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 diffe...
Taking ideas from the 'Learning in the fast lane' I decided to do more in depth teaching and learning within our 'Speech Unit.' Firstly by taking my small target writing/reading group, I knew it was important to expose them to our 'Class Topic Headings' and splash ideas with sticky notes of what were some good speech topics. Eg: 'Community and Social Issues' we looked at certain things in our community of Waitara that pose as problems for us - straight away they were able to share lots of ideas such as 'Unemployment is it a problem?' 'Facebook, is it dangerous and what should we do to protect ourselves?' 'How can we look after our beach environment?' The next day I exposed the eight topic headings to the class. I divided the class evenly int eight groups - 3/4 per group and they went around to share their ideas under each heading. As I observed my group, it was great to see them all taking part and being more aware of e...
What is student inquiry? This very question has taken me on a journey of much discovery from readings to understanding more clearly 'What is inquiry?' but furthermore 'Where does the learner fit into this?' And 'How this benefits the learner.' Weaknesses Teaching inquiry this year I've observed students who are below or well below struggle to understand the concept of inquiry. More importantly the learner has not yet developed the necessary key competencies to be able to inquiry. There are many actions to teach around inquiry and trying to do all of this at once can overwhelm the learner as they do need plenty of practice to feel confident to do inquiry learning independently. First and foremost it starts with having the confidence to pose questions, and the learners need to be immersed in these. For example posing questions could be a reading focus for small groups and as a teacher you're giving explicit teaching around this. Students ...
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