Practicum 1 - Ashhurst School

I aim to develop a trusting professional relationship with my associate teacher, and all colleagues within the school while also demonstrating growing professionalism by developing my teacher identity during this first practicum.
Standard: Professional Relationships teaching standard

I will achieve this by:

Moving out of my comfort zone and finding the confidence to openly approach my associate teacher and ask for feedback. Also, talking through any doubts where possible during my placement journey.
Turning up at my placement school bright and on time to be proactive with helping start the class day through engaging with activities such as duties and meetings, fully getting involved with the class ethos practices where possible.
Watch and observe how other colleagues engage and work with each other in this professional setting.
Learning the names of each tamariki I will be closely working with, and when opportunities arise engage in a positive and professional manner with their whānau.

Goal Rua:

I aim to grow confidence with embodying the use of te reo during this practicum, further developing growing knowledge of tikanga māori within the school setting.
Standard: Te Tiriti o Waitangi Partnership teaching standard

I will achieve this by:

Taking the time to learn about the school’s history and how the school’s policies show a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and all tangata whenua.
Engaging with any opportunity to practice Te Ao Māori within the class through speaking te reo and tikanga Māori through (Greetings, Pepeha, Questions, and bring onboard the world of movement by inviting Te Ao Kori into the class).
Inspiring ākonga to practice te reo in class and establish a culture in which they feel protected and safe to do this through positive guidance.
Joining the Massey University te reo Māori course to further develop my reo understanding during this practicum.

Reflections:

Week Tahi: Reflection of Goal Tahi

During the first week of my practicum, I was involved in a busy first two days. I was involved with the full school triathlon day as well as Tūranga swimming sports day (which is my class team). Tūranga is named after the highest peak above the Manawatu Gorge and it is also known as Te Ahu a turanga.

During triathlon day I was thrown into the deep end, but very excited to make the most of meeting the teachers of Ashhurst school as well as the tamariki and wider whānau. I made a decision to help the deputy principal of the school with jobs that needed to be done throughout the day. I was also out with my class and Associate Teacher (AT) supporting students biking during the triathlon day. I took the opportunity to go out of my comfort zone to meet many of the parents of my class and the wider school community. My second practicum day was the Tūranga team swimming sports. I made an effort to strive to learn and retain the names of my students and support them from the sidelines while they were competing. I also met the families of students in my class, and gather more of an understanding of who they are as students and their backgrounds. Many of the students whānau are very supportive and will make it to events where possible – these first two days were an amazing start with forming professional relationships with the whānau and kaiako of Ashhurst school.

Throughout the last few days, I began to form more clear relationships with my students and I have also begun to better remember the names of ākonga in room 16.

Week Rua:

The second week of practicum saw me creating bonds within my team and the wider school team of kaiako. Here I engaged in meaningful korero with my associate teacher as well as the teachers within my team. I have grown in confidence to reflect on my teaching and what I am enjoying and still working on within my team. I have received valuable feedback on ways to improve my teaching from my assistant teacher throughout this week. I have met other year-group teachers who also came through the graduate diploma programme, I have grown in confidence to talk opportunities as a kaiako once I complete this year. I have learnt much about myself and how to converse in professional conversation throughout this week. Near the end of this week, I have been able to learn all of my ākonga’s names and have grown to learn about their interests and life in and out of school. Many of my students love Ashhurst School and this is a school community I will always remember once my practicum is over. The mana and wairua of the school is one I will cherish.

Week Toru:

This week involved myself working with a reliever teacher for a day. It was great to experience the class working with a reliever. I formed a quick professional relationship with the class reliever and we were are to teach the class together in a way that engaged our ākonga.

I had a teacher only day which the agenda was based around Cultural Capability. Here I was able to work with the teaching team in a more close and professional manner. Here we were engaged in a course around Te Tiriti o Waitangi and engaged in meaningful korero around Te Tiriti, and what this looks like for our ākonga and school community. We also explored the education document Ka Hikitia and what this means moving forward in teaching Te Reo Māori.

I found that after this day my relationships with my colleagues at Ashhurst school grew and developed greater.

Week Tahi: Reflection of Goal Rua

This week I have begun to use Te Reo when greeting the class, I began to use little phrases to greet and praise students as well as to send them home at the end of the day. For example, I would say ata mārie, Mōrena, Haere Ra, ka rawe, ka pai, e noho and e tū. These are some commands I began to introduce and say throughout the day. During my first full class teaching, I would say Whakarongo Mai (Listen to me). I would always praise and thank students who had awesome korero as a class during mat time. In the morning as a class we sing the waiata (Te ahu a turanga) and say the class karakia (Whakataka te hau) in the morning. The school has a lot of pride and respect for māori culture and a big part of the morning and afternoon is waiata and karakia. This happens in the morning before kai and in the afternoon. I spent this week learning about the history of the school and the connection to the local iwi Rangitāne o Manawatu. Here I also learnt much about the history of my school's team name Tūranga and about the history of the other team names. The Tūranga team name is named after the highest peak above the Manawatu Gorge known as Te Ahu a Tūranga. This was the burial place of Tūranga, who was the eldest son of Turi who captained the Aotea canoe. Many karakia would be recited here as māori people travelled along the path which passed by, to ensure a safe journey to the Ruahine Ranges. This week I focused on diving into the school's history and connections to Tangata Whenuatanga.

