Here is the list of the professional development I completed this year. Not a long list, but very impactful.
Professional Development Log 2024
From within the log you can access my reflections on each of the PLDs I attended.
The one I enjoyed the most was the airport kōrero because I had no idea about the significance of the area and was just one of those people who walked the airport and thought it looked nice! I should have known better.
A great year this year!
My class tends to see blogging as a requirement and not as an opportunity to learn further. It is beholden upon me to turn this around, to embed it into our work and also to get them to reflect better.
We have sentence stems laminated and on every single chromebook.Nearly every time we blog, I get the same questions “how many stems do we have to do” (nothing has changed, still the same amount), “what does this mean?” (explained EVERY time) and the waiting for me to type it out for them (which I do not). They see it as a chore, as they do a lot of work in the classroom. “Do we have to read ALL of this?”, YES.
Another issue is the lack of participation and commenting from whānau despite notices, posts online on different platforms and discussions kanohi ki te kanohi with them. We aren’t particularly good at commenting on others’ posts either. I feel this will be a focus for term 4, learning to comment better and setting aside time each week to visit others’ blogs and to give good feedback on their peers’ posts. It doesn’t help that our teachers aren’t particularly good at commenting either on each others’ professional blogs or those of our tamariki, although we are changing this.
The tamariki do not see blogging as part of their learning. Being able to write coherently and reflectively on their blogging is reading and writing! To express themselves and to think about what they are learning is the cherry on the top and a way to accelerate learning if done often enough.
The biggest thing I need to do as a teacher is to actually timetable the time to A) complete a blog and B) to comment on other’s blogs. It is not enough to say “blog your reading” in the response to text or elsewhere because if they do not manage to complete the mahi, that is the first thing that falls off. It needs to NOT be a perfunctory “here’s my work” and that’s it.
Research shows those tamariki who blog at a "high" level (2.5 posts on average per week) actually gain levels in asTTle writing scores. By writing and reflecting, they become better writers. This could be a game changer for some of my tamariki.
I currently have non-negotiable blogs (they HAVE to blog about something) but they are perfunctory reflections based on sentence stems we have provided. I am going to show them blogs from other schools that show how much more thinking has gone into their blog reflections.
I will also make a concerted effort to comment on their blogs more often. It is something if I don't timetable it into my life, it will not happen except in random bursts!
Another aspect of sharing we looked at today was collaboration. Completing "creates" with other tamariki in the class. I can see this sometimes going pear-shaped so I will need to set some ground rules with input from the tamariki as to how this will work and how they are held accountable in their pairs or groups. I will also be asking them how they would like to collaborate and creating success criteria with them around their dispositions and expected behaviour.
We blog about once a week at the moment and it happens at odd times. I will formally timetable these into the day and also have a time for them to post comments on others' work. Some have completed how to write a good comment, but I think all will actually benefit from another round of lessons on how to write great blog comments (along with blog posts!)
As the diagram shows, commenting and responding is not linear! But it hits all aspects of the curriculum with regards to English (as the curriculum currently stands anyway!) It is one way to help increase literacy time while doing something the kids usually enjoy.
My biggest area of concern though is the whānau engagement. i have two parents who comment on blogs. One is a high school teacher who understands the benefits of commenting (also a Manaiakalani school). How do I get others involved? I liked the ideas of sending home reading "homework" to do as a whānau. I will think long and hard about a few activities that whānau do not find difficult or time consuming to ensure they do want to do it and get it done. The kids won't be hard to convince but I don't want meltdowns at home if there is raru about having to do it.
It is the final day of the course, I am happy in one sense that I have achieved a lot on this course and that it is done. But I am also unhappy as there goes the accountability, learning, collaboration with teachers all over NZ and the myriad of other benefits being on this course has meant. I can't wait to get on the MPI and hopefully a writing version of this same course. Excited!!
This is by far, the best PLD I have been on regarding reading. I completed a one year Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning after 30 years away from University and my initial Law degree. This one year diploma was mainly theory with 14 weeks of placement. Although we learned how to plan etc, a lot of it was not very practical as to how to set a reading programme up, what to do with the kids, how to do rotations, what to put in rotations, it wasn't even explained why we use rotations! It was an eye opener to get into our practicum classes and see how things were run. Different teachers did different things, for different reasons with different theory behind it. WHAT WAS I TO DO?
I had a fabulous Mentor Teacher and colleagues who I gathered information and ideas from and away I went. We were always changing things up but I had a few misunderstandings practically which have given me a good laugh in retrospect, but the revelations in the Manaiakalani RPI course came thick and fast.
