Superhero - by Leki Jackson-Bourke

 Back in term 1our room 2 literacy class completed a whole class text called Superhero by Leki Jackson-Bourke. Our whole class loved the storyline and finding out it was actually based on true events that happened to Leki himself. This resonated with students in class and encourage them to participate in our dress up day where they got to dress up in their favourite superhero and explain what their powers were. Check out our movie we finally got around to sharing.

RPI: Creating

Today's session was a very hands on creating day filled short, sharp and longer create tasks that can be used to help embed ideas and capture readers interest from your students. 

Dorothy took us through the pedagogy and research behind WHY create is so imperative to our teaching and student learning. We are the gatekeepers! We need to make time and intentionally provide opportunities for create in our students' learning. 

Check out my slide deck for some of our create tasks.

Slide 1 - Creative illustrator and performer - We used one of the 2 prompts provided to come up with our own take on an image that would match the text. I created mine using Gemini as it is provided for our students in their Google suite. Other apps suggested were Craiyon and Canva. 

Slide 2 - 'Tighter & looser' session - This gave us ideas on how tight or loose we made our scaffolds/templates for the student create tasks. We were provided with many ideas of the types of templates, then had to create our own based on a text we were planning to use in the up coming weeks. My text was about Lizards in the L2 School Journing - June 2024. 

Slide 3 - One shot film - We got to create a book trailer to try and sell a text to our class. I used quick time to record mine on my laptop in one of our podcasting rooms with the blue background. I then used imovie to put in the blue screen and produce my promo video for Selina Tusitala Marsh's book - Mop Head.

Kiri also took us through some great examples of longer create units that have been used throughout the different clusters. These are great examples I'd really like to get to one day - especially if I get a chance to start novels with a group of higher readers in my class. 

One thing I will be implementing next week - Will be a short create task before we read the whole text - just like we did in todays lesson. And I will also make an effort to make time for a 'tight' create task for all my groups next week.

Manaiakalani 'Create' PD

Yesterday our cluster got to experience some create activities as part of our PD. There were many different create workshops from rocket making, to sign language and even line dancing!

I was needing fuel for a Monday so I chose the cooking workshop which was making Vietnamese spring rolls.

This workshop was taken by Akesa Tuipulotu who took us through the steps of making the Vietnamese spring roll, the ingredients and where things can be found on our benches. In the end we filled ourselves up with some prawn filled spring rolls and sizzling mince ones. A thoroughly satisfying workshop.

Anne's A - Team!

Thursday evening we had our 2nd CoL meeting for the term. Our focus was on: Focussing Inquiry and Teaching Inquiry.

Anne Sinclair facilitated our discussion group and here are the points we had to share about.

Learn (Focusing Inquiry)

Share a brief reflection in response to your Focusing Inquiry

• What information, strategies, tools did you use to determine what your students have already learned and what they need to learn next? (3min)

As you share reference your blog and highlight how you have organised your evidence so that it is visible and accessible to your colleagues.

Create (Teaching Inquiry)

• Based on this evidence what are you planning to do differently as a teacher? What might you need help with? (3min)

It was awesome listening to others share about their inquiries because although we had a different focus (eg: accelerating levels in maths), we could still identify with others and their inquiry into reading difficulties for students because we had the same things happening in our own classes. 

Our "A-Team" came from what we shared for part B - what are we planning to do differently as a teacher. We had words such as Actor, Analyse, and Amalgamate.

My word was Auditory - I needed to listen more to students needs. Listen to them when they say why they don't want to do something and prompt students to share what would make them work better in maths. 

My next steps now would be to watch Dr Graeme Aitkins presentation to school leaders and see how I can implement some of this with the students in my class.  

PD - Creativity Empowers Learning

Monday's staff PD was filled with Ooohs and Ahhhs as we watched the caliber of movie making Pt England had 10+ years ago. Our wonderful Dorothy Burt conducted our PD on how 'Creativity Empowers Learning'. Teachers who's work was shown shared their learning process and how they made those 'create' activities possible, but most importantly, the learning and motivation (engagement) students received while carrying out these tasks as part of their learning. 

This was great for us teachers who have only been here at Pt England a few year to see the types of activities and learning that can be had through movie making and animations. At times during my teaching here, I have been guilty of making my create activities a writing task or creating something with no real purpose or learning behind it. 

But with the start of my CoL inquiry at the start of this year, I have been more mindful and purposefully provided time in my class for students to be creative in their learning through the use of animations, acting, song and dance. This PD has helped me think of new ways to make this a part of students' learning and the pedagogy behind it has strengthened my resolve to ensuring this is happening daily for my learners.

Dorothy emphasised how Create is a DOING word which uses multiple sense and involves the use of your WHOLE BODY not just your brain.

SISOMO - Sight, Sound, Motion. This is what create is all about!

One of the excerpts shared from the Create part of the Learn Create Share Pedagogy was:

"One of the foundation goals of the Manaiakalani Programme is to 'motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum' and a significant driver for engagement has been our intentional use of modern technologies to enable creativity to play a significant part in learning and teaching opportunities."

It was great having this in front of us as a reminder that we have the same vision and are on this journey together. 

One of the slides I really liked and will hopefully talk about more in a later post is this one aligning Blooms Taxonomy with a SAMR type graphic, using TECH - moving from traditional teacher-created tasks to student-centered, tech-integrated learning.