Mrs Gunn's Last Day

It's with a heavy but excited heart that I come to a short stop in my teacher career to go on maternity leave to have our first baby.  I'm so excited to welcome our bundle of joy into the world - but very sad to be leaving my wonderful room full of learners!  I plan to have a celebration day on Friday with lots of fun things planned, and will end the day with this wee gift that I have made for each of my students.  I hope they like them!

Making Fruit Kebabs

To celebrate the end of the term and to reward us for all the hard work we have put into training for the lapathon and cross country we made fruit kebabs with a free wee treats added as well!

Presenting our Friendship Certificates to our Buddies

Links to the RTC:
Criteria 2. demonstrate commitment to promote the well-being of all ākonga 
i. take all reasonable steps to provide and maintain a teaching and learning environment that is physically, socially, culturally and emotionally safe ii. acknowledge

Criteria 7. promote a collaborative, supportive and effective learning environment 
i. demonstrate effective management of the learning setting which incorporates successful strategies to engage and motivate ākonga
ii. foster trust, respect and cooperation with and among ākonga

Science - Fair Testing

We have been having fun this term conducting a variety of science experiments under the big idea of 'Fairness'.  Our focus has been to ensure that our students understand that keeping all of the elements of a test 'fair' are important to have an accurate test.
These are the following tests we have completed:

• Which liquid helps to grow grass the fastest?
• Which nappy is the most absorbent? (to help Mrs Gunn  know which to purchase for her new baby when she goes on maternity leave!)
• Which liquid is the most corrosive for teeth?
• Float and sinking, which material is best to make a boat out of?
• Paper towel absorbency test

Our goal is to give students the skills and strategies so they can conduct their own fair test so we can have a mini science fair here at school.

Here are some photos of our experiments so far:

Here is a link to our planning for this unit:

Science Fair Testing Unit Plan Links to the RTC:
6. conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme
ii. through their planning and teaching, demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of relevant content, disciplines and curriculum documents

Maori Lessons - Learning the Days of the Week

In class this term we have been learning to become confident in saying  the days of the week in Maori and being able to ask and answer a question using these days.  Here are the days we have been learning and the phrases we have been practicing:

Monday	Rāhina
Tuesday	Rātū
Wednesday	Rāapa
Thursday	Rāpare
Friday	Rāmere
Saturday	Rāhoroi
Sunday	Rātapu

Ko te aha tēnei ra?	What day is this?
Ko te Rāhina tēnei rā.	Today is Monday.

Here are some videos of us practicing together:







Here is a video of us playing the game 'piki' to help us practise the question and answer in Maori, but also to have some fun with our learning!



Links to the RTC
3. demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand  because I show respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi
10. work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand
i. practise and develop the relevant use of te reo Māori me ngā tikanga-a-iwi in context

Learning Our Mihi's in Room 14

Teachers make powerful connections between home and school, with opportunities for children to; draw/paint family portraits, write about themselves and others, or bring along items/stories/photos from home to share. All the while, new data is being gathered to provide an overview of learner skills, knowledge and needs.

It may take a little longer to get to each child/young person's

• experiences and realities
• goals and aspirations
• learning preferences (larger font, group work, standing desks)
• history and culture

Professor Professor Brian Edmiston talks about the power of polyphonic (between many) learning conversations as well as, ‘connecting to storytelling as a genuine tool for understanding.’ Through quality conversations, teachers can and do discover what influences, motivates and inspires students from all different perspectives and world views.

One way to find out more about our learners, is to invite tamariki to create and share their mihi or pepeha (Māori, Pacific or other).

We will be sharing our mihis before saying our speeches this week.  Here are some videos of our class members sharing their mihis:

Links to the RTC

3. demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand

Demonstrate respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi 

10. work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand 

Practise and develop the relevant use of te reo Māori me ngā tikanga-a-iwi in context 

Whatataukis in Room 14

What are Whakatauki?