The practical advice and modelling backed up by robust research was very very helpful. My favourite sessions involved vocabulary and the create session. I am the first to admit that I am not very creative at times and find it difficult to come up with engaging content for the tamariki digitally. The suggestions and the way to develop these was extremely helpful. It made me feel more confident I could actually do things that make the tamariki use their brains and new found knowledge into new contexts to help it transfer to their long term memories.
Vocabulary is a passion of mine, but the way to teach it was varied and this course gave me a clear pathway to teaching it. My teacher's aide, Te Arani made an amazing vocabulary tree for my class and brought my vision to life. It has been hard to actually keep up the use of it, but that will come with repeated use and reminders to myself!
I have changed the way reading is presented to my tamariki and the independent work is more aligned with their learning objectives. Before it could be a little hit and miss at times, but things have slotted into place now. Six years of teaching and I'm still learning the basics it seems sometimes. There's so much to choose from, so many things thrust at you and so many ideas about what is good to do, it is nice to have a clear path to take with reading.
This does not mean I didn't enjoy the other sessions. I absolutely did. I have slowly put into place nearly everything now that I have been taught. I had to ensure that I didn't just change everything straight away, but be sure that the tamariki in the class were ready for change and that I could model it, practice it and embed it before I added more change into the mix. Some of my tamariki do not like change so I had to take moments that I knew I would succeed or succeed with most of the kids otherwise it would be a disaster. I did get a bit excited once or twice and have to back a change out due to the tamariki becoming discombobulated! Nothing like a sense of chaos to upset the apple cart.
The reading pillars, or pou, are extremely helpful in developing my classroom programme. What I am doing, what I need to do, where I am going and how I am going to achieve the lift in reading we need to see. The checklist makes it eminently practical to implement. Moving forward I am going to continue to blog about how I am going with ensuring my programme refers to and uses the different pou. If I haven't done a blog in a few weeks about this - comment and give me a kick in the proverbial!!!
I'd like to thank the facilitators of the course, particularly my group leader Anna for her caring attitude and down to earth understanding of the pressures teachers are under at times. It made for great sessions and learning opportunities.
Creating. This is my biggest weakness! I often struggle to come up with ideas. I am a creative person in my own time - photography, art, crafts, writing... why can't I do this in class?
This session made me realise it is much easier than I had lead myself to believe. Seeing others' work has set off a few lightbulbs for more and having a resource bank I can use as is, or to springboard my own ideas off, is just a godsend.
Creativity is what sets humans above animals. We need to create beyond just making a bed for ourselves or a functional home.
Creativity helps us come up with new ideas and make progress in different fields like science, technology, business, and the arts. It allows us to think outside the box and find solutions to problems. Without creativity, we would not be able to move forward and face the challenges of our changing world. These changes are coming thick and fast and it is essential our tamariki learn to harness their creativity.
When we think creatively, we can approach problems from different angles and find unique solutions. This is helpful in our personal lives and also when dealing with big issues like climate change, poverty, and healthcare. Creativity helps us find new ways to solve problems and make the world a better place. In a world that is constantly changing, creativity helps us be flexible and adapt to new situations. It allows us to think on our feet and make the most of opportunities that come our way. With creativity, we can overcome obstacles and keep moving forward.
The underlying kaupapa of Manaiakalani is "the hook". What is going to hook tamariki in so they excel at everything they do. What is going to excite them? What is going to motivate them to learn and change the world? Creative work is one of these hooks. Get them to create something exciting and they will learn more and achieve more with what they believe is no more effort.
It is important to come at their learning from all angles and opportunities. Multimodal creativity ensures that the tamariki are more engaged and that as many as possible are hooked in.
Looking at the opportunities I offer my tamariki create wise, it is clear that I need to ensure that I am stepping up on what I give them to do. The biggest issue I have in class with offering new things is that it can sometimes take multiple sessions of "I do, we do, you do" for them to do the simplest of creates. I can have bulleted step by step instructions which they won't read, I use mote to give them instructions verbally - but they won't listen to it. They go straight to DOING it and doing it badly often. Or, after a whole class lesson on how to do something I can't run a small group as there are multiple interruptions with kids so far off course that I want to cry. We may have done a particular activity several times, and yet the same questions come up. They seem not to be able to understand instructions despite the five ways I have given it to them and the rewindable learning on it. This is something I have to work on and could well be my reading for a fortnight or more. I will have to go through an instruction and we discuss what it means, what are they supposed to do, throw some maths word problems in there, a few class activities with instructions, but really just be teaching instructional words, what they mean, testing if they understand (as a comprehension "test") and the sometimes fun consequences (with some tricks up my sleeve) when they don't read or clarify instructions up front. A few ideas are running around my head now.
