A great opportunity arises early 2021

This year I am working as a CoL Across School teacher. It is a role I have aspired to have for a long time. I applied for the role in 2020 and was appointed at the end of 2020. 

One of my first responsibilities is to be a facilitator for the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) Course for the first cohort this year. To be a facilitator is an exciting opportunity. I have to admit, I was a bit anxious at first when I found out I will be a facilitator but I surely was ready for the challenge. 

Today was our first session. I lead a bubble of six wonderful educators all up skilling in how to use digital technologies in their practice. Although, I did the course last year myself, I find I am also learning and reinforcing a lot of skills during the course this time round. 

I am very proud to be a Manaiakalani teacher. I have been in the Manaiakalani cluster since I started my teaching career and can not imagine teaching outside Manaiakalani. Being a facilitator in the DFI Course is highlighting a lot of the reasons why I have enjoyed teaching in Manaiakalani schools. 

Sharing my knowledge, skills and experiences with my bubble is very rewarding. I also learn a lot from my bubble members. We have a great team where we collaborate and help each other out during the day.

I am excited for next seven weeks of the course. I also forgot to mention that I am working with a great team of leaders and facilitators who I am learning so much from. 

Today we welcomed our students back to our Happy and Safe Learning Community. The summer break has been a wonderful break for our students as well as our staff. 

There were many smiles and many happy verbal recounts about the holidays from the students in the classrooms this morning. 

Our big theme this year is He Waka Eke Noa. We are all in this together. For ignition assembly, I put together this short movie to explain what I bring to the Room 7 waka. 

I am excited for this year and looking forward to my new role as a CoL Across School teacher.

Inquiry evaluation for 2020

My inquiry question: Will an integrated literacy programme with a focus on Learn, Create, Share accelerate the writing achievement of my target learners?

The Learn, Create, Share pedagogy was definitely strengthened in my practice this year. Reflecting back throughout this year, the students and I have been on a constant push to create and share DLOs about what we have been learning. There is still quite a bit of work to do with the quality of the create activities. The students are very camera why and would happily create posters, Google slides to share their learning. I have been encouraging them to create DLOs where they can be heard and seen presenting their learning so their audience can see their passion and excitement about their create activities.  

I feel the integration of Reading and Writing together was a success. The learning activities and discussions were much more powerful. The quality of discussions were rich and this was evident through the responses of the students through their verbal discussion and their independent activities. I also noticed when the students had to present in front of an audience, they were confident to speak and present. The topics were learnt about this year were discussed and analysed from different perspectives. Through the supporting texts and challenging texts, I was exposing students to reflect and evaluate that they too can have a different perspective on topics not only in learning but in their lives. I believe this is a very important aspect of teaching. Teaching students that they too have opinions which matter.

Moving forward, I have been reflecting on student agency in their work. I feel this is an avenue I would like to look into next year. I also have identified I need to do more research in literature to inform decisions I make in my practice. 

Celebrating student success in their writing

My class have been receiving Toitoi publications for the last couple of years. This year, we were very proud to find out one of the writing pieces from one of our students was selected to be published in the next Toitoi publication. 

This piece of writing came from a narrative unit. The students enjoyed the unit because they were able to express their creativity in their writing. We linked our topic studies of Science with our narrative writing for the unit. 

Having one writer publish his writing in Toitoi has encouraged the rest of the class especially boys to set a goal to have their writing published in Toitoi too. 

Building on rich vocabulary

Exposing students to rich vocabulary through authentic texts has expanded their vocabulary about topics they are writing about. 

Manaiakalani_Student Achievement Data Sense making Feb 2020

Through texts my students have been reading about topics we are studying, I have found they are confident in using the vocabulary they are reading in their discussions and their writing. The ideas presented in topics are discussed in detail and the students make connections with texts by critically thinking about texts and questioning the ideas in texts. 

For example, this term our topic is Garden to Table where our class are learning about horticulture and also making a community garden to share with our community. Through their reading materials, the students have been reading about seasonal planting, the horticultural industry, how technology is improving the harvesting of fruit and its consequences for labour work and employment. 

During the reading discussions, the students explore the main ideas in texts. We then as a group dig deeper into the text by critically thinking about the implications of what we read. In one text Kiwifruit growing spills beyond Bay of Plenty to other regions the students discussed the impact technology has on kiwifruit picking, the technological aspect of the invention and also how this could impact people who are employed by farmers to pick kiwifruit such as the seasonal workers brought in from the Pacific Islands. In one text, the students explored so many perspectives in their discussions.

Through these rich discussions, I observe the confidence the students have in sharing their ideas, exploring ideas which are new to them and using vocabulary related to the topic.

When the students move on to writing, they already have many ideas about the topic and are now learning to organise their writing in sequence by brainstorming ideas and expanding their brainstorms into paragraphs. 

One of the activities we do in class to help students with brainstorming ideas is a vocabulary activity where we collaborative use a Google Doc to write down vocabulary related to the topic we are writing about. Most of the vocabulary the students use come from their reading materials and some from their personal vocabulary. We then elaborate on the vocabulary in the brainstorm by adding detail about the vocabulary. By doing this activity, the students are supported in using the vocabulary from texts in their writing. It also helps them by planning paragraphs for their writing. 

The power of rich discussions in reading which translates to writing

I have been seeing a lot of improvement in the writing my students have been producing. The genre they have been working on is argument writing. It is wonderful when you see the confidence in students to voice their opinions and put their thoughts into writing. 

There have been a lot of discussions in Reading through the texts the group have been reading. The text Me, Me, Me by Renata Hopkins stimulated a lot of thinking about the use of devices and social media. The discussions were rich in sharing of ideas and exploring issues with social media and devices.

The supporting text was an article from Insight NZ was about the ban of phones in some schools. The supporting text discussion brought more insight into the challenges school and young people are having with devices. 

Through the rich discussions,  the students were able to brainstorm ideas to write their arguments confidently. I am really happy with the confidence the students have, to start their writing after being in reading discussions. 

The students have also been going out of the classroom to interview teachers and other students about their opinions regarding phones in schools. The joy they have in gathering views and opinions is just wonderful to see. Their use of technology in their learning is also very encouraging to their peers in other classes. 

Through rewindable learning the students were able to draft their writing using the brainstorm on the Google Slides. A lot of the students worked on their arguments from home and using the slides was essential in helping them with their writing at home.

Here are some writing samples the students in my class have produced:

Soane argument writing 

Richie argument writing

Meeting the author of our class novel

 Yesterday my class had the privilege of meeting Andrew Taafuli Fiu who is the author of a novel I am reading to my class. The novel is about Andrew's life and how he has overcome years of challenges from having rheumatic fever at a young age. 

Yesterday Andrew's message was about never giving up and always pursuing your goals. He counselled the students to work for their goals and to ensure they finish tasks they start. He also reinforced the importance of gaining an education as it is the key to success. 

He too really believes in being readers. Although he is not a trained writer, he decided to write about his life to tell his story. He had many challenges in writing the book and finding a publisher but he never gave up.

He told many stories about his life and was pleasantly surprised to learn how much the students knew about his journey as a child and adult going in and out of hospitals.

Yesterday's visit from Andrew was a powerful and meaningful experience for my class. They were just beaming with questions and excitement during and after Andrew's visit.

Watching the engagement of the students was a wonderful experience. Novel reading in my class is a time where we take a break and focus on reading for enjoyment.