Inquiry - Building Vocabulary

For the rest of the year, I have decided that my inquiry is going to be based on building vocabulary for students in both reading and writing. Through a series of different interactive games, I hope that I will be able to build students' vocabulary and their connections to prior knowledge. I was lucky enough to come back in time for a team session on this topic with Dr Jannie Van Hees. She gave us ideas on creating oral paragraphs, wordplosions, the importance of quick sight word recall. My postgraduate research had been based on this topic, however I am keen to continue this area of research. This week, we began with lots of reading of picture books and sight word bingo. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting the various activities we are doing in class to extend the variety of vocab and important basic sight word vocab in the class. As always, love to hear of any cool ideas you may also have!

Oh, how time flies - MDTA Graduation!

As I sat on the ferry, heading into Google Headquarters for our MDTA graduation, I reflected on the last two years. It has been one huge journey, full of its challenges but outweighed by many amazing learning experiences and memories; meeting incredibly inspiring teachers, attending many motivating professional development sessions and of course being able to have such loving students to share each day with.

I can say there was never a dull moment. I learnt that the most important thing in life is people. I have first hand seen how we have a poverty issue in New Zealand that is much greater than what many (and I before joining the MDTA) realise. I learnt that a smile makes the world of difference and that giving is much more rewarding than receiving. I also have the greatest respect for any teacher in the world who has taken on the role to inspire their class of learners, as it definitely is not an easy job. I feel privileged to be a part of the education world and kickstarting my career as an MDTA was definitely an invaluable opportunity.

There are so many people to thank for their support - I won't start naming as you all know the incredible people you are! It is a journey I could never have completed on my own, so thank you everyone and to all those who have supported my blogging journey so far as well. Here are some photos of our graduation celebration!

Celebrating Accelerated Shift in 2017!

Today Dorothy took our staff meeting on how visible learning empowers both students and teachers. We reflected on the strategies we have used this year to accelerate the learning and were asked to share a short summary of how we achieved this shift.

Here is a summary to celebrate the shift of a student in Year 2:

Maths Professional Development with Jo Knox - Calendar Maths!

We have been very lucky at Pt England School to have Jo Knox working alongside us this year in maths. Last week we had team sessions with Jo and I left feeling extremely inspired by all her ideas!

The focus of our session was fractions (I will post about this soon), however she also touched on Calendar Maths and how it can be used in the classroom to reinforce various maths skills each day.
(I had seen a similar concept on a placement with 100 days of school, however had not yet seen the many creative ideas that Jo presented us with!)

Calendar Maths is set up as an interactive wall display which you complete with students for a few minutes each day. Some teachers also use it as part of their maths rotation which can be seen in the links below.

Visit these links to see what I am talking about!

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3 

What you decide to include on your Calendar Math is totally up to you and will depend on the age and needs of your students.

You may include:

A calendar!

With this you could talk about the date - what is the number before and after? What is 10 more? 10 less?
Bundle the number into groups of ones and 10s - students will get to see how when you get to the next ten you bundle the ones and they become one group of 10 and not individual ones.
Talk about the days of the week, months, year and seasons.


A clock!

Get a clock and talk about what time the clock is showing.


A hundreds board!

Start from day one and add a number each day. You could count forwards and back from the number of the day. This will help with students not always counting up from 1 which can cause difficulties when you want students to start from a different number!


Have a daily fraction!

Pop up a fraction and get students to read what it says and maybe even match a picture that represents that fraction.


A tooth tally chart!

Each time a tooth is lost in the class add it to a tooth tally chart to expose kids to how we tally and group in 5's.


A piggy bank!

Put some money in the piggy bank. How rich are we today?


Would love to hear any more ideas you may have about Calendar Maths and how it is used in your classroom!


Image attribution 

A few tips and Apple tricks!

At our staff meeting Dorothy Burt had asked some of the staff to share any Apple Tips and Tricks they knew, so that this knowledge could be brought to the rest of the school (teachers at our school all work on MacBooks and iMacs). I must say I am always up for learning a time-saving/life-changing hack, so was very excited to see what others had to share!