What I love about Manaiakalani is the collaboration amongst teachers. The support, willingness to share ideas and mahi amongst everyone is amazing. Teachers too often are reinventing the wheel and you may have a 1000 teachers doing the same thing on any one day yet each of them have created their own resources to teach it. This doesn't happen in Manaiakalani and I love this aspect of the kaupapa.
I have come away from this session with many ideas and I am relieved that I am now armed with more creative ways of engaging my tamariki and hopefully boosting their rate and depth of learning.
This session has made me understand how much more deliberate and focused my comprehension questions and design of Guided reading needs to be. I ask questions, I try to ask "good" questions, but what is good??
My tamariki aren't particularly critical (from my general observations). They tend to believe things they are told and don't really think about it unless I point out things to think about or, what I consider to be obvious faults in their thinking. This session will get me started on thinking about getting more from the literal questions and far more into the evaluative end of the kaupapa. The critical thinking skill is one that is more important than ever to teach ALL tamariki as there is a world of information they are being bombarded with and a lot of it needs critical analysis. They need to be literate in a whole world that never existed when I was a child myself. Although there was still misinformation and misleading information when I was growing up, the invention of the internet and rise of information available to everyone now is overwhelming and needs to be looked at carefully. Anyone can say anything online now - ANYONE. It isn't just published authors or experts that are writing/filming or broadcasting their "facts" and opinions.
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| The literacies of today. |
Looking at Bloom's High Order Thinking diagram, we need to be pushing our tamariki into developing higher order thinking skills. Analysing, evaluative and creating. Rather than shallow thinking, they need to be deeply think about themes and get more opportunities to be challenged.
In reading there are three main levels of thinking:
Far too often I feel I don't get into Interpretative thinking enough and rarely into evaluative thinking and making judgements.
As part of the Reading Practice Intensive course we are working on timetabling of our reading sessions. Previously I disclosed that I had been doing far too many group sessions with every single group every day. Now I have backed off and am trying to work on fewer sessions while still seeing my lower kids every day. It turns out that backing things off is not as easy as it sounded!
From my perspective it has been easier, but from the perspective of the tamariki, it has thrown them through a loop. I had to back off from some of the sessions to enable the change in "feel" in the classroom to settle the tamariki. It was an odd situation. You'd think less time with the teacher would work out better, but no. They found it hard to spend more time doing their mahi or independent tasks. I realised I had created sessions that they needed my help with (or they perceived they did) and having to do more of it without checking in with me was too hard.
We are getting there though. The last thing I need or want is tamariki that depend on me or any adult for approval before they can do the next task.
Regarding the independent tasks; I was already using all but literacy planet as part of the options for independent work. I also use spelling shed with lessons each week they take themselves through. I will be introducing Literacy Planet after I have settled into the teacher groups better and "set them free" with their mahi.
All part of the learning process - particularly with these kids who tend to expect work to be super easy and that if it requires even a moment's thinking, that Whaene Vicki will do it for them or write it for them!
I do reading the same time every morning - it works well and I don't have any ins and outs that affect that time slot. I am looking to rejig this in term two to have some days at different times to see how that works out and to change the daily timetable a bit. I am loathe to do this in the final weeks of term as it will unsettle the routine we have got into.
After last session's epiphany about my Guided reading, I kept doing what I was doing as I saw the next session was about planning the reading programme. I didn't want to rush ahead and then have to redo it all as I didn't hit the mark.
This session I have taken away several ideas that I will be working on, in the coming weeks. The biggest delight this week was the writing as reader session. I find writing my weakest pou in my whare of learning. It is hard. This activity is such a great way to add more modelling to my tamariki and improve their writing - all from their reading!
Guided reading is the mainstay of reading instruction in my classroom. However, I was checking every child's reading every time I saw them in guided reading. Doh! I have looked at my guided reading (GR) instruction from university and it wasn't very complete at all. So for the past five years I have been struggling to keep up with the groups and every reader every week. No wonder I have found it to be not my favourite part of the day. Probably not for the tamariki either.
The biggest epiphany is that I don't need to do this! I do have tamariki on the colour wheel which I will continue to work on intensively, however, I can now release the older and better readers and only do observations maybe fortnightly. Sigh. A lot of work over the years for probably little benefit for my tamariki and way too much work for myself. I think I might sit in the corner and cry later today.
