PLD 2022

Structured Literacy

This year we are continuing to work on developing our structured literacy programmes school-wide. As the members of the school that hadn’t previously had the training, we were receiving this at the beginning of the year the rest of us were working on our school-wide approach. It has been great to get into this more deeply this year to start working on this structured literacy site. It has been great this year to be implementing the rules and REVLOC knowledge we gained last year. It is exciting to see how the kids are progressing and how well they understand the rules, I love hearing the specific language being used. 

I am also enjoying working with Lillian and seeing how to do the coaching observations, they use a good recording sheet that identifies all the aspects we are looking for. 

 

PMP

Vicki from sport canterbury has come and given us an introduction of PMP with some key starting points. This session focussed on using the body and scarves and equipment that we have around the room. It was a really good session and got us thinking about the basics and allowed us to see how easy it is to implement as part of our class programme, she gave us some good ideas on brain gym activities. It was a fun, low-key session and she gave us lots of good resources to use. 

We then took what we learnt from her and used the knowledge with the specialised gym equipment we have. We use this every Friday in the whare manaaki and the kids love it! They always ask when is it gym time. I look forward to getting her to come back next term and see what we have been doing and for her to give us more tips and tricks and to ensure we are using the equipment correctly. 

PB4L

I have enjoyed the classroom practice teams sessions I have gone to with Rebecca. We have tweaked our form to ensure we are delving deeper into the behaviour and we ran a staff meeting on it with the school. We are going to have these CPT teams as the hub teams and have Jayne, Rebecca and I supporting one hub each. The recent session we attended we were able to see what forms other schools have come up with, I do enjoy these days. Check out this link for the PD session we did with staff.

  

Te-Reo 2022

 In term 1 we focused on learning our morning karakia, days of the week and our class names as well as attending kapa haka sessions to learn some waiata. Unfortunately due to the nature of the term with covid we only had a couple of kapa haka sessions and were unable to have the time in these to really learn any new waiata. As we had our BSU focus this term instead of having longer Te Reo sessions once a week we had our Te Reo focuses at different times of the day e.g. morning karakia time at 9, days of the week during our homeroom sessions and throughout the day we were learning to recognise our classroom/hub names.

We also used the Te Reo language for our movement breaks. The tamariki responded really well to this and thoroughly enjoyed when we do the movement breaks. We have these up on the wall beside our teaching station and can pull them off as a visual reminder if students need additional support to the oral language being used.

We also spent some time looking at our cultures and developed our cultural wall for this year celebrating where we all come from. We ensured that we talked about how we are all New Zealanders and that some of us have other cultures that we identify with also. We looked through this cultures slideshow to learn a bit more about each of our cultures.

Term 2:

We have continued learning the morning karakia, days of the week and our class names as well as attending kapa haka sessions to learn some new waiata, although this has been difficult as the children are not able to learn at the pace that the tutor is working at.

We have also been exploring the names of all the buildings in the school and when we leave the classroom to go to another space we use the name of that space for example we go to the whare manaaki at least 3 times a week and I feel if you asked the children where it is they would know. We do lots of little snippets of learning throughout each day. We have also explored a few more picture books for our story-sharing time that have a lot of Te-Reo in them or that are Māori stories also. See this link to check out the books we have explored. 

 

We used the How Maui slowed the sun as our book review for the leaders of literacy and it was exciting to see the children retelling the story in their own words and saying what they really liked about the story.

For next term: To help with our new children and whānau transitioning into our space I am going to put the Karakia up on the wall in the space of the classroom that we do it so they are able to see it and make connections to it. We are also looking at Karakia Kai and when we can do this. Moving to do Kapa Haka within our own space so we will explore the waiata and actions that we want our tamariki to be learning and strong in.

Term 3: Ekk Lockdown 2021

 All our programmes are planned as per our school guidelines and include all important information from the NZ curriculum. This term there was a lot of repetition in our term as we really had 3 weeks before we went into lockdown and then three weeks when we came back. The break in the middle made it more challenging to get as much learning done as we wanted to. I have included planning from week 4 but we only got to do two days of this before the lockdown.

