Have you ever been a scientist? This is a story about when I was a scientist. . .

How to be a Scientist

In order to be a scientist you have to hypothesise and look very carefully. You should also ask a lot of questions. E.g what is this, where is this, why is this doing this and can this do this, last time I was a scientist I was at the āwā and I asked can I pull out this weed?

To be a scientist you also have to collect information about what you are studying. When I was at the āwaI was looking after some plants which the year 6s planted about three years ago. Finally you have to action your plan.

I am very excited to go to the āwa next term. I really suggest that you go to an āwa!!!

On the Waitohu River trip we saw the water and had to climb the electric fences. The walk was about 1 km. We had to carry rocks and I was getting scratched and stabbed by the thorns. It was so hard!  We saw spiders under the rocks. I was carrying heavy rocks. The scariest part was me getting stabbed by a thorn.

Lachie’s Blog

Yesterday, Room 4 went to the Waitohu awa trip. I picked up one rock because we needed to put them around the trees to protect them from the weeds. I fell over and the spikes of the blackberry bush scratched my leg and it hurt.  I sat down with Mike and he cheered me up and made me laugh and he helped me up.

We walked back and when we came back it was home time and everyone went home. I was happy and sad because I hurt myself but it was interesting learning about the trees and water. The water was nice and the weather was beautiful.

Aria’s Blog

This week we finished reading Pocket Bear by Katherine Applegate.  Take a look at some of our responses to the book.

In Room 6 during our Cybersmart programme we have been learning to make posters with our top short cut tips.  Take a look …

Today’s session was really interesting for some of the resources provided and left me really challenged in how best I could look to incorporate some of the mahi in to my programme considering I am restricted to only 4hr per week with my Big Picture Learning class.

Starting the day off was something really insightful and actionable for me in my practice where one of our key speakers discussed how the shared pedagogy and ideal practice for all of us should be that our class sites are super accessible to our learners. One thing she said was about checking that learners can access your site in three clicks or less. Obviously anything more tedious to get through than this is going to mean that some learners just switch off before they can even attempt to find the site. So that’s part of my homework, checking that my site is accessible to everyone in the most obvious and easiest way possible.

One thing I did enjoy was there was some comparison on teacher timetable and although lots of it was talking about a week where you have access to a whole class for the majority of the week when looking at some things related to mahi trackers it was encouraging to know that I’m already using one of these and in a really meaningful way.

Something it did make me think of though is my use of accountability in the best way to actually ensure that people are following through with us. I know in the past because of time, or being out for various reasons, or just not getting around to it, that students can get away with not completing tasks with no consequences as well. I’m not sure whether it’s best to go punitive with callbacks etc or whether I can work out some kind of positive reinforcement/motivation for these guys.

Of the digital reading that they shared with us I enjoyed looking at Epic! It seems really handy to support some of the narrative writing, non-fiction tasks, language features activities that I know my class need the most support with. Being able to set up end of reading quizzes/assessments could potentially be an engaging way for them to support their learning. Something I need to spend a bit more time looking at.

The final activity we covered was one about rewriting a narrative. Interestingly it was something I did with my class a couple of weeks ago unintentionally. They had to find incorrect grammatical and spelling errors that I had intentionally placed in a small paragraph and then rewrite that paragraph in the most exciting way possible link to the example text I used with my guys a couple of weeks ago is below:

Matua Sam stood at the front of the room. The BPL class was very loud. He felt disapointed because nobody was listening to him. A student in the back was eating a sandwich secretley. Outside the rain, was falling heavaly on the roof. Matua Sam cleard his throte and tried to speak but the noise was like a roar. He thout about his cofee sitting on the desk it was cold now. He needed a stratagy to get their attention. Everybody was talking at once he felt like he was invisible. He realysed that he needed to be more confident if he wanted to succede today.

The 10 spelling errors are:

3 punctuation errors are:

My gangster as re-write:

Here is a slide of our latest Assembly.  The photos are taken by  Baden who is one of our classroom photographers.  Malaiah assisted Baden to create this awesome slide.  What is your highlight from Assembly?

We have been learning ball skills.  We have learnt bounce passes and dribbling.  I am not that good with ball skills but I am getting better!  One of the games we are doing is finding a partner and we have to dribble it down to the end of the court.  By Anna

A couple week ago our school ropu groups did art for the art gallary  and my group is tawa I had to take photo’s of it and we did it in rm 4 it was fun here are the photo’s of the art projects.

A few week ago the year 4-5-6 went to the hall and some Ōtaki canoe polo People came it was cool I loved it and it was amazing here are the photos!!!

Today we read about how ants communicate and for some it’s like Morse Code.

