Janeen - Effective Teaching Practise

After our professional development staff trip to Rotorua, my main aim was to take something from this and to try within my own classroom.  I was enthused to add rich learning and problem solving into my classroom by using a familiar context 'cake stalls.'    Our class have been raising funds for our end of the year camp and one of the fundraiser's has been a cake stall.  Already we've had two very successful stalls, however I noticed only just under half of my students were actually taking part. The students who never took part definitely realised how much money they could potentially raise as several of our students raised between $120-$150 in one cake stall. Here's the challenge I set for the  students and they had to work on their own (to increase independence, risk taking and ownership of their learning). Instantly the students showed engagement as the tool they used to support their learning was a laptop or ipad to research and compare different

Jack's group showing lots of engagement in the 'Illustrator' role My year 8 students were already equipped with the tools needed to achieve a literacy circle.   Zoey and I thought it would be a wonderful idea for my year 8 students to model this to her class.  Eva's group using the dictionaries and thesauruses in the 'Word Master' role  Room 13 students knew what the expectations were while another student lead a group and we unpacked the WALT in student language to understand how they will benefit from this. Room 13 students engaged in the learning  All students showed brilliant respect to my year 8's as they were very nervous to start off with.  But after the first group, my year 8's showed confidence and Room 13 students were engaged in each 'role' rotation. Sam's group (back corner) immersed in the 'Discussion Director' roled

Literacy Circles WALT: ·         Read and share our own interpretations and personal responses with our group members. Students are able to: ·         Deepen their comprehension skills. ·         Construct meaning together as a group. ·         Debate and challenge each other. ·         Connect with an article/story on a deeper level As follows are Room 8 students leading the learning with the different roles they need to fulfill.  The articles they read are from our science topic fair - 'Biological threats to NZ.'   Take the time to visit the link below to find out more about how our learners benefit from 'Literacy Circles' http://www.slideshare.net/sheenacameron/literature-circles-trial

Tuesday, 31 May 2016 Literacy : comparing level 3 and 4 of NZC (Listening Reading Viewing) Today in our team meetings we had a discussion about the differences between Level 3 and Level 4 of the NZC (Listening Reading Viewing strand) Our thoughts .. Level 3 - From purposes/audiences to Structure: show developing….developing understanding...Level 4 shows an increasing. Understanding… ·                      Importance of being able to see the difference of developing and increasing. ·                      Examples:  When reading a student at level 3 may refer to images/diagrams to support their reading. Whereas a student level 4  would be referring back to these images/diagrams to increase their understanding of the text eg. Water Bottle Rockets, students would be looking at diagrams or videos together with text to help them understand what they are reading. ·                      When reading a text/viewing images at level 3 uses their prior knowledge (text to