A visit to Stonefields School

Today on our MDTA day we were privileged to be able to attend the Manaiakalani School Leaders Study Tour of Stonefields School. It was inspiring listening to Sarah Martin, the principal, discussing the schools learning process and how the School has a detailed language of learning the all children from year 0 to year 8 understand and use. It was even more inspiring discussing the children's learning with them and hearing this language from them.

This is the image the represents the Stonefields School learning process.

This image come from the school website to read about this learning process visit Stonefield Schools website.

During the day I attended workshops that discussed the Nuts and bolts of how things work at Stonefields School and a discussion on Modern learning environments. It was interesting listening to the leadership team at Stonefields discussing how they do thing and why and how their building support the learning. Throughout the day I was inspired by the builds, the people and the pedagogy of the school.

Now I have to take what I have observed and consider what this means for me in my class? I also need to consider how own non-purpose build space lends itself to modern learning practices and if we can use the space better?

Create to Learn

Do you Remember when you were at preschool and everything you created was special to those around you?  Why does this change as we get older?

Today during our MDTA day we discuss creativity and how we can provide opportunities for our learners to create to learn.

I believe that creativity is a part of human nature. People love to create and creating is a great way to learn. It is interesting to consider how creativity is viewed in education and think about how we can promote the creativity of our learners. Sir Ken Robinson has some strong view on this and listening to him has given me a lot to consider, click on his name to view his ted talk entitled Do school kill creativity?

I believe that in our ever change world where new things a constantly being developed creativity is important to success. I aim, along with my co-teachers, to encourage creativity in my learners. Below are some examples of the things our learners have created.

Jarreka

Toby

Eden

Click on the names under the images to see the learners' blog. 

I believe that it is important that as educators we don't forget to provide opportunities for learners be creative and to create to learn.

My 2016 Inquiry into Practice

This year PES (Pt England School) has a school wide inquiry focus on formative practice in reading/writing to improve students achievement. 

 After meeting with Juanita Garden (AP at Pt England School) to discuss the challenges for my learners in reading and writing I decided to focus my inquiry on how to scaffold vocabulary development and word decoding skills for struggling reader? I choose this focus because I had noticed that my learners often struggle with the same word multiple times in and across text as well as struggling to decode unknown or tricky words. 


 Below is a presentation that outline the problem of my learners, my inquiry focus and the first steps I will take in my inquiry. 




This is an exciting learning experience for me and if you have any advice I would love to hear it so please leave a comment.

Google Sites and Critical Thinking

At our MDTA digital immersion day we learnt about google sites. This was an exciting learning experience for me. I have been looking forward to learning about google sites because they are such an important tool for leading learning in our classroom.

Once we had the learnt some basics about google sites we created a page that presented a fairy tale for our learners in a multimodal way. This means that students could access the fairy tale in many modes including visual, written and audio forms.

The aim of this page is to provide a starting place for critical thinking. Here is an image of my Goldilocks site page.

Reflecting on what we discussed and created I have begun to think about how I can bring more critical thinking into our classroom.  How can I get children thinking critically about texts during guided reading? How can I get my children to look at stories from different perspectives? I am excited to see how the children in my class think about different perspectives and watch their depth of critical thinking develop.

Collaborative teaching - What it means to me.

Collaborative teaching for me is like an orchestra.

Instruments on their own are fine but put together they can make something amazing.

Over the last four weeks co-teach Helen and Zac I have learnt so much. I have learnt that some times we get out of tune or loose our place when reading the music of the the classroom. But other times we are in perfect harmony. If one of us is struggle to read the music of the classroom the others will help them.

Collaborative teaching is not one piece of music played over and over. It is ever changing. Our relationships with each other are changing as is the way we teach. In one moment we may be teaching as three teachers co-teaching a lesson. In other moments we may each be taking a workshops with different groups. Sometime we may even play a supporting role as one person leads the teaching.

We are still a new orchestra, still working out the timing and the tune but we are working together to do this. We have been working together for four weeks now which isn't a very long time when you really think about it. But we are  learning  together from each other as well as along side each other.

Just as an orchestra give you access to more music the just one instrument, Teaching collaboratively gives the children More experiences, More Knowledge, More opportunity, More teacher time (which causes more accelerations) and Most importantly More Love. 

Google Certified Educator Level 1 Exam

On Friday the MDTA BTs sat the Google Certified Educator Level 1 Exam. Well this was a test I felt that I learnt a lot from the experience. I gave me a lot of ideas about the skills I still need to work on. BUT I PASSED....

Reading Follow up

One of the big questions I started the year with was How do I engage the top readers in my class in meaningful follow up activities?

Having this in mind I started these groups with a learning focus of linking books to personal experiences. Last week these groups read the article Just one wheel, this article is all about children unicycling. After the children had read this article and answered some questions about the text I challenged them to have a go. So during one of our reading sessions we went outside and used what we had learnt from the text and videos we had watch to give unicycling a go.

It was awesome watching the children enjoying unicycling. It was Interesting watching them make connections to the text as they attempted unicycling. One thing I noticed was that none of the children attempted to let go of the fence. I wonder if this was because the article said well you are learning hold the fence.

I also gave unicycling a go check out my video. As you can see I let go of the fence.....




And fell off the unicycle.


Once they had given unicycling a go I asked them to video a reflection of the experience. They were given specific questions to answer. This proved to be more of a challenge for some students then others.

Have a look at the awesome video reflections from these amazing learners.

Marika
Levonah
Pisirina 
Zaeeda
AJ
Toby
Eden

Great work amazing learners.