This would be how you would spell my name in Morse code  .._  .  ._..  ..  _._.  ._ _ _  ._

Felicja’s Blog

Room 6 have been learning how to use a dictionary! First with our Monday match -up we looked at the dictionaries.  Then with someone from our reading group we finished a worksheet called Dictionary Detective.  We did it using a dictionary.  By Nate

At our school we are getting a waharoa at the front gate.  They said it would be done in five months.  I’m so excited, I’m going to stare at it for weeks. By Tyler

Room 6 saw some carving that had the Tararuas, and a taniwha in the middle.  It isn’t finished yet, there was a lot left. It was sooo fun!! By Ezra

– Reflection on past two weeks in relation to this kaupapa.
What am I proud of? I’m really proud of my taskboard designed mahi and the way that my crew have positively taken to it. They are building skills around self management and organisation/ownership of their own mahi.

What was challenging? A big spanner was thrown in the works in regards to some health complications at home meaning that I haven’t had a lot of time in class.

What helped me achieve my goals (homework)? – one thing I think has been really helpful for my practice recently has been the fact I have intentionally been trying to strip everything back and focus on a few quality tasks rather than trying to speed through lots and lots of mahi with my class. I noticed that when provided many different tasks I would get students blitzing through and not doing their best OR being so overwhelmed they didn’t know where to start. Reducing the amount of tasks in front of my kids has really allowed them to dig deep and create some really cool mahi.

What do I need help with? – I would love support for better linking of my students PAT data with my text selection

Today’s programme has been very busy, which has been great but always leaves me feeling like I’m not doing the best I could be for the kids I have in front of me. I know this is partially down to time constraints and that the course is primarily aimed at primary school level but I feel waaaaaay out of my depth at times too!

Below is a collection of the key things that stood out for me today. Assorted quotes, resources and models useful in the structure and delivery of small reading group based mahi.

“Teachers are always watching children; but observations can be random and diffuse. You always gather information about whether children are behaving appropriately, finishing their work, or performing tasks accurately. But you need to make your observations far more focussed and productive when it comes to noticing the precise behaviours that relate to literacy learning…”

Fountas & Pinnell, 2017, p. 215

I really liked the observation sheet for Listening to Reading. I think this would be really interesting to complete with our Y9/10 students to see how proficient they are with their reading out loud.
I have had the idea for a while now of setting up a reading out loud challenge using Dr Seuss pukapuka. It came to me after my boy was getting me to read Fox in Socks one day and I could not for the life of me get through reading the whole thing without at least a couple of funny errors.
Speed reading this and scoring kids on pauses, errors etc while also doing so in a non-threatening way could be quite a funny task.

On Wednesday we celebrated ANZAC day at school.  Mr Curtis told us that Lincoln and Shavaughn represented us on the actual ANZAC day at the Ōtaki senotaph.  He explained what it was all about and then we raised the flag.  This is a slide I made of the ceremony at school.

This week I decided to make my fact of the day research about penguins. Fact of the day research is when you pick a subject in my classes website. I thought that it would be hilarious to blog about and research about penguins. I found this amazing to do and it is really fun to make these facts of the day research slides.

Can you believe that there is a penguin called Palaeeudyptes klekowskii?

Every  morning  we have a slide show and it has a fact of the day and every  week we have to do one and on a slide show and that is what i did today i found enjoying, i liked how it was very calm i while i was doing it and, i got it done very easy do you guys have a fact of the day? very easy do you guys have a fact of the day? 

 

Thoughts, notes and thinkings from the PD session. Might not be fully coherent – typing as it goes!

Acknowledgement 4yrs ago that Te Puna Aroha needed to supply more support towards G&T students not just ‘higher needs’.

Looking at more Universal Design of Learning.
Identifying G&T

Care around clarifying Gifted and Talented through not just a ‘western’ lense. Mahi being done currently to also look at this through Te Ao Māori and Pasifika lense.

UDL – Te Tūapapa model

3 parts –
Te Matua – the stuff that  you provide to all students
Te Kāhui – more targetted mahi (small group stuff)
Te Arotahi – one to one learning tasks for those who need it

A way to think about UDL…
Analogy of going to a feast. Two options here:
One size fits all model – everyone is given the same full plate of kai. Irrespective of dietary requirements, tastes and preferences.
UDL is more like having a buffet where everyone can pick their own kai preferences and eat what they need/want.

UDL thinking cycle

3 Principles of UDL
Engagement – provide multiple means of engagement. This is the ‘why’ of learning because different students are interested in different ways/different tasks/different situations.
Representation – provide multiple means of representation. The ‘what’ of learning because students differ in their perception of information.
Action and Expression – Provide multiple means of action and expression. The ‘how’ of learning, so students can participate and show what they have learned.

Rubber Chicken         
As you walk through town you notice everyone is carrying a rubber chicken. Why?
Fluency – write as many different ideas as you can
Originality – answers that no one else came up with

Gifted and Talented recognition at ŌC – new doc developed for this.
Lists different indicators. Can go through reflectively and as you read the indicators, jot names down of students who come to mind.

This week in class I have been doing some research on penguins for a fact of the day activity is was real fun and hard but here is my work hope you like it.

This week I chose to do some research on blue whales. Our teacher wants us to be curious about the world around us. Every morning we have a fact of the day and a national day and we have to chase one of them to research. I enjoyed finding out about blue whales. On my slide, what do you think is the most interesting fact?