Beyond a Blackboard

This week our staff meeting was run by Fiona Grant, who came to talk to us about the way that creativity empowers learning. As our  Manaiakalani pedagogy is 'Learn, Create, Share' our students are given regular opportunities to create and to be creative. However, not all create activities are equal. When we consider the SAMR model, we know that we can design activities at the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition level of the model. We know that we cannot always design tasks at the top two levels of this model, and that substitution has its place.                                                           image by Sylvia Duckworth Fiona reminded us that often Modification and Redefinition level tasks can be more time consuming than those at the Substitution and Augmentation level. However, students can achieve a...

I have just completed my mid year assessments and I am reflecting on what has supported my learners this term. To support my own observations and data, I have sent surveys to my learners to discover what they have found most helpful in each of their lessons. 1. Student Agency and Workshops As part of my dissertation, I have been using a workshop approach to teaching maths a few times a week. My learners select which workshop(s) they need to attend and choose the activity aimed at their level. To support the learners when they are not with me, I have provided videos portraying the content that was covered in the workshop and materials. I have found that the students have been able to select the correct workshop and activity for their level.  They noted that the small group environment, materials and time with the teacher were very helpful. The students also have two problem solving lessons a week which I facilitate but let the students take the lead on. This means that we h...

As someone who completed the majority of their schooling overseas, I cannot say I experienced any Te Reo Māori lessons when I was at school. As such, when I began teaching last year I was a little unsure of how much Te Reo is usually taught and how these lessons are structured. Naturally, there is a lot of variation between courses and different ideas of how best to support the development of the language. Fortunately, I was able to experience Te Reo lessons first hand as I enrolled in two different courses as a student.                                                     Learning about the colours While I was a student at Auckland University, I took a linguistics paper in Te Reo Māori which helped me to develop an understanding of the structure of the language and supported me to build a basic vocabulary. As I still struggled with pronunciation and ...

This term I have sought to facilitate discussion between my learners and to step out of group lessons so that they are student led. I have utilized strategies such as reciprocal reading, maths as problem solving and circle time to encourage this. I have also highlighted the importance to work with others during our class PB4L lessons. Team Building Sport Games Within these PB4L lessons, I have facilitated a number of activities to foster team building. We played team building sports games, technology challenges and the famous toothpaste activity. One of the most engaging and successful activities that the class has participated in has been Breakout Edu . A PB4L Challenge The students were respectful, supportive, collaborative and engaged throughout the game, which was very rewarding to observe. Part of this success could be due to the amount of focus that we have put into team building in the past, but the Breakout had my students captivated and they have requested t...

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.                       ...

I have done so much learning this term and can already think of so much I would change or do differently when I enter the first term next year. However, it has been a pretty successful first term and I have really enjoyed my time with the children. I have found that our inquiry lessons have been pretty successful this term. The children were interested in the topic of global warming and the environment and we covered a lot of content by integrating reading, writing, health and social studies. We also created  and shared art that illustrated our view on environmental issues and I was impressed by the ideas that the students had and their creativity. I have seen a lot of success in reading in particular, as my students have been able to meet the learning intention and create some wonderful DLOs in response to the text that they have read. I can tell that the students have been engaged, as they have consistently met deadlines, completed reading tasks at home and have f...