Lockdown learning/teaching/blogging

During our time at home in lockdown we still aimed to maintain the best possible learning programme for our students while also understanding that this was a tough time for students and families. Therefore we provided them with resources before they left and then also set up daily challenges that they could take part in. We tried our best to continue their Te Reo learning by sending home their mihimihi template and including te reo in our daily challenges. Here is a link to each week’s lockdown planning: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5. We tried making it fun and engaging for them and had to think about what resources and equipment they would have available to use at home. e also wanted to make sure we were exposing the students to aspects of what we would be learning about if we had still been at school following our long term plan. This planning then went on the site, here is an example of that on our site. Students shared their learning with us and we would put it on our blog.

There was a lot of new learning I experienced whilst undertaking the home learning and I enjoyed the relationships and support from my team :D

      

 

 

Celebrating our Cultures

 This year we had another cultural day where we celebrated our cultures through creating the wall below. We identified the cultures of our families through a cultural survey sheet and also how we are able to best support them and their cultures. This was noted down in our know the learner document and transferred onto linc ed. On our school wide cultural celebration day we began to look at our different cultures through this slide and we had a shared lunch together as well as a cultural show and a flag ceremony.

We love celebrating the cultures within our classroom and will use these greetings with the students. During the lockdown time at home I also responded to student work using some language to them for praising their efforts.

Creative and Innovator- Learning about our culture and heritage.

Through our inquiry learning this year we have been learning about our culture thinking about the fact that our nation is a bicultural nation and learning about how our country came to have two cultures of people in it. We learnt about the first arrival of people and then the European settlers. We also thought about how this affects our lives now. Our school has English names and Maori names each due to different reasons. We were really trying to reflect upon how our country came to be the way it is now and the fact that although we may all have different heritages we are all New Zealanders.

Inquiry planning

Cultural Staff Meeting with Christine Brown: Harakeke

In Term 3 we had a great cultural staff meeting all about harakeke which was led by Christine Brown the RTM. We learnt how to use it and the protocols behind it. We then used this knowledge to harvest our own harakeke and to prepare it and use the stalks we prepared to create our own mats. This was such a strong and powerful experience, I didn’t really know anything about weaving except that you go over and under when you weave. So to learn the things that actually go behind it and the whole process from harvesting was amazing and I really enjoyed it. I always enjoy the meetings that Christine delivers as it is always engaging and you always learn a lot. Here is a picture of Joanne applying what we learnt.

Champion Centre

WOW! What an incredible place the Champion Centre here in Christchurch is!!
I had never heard of this place before finding out that I would have a student transitioning to school from here. I didn't know what to expect but I do know the child is not what I expected. You would not be able to tell that he was any different from any of our other students or be able to tell that he had a difficult start to life.
Champion Centre is amazing and they do the most amazing things with all of their patients. I was lucky enough to have been able to go out and visit and observe at the centre two times before my child started school.
I gained lots of new ideas from observing the different people there and what their role is at the centre. I loved the music therapy and occupational therapy. I have started implemented some of these strategies already.
The Champion centre also provides the student with an early intervention teacher- who has come along to all of the school visits. Judy is the most amazing lady, we have been so lucky having her expertise in our classroom over the last ten weeks and boy I am going to miss her next week! She has been a great help and has provided me with some really good fine motor activity ideas.
The write up that the Centre has provided for the school as a transitioning report is incredible and full of details and ideas. This is something very powerful and we are extremely lucky to get a transition document like it.

Ashleigh Wade SLT: - LLI- Language and Learning Intervention

Ashleigh is the speech-language therapist for our school. This term Nicole Rebecca, Brenda and I were lucky enough to spend the day with her to have LLI (language and learning intervention) training based around Sharnee and her language needs. This was such a valuable day beginning with being put in the shoes of the children. It was great to think about how much is going on and to think again about how much I am talking. This is something really big that I have taken away from this, about me increasing wait time and thinking about my instructions to minimise the amount the students are having to listen to, comprehend and follow.
It also made me think that we need to use a lot more visuals for the students as well. The slide below is the presentation that Ashleigh went through with us.
Attached are photos of the plan we came up with for Sharnee on the day. It was beneficial for Nicole to be there as Sharnee is moving out to Nicole at the beginning of the new term. I do wish I had this LII at the beginning of the year or closer to when Sharnee started school not after one year when she was moving to a new class. However, I know this will be beneficial for lots of other students.

Belinda - Reading Recovery Teacher: Literacy Support

This term I worked with Belinda, as did all the Junior teachers, we were getting support to continue to help our struggling readers. Nicole, Joanne and I were particularly looking for help with our readers at red as we have a lot of students that are just moved to red because magenta is no longer valuable for them, rather than moving because they are ready. She gave some good ideas and now we are moving to reading one book over two days to really get our worth out of it and to work on some further word and alphabet work with the students.
I was very nervous before my lesson where Belinda observed, however once I got her feedback it made me feel really good about what I do.
There has only been little minor tweaks to what we were doing, but have seen gains already.