Project Update

Kia Ora,

If you have been reading my blog, you would remember that this year I am part of the Manaiakalani innovative teacher team. As part of this awesome team I have the opportunity to design, innovate and create a tool that will support teaching of critical literacy skills to our tamariki (children) in the Manaiakalani community of schools. 

The challenge that I identified at the beginning of the year was that many of our tamariki (children) have gaps in their application of critical literacy skills, especially when they are reading texts. This starts at an early age when we see gaps or low levels of comprehension. So, from the beginning of the year I have been gathering data and analysing the findings. 

Here is a link to the teacher questionnaire I asked my colleagues at Glen Taylor school (School I work at) to take and the students responded to questions on this padlet. 

I discussed the responses with my colleagues and students separately. We drew out common themes and gaps. 

Since Term one I have been implementing programmes, ways and using resources that are going to fill these gaps and hopefully not only fill the gaps but accelerate student engagement in a way that promotes their learning of critical literacy skills. 

Two of the websites that I am using in my literacy programme that are really making a positive difference in student engagement and their achievement too are - ARBS website and Pobble for writing. I use ARBS not only in my literacy programmer but also Maths. 

Here is the link to ARBS website  that I am currently using to get resources for my tamariki and implementing these into my literacy programme. 

ARBS is free for New Zealand educators and the variety of resources is of high quality ranging from level 1 of the curriculum to level 5.  

The other website that is having a huge positive impact on student learning and engagement is Pobble. 

Here is the link to this website. Every week as part of the daily 5 students do a task from Pobble. Here is the link to this week's. 

All the students in my class enjoy doing their activity from Pobble. It's not just writing, it is more than that. The students get to think about , discuss and share their responses to various questions about an image. 

Here is a video link of an online toolkit I ran early this month on creating a T-Shaped literacy unit and what T-Shaped literacy is.

Link to the site from where I ran my toolkit. Link to the video of the toolkit. 

To summarise, I am really enjoying trying to create a tool that will enable students to master their critical literacy skills. I believe the students have it in them , we just need to find a way or ways to help them get there. I am hoping that the tool I am developing this year will help with this end goal. 

Goal to engage our tamariki and maximise their learning outcomes and their achievement. 

Take care. 

Blog soon.