Beyond a Blackboard

After following the inquiry cycle for six month, today the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers met to present our tools. These were designed to provide somewhat of a solution to the problems that our inquiries were based around. I was particularly interested in hearing about Kariene’s tool, not only because it is concerned with writing, but because I have visited her cluster in Northland and I am particularly interested in following their journey with the Manaiakalani Kaupapa. She has focussed on creating a website that shows other educators how to teach writing in an engaging, collaborative and rewindable way. I could immediately see the value in her site. It connects seamlessly with her inquiry about accelerating students learning in writing and it will hold a plethora of resources and information to support teachers. It contains the kind of information that was invaluable to me during my MDTA sessions; how to use technology to enhance teaching. For teachers who new to the le...

I am now just over six months into my MIT inquiry, which focusses on accelerating learning in literacy for students in years seven and eight. I have begun to go around the inquiry cycle once again as I am discussing the term 2 literacy data with my team and responding to it, considering what it means for my inquiry and what adaptations I need to make.    

I am now six months into my inquiry about accelerating the literacy progress for students between years 7 and 10. I have been making the connection between reading and writing explicit to my students - check out my findings so far!

Are high expectations important?   Educators who hold high expectations of their learners support their self-efficacy and belief. Whilst pushing their students to engage with challenging material, they are not only supporting higher achievement outcomes, but they are also demonstrating their belief in their learners, which in turn supports the students belief in themselves.

We, the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers, met once again at KPMG today to discuss our inquiries and collaborate to extend our thinking.  My inquiry is focussed on addressing the issue of decelerated achievement in literacy for students in year 7 and 8 who attend Manaiakalani Schools.

Are we using the opportunity to teach rich conceptual understandings or are we simply teaching factual information? James Hopkins challenges educators to teach the 'why' and cater it to the 'who', as opposed to focussing simply on the 'what', or teaching a series of facts. For example, many educators 'cover' the Treaty of Waitangi, by encouraging students to learn the main facts of the event, as opposed to looking at it through a conceptual lense and posing deeper questions, such as how it is relevant in 2018, who benefited etc. But we are still concerned with curriculum coverage, of covering content. When we plan we focus on our curriculum achievement objectives, but rarely do we visit the key competencies or values when we flick through the curriculum document. James asked us to highlight a piece of our planning indicating where we were teaching content, behaviour and skills. As a group, we noted the large amount of 'content' in our pl...

 Lindsay Wesner's keynote was about storytelling. She began with her own story, one not to disimilar to my own; a little girl who grew up with very little access to technology and who was greatly challenged when she was asked to use it a school. However, Lindsay began her teaching career at the blackboard using worksheets and exercise books. At the time this was the norm, she was respected by her colleagues and her students experienced success. Then she found herself lost in a 1:1 Macbook class. This could have very easily been me; I learnt basic IT skills at high school, but I would have struggled in a 1:1 classroom had it not been for the professional development I gained from the Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy. It was great to hear Lindsay's story as it reminded me of how far I have come and how fortunate I am to be capable of presenting at such an event so early in my career. It also reminded me to slow down when presenting and to be considerate of those who are at...