I will be taking a closer look at the more formal note taking ideas from the rōpu and trying various options to see if it works for me or if I need to make changes. Currently I do anecdotal notes which end up all over the place unless I do a probe or other formal assessment.
Looking at the introduction of the texts for GR, I have probably been a bit loose in my preamble with regards to prior knowledge, and the examples of the more targeted questions and the choice of words was excellent.
Fluency is something we are working on currently. We have been recording ourselves, but I will now use the fluency rubric to get my tamariki to self assess and then discuss it with them. It will make them look more carefully at the way they are reading DURING their reading, rather than waiting for me to assess afterwards.
This is the first time I have been explicitly taught how to do comprehensive guided reading. This is my 6th year of teaching. I have found bits and pieces here and there about it, and have watched others, but this PLD session has been great on the practicalities of teaching reading and I will be changing up the way I do things as a result.
I found the Fountas and Pinnell Guided reading framework a good way of structuring my sessions, although I will be introducing the learning intention at the start of the session as well as touching on it during the lesson. I find the more you express the LI, the more likely the tamariki seem to be to understand what and why they are learning something.
Another intensive day, this time about what texts we choose and why we choose them. We are working on the Inside Classroom pou of our pillars of practice (see below).
Having to do some activities with a tight timeline made me realise it isn't as hard as I can sometimes make it out to be! I often angst for hours over texts and then they are read and done in a few minutes and I wonder at how much time I wasted for the kids not to connect or to "get it" so easily it was almost unworthwhile. I put together a text set in just a few minutes which I will add to but will be using next term.
I realised over the past few weeks that I really have steered clear of poet
ry. As a poetry lover since I was a child I am absolutely frustrated at myself for the disservice I have done to my tamariki. I deliberately have chosen poetry to start of term 2. I am going to be using ones that evoke the senses which will also help them with the descriptive writing we are doing next term. I have chosen poems about events or situations they are familiar with and can use their prior knowledge to connect with. I have other writing about these same topics that will help fill any gaps they have and to give different perspectives on the subjects.
Another part of the kaupapa that resonated with me a lot this time was ensuring we were providing texts that gave tamariki the opportunity to see themselves, see others and to experience other worlds - mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors.
I work in a small rural type of town. We are a decile 2 school and our kids don't go a lot of places often, or have experiences that take them beyond their own small neighbourhood. We do cover a lot of te ao Māori as our tamariki are 85% Māori. They live in a Pākehā world however being only 30% of the town's ethnic make up (don't talk to me about where the 70%'s kids are going to school though!!). We teach Te Atiawatanga which is the way that our local iwi participate and interact with the world (most of our tamariki are part of this iwi). We ensure they know about local land wars, Parihaka and the rich Māori history of our rohe. They are somewhat closed off to the world out there though. They often haven't been out of the North Island, let alone the country. So ensuring they have meaningful interaction with texts of various forms about other people and cultures is vital, and helping them to figure out how Aotearoa fits in this world.
Putting my practice into a rubric to see what I am doing with the way I teach reading was interesting too. I do long texts often as read alouds of novels, where I read something like "The Wild Robot" to them purely for enjoyment, although I model what I am thinking and some new vocabulary occasionally. I cast this to my TV via a reading app and can see some of them reading along as I go. Others are drawing the scenes that I am reading about. They love it and so do I. Guided reading is completed each day but I was a bit slack on the shared reading. I often struggled with what to do with my older students but seeing today's example of shared reading made a few pennies drop so I will be incorporating more into my classwork for term 2. I'm excited! I also like the buddy reading. We already are focusing on how fluently we read and recording ourselves, so having a friend help them read better out loud in a safe environment will add to this immensely.
Another week chock full of learning and I'm sure I have more to talk about, but will catch up with my fellow RPI attendees at school and my mentor.
Day 2 was a very intensive day. I feel shattered at the end of it!
We had a quick look at our assessment data from the PAT Pānui Reading Comp testing. Three of my tamariki are incomplete: one was away and been away a nearly every day I scheduled to run it for him, then two just mucked around and gave answers and attitude in such a way I know they weren't taking it seriously. They will have the joy of resitting with a mentor watching over them.
I have always looked at the ARBs for maths, but no so much for reading. Having the opportunity to look more closely at these was good and I have many ideas for how to use them. The readings a short but varied. I rarely use poetry and that showed in the PAT test as a low area. They were unable to identify metaphors and to picture the scene in their heads and answer the questions correctly. I love poetry myself as my parents gave me poetry books as a child - why aren't I modelling this to my tamariki? Moving forward I will definitely be using these in my reading groups to create discussions and discover how the akonga are thinking and why they are answering the way they are.
