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:
- Meet and Greet (mentee and mentor)
- Working on engaging Critical Thinking Reading/Maths Tasks
- Q&A session (about High School) between Y8 and Y9
- Reading Comprehension Tasks
- Key into Inference Tasks
- Y8 mentees shadow their Y9 mentors in High-school for 2 blocks
- Evaluation/Reflection