‘Whakataukī’ are Maori Proverbs. These are sayings that reflect the values

and advice of past generations. Whakatauki often use metaphors to convey their meaning.

We have been learning different Whakatauki throughout this year for Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori.

This has become part of our routine where we start and end the day with a whakatauki.Our student Councillor Adelei shares this with us everyday.  Partly because her pronunciation is  much better than my own, but also to empower other students to show I am a learner too, and that I am giving things a go, even if some of the words are tricky in the beginning.

Here is Adelei sharing the whakatuaki:

Whaia te iti kahurangi

ke te  tuohu koe me he

maunga  teitei

Aim for the highest cloud

so that if you miss it, you

will hit a lofty mountain

Links to the RTC

Criteria 3. demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand

Criteria 10. work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand

Student Reflection on Learning

Shelby sharing her some of the things she is really proud of from her learning log.

RTC

Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, supportive and effective learning environment

i, demonstrate effective management of the learning setting which incorporates successful strategies to engage and motivate ākonga 

ii, foster trust, respect and cooperation with and among ākonga 

Ways to Help Struggling Writers

ConnectEd session August

Collaborative Planning Session

For the first session at our ConnectED session I decided to attend the Collaborative Planning session.  I really wanted to hear what others do in, and what they use for planning.  We currently plan collaboratively for our big idea planning and our unit plan for mathematics, but wondered when others are planning in a team, what does that actually look like? I have visions of teachers either working in an online doc or site planning together based on their learners needs and then linking off to other docs as they get more into the detail of what they are teaching. 

It was great to hear from Mike who shared what they are doing down in Nga Whatakauri as I haven't really had the chance to talk to the three of them about how they run their classroom programme down there.  It sounds like it is full on for them, and most of the day is dedicated to reading, writing, and maths.  He also said there isn't much time for things such as the big idea focus, sports or game time.  After listening to others share and discussing in the circle, he concluded that he felt the three of them could be collaborative better as at the moment they are still doing separate reading, writing and maths planning for groups and that it still took such a long time for planning each week.

A teacher explained that she went through a similar 'panic' about how to plan when her and a colleague went to an open plan room - 44 Yr5 and 6 pupils. She couldn't find anything she liked much, despite trawling the internet, so she created my own Google Sheets planning template. This looks like a regular timetable but uses hyperlinks to the curriculum and other online content, and to her own Google Docs. She also shares the relevant weekly plan with the class, via their email so they an access the links themselves. Seems to be working well.  She is wondering how next year will work though as they are going from 2 teachers to 4 next year, as she thought the larger the amount of students and teachers the more difficult she thinks it might be.  She also commented on the importance of having a great relationship with the colleagues you are working with the open plan environment in order for it to work.

After the session, I did a little bit of searching online to find other examples of what other teachers are doing in terms of collaborative planning with others and found this site which contains a range of resources and examples from other teachers and how they plan:
https://docs.google.com/a/core-ed.ac.nz/presentation/d/1Q7isbPcO8_V8_Cm8vrZLqRKKvTbBSCqA5E5Rk6SVvg0/edit#slide=id.g486d3ebd0_099 

Planning Check Principal August 2016

Recently I had our school principal came into my room to do a planning check.  I provided her with my planning for reading, writing, and maths as well as my weekly planning.  I also provided her with my assessment records and things such as students learning logs which showed evidence of students self and peer assessment etc.  I was pleased with the comments that Myra provided afterwards both verbally and in her note below.

Links to the registered teacher criteria

• Criteria 6 conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme 
• Criteria 8 demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn
• Criteria 11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally 

Sheena Cameron - Vivid Vocabulary for Improving Reading and Writing

Top Score Activity
Given a category and think of the word that will give the most points.
E.g. Plants - Venus fly trap

The amount of words a child knows on school entry predicts their long term reading achievement

A comprehensive vocab program

1. Building and foster word consciousness
2. Teach word learning strategies
3. Teach individual words
4. Plan for and encourage independent reading.