My class has quite a few gaps and I'm glad I'm on this course to help me to plug those gaps and to ensure the success of my tamariki with reading.
I feel a little overwhelmed with the tracking sheet. It requires a lot of time to build up the data and then once it is full, the data needs to be tracked again in other ways at my school. When we get into using it though, we will have some evidence to drop the repetition and just link everything to the comprehensive tracker! Sooner rather than later would be a good outcome. It would be great if the rest of the school used these also as it would mean that as students move through the school we would have the data being tracked and what has been covered. We track students through HERO and know where they are up to, but it is only as good as the data being input. At the senior end we inherit the data from previous teachers and there can be gaps that aren't gaps or things marked off that need re-visiting.
I always give a WALT for my lessons and we discuss the Success Criteria (SC). The tamariki do have the opportunity to help decide what the SC should be, but often it may be only one sensible SC offered by them, but at least that gives them a hand and a feeling of co-creation. I will be working on trying to get more out of them though. The splitting down of the AO, LI and SC was a great exercise and one I hadn't thought about it. Also the backwards planning. Makes perfect sense. It's how I handle things in my own life - want to go on holiday? What do I need to do to get there in the months prior to leaving? Same with what the tamariki are expected to be able to do at the end of a unit or similar. So what do I need to do to get them there?? I LOVE THIS.
The dive into why we do assessment was interesting along with the 7 characteristics of expert teachers. The surprise was that establishing and maintaining high expectations with the learners effect size was so high. I think I do have high expectations, but am I making sure the tamariki know this? I will be taking steps to ensure that I am communicating this clearly, both at a class level and at an individual level.
I am looking forward to using the template slide with the graphic organiser with the week's work to access, and having the tamariki settle into their reading more. The best thing is seeing that they have gotten books out of the library now - those titles that were in the best fit book choosing exercise! I re-ran the activity with books from inside my classroom - it was a race to find them on the shelves and to read them. This was an amazing result. I will continue to do this activity and vary it somehow to keep putting books in front of them to read and choose. I may get them to try choosing a book for a partner to read based on what they say they like and see if that gets titles in front of them to get excited about.
We are starting to write book recommendations with covers next week so that they can see what others like. I am going to work with the school librarian to do this in the library too. I think the teina would like to see that their tuakana liked a book as they model themselves and their behaviour on the older tamariki.
A couple of days ago I conducted a reading survey on my tamariki. I have a mixture of year 4, 5 and 6 students (mainly 5/6) and this years' cohort is at a lower academic level than previous years. They are all eager to please though and despite a choppy start with my attendance at school, they have settled in relatively well.
Getting to know your tamariki is key to their education. Knowing what they like, who they are, what they bring to your kopa is essential and being able to plan around this knowledge needs to be evidence based. This survey via Manaiakalani is one way to get to know who your tamariki are as readers.
Prior to the survey I thought that my kids would not like reading nor read a lot. The exact opposite of myself. I read before I started school at 5 and read everyday - although the past couple of years had me put down fiction and pick up a lot more text style and science books. I am just getting back into reading fiction after the first day of RPI inspired me.
I had a battle with Google Sheets. As an experienced MS Excel user I find sheets frustrating. To add to that I lost part of my brain with covid two weeks ago and I am sorry to say that I have yet to find parts of it!! I struggled with putting the data into sheets and gave up with some graphs that made a great maths lesson for the kids on reading the results. So a win there as they had to figure out that things weren't in order column wise (and what was a column?) so they had to read carefully. They were fantastic and enjoyed the lesson both from a maths perspective and to learn from the data itself.
The results surprised me. I have one outlier who did skew some results. This tamaiti reads texts books for fun and scores in stanine 9 for everything in his year, and stanine 8 for the year higher.
6 didn't read anything which was sad, but lower than I thought it would be. They generally fell on the "liked reading at school" side which was a relief, but looking at the individuals who didn't like reading at school it was the poorer readers which I felt for.
I shared the titles of the books that they had as favourites and several were interested in trying reading the books that the others enjoyed so that was great. I will be starting a recommendation system in class where kids write reviews for others to read with the book and have it on display for others to see and perhaps be inspired to read.
Just under half the class does not have their own library card. Again, I was surprised that it was that high! I am getting forms from our mobile book bus that comes from our city library to school so that others can get one if they wish. I will encourage parents to sign them up.
I wonder if some filled it in, in such a way in order to please me though. I hope not. These tamariki hunger for attention and love which as a role model for reading, I hope to influence them that reading is awesome and worthwhile.
