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?

For this task we needed to choose a fact of the day from our morning slide.  I needed to gather some pictures to put on my slide and then research some facts about this topic.  Our teacher wants us to do this because she wants us to be curious about the world around us.  I really enjoyed researching pictures about the Mario brothers, but I found it hard to fit them all in.  What is one fact you found interesting about the Mario brothers that is on my slide?

Whaea Alison has the fact of the day as part of our morning routine.  I chose this one to research because it looked like the most interesting fact of the day.  I found the task fun because I learnt so much about baby kangaroos.  What do you think about Kangaroos?

As part of our class jobs, I am the photographer.  This means at special events I need to take photos of the significant things that are going on in our class to share with you what is going on in Room 3.  Here is my photos of the Week 4 assembly.  I used Canva to make this, it was fun.  Let me know something you learnt about our class?

Week four assembly. by Rex HINES

We have been reading about A family walking from Cape Reinga to Bluff.

I would not go and do the walk because I walked a 10km walk and I was so tired after.

Lincoln’s Blog

The Longest Journey is about a family coming o the Longest walk from Cape Reinga  to Bluff. When they missed a section Elizabeth got sad so they had to go back and re walk it so they did the whole walk they stayed in tramping huts  sometimes they had to put up tents.

I would really love to go to  Te Araroa because I love adventures so I would love to do this walk it looks fun.

Isabella’s Blog

In room 12 we have been writing about fun and funny story’s

One day Layla was reading a book and her phone started to ring. RING RING! The message said YOU ARE CHOSEN TO A TOURNAMENT. She quickly replied YES! After a while she got hungry so Layla made some cookies. When the cookies were ready she took them out of the oven and ate them. When she sat down to eat them she was wondering what the tournament was going to be. 

When it was time for bed she changed into her pyjamas and went to sleep. After a while she started to think about the tournament. She kept thinking and thinking UNTIL she was dreaming about cookies. KOKADODLE DO!!! It was time for Layla to wake up and get ready. As soon as she woke up she remembered it’s the tournament today. She rushed to the kitchen and had breakfast, then sprinted to get changed, then ran to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then when she was ready she put her shoes on and got in the car and drove to the tournament. When she got there the owner was there judging every one on stage. When it was Layla’s turn she was shaking, then she remembered don’t give up so she started singing and singing until the song was finished. One was silent until a huge crowd was clapping and throwing flowers on the stage and then it was the judging decision…… Then in 5 seconds he slammed his hand on the gold button and confetti was flying from the roof. Happily, she won!!! the end

Do you like it??

We have kindness diaries.  We write down what kind things we do.  Our whole class does it.  We are doing it because we are learning how to be kind to other people.  By James

RPI Day 3

– Reflection on past two weeks in relation to this kaupapa.
What am I proud of? How well the task board activities were received by students. Check them out if you wish. 
I also had students who had been fast finishers, go back and complete multiple activities within the ‘Choose One’ section.

What was challenging? Only having my BPL crew for 4 hours a week I found it tough to design a task board for only this time that provides meaningful options to the kiddos.

What helped me achieve my goals (homework)? – the resources and templates and also the time of the term where we are looking towards showcase presentations. It meant that students are able to pick the tasks which were best suited towards their showcase in Week 9 and work towards them.

What do I need help with? – linking specifically to reading specific learning outcomes when I’ve only got 4hrs p/w with the class. So much to try cram in!

Main mahi of the day. Selection of appropriate texts and als othe development of “text sets”.
I think I could try the following text progression in my class and see how they do with engaging with what I have selected.

The Anchor Text: “The Making of a Māori Town: Ōtaki” by Tainui Stephens (E-Tangata)
https://e-tangata.co.nz/reo/the-making-of-a-maori-town-otaki/

**High visual layout online, but vocabulary can be dense. It requires heavy scaffolding.**

Then “On-Ramp” Text: “The Māoriland Story” (Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxkxmHFIA3s

Grow inference skills: Students watch the body language and faces of the youth as they talk about their town. How do they feel about Ōtaki?

Contemporary Māori Waiata

https://folksong.org.nz/tangaroa_whakamautai/index.html

Short-form text. For dyslexic learners.
Break down the dong for inferencing skills. Play just the first minute. Ask students about where they think of etc when listening.
Then introduce lyrics – extract powerful statements and focus on what the intention of them is within the song itself.

The one that ties it all together
“Summer is for swimming. But what’s in the water?” (by Shanti Mathias)

http://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-12-2023/summer-is-for-swimming-but-whats-in-the-water

A researcher who uses the Ōtaki River (awa) to teach swimming and well-being. Discusses the concept of “kauora” and the understanding that swimming in our local rivers isn’t just a sport, it’s about providing, playing, protecting, and enhancing the well-being of the whole whānau.

One really cool and useful skill that was covered was…

Summarising!!
Start with a piece of text
Model – ‘deleting’ all the irrelevant information (the opposite of the old school ‘highlight the important stuff’).
From here, collect groups of ideas that fit together.
This then shows you ‘What is left’ which if done correctly gives you appropriately summarised text.

Through the whole session though (and a common trend with these whole day DP opportunities) I was left with a big revolving question lurking in my pea brain.
I kept thinking about how digital heavy our schooling is becoming and wondering if leaning so heavily on digital was actually having a positive impact on the reading (and learning in general) abilities of our kiddos.
It led me to wondering – what evidence is there about the effectiveness of physical book reading compared to digital text options?
I want to look in to this further but currently I think that we are far too digitally reliant and this is taking away from the teaching and learning of our kids. Might have to collect some student voice about this before end of term and scientific journals too. Plenty out there!