Word consciousness
Adopt a word

• Working in a small group with a word - adopt a word for a period of time - 3 weeks
• Could be a topic specific word or tier 2 words - long term use word (Tier 2 word list in resource)
• Sheena Cameron website - child friend academic word list
• Students choose a word
• Diorama to introduce the word
• presentation to explain their word
• make a advertisement using drama
• word jar
• Vocab charades with the word jar
• Fridge word - oral language book (home learning task)

Great website: wordplays.com

How many words you can make out of a given word - great spelling task for top kids

QR codes link to word play sites within the oral language book.

Words as an image - Ji Lee - not safe to show the class

Website that shows a whole bunch of different words as images

Students create an image using a give word for them.

Kinetic typography - inspire o.k to show a class

Playing with Words

Monkey Business by Wallace Edwards

Great book for idioms

Runny Babbit By shel silverstein

Wuzzles - wordsandnotesandcords.blogspot.co.nz 

Finding unknown words

• Reading resource - 20 most common prefixes and suffixes
• oral language book - looking at Greek and latin orgin of words eg 'logy' zooology, arceology eg.

Stop the bus

Bored panda - dangerous journeys to school

Verb                        Adverb      Adjective

Balancing              Bravely      

S

T

Teach individual Words

Tier words are the most important to learn

1.Read the word within the text, emphasizing a new word

2. students say the word

3. provide student friend;y definition

4. explain the meaning to a partner

5. repeat the word

Explain the word don't get them to guess all the time.

Dictionary definitions 63% of sentences were judge to be odd. (Miller and Gildea 1985)

Visuwords website - visual dictionary

Word hippo - online dictionary

Planned and incidental word teaching

• Student friendly definition with words that we come across in the shared story

Planned

• Get students to identify tricky words
• Teacher identifies 4 words and complete table
• word match - match word with definition
• Define it from oral language book
• Partner idea - 'piercing' student reads out the meaning
• Students copy the word
• teacher explains meaning
• students take notes and draw a picture
• students make up a sentence using the new word

Incorporating new vocabulary into writing

Aim to regularly teach a new word in a writing lesson

Can you include 'menacing' in your moment in time

Tweet the meaning

• Can you write the definition using only 140 characters?
• Meet with a partner and combine the definition
• Meet as a 4 and come up with a combined definition 

Word sorts

• Open word sorts - beginning of the unit, give the words and get the students to sort them into groups they think they go to.
• Closed word sorts 4 columns - 6 words in each columns

Brainstorm it - sort it - from oral language book

Three level thinking frame

• Understanding information
• Digging Deeper
• New Understanding

Highlight unknown words and where meaning breaks down for them. - Word Consciousness

Bring words to life 2nd edition - Isabel L Beck

Teaching Vocabulary in all Classes

Learning Support Meetings - Senior Teacher involved in these meetings

Room 13:

Mathematics

• Race around the track and basic facts provided for parents to support at home
• maths club
• Touch base with student who is well below in  maths but is consistently late and misses maths lessons

Written language

• One student who is well below has had 6 weeks away from school so far this year - discussion has been had with this parent
• ESOL student who is well below is starting to move
• A couple of students who are below are making some slow progress

Reading

• A couple of below and well below students are due to ESOL levels
• Boy is above who can be hindered due to his chatting
• Girl above goes to another class for reading

Room 15:

Mathematics

• Students who are below are struggling due to lateness
• Some year 6's who are well below have grown in confidence in ability
• Extension activities for top kids for home learning - Life of Fred

Written Language

• Lower abilities are ESOL and students who are often away
• 4 part picture plan can be detrimental for one student in the lower group
• Moving across the curriculum for writing for the top writers
• Have editing experts and language experts
• Student agency

Reading

• Sharp reading programme started with lower readers
• Unpacking what a text means
•  top group go to room 14 for reading session

Building Student Agency in your Writing Programme

Presenter: Debbie Thorpe - Rototuna Primary School

Link to the Presentation

One way student agency can look in the classroom:

• Student choice
• Writing motivations
• Student planning and preparation- having something to say
• Explicit lessons- grown over the week.
• Student tracking/goal setting- taking charge of their learning
• Teacher roles
• Growing students range and self selection to write different text types.