Reading and writing

We have been teaching literacy together this term and I think this has been a really positive thing for the students. When we came back from lockdown Nicole and I made the decision not to switch groups as there was only three weeks left and we wanted to get as much strong learning done as possible during those weeks. We have continued to change our groups as much as possible to cater for the progress of different students, so they are in the best group for them. We have also been using topics that are familiar to the students for writing so they can produce their best work.

Reading plans (with assessment on plan): Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10

Writing: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10

Writing Assessment

Maths

We started the term with some algebra this term and we did two weeks on pattern making. We grouped the students according to the data we had from both our algebra testing and our assessment of their number skills as for some that didn’t recognise numbers still they obviously needed to work on simpler colour or object patterns.

Algebra Plan

Algebra Assessment

We then started working on number in week 3 but we were also starting this routine again and working with a new teacher to welcome into our classroom space so we hadn’t really started strongly before we went into lockdown. After we came back from lockdown we started using number knowledge pathways to more strongly get an idea of exactly what they know and need to work on. They loved them as well.

Week 3, Week 4, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10

Math Assessment

Shared Reading, Phonics and Poetry

This term for reading we used fairytales which were from the national library so they also included a CD as well as the story so that we both read the story and listened to the song too. This was a great connection for the students and they enjoyed having the singing aspect. We have continued to work on having two groups for phonics so that we can better cater for the needs of the students but we also did it so that we were working on the same poem that we would have for our poem of the week. We didn’t always get to the activity for the poem but we always did a lot of work on them throughout the week.

Shared story Plan

Phonics Plan

Poetry plan

Health/PE/Fitness/Zone/Behaviour/Mindfulness

These areas were one place that we really missed out on due to the lockdown as we didn’t get to do much of either food and nutrition or for our small balls unit due to when the lockdown occurred. We also had a fire safety issue arrive in the class and therefore needed to start this unit when we came back from the lockdown in order to ensure the students understood how important fire safety is. We have continued to improve our fitness and have been getting out there for more and more time which is great.

Plan and small ball assessment

Te Reo

This was another areas affected by the lockdown as they weren’t for the most part being exposed to Māori in their homes during this time so it meant when they came back we basically had to start again and repeat the lessons that we had done at the beginning of the term. So for this reason the assessment doesn’t look that great as we didn’t get the long stretch of time we needed.

Te Reo plan

Te Reo Assessment

Inquiry - Science and Drama

Our science this term definitely went a lot better than our drama. We focused on simple concepts for science and this meant that they were able to develop an understanding quite well. We will continue working on this next term and integrate our technology into this unit to get more out of both areas. For drama we have only really just gotten started and we need to do a lot more in this area to work for the students to build a stronger understanding of drama skills.

Drama Plan

Science Plan

Setting up for success and high expectations -take off!

 Setting up for Success

Nicole and I worked really hard to establish a positive classroom environment for all our wonderful students. It is so important in those first few weeks to establish a strong positive classroom tone so that students are happy and so that we are able to forge strong relationships. We learnt about each other and also worked to develop their relationships with each other. Our classroom looks warm and inviting now and Andrew remarked in our observation about how well the class was doing and that we had such calm and positive natures that really and how happy the students are. This was great to hear about how well we have worked to create such a positive environment. Below are some of Andrew’s comments which show our strong relationships with our students.

Setting High Expectations

We always ensure we have individualised high expectations for all the students. So that they are being pushed to keep making progress but that this progress is based upon themselves and not any expected standard as all students are different. This term we have also begun writing goals for the students to focus on next term. You can see our display below.

Having fun with Te-Reo!

 Te Reo Language Term 2

This term we worked on increasing our integration of the Te Reo language we were teaching. At the beginning of the term we were learning about shapes and so we brought this into our language teaching. The students used some of the same games/activities from our shape lessons to learn the maori words for the shapes at the same time. We had lots of fun with this and the students enjoyed learning about the different names.

