Sheena Cameron Reading

 

Panmure Bridge School along with Glen Taylor School joined to have a Reading professional development day. Leading the day was Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey. 

Some key points and highlights:

Link to maths with Talk Moves

Link to phonics with Yolanda Sorryl

Ideas shared around how to do daily Shared Reading

Good shared reading alleviates the anxiety around guided reading.

What was reaffirmed and resonated with me especially as this is something we have previously discussed in our junior school team meetings:

* No round robin

* reading within a colour band

* Digital modelling books to refer back to -rewindable learning / Ako Ano

* Good universal LI's for Ako Ano and follow up activities.

* importance of multiple opportunities to read

*Big Book/ Shared Book

This also linked really well with HLP's 

Interesting - No modelling book in NE - I think by having a digital modelling book where the learners can hear and see cancels out this theory.

Mid Year sense making

The Manaiakalani Senior Leaders meeting focus was to make sense of our current data and identify what we currently do, what we need to incorprorate and what we need to change to get the required shift across all learning areas. The  5 key points made about High Leverage practices:

 

My focus is on how do I ensure these HLP's are integrated and embedded into a classroom setting and support teachers in doing so. Coming out of lockdown the emphasis on teacher and student wellbeing is of utmost importance. Creating a well balanced non threatening  environment will need to be carefully considered. 

Step 1 - less team meetings. maybe every alternate week. This would give teachers time to breathe, time to focus on learners and creating a well balance programme that incorporate HLP's. 

Step 2 -  1 Team meeting, 1 learning area.   

Step 3 - Highlight and discuss HLP's for that learning area. Look at research, evidence based practice and teacher professional contributions within the team.

By going slow, being thorough and sharing of ideas I hopw we alleviate stress and everyone feels well supported.

New Year, New Role

 It was decided that because I have:

1 BT year 2

1 3rd Year Teacher

1 Teacher returning to New Zealand and

1 experienced Teacher new to New Zealand,

I will be walking for the first part of the year or until a new class needs to be opened. 

This first week my focus has been on welcoming the new teachers and assisting them with setting up their classrooms and the importance of building a good relationship with their students and wider school community. 

My second focus was the importance recognising our learners culture and the important role of the Treaty of Waitangi and why and how it must be used and adhered to in a classroom environment.

To help them become acquainted with life at Panmure Bridge I gave each new teacher  a welcome to the junior school document. LINK 

I also decided to keep a virtual diary to show how I spend my time during theses days. LINK

My second focus was getting them acquainted with Assessment protocols and procedures. I explained how all these would be accessible on our team minutes for them to see at anytime. LINK

Panmure Bridge Maths ToD

 This week we were welcomed back to school for 2020. After meeting the new members of staff and Richard Johnston giving us the 'State of the Nation' address we had our Maths professional development was with Marie Hirst.

Session 1: We started with a revision of some warm up activities and a chance to get our brains working again.

Warm up:

Alphabet letters are given a number and bring it down to 1 digit. Look for your corresponding meaning.

Some key learnings in this session and ideas for weekly planning:

10 principles of effective maths pedagogy.

Fluid groups for target teaching. Monday - Needs based maybe Tuesday and Wednesday - collaborative problem solving Thursday - Needs based  Friday as required.

Strategy Teaching Model Bk 3 Getting started. Make connectionswith number within the same lesson. 

Something to do: Make magnetic tens frames for trs. Number line 1-100 on whiteboard. Number 1-20 on tr station.

Make sure you use the language that will be needed and put up on Vocabulary wall.

Do LI at the end… what have we learnt today i.e. to split numbers to make a tidy ten. 

Robyn Anderson has a think board on a google doc, can share so Trs can make a set for the class. 

Session 2: How to set up a successful Maths programme

Learning environment should have some if not ALL of these:

Annotated clock

NESW

Thermometer

Calendar

Height chart.- different facts e.g. red kangaroo

Number line 1-100 on whiteboard

Angles by the door

Horizontal vertical by door.

Maps with focus questions or pictures.

Something to do:Ensure all classes have these items and Teachers are referring to them when teaching .

Burst and bubbles

 Having attended a few of these over the years I was surprised by some of the inquiry questions that were chosen and it made me think about more carfefully about mine...

Am I trying to complicate things? 

Am I trying to always think of the next big thing and trying to reinvent the wheel instead of keeping it simple?

For next year I decided I am actually work backwards. Im going to use the Burst and bubble speaking frames as a guide to focus my inquiry path. This could also possible be my titles for my blog posts. 

I am also thinking of asking Robyn Anderson our CoL in school teacher about whether these speaking frames could be used as a means to assist the new teachers we will have in the junior team. 

Explain Everything in Year 1

 This has been a busy term having my own class but also using part of my management day to work in Room 1 showing the year 1 learners and their teacher how to use Explain Everything and its many tools.

It is important for the learners to go into next year where they will be year 2 with some basic iPad skills.

The ones I deemed important are:

How to hold and move with the iPads: hug hold, always hold in your lap if on the mat and leave on a desk when not in use. How to put it on charge and remove it from charge without damaging any chords.

Basic skills: How to find and navigate their class site, how to swipe and clear iPad after using it, how to take a photo using their camera, how to access apps on their iPads not on their class site.

Explain Everything: how to open and EE link, start a new EE, give an EE a title, upload to their drive. We also worked on taking a photo and changing the background colour, accessing the pencil and draw tool and how to add more slides.

The learners are picking up these skills really fast and are attempting to help their teacher become more adept at using them. The concern I have is that over time, less time is being spent mastering these skills during the week thus only leaving them using EE's on a Thursday. One way I could tackle this is to make EE's and add to the class site allowing learners an opportunity to hone their skills over the course of a week. 

Whether this will be bough will only be determined next year when they move onto a new class and they are able to use the basic skills taught without the teacher having to reteach it. 

New role, new teacher

This term sees me stepping away from the classroom and supporting an experienced teacher, new to New Zealand in navigating the New Zealand curriculum and embrace the Manaiakalani Cluster pedagogy of Learn, Create and Share. 

Balancing learning to get to know the curriculum as well as assisting with learning how to use technology on a daily basis is not an easy task. My main focus is to show the important must know items first. This is to ensure that daily communication and administration can be completed and everyone is always in the know about what is happening. I will also be working through the the google educator certification with the new to NZ teacher. 

        

Creativity vs Artistic

Another successful Teacher only day. I love how Richard is able to seamlessly transition us from relaxed holiday mode to a genuine interest into a topic that will be our focus for the year. I once again came away having not only enjoyed the day but also with some retrospection and reflection about my current practise, how I would like to continue this year and some real practical knowledge on playing with clay.

This year we got to make clay birds with Barbara. The entire staff had fun and learnt so much in the process. We were gifted words that helped us describe and talk to our peers about our birds such as smooth, grog, texture etc. It made me think more about play based learning, rich math tasks and hands on, fun activities that I could do with New Entrants and encourage throughout the junior school.

Richard also showed us how to we could get creative digitally by using www. remove.bg. I am not sure whether this would work on our iPads but I definitely can see how we could do this using Explain Everything.

Learnings/ AHA moments:
* creativity is applied imagination with innovation.
* I am not hopeless at art.
*Encourage creativity and learner outcomes may change.

Ramblings/ Rumblings:
* How much time am I allowing for creativity?
* Am I using creativity, rich tasks, hands on activities to their full potential?
* How can we tap into learners cultural knowledge, strengths and interests using this platform?