Main points noticed..

student agency impacts

1. Student Choice of topic -for a purpose.
2. Student’s taking control of their learning
3. Student’s tracking their learning
4. Children do the learning/talking- active participants.
5. Student Progress is easily tracked/evidenced

Writing Motivations: (refer to panda lesson outline sheet)

Panda Video:

I wonder if all pandas are this playful?

This reminds me of . . .

Did you know facts shared

Records the wonderings on the board

Discuss what our purpose for writing could be

Group ideas using different colours

Student choice with planning - try to encourage structure

Explicit lessons

• Monday to Thursday
• See three flexible groups each day.
• Each 10-15 minute session builds on from the day before.
• Purpose of the lessons are to discover the new learning, collaborate and build understand together with the new learning and then take this new learning to independence.
• In the last session the goal and how we are going to know we have done this learning is written on their goal sheet.
• The following week the students may have another learning goal- or will be proving their learning.

Student tracking

• Build into your explicit lessons
• So what will this/could this look like?  
• Wait until the learning has been discovered before children are expected to track it..otherwise it will be tracked for you, not for them.  
• Give time to build what this looks like over the week.
• Give time to write in the goal and how to show this...this must be owned by the students.It needs to be in the students own words- and doesn’t have to be exactly the same for each student in the group.
• Give time each day for students to track their learning in their books.

An Assessment Tool to Make Life Easier

Presentator: Jade Milne - Hamilton Junior High School

Assessinator Tool

Benefits

• quicker marking assessments
• Can give students the achievement matrix that you have created
• Track student achievement
• quicker making OTJ's
• easier to write report comments
• able to track student achievement
• able to write report comments without books
• easy export option

Limitations:

• Department share classes
• limit of 3 classes for free
• only 45 students in each class

ConnectEd TOD Keynote: Marcus Akuhata-Brown

22nd July 2016

Connectiveness to people and place

• Connectiveness to place can inform and influence the contributions you want to make in that environment.
• Young people feeling isolated and afraid as they don't have connections
• Connectiveness beyond immediate contacts
• learning community could be the place people can go when a crisis hits
• young people need vision - an experience could sharpen their vision
• what are the mana enhancing actions that we can do?
• Conditioned by their environment - Glass lids of expectation
• Through the head condition of belief with our hearts - head and heart working together - power to change
• The further you move out of your comfort zone the more you grip
• people make a difference 

Professional Development - Leadership Day Exploring the Edges with Cheryl Doig

Link to the presentation 

Here so we can make a difference

Are you ready for exponential change? - Futurist Gerd Leonhard,

• Are you driving change or are you being driven by it?
• What can not be automated?  That will be important in the future.
• Humanity is what is important - this will be important in the future.  What is the teachers role in this?

• Communication and interaction skills will be important to teach in the future and less influence on pen and paper and writing etc.
• What are we unleashing on the world?
• The saying that if we always do what we've always done then we will always get what we've always got - not true anymore.  If we always do what we've always done - then we will end of going backwards as the world is moving so rapidly. 

Technology as a driver of educational change

• Cyberthon - Physical Education
• 3D printed medicine - Science
• The Levian Project - Literacy - World building
• What are the implications for learning and teaching?

School as a learning ecosystem - 

• fit for purpose
• adaptive
• agile
• complex
• contextual

The minute you stick your toe in the water the system has changed - unintended consequences.

