She and I found a wide range of educational books there and we may or may not have purchased a large number of them - woops.... So I thought as I read them I would give a bit of a summary which may inspire a few others to read them as well. 

I really liked that this book is based on New Zealand practice. It shows practices of NZ kaiako and educational professionals who use Evidence-based practice (EVP) and implement interventions for those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the classroom. Overall the book has some great interventions and tips for dealing with the 1 in a 100 students who are diagnosed with ASD. It also has a lot of tips specifically for Māori students and talks about components of culturally responsive evidence based practice, referencing Sonja Macfarlane's work. There are also some great links throughout the book to websites that can be used for more in depth research. I have done a quick note about each chapter to give an idea of what information is available in this really practical book and added a few links for more information about each topic.

Part 1 - Interventions

Chapter 1 - Using an adapted SCERTS framework with a 4-year-old - Anna Christie

SCERTS stands for Social Communication, Emotional Regulation, Transactional Supports. This chapter has descriptions and case studies about how it can be used in the classroom, building competency in each of the three areas by using strengths and interests.

Chapter 2 - Picturing the future: A video modelling package - Tracy Watkin

This is based around Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Learning Theory which is about behaviour acquisition through imitation. The idea is that an individual learns a behaviour by watching a video of a demonstration of that behaviour. It also talks about Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development which talks about a "more knowledgeable other".

Chapter 3 - The development of a Makaton resource for Samoan children - Heather Polson

Makaton is a signing system for hearing but can also be used for communication and learning differences. It uses sign and speech together as a bridge to verbal communication. This supports the idea that the preferred learning option for many individuals with ASD is visual rather than verbal.

Chapter 4 - Social Scripts: SpongeBob helps Sam - Tangi Jackson-Ross

There are lots of different social narratives - statements, comments and questions individuals can use in social situations they find difficult. This one is focussed around SpongeBob Squarepants where the author wrote scripts with illustrations for a child to help them with having a conversation or to deal with different situations.

Chapter 5 - Colourful semantics: An approach for teaching literacy and communication to children with ASD - Dervla Hayes

This chapter was about using colour coding to show the structure of a sentence. It is a possible intervention to show how language works, but not necessarily for Māori due to the sentence structure being different. This is based on the Colourful Semantics approach by Alison Bryan.

Chapter 6 - TEACCH in a New Zealand regular classroom setting - Sharon Ketter

TEACCH stands for Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped Children. It is a strengths based approach based on structured teaching. This chapter gives examples in writing and mathematics, using the individual's strengths to teach them to work independently in the classroom. It is highly individualised and is based on the premise that:

If an individual with an autism spectrum disorder is not learning a skill or behaviour that we seek to develop, then we are not learning from them and we are not modifying our instructional tactics to their needs effectively. (Powers et al., 2011, p. 86)

Chapter 7 - Creating a social skills toolkit - Fran Dawson

This includes a Functional Behaviour Assessment, musically and electronically adapted Social Stories, video modelling. An example is of a group making a song and video about keeping their hands to themselves.

Chapter 8 - Pivotal response training for individuals with ASD - June Chiaroni

This was about enabling ASD students to respond to naturally occurring learning opportunities and build on their own interests. Parental involvement was very important. Lots of choices were available to students. For examples in literacy they had a choice of seat, a choice of pencil, marker or ballpoint, a choice of writing in a book, on coloured paper or on a computer. A lot of this is drawn from an Autism Internet Module on pivitol response training (which I suggest anyone with an interest in ASD signs up to and does some courses - free).

Chapter 9 - The Ziggurat Model in planning interventions for students with ASD - Jenny Tippett

This model has 5 heirachical levels that all need to be  addressed for intervention. Sensory and biological, reinforcement, structure and visual/tactile supports, task demands and skills to learn. These are all unpacked in this chapter and a case study example is given.

Part 2 - Issues

Chapter 10 - The role of culture - Jill Bevan-Brown and Alexandrina Moldovanu

This chapter is about how culture has influence on how ASD is viewed. In some cultures the symptoms of ASD may be ignored or not noticed as they are considered 'normal' behaviours or may be seen just as a  'naughty child'. There is also discussion about how interventions developed in the Western world are not always appropriate in other cultures. A very strong message that it is important to listen to and be guided by parents.  Bevan-Brown's three-step stairway to cross cultural competence is also mentioned. This is about understanding one’s own culture first, about the influence of the Pākehā culture on the New Zealand education system second, and third, about recognising the necessity to increase our own knowledge of the cultural background of the students.

Chapter 11 - Narrative assessments: Inclusive educational 'selfies' - Natalie Paltridge

Narrative assessments or learning stories can be used to show progressions, depth or ideas for next learning steps. They are used widely in Early Childhood, but not always at other levels. A good discussion in the chapter about how we perceive, apply and use assessment. I do like this quote:

Assessing everyone in the same way will not meet the needs of all students.

A reminder that is assessments are to be meaningful, they need to be student-centered and responsive to each student's learning needs. 

Chapter 12 - Dual diagnosis of deafness and ASD - Sharyn Gousmett

This chapter discusses the challenges and implications of this diagnosis. 12% of children with a hearing loss have some form of disability and a further 12% are thought to have an unconfirmed disability. One thing that jumped out at me was not having a diagnosis until later in life meant that students  "missed out on vital opportunities for intervention support". Early intervention needs to happen at age 2 or 3 and it can make a big difference.

Chapter 13 - Sensory therapies and interventions for individuals with ASD - Julianne Swanepol

A few approaches are described in this chapter. A sensory diet, where there are scheduled activities that can be integrated into a day. The ALERT programme which helps to recognise what those with ASD need to do the help themselves adjust to different situations. Handle Therapy, by Judith Bluestone, which is current not available in NZ. The chapter also has information about a Sensory room and how this works. There are a lot of resources at the end of this chapter as well.

Chapter 14 - PATH: Planning alternative tomorrows with hope - Alison Browning

This chapter was about planning transitions from school to the world. Some key issues were discussed. Transition should be over 5 years from age 14 where students would be introduced gradually to community based learning until their final year of school which should be mainly in a community context. 

I really enjoyed reading this book. I learnt a bit more about some different interventions and it reinforced what I already knew. Some things that went through all of these chapters are:

Getting to know your students is most important

Consultation with the person with ASD and their whānau is so important

The need for programmes to be individualised

Interventions are all built on interests

Interventions should be used with ALL children

You need a sound knowledge of ASD characteristics and strategies

More learning - there is always more to learn

Bring on the next book.