Malo e lelei everyone :)
Another year and yes I'm still here. From joining CoL back in 2018, I have always been an advocate for the learning area of Literacy. This year, I am taking a leap of faith and choosing Maths as my area of choice.
Inquiry question? Still pending.
For the last couple of years I have been looking into the transition of students from Primary level to Secondary. Being an Across School CoL teacher last year, I worked closely with our local high school - Tamaki College. I was able to create a mentoring/coaching group that consisted of Y9 students, to work with some of our Y8 students. The purpose of the group was to 'prepare our Y8 learners for the realities of High School'.
The content of what we covered was at High School level and was co-constructed by myself and one of the deans at Tamaki. Critical Thinking was a focus for us, so the activities, reading texts, pieces of writing that students worked with, stemmed from Critical Thinking.
I was confident that I was going to continue with the role so that I could branch out to the other schools in the cluster and initiate mentoring groups for their students too. Unfortunately, I missed out on that and thought that I would leave things where it's at, because I felt like I wasn't heard.
But this year, even with a Within School role, I would probably continue with my own Y8 students. It will be hard to work with the High School students due to time restrictions and timetable clashes and because I don't have access to the release days I had last year.
Anyhow, that is the plan for now. Things do change. But I remain hopeful I can continue with this phenomenon of helping my Y8 learners as best as I can with transitioning from Primary to Secondary.
