End of Term 2 Reflection

Highs & Lows!

Daily 5

Daily 5 continues to be a positive in the classroom literacy program.  The majority of children are spending quality time (increased mileage) reading or completing reading based work.  Testing is showing good progress, although some children with the benchmark change have appeared to have gone backwards or not as 'above' prior to coming to us.  With comprehension being the focus in middle school with the transition to senior school reading is now about understanding and less so about decoding.  

I have noticed fewer children choosing writing and a lot of children copying what they are reading into their work on writing books.  We have reflected and we will check independent work on writing more regularly and also the children must write twice per week.  We will also provide alternative spelling options to try and increase engagement.

We are also introducing handwriting and current events as independent choice options. Steps to Literacy children will be able to choose to complete their online program.  We hope this provides the variety and retains the engagement and motivation in the program.

To give the children greater self-management we are also introducing a Daily 5 choice sheet.  This will reduce teacher time managing choices in between rotations.  The downside is greater photocopying and collecting books in to check choices.

Phonics

The Yolanda Soryl program has been running for a term now and I have enjoyed the structure and step-by-step nature of the program.  The children I have had (stage 2-3) have been really engaged with the program, mainly due to the use of whiteboards and the challenge of the revision (element of competition keeps the boys engaged).  There is some transference coming through in writing of initial vowel sounds and the reading progress of some of our low children could be attributed to phonics as well.  These children still struggle with some sounds like 'r' and all vowel sounds and will need to be repeated.  I look forward to teaching a new level next term (stage 5-6).

Flat Stanley & Inquiry

The children have loved Flat Stanley and sharing his travels around the world.  They are proud to see their Stanley up on the map!  It was a great hook into our inquiry but we feel it was not as well linked to our inquiry this term.  The children ended up choosing countries different to where their Stanley's travelled.  It would have made sense for them to have a question and be in inquiry groups around this country.  

In hindsight, greater teacher direction was still needed, especially in the researching/finding out phase.  The children learned how to use google slides to present their information which was a great way to incorporate technology.  It would have been a good opportunity to see the children skyping experts or other school children in their chosen countries to get information, as well as have a bigger, authentic audience to present their work.  Once self-assessments (and teacher assessments) against the rubric are done it will be great to see the progress comparison from term 1 inquiry.

Matariki & Visual Mihi

Over term 2 my focus in teaching Te Reo Maori and Tikanga Maori was to complete a visual Mihi following on from the term 1 focus on introducing ourselves using our Mihi.  The visual Mihi gave the children the chance to use pictures to represent their awa, maunga, moana, marae, iwi & whanau.

Model used to create our visual Mihi

We incorporated ICT with the children learning how to take a selfie on a Chromebook and how to insert it into a google doc.  They then typed their mihi in the google doc to print off and place on the visual mihi.  The children then decorated their Korowai (cloak) using symbols or words that were important to them (family, flag, friends etc).  Unfortunately, we couldn't explore Maori art (symbolism of koru, mangopare etc) to support the decorating of the cloaks as planned as WIFI was down.  We have displayed our visual mihi with our matariki art in our corridor learning space.   Our children greet all our visitors and families each morning.

Model of the korowai

The children's next step is to continue practising their mihi orally and work on accurate pronunciation in preparation for our Arowhenua marae visit.

We also read different Matariki stories over the last couple of weeks school.  For many children, this was the first time they had heard different stories around the Maori New Year.  We then finished our term with a shared lunch to celebrate Matariki with the children and one of our classroom sponsors. Reihana was given a leadership role of karakia mo te kai, with Cooper chosen to support him to do this.  Lara (Reihana's Mum came in to support him also).

Reihana doing our karakia mo te kai

The children enjoying our Matariki feast!

This was a wonderful way to reflect on our term and relax together and catch-up.

Leadership and next steps

After attending Neil O'Reilly's ILE workshop with the other middle leaders, Anna and Shane, we all agreed about the importance of public unity, consistency across the syndicates and the importance of regular meetings in which best practice can be unpacked and discussed (e.g. BES).  Also, what and how we are doing things in our own syndicates to help each other and understand our practice.

As a new leader, I really value the support from the other middle leaders, hearing their ideas and what's been working well, and the chance to talk about what's on top.  I look forward to really unpacking best practice in term 3 and passing this onto my syndicate.  I realise we need to know why we are doing what we are doing and are we doing it the best way to make sure we have quality teaching and learning at the forefront.

Here is an example of our meeting minutes from our first two catch up's as middle leaders.