Beyond a Blackboard

This year I have learnt the value of providing rich experiences for my students, particularly as prompts for writing.  As the year has progressed, I have noticed that my students are asking to learn about a more diverse range of topics, from learning languages to learning about ancient history. Over the past four weeks we have travelled to a farm and learnt about how farmers run their businesses, shear sheep and herd cattle. We have learnt to make scrambled eggs, dioramas, models and to play hockey. We have also learnt a little about Etymology and had a sign language lesson with a tutor from Deaf Aotearoa. Learning to sign this week From these experiences I have seen my students vocabulary increase and they have been able to create very rich pieces of writing. I have found the true value of language experiences and intend to utilise these to support my year six students in particular, as they are focussing on the recount genre this year.

For the first part of the term,  our inquiry topic has been focussed on animals and being a responsible pet owner. I integrated maths, reading, writing, inquiry, technology and art as to maximise the amount of learning that could occur in the short time that we were given. I was amazed by how much content we covered and how much the students learnt. My reading books aligned directly with the inquiry science lessons, where we investigated classification, adaptation and the food chain. I ensured that my students were engaging with multimodal text types each week and that we read a few texts that covered the topic in depth. I found that these reading lessons were very successful; the students made connections between their prior knowledge/ learning and between the texts.This aligned with a wide and deep reading approach, which Glenbrae and other Manaiakalani schools are focusing on at the moment.                       ...