Adelei Teaches Room 14 Song to Remember the Maori Vowels

This term we have been continuing our Maori lessons.  From these lessons I had Adelei in our class approach me and say that her mum had taught her a really neat song that helps her to remember the long and short vowels in Maori.  I asked her if she would be keen to teach the class the song.  She agreed and became the teacher for our last Maori lesson for the term.  Her mum came in to support her but she did really well to present this to us mostly independently.  We now sing this song before each of our Maori lessons to help us prepare for the pronunciation of the words in our lesson.

The criteria I believe have been shown through this is:

Criteria 3 demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand

This is becuase I demonstrated respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Criteria 10 work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand

This is because I was supoorting my students to practise and develop the relevant use of te reo Māori me ngā tikanga-a-iwi in context. 

Criteria 8 demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn.

This is because the song enables ākonga to make connections between their prior experiences and learning and their current learning activities.  

Coaching Workshop 2 Lead by Skella Keepa

Reflecting on our first set of coaching sessions:

• Having the time to meet with the people that we are coaching
• Meant that we showed the importance for the process
• Having the competence and the coaching separate
• Going into the coaching session without an agenda - not knowing what direction the conversation is going to take
• Coaching conversation can jump around 
• Tangents can be good as that what is what the person being coached needs to be discussed

Learning's from Coaching Sessions

• Learning to hold your tongue and not give the answers to the coachee - and solve their problems
• Nice to allow the space and time for the voice and time for the coachee to share
• Looking for the body language to add to the discussion that is happening for the next questioning pathway
• Make sure you plan where you will sit for the conversations - side by side is best, but can be opposite but make sure there isn't a table in between
• Could try whiteboarding the GROW session with the coachee - can use this for groups too

Focus of Coaching

• Helping releasing a persons potential to maximize their own performance
• That doesn't sound like that is a focus for you at the moment - whats the focus for this term/right now?
• Mindset stuff
• Whilst that sounds great, that sounds like a safe option.  What can you do next to challenge yourself a bit more?
• Take away blockages for the coachees

Great Questions to Use:

• If you were me what do you think you would do?
• Thinking of your goal, do you think this and this and this will help you achieve your goal?  If this doesn't work then say 'i'm going to take my coaching hat, and put my monitoring hat on'.
• What will success look like for this goal?  When you are success for this what will it look like?
• Tell me more about that?
• In the next month what would success look like for you?
• What have you learnt?  What have you implemented so far?  Where to now?
• So if we had no limitations, what would like to do?
• To maximize the benefits from the learning you have had what would you like to do?
• In the next two weeks what would you main focus be?  Let's get the pathway to that.
• Are those options achievable?
• What advice would you give yourself?
• Where are you now in relation to your goal?

Maori Lesson Observation

Today Amy came into my class to observe me taking a lesson on our current Maori focus - learning the names for family members in Maori - i.e. Grandad - koro, grandma - kuia.  Amy was looking to see that I was teaching the language using the IRDPX structure.  Amy said that she was impressed with my structure and the way I went through IRD.  Amy then took over to do a couple of games that help to reinforce the learning of the names.  She recomended that I spent a bit more time on discrimination as they were a few kids who were getting a little confused.

Games Amy did with the class to reinforce the recognition/production stage of IRDPX:

Student wears a headband with a picture card attached with velcroe outside the room
The class says "kahu mi" (come in)
Student comes back in and the class says "Hello and the name in Maori of the picture on their headband"

4 students wear headbands with picture cards attached to the headbands.  Class then plays head down thumbs up.  When the students guess who picked them they need to say their name as the Maori picture card.


Links to the Practicing Teacher Criteria
During these Maori lessons I believe I have shown
Criteria 3. demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand
Because I demonstrate respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi

and

Criteria 4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice
Because I participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within our Vardon learning community

Coaching Session Number One

Last week I had my first coaching session with the first teacher that I am coaching.  I was a little nervous as it was my first coaching session ever!  My biggest concern was making sure that I was able to elicit enough from the teacher to ensure she was able to set a clear goal for her teaching focus.  I came armed with some questions and the goal template that we were shown from Skella during our coaching session from her a few weeks ago.

