Bursts and Bubbles 2024

Malo e lelei

Christine Tupou-Fonua

Y7&8 Team Leader and Teacher

Across school CoL

Inquiry: 

• My inquiry this year focused on two things: 

Critical Thinking and transition into High school.

What was happening? 

• The Year 9 drop-off was often a ‘topic of discussion’ in our PLG meetings

• Drop in student attendance 

• Several pastoral incidents

• Students continue to navigate the onset of adolescence

What evidence do I have to support this?

• 91% of Y9 students scored a stanine 4 or below in their beginning of year PAT assessment

• There is also evidence that the likelihood of students staying in school can be heavily

• dependent on the success of their transition into secondary school. 

• Some studies have shown that secondary school drop-out rates are lower when

• students’ contributing primary/intermediate schools have clear secondary school transition

• programmes to help students prepare socially and academically for the upcoming changes.

What changes did I make?

-Collection of assessment data was used to inform what to focus on in reading
-My intervention this year was to create a mentoring group involving six Y9 students and six Y8
students. 
-We started in Term 2 with a “get to know you”’ session where the mentor/mentee created learner
profiles. 
-Subsequent sessions became more educational based and varied - including a Critical Thinking
session, a Q&A session where Y8 learners interviewed their mentors about High School, and a
debate session - mentor vs mentee, about propositions Y8 learners came up with.
-Students also got to share their reflections on a professional reading assigned to them.
-The most recent session, “Shadowing your Y9 mentor for the day”, saw the Y8 students spend
the day at Tamaki College - to experience a “day in High School”. 
-The above selections are just a sampling of what was offered.
-The purpose of the intervention was for the Y9 students to act as Mentors/advisors/coaches for
the Y8 learners.
-The Y9 learners were my ex-students from last year and their dean agreed they were suitably on
track with their own learning to participate. 
-I worked closely with Albert Tu'uga Stevenson to make this happen so huge shout-out to Albie,
and to Amber George and Dorothy Apelu. 
-Special thanks too to Scott Mansell, whom I’ve met to talanoa with about how best we could
implement a similar programme next year.
-I am keen to strengthen the relationship between Secondary and Intermediate, to work together
and identify further needs to be addressed to enhance a smooth transition.
-The sessions were not solely planned by me.

-Student voice from the mentors highlighted what
they thought was important to focus on, and what they wished they had available to them when
they were in Y8.
-Termly e-asttle tests were also assigned to the Y8 learners.

Some literature that helped me along the way?

-RPI resources on critical thinking
-Ted Talk videos and scholarly articles on Critical Thinking 
-Articles on primary & secondary transitions found on the education hub

Hardest thing for me to change?

-Adapting to different educational settings and changing my practice to cater for older cohort of kids
-Understanding the importance of showing empathy, dealing with divergence and the challenges of
early adolescence 
-Figuring out a way of how I could implement Critical thinking learning into the intervention.
-Thanks to conversations with colleagues and SLT, including this in the mentoring sessions
became the solution
-Working with the scheduling and timetabling of High School. It was so hard to find the
time/availability to schedule the sessions but thanks to Albert Stevenson for his time and actually
helping me make this work

My Wonderings

-What known and unexplored elements of a mentoring programme would best support Y8s
transition into Y9 at High School?
-How might a collaborative approach for High School and Intermediate support this cause?
-Perhaps teacher exchanges and/or a badge system at intermediate that relates to the NCEA
structure

For explicit detail on this intervention and student achievement data - please check

out my professional blog 🙂

Malo ‘aupito

A Ted Talk I found quite effective...

 

I came across this Ted Talk video where Brian Oshiro talks about the importance of questioning when it comes to Critical Thinking.

Brian Oshiro's breakdown of the 'what, why, and how' of questioning is brilliant! It's a powerful reminder of how crucial it is to challenge students' minds for meaning learning. What questions gives content, Why questions gives the idea about origin of content and how questions talks about the ways we can use that content.

This ted talk gives insight to why teaching our learners to be critical thinkers helps encourage creative thinking. Schools need to teach students more than just the 'What', but the 'How' and 'Whys'. Let's ask questions about the consequences of a topic, ask questions with more than one correct answer to engage creativity. 

This was an encouraging video because it emphasised the importance of questioning and the importance of teaching Critical Thinking to our young leaners. It also mentioned how this is beneficial for the learners in terms of cognitive development and confidence in creativity.

Shadow our Y9 mentor day

 One of our final sessions for our Kau Taki intervention was the 'shadow your Y9 mentor' day. The purpose of it was to give the Y8 learners a day to experience what a typical day in High School felt like. 

The year 8 learners followed their mentors to class, did the work they were doing and engaged in conversation about it.

When I picked up the Y8 learners at the end of the day, they were so excited to share how their day went. Student A: "Miss I am so excited for College"

Student Sp: "Miss to be honest, I was a little anxious this morning but now that I've been through it, I think i'll be allgood come Day 1 next year"

Student B: It was fun Miss, a whole lot of independence. I guess who just have to make sure you're doing the work and you'll be fine in college

All x6 students shared the experience was positive and were grateful for it.

Intervention so far...

My inquiry this year has been a real test/challenge. Being an AS CoL teacher, you have to ensure that you are on top of the game always.

I started off by talking with our former school principal about what it would look like. With Y8 transition being at the forefront of my inquiry and interweaving literacy throughout. Chris said 'start off with Glen Taylor being your initial school or target group and hopefully reach out to the other schools in the latter half of the year'. 

I must admit, it's been full on and I just haven't had time to involve another school. It was already complicated to work around the dynamics of when the Y9 students would be available, because High School timetable is different to Primary.

So I started with my target group of Y8 students and with the help of Ms George and Mr Stevenson, I created my Y9 mentor group (all 6 students being former students of mine). Created the 'Kau Taki' group (aka The Leaders). The students briefly met in Term 2 but the mentoring sessions didn't start till beginning of Term 3. The purpose of the sessions were to support the Y8 learners with their learning, while preparing them for the realities of college.

Our sessions included:

1. Meet and Greet (mentee and mentor)
2. Working on engaging Critical Thinking Reading/Maths Tasks
3. Q&A session (about High School) between Y8 and Y9
4. Sharing Back of Professional reading findings
5. Reading Comprehension Tasks
6. Debate Day (D-Day)
7. Key into Inference Tasks
8. Y8 mentees shadow their Y9 mentors in High-school for 2 blocks
9. Evaluation/Reflection

What I am hoping to achieve from this intervention are:

1. My Y8 students achieve pass their EOY Reading Assessments

2. Y8 students leave GTS being Confident in who they are, Confident in their identity and language

Session #2 and #3 - KAU TAKI Intervention

End of Term 3 and we've completed 3 of our KAU TAKI sessions for my Y8 and Y9 students. It's great to see the students have built a good relationship with one another, they've surpassed the 'awkward' stage and are getting on with the work.

Below we have some images of them working through their 'tasks' together as mentor and mentee. So far we've worked on some Critical Thinking Reading tasks that included - Reebus Puzzles, Riddles & Brain teasers, Sudoku Puzzles, Would you rather questions and we had a Q&A session where our Y8 learners asked our Y9 mentors 10 FAQ about High School.

In today's session, we planned what our 3 sessions next term would look like.

Session #4 - Watching 'Inference' youtube clips and inferring them in pairs.

Session #5 - Y8 mentees shadow our Y9 mentors in High School for the day (if not available, we will look at 1-2 blocks).

Session #6 - Reflect & Evaluate our intervention. Give feedback on what went well and what possible next steps might be to ensure the intervention could be implemented in another school.