At the end of semester one we asked students, teachers and principals how are we doing? Students and schools were mostly positive about their learning with the VLN Primary. They talked about what was going well, what wasn't, their teachers, their online environments, and the opportunities they had in learning especially for te reo Māori, second languages and programming.

What the Kids Said:

71% of VLN Primary students who responded to our survey thought that we were doing Great or Good 😀 21% OK 😐 5.5 % & the remainder not so good or awful 🙁

Most children talked about how they enjoyed their online classes, they liked their teachers, and they valued the opportunities to learn languages and culture especially Te Reo Māori and programming.  They liked learning new and interesting things, and learning alongside students from other schools. Some had difficulty with the quality of the connection (audio, video, internet or computer), a few found the class difficult to understand , and would have preferred to work with a teacher face to face.  They also found it difficult if class times cut across school break times or if there were clashes with other school activities.

Students talked about their Google classrooms as being a great place to find all their work, and to keep track of their learning and ask questions of their teachers or their classmates. Some students enjoy the WeLearn site as it was fun, useful and interesting and they could make new friends but not many students are using WeLearn now we are using Google classrooms.

• "just thanks for letting kids like us learn new things
  
• Over all VLN is SUPER awesome and I really enjoy it. \_(^_^)\
  
• It would be good if I learn another language like Korean because i have always wanted to communicate in 3 or more languages and it helps me to communicate to those who don't know how to speak English.
  
• Will you be adding more languages more choices for us curios children to learn."
  

What the principals & teachers said:

97.5% of the principals or teachers who responded to our survey strongly agreed, or agreed that they would recommend participation in the VLN Primary School 👍

They described the following benefits:

• Sharing of resources amongst schools, expertise across the range of schools

• Personalisation of learning for Y7/8 students - ability to choose the language they are wanting to learn, not just having to choose what we have on offer at school due to staff skills or resourcing.

• Developing student agency and independent thinking

• Learning through a different medium is great for the students, great for self management.

• Improve communication skills and to build confidence with articulating themselves in front of others. Building multi-literacies across the curriculum. Relational trust and time management. Mentoring: Tuakana - Teina. To build resilience, accountability and ownership of their learning/learning time.

• Students get learning opportunities that they might not otherwise get in our town.

• Giving all students the opportunity and access to learn Te Reo Māori.

You can read more in our evaluation reports attached below.