I felt the conversation went okay.  I manged to ensure I limited my comments to questions and clarifying statements rather than trying to offer solutions to the challenges she mentioned she was facing at the moment.  However I did feel that at times I lacked enough questions to enable the teacher to reflect really deeply on her practice and set a goal that truly reflected her biggest challenges.  Her goal, although something she wants to work on, seems like something that she can achieve quite quickly without too much support or work required.

Before my next coaching session with my next teacher, I would like to make sure I have done the following:

• have a wider range of questions pre-prepared to draw from during our coaching session
• ensure the teacher has reflected and answered the questions Myra has prepared for teachers to reflect on before their session.

My next set of coaching sessions are at the start of April so we will see how these go!

Criteria Covered with this experience:
Support others to:
1. establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of ākonga

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

WLA Professional Development Workshops 17 March 2016

Born to Read - Rob Southam

• Reading to students is extremely important
• Find a series to hook them in - it doesn't matter what the series as it will lead to further reading in the future
• Children should be in charge of their reading - let them choose
• Find a book that they love to read

Top 10 Global trends right now for books:

1. Diversity themes - check out cool nukes by Des Hunt
2. Science fiction, Fantasy and Adventure
3. intriguing non fiction and sophisticated colouring books
4. novels with cartoons
5. Kid lit on screen
6. War themes
7. Humor is huge
8. fun early readers format
9. Graphic Novels - Gorillas in our Midst
10. Pop Fiction

Lynden Cook - Writing

Learning pit - James Nottingham

Growth Mindset

Student Agency

Teacher role is the provoker and inspirer

Teachers role is also to explicit teaching 

Students taking this to independence

Sequence  - connect to students interest

• I have noticed . . . . . . 
• Activivate prior knowledge - What do you know about . . . . 
• Connect ideas What do you know?  What does that mean?  How do you know that?  Do you think that?
• Did you know - Grow vocab, did you know facts
• Introduce the artifact/motivation (video etc)
• Planning talk - This reminds me of, I could explain how
• Writing cycle process

I want my writing to . . . . . (genre)

Explicit teaching

5/7 learners over four days

• Discover
• Compare/contrast start to form a success criteria in student language
• Collaborate with a partner
• Practice

check in with the students the following week to see if they are including the skills taught.

Easier Said Than Done: Collaborative Learning Reading

Easier said than done: Collaborative Learning - Chris Watkins

This article is a look at how teachers can promote collaboration with their students in the programmes and activities they do with their classes.  I thought this would be a good place to start my thinking as our syndicates big idea for the term which is 'collaboration'

Here are some important points I found from reading the article:

• Collaboration will generate important social learning and life skills for young people
• Research evidence suggests that collaboration learning is associated with higher performance right from the earliest years in schooling
• Collaboration aims to promote dialogue
• The crucial element is designing tasks to allow for collaboration
• Tasks must not be 'decomposable' - not able to be complete by one person in the group
• The task must require the contribution of all members of the group
• Tasks should create an interdependence which is reciprocal: each student is dependent of the contributions of all others
• The task can not be a 'right answer' task.  Instead it must require higher-order thinking and negotiation of meaning.

I believe this links to Practicing Teacher Criteria in the following ways:

Criteria 8. demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn
because I will be enabling ākonga to make connections between their prior experiences and learning and their current learning activities.  I will also be providing opportunities and support for ākonga to engage with, practice and apply new learning to different contexts.

and

Criteria 12. demonstrate commitment to critical inquiry and problem-solving in their professional practice because  I have systematically and critically engaged with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine my practice.