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We also did an integrated art/english/maori unit with our myths and legends art. They always enjoy the myths and legends work that we do and again we took this into creating sun artworks in the classroom, looking at koru symbols also and what these mean. We took this up a different step this year by also using the knowledge we learnt from Christine Brown about harakeke. We decided to take the students out and harvested harakeke. We said the karakia to the right and then we harvested it as we had been shown. Finally we put out mats in our classroom, set up appropriate protocols and had the students try to plait some flax as they did in Maui and the sun. This was very difficult but I think it was so worthwhile for the students and us to do and I would definitely do it again in the future. I think this was great to use our skills and actually incorporate some of the other areas that are important in maori culture, not just language.

Te Reo Plan

Te Reo Assessment

Term 1 Evidence

 Cultural Responsiveness

We looked at our goals from last year and then I reflected upon where I got to with this. I celebrated more language weeks and am trying to slowly use more vocab in the classroom in terms of Maori language first and then bring in other cultures that are in our classroom. We also put out a survey for all the families to be able to share all the things that are important in terms of their culture. We used this to fill in our know the learner slides so we know what is important to celebrate within the classroom.

Setting up for Success

As part of starting the year off well and setting our classrooms up for success we set up our cultural wall and worked through some activities to think about our cultures. We created this cool display where they have their work showing their country's flag. We emphasised New Zealand Culture first, as we are all New Zealanders. We worked through this slideshow. Looking at all the different cultures represented in our class.

Te Reo Language

We focused on some basic Te Reo work this term. We spent a bit of time on our classes and used an activity in particular that Lee-Anne had given to us at the teacher only day. We added to the sorting by also including the faces of people in the school. The students have loved interacting with this on the wall. We also worked on greetings and have added another karakia to our everyday by having the karakia kai also (as well as our morning and end of the day karakia). We continue to work on adding more Te Reo throughout the day.

Te Reo Assessment

Te Reo Plan

Staff Meetings Term 2 and Learnings and Relfections

 Staff Meetings

Inquiry

This was a good staff meeting, where we went back to planning the unit the old way, with paper and figuring out how many lessons we have and what we would focus on, it really allowed us to be well thought out and have a clear idea of where we go from the beginning. I enjoyed this meeting and being able to have my thoughts and ideas valued.

Mel - WST, AST’s - Clay, Heather, Jo

These meeting were basically about what their positions are and letting us know how they can help us.

Math - Joanne

Joanne shared feedback in this meeting as to how she is going working with the students and what she has been learning. As always it was great to talk with Joanne and get some ideas on things we could be doing. Most of all though this was a reflection session to think about what we are doing at the moment and what we need support with.Joanne also met with us 1:1 to share her observation feedback and I enjoyed being able to ask her questions about the numicon and new ways that I could be using it.

Christine Brown

She came at the end of the term and this was all about preparing for our Marae trip next term. It was really good for me to be reminded of the protocols of visiting a marae and the process of mihi whakatau. I enjoyed this workshop as I have been a couple of times previously and believe I have good knowledge of this process, Christine even said that with the paired task of matching cards that Rebecca and I did together. I am looking forward to going next term and preparing the class for the visit, It is great that Christine is coming back next term as we didn’t really get to make a start on our mihi work. I think that I am going to have to take most of mine out though as she said it was not appropriate to share at the marae.

Teacher Cluster Summit

I supported Kathleen as she was a presenter this time. She appreciated me being there and supporting her. It was really disappointing how unprofessional people were who attended though.

Structured Literacy

This has been such an important term for us in terms of using the information we have gained and really working on how it looks for us in our classroom. Nicole and I have now worked out a system of resources that we are using in our classroom and it has been great to get this well set up so we are both doing the same thing when we are teaching reading. This was good when we had the student teachers as they could also see what we were doing and were able to follow our same structure. The structured literacy team and myself led the structured literacy whanau workshops. The parents need more clarity on what they should be doing with their child at home so next term we are going to implement a home learning book where it will let them know in one place what they should be doing at home for the night. We will also be using our structured literacy groups during writing time and we hope that this will strengthen their work further by reinforcing the work we are doing in reading time.

OTJ discussions

This was a really great and robust day where we were able to talk through all the students in the hub. I really enjoy these times as it is good to think about some of the higher levels and what these actually look like in terms of their physical work as most of the time the students I teach are only in the 1b/1p area.