Intervention insights...

Sooooo,

Let me give you an insight to what my intervention is.

Because my CoL is around the transition of Y8 to Y9 - I decided to create a target group in both Year 8 and Year 9. I thought 6 students would be ideal because it's not too big or too small. Fortunately with Tamaki College being our local High School and I know some of the teachers there, I contacted Ms Amber George, Ms Dorothy Apelu, Mr Mansell and Mr Albert Stevenson for some help.

Eventually, I was able to form my target groups and from Term 2 of this year, I have met with my group 3x. Another bonus is, my Y9 target group are my ex-students from last year. 

The plan is to meet with them 4x this term and 4x next term. For my sessions this term and term 4, they will be working with my 6 Year 8 students, in the role of a mentor. 

For their first session, it will be a 'get to know you' session and for the remaining 6-7 sessions - they will be working on some 'Critical Thinking' tasks, Q&A session, Reading Focus session, Debate session, Key into Inference session, a 'shadow my Y9 mentor' session etc. Some of the activities included will be around Reebus Puzzles, Riddles, Brainteasers, Debate Provocations, Professional Readings etc

Last year we had the WayFYnders mentor group from Tamaki College come and work with some of our Y8 students. We found it very effective. The students who were selected as mentees were students who had attendance, self-esteem and motivation issues. After a term of mentoring, our Principal checked the attendance rate of the learners and we saw some really positive changes. This was the inspiration for my intervention this year.

I am hoping that through this mentoring programme between Y9 and Y8 students, the anxiety and stress for the Y8 learners transitioning into High School will be less tense and less pressure for the learners.

Student Profiling...

This blog post explains who my target students are:

I have 2 groups of students that I will be working closely with this year.

Group 1: 6 Y8 students who I currently teach and I know they will be going to Tamaki College next year.

Group 2: 6 Y9 students who study down at Tamaki College. I will be using their expertise to help me develop my intervention/s for my inquiry this year.

I also would like to see them as some sort of mentors for the Y8 students. Try and have them meet couple times a term to help with preparing our Y8 learners., especially in Literacy.

To find out more information, I created a google form to collect student voice from my Y8 learners about learning in Literacy.

For my Y9 experts, I had imported the questions above into a google form and had them fill it out. We met as a group, and although they filled out their responses via forms, we had some deep and meaningful talanoa out of this.

After collecting the information from both of my groups - I will sit down and analyze the findings before creating my hypotheses.

The ball is rolling...

 Hi Everyone,

I know it's been a while. I had taken time off work to look after my mother who had terminal cancer. Unfortunately, my Mum lost her battle with cancer during the school holidays. Took a further 3 weeks off (to grieve and be with family) and returned to school this week (Monday 20th May - W4).

Before taking time off, I had met with Amber George from Tamaki about my Inquiry and my vision of what I want to achieve. She directed me to Albie Stevenson (one of the English teachers and dean). The learning area I am choosing to focus on is Literacy and my Inquiry is on the transition of Y8 students into High School. 

I also met with my Principal Mr Herlihy to gain some insight and expertise from him too.

So what now? The ball is rolling...

1. I've met with Albie and together, we selected a group of Y9 students, former students of GTS. Some may call them my 'target students' but I prefer to call them my "experts". I will be interviewing my group of students to find out more about their experience of High School so far, as a Y9 student. Over time, I want to identify strategies and ideas of what we can do from our end (as an Intermediate) to prepare our current Y8's for High School next year.
2. I would also like to pop in to some of their English classes to observe the students. Looking at attitude and behaviour for learning.

Before finalising my Inquiry for 2024, I had reached out to some of our colleagues at Tamaki College end of last year. I wanted to gauge some insight to their thoughts about Y9 students and also hear what they think we should do as Y8 teachers to prepare the students.

Appointment Schedules for 2024.

Malo e lelei Teachers,

I think the adrenaline and excitement is still floating around in my system. I find that in the beginning of the year, everything seems possible. Nothing is too big to achieve and you just want to get the ball rolling.

 Anyhow, exciting news - Fiona has informed us of this new feature on calendar called 'Appointment Schedule'. We've set up our schedule and if you need any support from me, you can simply click this link and it will take you to the booking page.

I am happy to meet in person or online. We can even arrange a time for meet and chat about what sort of support you're after and what I can do to help. I also want to ensure I come prepared so that the support offered is effective and we utilise the time wisely.

Strengths: Culturally Responsive Pedagogies & Literacy - BUT I am happy to offer my help in all areas of learning.

Look forward to meeting some of you soon.

MALO.

2024 - Let the new journey begin!

 Malo e lelei 2024 :)

Back and excited to be in a new role this year, working as an Across Kahui Ako Teacher. My focus this year will be on the transition of Year 8 students into High School.

This role would draw on my experience working with GTS colleagues and Y7&8 students, to assist students' transfer from primary to secondary learning by boosting their readiness, engagement, agency and confidence.

Throughout my years of experience in Education, I have witnessed the critical importance of a seamless transition for students from Intermediate to High School. This is pivotal in a student's education journey, influencing their future academic trajectory and personal growth. I am motivated to ensure this transition is as smooth and empowering as possible for each student.

In conjunction with this, I want to enquire about collaborative teaching and how it's deemed to be the "new successful approach" to teaching and learning, through all learning areas. 

I also look forward to further implementing the resources and knowledge I'll be gaining from RPI. Last year, I was a mentor teacher, this year, I decided I too wanted to further up-skill myself and actually take part in the Reading Practice Intensive, to better my own practice and to ensure I am doing the intervention justice. 

I look forward to working alongside my fellow Kahui Ako Teachers and our learners for 2024.

***Observation - Sandhya from GI Primary

 Today I was fortunate enough to pop into GI Primary and observe Sandhya teach Reciprocal Reading. She heard through the grapevine (colleague Vila) that apparently I teach a good RR lesson :) 

Anyhow, I walked into the classroom feeling quite honoured that she thought I was good enough to observe her. For me, I took it as an opportunity of learning because teachers implement things differently in the class. I really enjoyed how Sandhya executed it in her class. Yes, it can be quite difficult when one has a huge range of learning needs in the classroom but she managed this quite well.

My takeaway was definitely the 'Extended Discussion' part. Sandhya has a really big Level 3 group that consists of about 2/3 of the class. She seats them in groups of 5 (15 learners), they read the text together and after each page, they discuss in their groups what the page was about. Then, summariser from each group will share back their discussion.

Post discussion, Sandhya shares a template with each learner, this doc also works as a graphic organiser. There's a box for each RR role, questioner can write in their questions, clarifier can write in their list of words from the text (that may have needed clarifying), Predictor writes in their predictions etc.

It was a first time for me to see it taught this way. As mentioned before, teachers learn about the programme but we take it and implement it in a way that best fits our learners.