Manaiakalani 2019 Hui

I attended my first Manaiakalani Hui this year. It was a very exciting and educational opportunity for me.

With every presenter, they brought to the discussion their part of being the collaborators in the education of our tamariki. It really brought the big picture into perspective for me. So many involved with Manaiakalani from the Ministry of Education, edcuators, health boards, businesses, researchers and more.

I could not help but think how very fortunate we are to be part of Manaiakalani with so much support and work being done to help the learners of not only the Tamaki area but the outreach schools.

Post hui, I have shared the slides from the hui with my colleagues at Glenbrae school along with the notes I took from the hui. I also sent an invitation to approach me for a professional discussion about what I gathered.

Collecting achievement and reflecting on progress

Using google forms for quizzes is enabling me to take a snapshot of the whole class with their progress with not only Reading but also in Maths.

The students are driven to do better than their last test and they are also working hard during the week to learn and question if they do not understand. The instant marking of the google form enables them to see how they did in the test.

It is also teaching my students about taking tests and the absolute focus and perseverance needed when trying to complete a test.

I am limiting our testing to one test in different curriculum areas a week because I do not want to be focussing on just taking tests.

Here is the second maths test I created for our fractions unit.

Collecting evidence of student progress

From our last PLG, Aaron discussed the importance of gathering evidence for the progress of students. I created this reading test for my students. The text is from our class novel. All students in the class participated in the test. The results show the progress of a lot of students in understanding and responding to texts. However, there are also some students who omitted a lot questions in the test. These teacher designed tests will be ongoing in my practice. It is a good measuring point for my reflections regarding my inquiry.