Mia's Teaching Journey

Some thoughts and tid-bits from Dorothy Burt speaking about how 'Visibility enables accelerated shift'. I found it interesting how Dorothy talked about how all of these 4 pieces to the Manaiakalani puzzle; learn, create and share, must be working together in order to get the accelerated shift that we want. You can be creating as much as you want, but as a teacher if you are not allowing them to share this then that us not the manaiakalani way, and therefore you are less likely to see shift. This is something I can definitely think about in my teaching and will need to think about next year moving into the senior school teaching Y6.  It is vital to remember that as Teachers make a difference, even if some times we may not feel this way! We make shift happen.  I found this excerpt, taken from Dorothy's Google Presentation particularly interesting; " Collective teacher efficacy is beyond three times more powerful and predictive than socio-economic status (0.52).

Exploring a lesson based around the book ‘One is a snail, 10 is a crab’. This book gives the children a rich context to learning about making numbers using addition. Each number is represented by feet, e.g. a snail is one, a dog is 4, a crab is 10 so two crabs are 20 etc. 50 is 5 crabs or 10 dogs and a crab. 100 is 10 crabs, or if you are counting really slowly 100 snails. See below for pictures that represent the numbers. Once you have read the book. I am going to say. What might I see if I see 4 feet. Have pictures of the animals from the book to stick down. They should say dog. How else could we make this number. This will be done as a group. We have picked 3 kids from our class to sit with Jo as she models this lesson. They are NE children and haven't been at school very long at all! Jo reading Book to kids: 1 - 1 is a snail. Now they are saying it’s one because how many feet has a snail got? 1. Logan: It doesn't have any feet! 2 - 2 is a .. can you

Kia Ora Whanau. It's a while since I last posted - please excuse me. I have returned from an amazing, almost 3 month trip around Europe. How lucky am I? I flew to London, and from there visited Greece (Mykonos and Santorini), Spain (San Sebastian), Paris, Croatia and Italy! A lot to fit into just under 3 months… I had an absolute ball. I travelled mostly alone but met friends in Spain and Croatia. I have travelled alone through Vietnam earlier in the year and although many may think it is a lonely experience I find it quite the opposite. Staying mostly in hostels I was amazed at how many other people were travelling alone, so straight away there are people you share a common trait and conversation starter with. Travelling alone makes you get out of your comfort zone. I found myself really putting myself out there and making an effort to walk up to people and spark a conversation. I am certainly not a shy person but I think in daily life I am mostly around people I know, colle

Today's PD was about aligning the NZ Number Framework, NZC and the National Standards. I have made some notes around things I found helpful or interesting, especially around the tests we use with our children. This is my first year teaching year 3 and the tips around Gloss I found very interesting and helpful. Thanks Jo Knox!! Some important notes/ things to remember : Because one curriculum Level spans 2 years - we look at early level and end of level. So in year 3 they need to be early level 5 - at the end of stage 5 by the end of year 4. Knowledge and strategies are interwoven or interlined We need to think about what tool is most appropriate - Jam or Gloss? Assessment isn’t just a one-off thing … it can be a chat you have with students. Summative - tape measure - MEASURING - gives you a mark/score. SUMMARISES what the child knows. Formative - what can I do differently to affect the growth of that flower (student in our case) - informs what learning

After an amazing break travelling through Vietnam it is great to be back at work. I am really enjoying teaching my new level year 3 and I have an amazing class of beautiful tamariki. I am only in my room until the 2nd of June (week 5 of Term 2), as Laura Nalder will be returning for the rest of the year after her study leave. Taking this into consideration I want to focus my inquiry around something I can hopefully come to some sort of resolution for/ conclusion by end of this term.  Although I haven’t done much maths in this first two weeks yet due to various time constraints and other things such as swimming etc taking up a big deal of time I have already noticed that a lack of knowledge is holding most of my children back and teaching them strategies seems to be a waste of time? Well perhaps not a waste but it seems like I am actually going back to teaching the knowledge because they don’t have what they need to work out the strategy.  I need to investigate ways to build up k