Notes from my Appraisal 2015

Coaching workshop lead by Skella Keepa (parent)

Coaching and Mentoring

• Coach can make statements about what the coachee has said
• Coach shows active listening - look for the things they aren't saying
• 90% of the time you don't give advice
• Coach only speaks 20% of the time
• Always come from the positive
• Start the relationship by finding common interests to build relationships.  Listen first session
• Perhaps change the environment - meet at a cafe etc.

Questioning:

• Why is it a challenge?
• What options do you have to develop this?
• What else?
• Use white boards and post it notes to develop ideas and solutions

How to set up your page during a coaching session

Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward

• Teachers take their own notes - not the coach
• Get at least 5 options to move forward

Questioning to draw out a teachers options:

• If you were Myra what do you think she would do?
• Which ones would you think you would do?
• In order to achieve this goal which do you think are the best options?
• What could you do to generate some options?
• 
  
• So what are some of the successes you had?

Links to the Practicing Teachers Criteria:

Criteria 12 demonstrate commitment to critical inquiry and problem solving in their professional practice 

This is because I engaged with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine my current practice and understanding of coaching and mentoring.

I also responded professionally to feedback from other members of the leadership team and engaged in robust discussions with them.

Maori Lesson Vardon School Term 1

This term our focus across the school for our Maori lessons is on learning about our families and how to introduce ourselves and discuss who is in our families.

Students WALT's:
Create a video to introducing our families
Ask and give information about their family and friends

I'm looking forward to taking these lessons as I can try the things that Lorelei had pointed out that I needed to practice from my last observation.  I also am excited about providing students the opportunity to find out more about their family and be able to introduce themselves to others in Maori.

Lesson outlines using IRDPX

Practicing Teaching Criteria that I think these lessons meet:

Criteria  2. demonstrate commitment to promote the well-being of all ākonga

Because I acknowledge and respect the languages, heritages and cultures of all akonga

Criteria 3. demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand

Because I demonstrate respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi

Criteria 6. conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme

Because I articulate clearly the aims of my lessons, and give sound professional reasons for adopting these aims, and implement them in their practice. 

Through the planning provided by the Maori lead team.  This planning demonstrates our knowledge and understanding of relevant content, disciplines and curriculum documents

Criteria 8. demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn

Because I enable ākonga to make connections between their prior experiences we have had with the language and learning and their current learning activities 

I provide opportunities and support for ākonga to engage with, practice and apply new learning to different contexts

Criteria 9. respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga

I demonstrate knowledge and understanding of social and cultural influences on learning, by working effectively in the bicultural and multicultural contexts of learning in Aotearoa New Zealand

Criteria 10. work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand

Because these lessons will help my learners practise and develop the relevant use of te reo Māori me ngā tikanga-a-iwi in context

Waitangi Day

As another school year starts, we also head closer towards Waitangi Day, on the 6th of February.  I decided this year to have NZ's special day as the focus for my reading during week 2 of term 1.  I have always meant to spend more time as a class studying this special day as I think it is really important for our students to understand how our nation was formed and the promises each cultural group made to each other.  So this year this focus was the first thing I planned out so I didn't run out of time to study it in more depth.  Looking at the treaty of our nation is quite timely as we will be looking at creating our own class treaty at that stage of the term.

Our study will look over:

• what was written in the treaty
• who the important people involved were
• timeline - how long it actually took
• important buildings at the Waitangi grounds
• flags of the time
• why confusion arose over the treat which led to conflict within our nations past and more recently
• their opinion - is it important to celebrate?, is it fair?, should we keep paying out for something that happened years ago?, how should the treaty be remembered?

Links to the Practicing Teachers Criteria:

3. Demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa NZ

9. Respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of akonga

10. Work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa NZ

I believe that I have achieve this part of the criteria as these learning experiences help children to grow a respect for our NZ heritage and the cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi.  It will also allow children of Maori and European descent the chance to hear how their ancestors shaped how our country runs today.