Here are some of the new ones I learnt to hopefully make your life on an Apple easier - enjoy!

This first one I found when Googling around for a new tip to share. It saved me a lot of time for report writing - I had the report writer in one screen and my class data in the other.

The following tricks are all from my lovely colleagues at Pt England School - thank you all!

Developing in Digital Worlds - Online PLG

This term I am taking part in an online professional learning group called Developing in Digital Worlds. The focus of this group is on "Argumentation" and the importance of developing ideas and skills around argumentation in the classroom. The sessions are lead by Naomi Rosedale, Stuart McNaughton and Cynthia Greenleaf. Sessions are going to be fortnightly and conducted through Google Hangouts.

The objectives of this group can be seen here:

The opportunity to take part in this professional learning group could not have come at a much better time. I have only recently reflected on how I often see students both in and out of the class have a very "my side" bias and how the conversation of "thinking about others feelings and how you would feel if you had been standing in their shoes" has reappeared quite regularly the last few weeks.

After the first session, I realised how I haven't been explicitly planning lessons to teach students this skill. I had placed the expectation to students that they would always be conscious of the ideas and feelings of others, however had never demonstrated what steps they had to take, vocabulary that could be used and what this would look like.

A few nights of ideas wizzing through my brain and I came up with the following idea. I would pose students with the scenario that we would be receiving a class pet. There would be three options: Tim the Tiger (who no longer fitted in his cage and needed a new home), Elijah the Elephant (he has been living in Africa but is now on his way in a ship and needs a new home) and Bella the Puppy (she has lost her mum and needs to be taken care of).

The lesson began with us talking about what a good listener is - does not talk over others, listens carefully by thinking about what the other person has said, may ask questions about what they have heard to find out more. We also discussed that in the activity everyone might have different ideas and we are allowed to change our minds as we hear what others think.

Next I told the class we were getting a pet!

As you could imagine with a class of 25 six and seven year olds, the excitement erupted (only one student did not seem convinced that this was really going to happen...I let the other students believe that this could be a very real scenario as I did not want to dampen the mood!)

After I flipped over the images of the three possible pets and what their story was I let the students bubble with excitement, sharing with their friends about the pet they wanted. I then asked the students to sit in a group by the pet they think the class should choose.

Next I posed the following questions to the students (questions and responses can be seen in the slides below), giving each group time to discuss and then also time to share their opinion with the class.




I was blown away by the thought that had been put into some of the responses (especially concerns over Elijah damaging the iPads with water!). The students had really thought hard about what each option would mean for the class. Some students had even started to realise that maybe their pet was not such a good option when other groups pointed out concerns such as tigers getting aggressive or elephants being huge!

I could definitely not fault students on engagement and participation (some of my quietest students spoke up for the first time with many great ideas!) I did notice that students were still very stuck on their own opinion and would fight to get their choice regardless of others suggestions. Some students were not very focused when others were speaking, more so waiting eagerly to share their own thoughts. This will be an area I will need to look into more for the next activity.

Would definitely recommend having a go at argumentation in your class, as I learnt so much about my own teaching and the students in the process. Let me know how the activity goes in your class or any other suggestions you may have!

Rewindable Learning

As I endeavour on my first year in the classroom, I have definitely battled trying to manage catching up students on work they have missed due to being absent. This can be due to students not showing up to school, showing up late, being pulled out of class for other commitments, or even being absent due to lack of understanding or focus.

It was inspiring to hear Dorothy Burt and Helen King speak to us today about how we can manage this in our digital environments. Some ideas raised included recording lessons taught on a device, creating video tutorials for strategies, and recording instructions on tasks that are to be completed. These digital REWINDABLE resources would then be placed in an accessible folder where students could revisit these ANYTIME, ANY PLACE at ANY PACE. Students are able to rewind learning sessions to either catch up on learning they have missed or revisit concepts they want to consolidate.

Creating visible and rewindable learning for students not only can reduce the amount of dependence students have on their teacher, it allows students to take ownership of their learning and realise that learning can occur away from the immediate radius of the teacher.