We recently hadMaria Tibble from Core Education talk with us about Culturally Responsive Practices, Cultural Identity and the role Ngati Whakaue and Te Rangihakahaka can have in supporting your teaching in 2017. She discussed the importance of Maori achieving success as Maori and our responsibilities as teachers to ensure this happens. I have also started to read Ka Hikitia Accelerating Success 2013-2017.
As part of our unit on myths and legends we visited Rotorua Museum, which is an amazing resource. There we had a museum facilitator talk to us about some local myths an legends. It is fantastic for the children to have such a fantastic resource at their doorstep and for them to be able to engage in the local myths and legends as there is such a depth of story in the local area.
There was over 10 parents that joined us on the trip and some that I spoke to said how they had forgotten a lot about the stories they heard growing up. So I feel they realised the importance of engaging with the local history.
The museum was also running a super interactive programme on the sun and this complimented the unit that we had just completed on space so students were able to bring what they had learned through our space unit and extend it during this visit.
One of my students exploring one of the interactive sun experiments
As part of my ongoing professional development I am having a lesson I teach be observed so that I can view it back and gardner feedback from my peers too. I recently had a writing lesson recorded. You will find the lesson below.
I posted with regards setting myself a teaching inquiry at the start of the year http://teacherandrewdoyle.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/goals.html after discussions with my tutor teacher, my year six team and a meeting with the Deputy Principal my inquiry has been set out for next term. The link below will outline the inquiry and the goals.
Each Friday Lynmore School has a whole school assembly, called Community. It is a great way for the school to come together to strengthen the bonds between, students, classes, school houses and the wider community.
It is also a chance for the school to acknowledge achievements of students. There is also another element. Each week one class puts on a Community Item. This is a whole school class performance of any description it is at the discretion of the individual teacher.
This week it was the chance for my class to put on a show. We brainstormed ideas in the class as a collective and the idea of a variety show like the X-Factot or New Zealand's Got Talent was the idea that garnered most traction.
I wanted to create a fun show that the rest of the school could get involved with singing along, clapping, booing our pantomime villain and really for it to be very interactive.
We had a four day week to put it all together (due to Good Friday being a day off). The students could chop and change the script and ad lib lines and reactions. They really seemed to enjoy the process and we created our show in just three days!
It was great to see the students working in a different context and how much certain students loved to perform and those that might be considered quiet were able to shine when the stage lights shone on them.
I have attached the video below and I am very proud of the performance my class gave.
Our afternoon topic for the first four weeks of the school year has been based primarily around the School Vision and the School Values. It was important that the words that the students see around the are understood by the students and have a real meaning for the students.
We deconstructed the values of Honesty, Aroha, Perseverance, Initiative and Respect in different ways such as acting out scenarios, word clouds, storyboards and news reports.
This allowed the children to take real ownership and understanding of the values.
Above is one of the word clouds they created and below I have linked a video of a news reports about the values being shown around the school.
I have recently been helping the Year 5 and 6 boys practise the school Haka. The importance of the Haka to link the students to their school is very significant. It also allows the akonga to demonstrate their respect to the Maori heritage, language and culture.
The boys get great mana in performing the Haka during special events and it can leave the hairs on the back of your neck standing up when it is performed correctly.
