Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher Journey Update

 

Kia Ora,

It seems like a long time since I last posted. It has been a roller coaster of a Term so far... Two lockdowns in Auckland, start of the school year, getting to know our leaners and whanau and this and that. 

It has been a full on Term yet very rewarding in terms of getting to know my learners and beginning to establish a learning focused culture where each and every learner can access learning, engage and be active participants achieving their full potential. 

Where am I at with my Manaiakalani innovative teacher journey so far?

Well, on Monday 29th March we had our second hui at KPMG and we came together as team after our hui at Coromandel in late February. 

We shared where we are at with our individual challenge that we are working with this year as part of our role as MIT (Manaiakalani innovative teacher). Everyone reflected lots on how and why with regards to their challenge after our first hui at Coromandel. Due to the two lockdowns in Auckland , I got working towards gathering data for the challenge I have identified towards the end of March.  

Since my challenge is to do with Literacy. 

" Supporting learners to use critical literacy skills when they read texts." The challenge I have identified across multiple schools and year levels is that majority of the students find it difficult or lack the ability to use critical literacy skills when reading texts.

The first thing I got into after our hui at Coromandel was dig deep into gathering as much information as I could before starting to collect data to move forward with my project and our hui at KPMG on 29th March. I did not just want to depend on the formal or compulsory assessments only so I created a Google Form for a group of teachers who have or teach Year 4's and up. Here is a link to the Google Form.

I wanted to know what my colleagues thoughts were around critical literacy and what their experiences are of students use of critical literacy when they are reading texts. 

I completed this Google Form as well and will be completing the same one at the end of this year just to draw any similarities or comparisons/changes with the one I did now at the beginning of the year. 

The other piece of data I collected was student voice through a padlet. Here is a link to the padlet that was completed by Year 3 to 8 students at Glen Taylor School(My school). 

Just with my class I will get them to respond to these questions again towards the end of Term 3 just to see if there are any changes in their responses. 

Hui @ KPMG 

It was such a fantastic day meeting at KPMG for the day and doing our mahi. We were treated so well and looked after corporate style by Justine from KPMG. Our main focus for the day was to get thinking about what tool we could create to solve the problem/challenge we have identified. 

The hui started by talking about and reflecting on where we are at with our thinking process with regards to our challenge- Has our challenge changed or is it the same? Have we thought about what tool we could create. We were shown this poster/model by Dorothy our Programme lead to get us thinking in terms of design framework and process. 

For the entire day we worked together collaborating with one another on coming up with possible solutions for the various challenges we have identified this year as a group. 

Some photos from the day- 

Justine from KPMG addressing us a group and sharing what KPMG does and what her role is at KPMG and how she supports Manaiakalani Education Trust. 

Kath and I sharing some vocabulary building activities our colleague Tim could use in his tool that he is thinking of developing. 

Kath and I presenting what we think Tim one of our MIT colleagues could design as a possible tool. 

Me working on my prototype. Thinking, drawing, reading and writing. 

In conclusion,

It was a day of coming together and working together and indeed it was. Did a lot of thinking and draft designing. I am happy to say I feel I am on the way now but it will be long before I can come up with a prototype. I will be working on my prototype for the next few weeks now. 

Take care everyone. More from me on my MIT journey in my next post. 

Whakatauki I would like to share with you all ( My class and I discuss a whakatauki every week)-

The bird that consumes the miro berry owns the forest
The bird that consumes knowledge owns the world. 

So with this thought in mind I am going to move forward with developing my prototype and consume as much knowledge as I can so I develop a tool that supports teachers and learners in all Manaiakalani schools in developing critical literacy skills when reading texts. (Teachers are supported in teaching these skills and learners have a tool they can use to enhance their critical literacy skills when reading texts).

Nga mihi nui