Reflective Practice

This year many of the St Mary's staff completed  a "home" based maori language paper through Te Wananga O Aotearoa.  It was nice to have a group of like minded learners working together to complete the mahi. Our tutor was Madrina and she was very helpful and understanding as we completed the set tasks.  The course was an interesting blend of familiar ideas and language as well as delving deeper into some areas of maori that I hadn't yet studied.  There is a certain satisfaction in completing these courses as it shows that as a staff we are committed to acknowledging we need support. The course was very well resourced and the cards and other books were succinct enough that I still use them with my class.  In particular I enjoyed the last module about copyright and how certain ideas that uniquely maori need to be procected even if they are used with the best of intentions. Trying to teach maori in an authentic context with in schools t...

Over the summer I decided to have a look at why I didn't really feel confident about what I should be including in my teaching portfolio.  These photos are the pages of wonderings about my teaching stacked up again the criteria.  My brainstorm to help me make sense of it all. I think as a staff it would be helpful to do more of this kind of practical unpacking work together - at least until we have working example of what would highlight our current teaching against these criteria in combination with what our school feels are the important aspects we are focusing on school wide. When I chat with my colleagues we all seem to have different ideas about what we should include.  Many of the teachers have a closed blog  and aren't willing to share what they feel are the parts that are good enough to share with the Teaching Council.   I don't really understand that either.  Surely we should be supporting each other and in t...

Check out the three videos below to see a summary of my reflected practice this year. Challenge: Can you figure out the digital numbers the students are making using binary in video 2?  

http://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/ERO-17763-Teaching-Strategies-that-work-Mathematics-v7.pdf ERO created a 68 page document in 2014 (see link above)  to identify what schools around NZ did to be effective in accelerating student progress in mathematics.   Honor Ronowicz, our maths facilitator, has been helping to create change in how teachers at our school teach maths.  It came to a point that no matter what PD we did around maths it did little to change the outcomes for our students. This need for more extensive PLD was triggered by my attendance at an ALiM.   The professional development Honor has provided (along with the maths leadership team) to our school is well-planned and targeted for the needs of our staff. This PLD was designed to improve the teaching of maths in our school from year 0 to year 6.  It became a more collaborative approach to how we used to teach maths. That we as a staff had a collective responsibility to improve our...

High expectations is one of the eight principles set out in the New Zealand curriculum document.   "The high expectations principle means holding high expectations for all students relative to achievement. This means a genuine belief that all students can achieve much higher levels than they currently are, and then putting the learning and action plans in place that make sure that students actually get there."  Professor Christine Rubie-Davies Goal setting is an important way of ensuring that I have high expectations of my students and that these goals are created and communicated with/by students and their families. High expectations help to motivate my students’ learning when they are created together with the student and me and their family. “When students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, goal setting is a logical step in the process.” (ERO 2014-ish) My role is to help my students set relevant goals, to scaf...

Last year a number of teachers decided that they required support to help them to more confidently deliver te reo Māori content throughout their teaching.  Our principal was involved in a language based course at a local high school. We expressed interest in getting something similar happening in our staffroom. Instead we registered for a paper based, self directed course offered through the Wānangna o Aotearoa.  I already completed a Maori language for beginners course (Te Ara Reo Māori). What I think I really need is another course similar to that to help me with figure out how to better pronounce māori words with my Canadian accent.  I personally need someone to help me...a language is too hard to do on my own. Although this year’s course is not the confidence boost we can directly use in the classroom. It is a step in the right direction to answering the question “How is the teaching of my class effective for Māori learners?” Course Description: He Papa ...

This year our senior classes took our classes to have an authentic two night camp on a local marae.   Students were part of the p ō whiri and welcome onto the marae.  The only other context many of our students had was on the school welcoming groups to special assemblies.   These would often involve the kapa haka group taking the lead with the remainder of the school left to follow along. To support the children (and me too) to make the most of this fantastic opportunity, in class we learned the vocabulary, completed puzzles to help students remember the order of events.  The team leading the camp were very supportive of schools coming with a low base of marae based learning. There were teamwork activities involving paddling a waka down rapids in Kawerau, making poi, using a taiaha.  There were games played and links to local history through the carvings in the whare. My class loved playing Ki-o-rahi.  It was new and fun...and I promised w...