Week Rua

This week involved strengthing my use of Te Reo māori and begin to speak a few more phrases. The school has an important focus on developing the use of Te Reo in the classroom and providing the opportunity for kaiako to develop their own pronunciation and grow knowledge of Te Reo māori. There is a course I attended with my associate teacher that the school is involved with every couple of weeks. This course is called Te Reo Pūawai. Here I developed more knowledge about māori vowels and the use of Tohutō. We learnt more commands and phrase that we could use in our classrooms – a few of these I tried out within the last few days of the week. I would say Haere mai ki te whāriki – come down to the mat. I also tried out Haere ki te tō tēpu – Go and sit at your table. Me he tē – like a boss is another praise we learnt. During this week I grew in confidence with pronouncing and speaking more māori in the classroom. The ākonga were very excited and happy to learn new words. This is something I will keep developing and growing throughout my practicum.

Week Toru

During this week I trialled these new phrases while I was teaching my small group classes. During PE sessions phrases I would do my best to use words like Hīkoi (walk) and oma (run) when moving to and from classes. When saying the role in the mornings and afternoons I would also keep greeting students in Te Reo Māori but also explore other languages like German and other pacific languages. The students always like to speak in different languages when saying good morning. Ahiahi mārie – good afternoon is also another greeting I would say during roll call time in the afternoon. I have noticed a greater use of Te Reo in room 16 with greetings and in waiata singing – the class can now say the morning karakia from memory. This week has seen great development in Te Reo Māori speaking and wairua. I can’t wait to come back and keep learning new phrases and explore chances to introduce the students of room 16 more Te Ao Māori.

After The Term one Break, we headed back into the Setting with New Goals and adapted and reflected towards new Goals.

Te Whakaakoranga - Teaching

Te hoahoa akoranga - Design for Learning

Goal Tahi

I aim to teach in collaborative and innovate ways that enable ākonga to communicate and dive into deep and rich learning with one another, and to be introducing ākonga with teaching approaches that will respond well to their learning needs.

Standard: Te whakaakoranga - Teaching

I will achieve this by:

increasing my kete of teaching strategies so ākonga have opportunities to draw in their own knowledge and ideas.
Document and journal teaching strategies I have used and meet feedback from the class and my associate teacher, so more strategies can be explored.
Plan and cater the teaching plan to invite time for think, pair, share and group work within the classes I teach.
Respond to curriculum and pedagogical strategies each week through gathering notes and begin implementing these into my teaching for further development as a kaiako.

Goal Rua

I aim to gather, and design classes based on the curriculum which meets the interests, strengths and identities of the ākonga of my class.

Standard: Te hoahoa akoranga - Design for Learning

I will achieve this by:

1. Identify the strengths and interests of ākonga in my class to create activities and plan classes to which they will succeed best.

2. Using knowledge guided from the curriculum and pedagogical approaches to help me identify which activities and resources will best fit all ākonga of room 16.

3. Looking to my Associate Teacher for guidance/feedback and collaborative planning to develop activities and classes that will cater to all ākonga in the class.

4. Continue to write and track progress in my journal, designs which go well and designs ākonga did not draw connections with.

Reflections

Week Tahi: 3rd-7th May - Teaching Standard.

My first week of teaching at Ashhurst school was a busy and influential week of getting back into the flow of things, but learning a lot from my associate teacher and ākonga in my placement class.

There is a quote that stuck with me this week from Henry Brook’s Adams “ A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops”. Being a kaiako pitomata I’ve realised this week that my influence may not mean a lot to ākonga this week but over time what I do in my professional development now will stick and impact ākonga in the best of way’s further on their learning paths. I begun this week observing on the first day back, but I took a leap of faith and got stuck into teaching small groups from Tuesday onwards. I took a small reading group where we focused on reading and writing R controlled vowels. I was an active listener and demonstrator as a kaiako, I made sure to focus on a couple of examples and provided a worksheet provided for me, for the student to practice with. I gave very clear and confident instructions with the student responded too actively and with enthusiasm. As a kaiako for upcoming weeks, I need to work on time management with the length of my lessons. When Full control comes around I will think about using timers. My maths lesson this week went really well, they were responsive to my teaching approaches, and were actively participating in the think, pair, share that I used to begin the group lesson. The approach of using direct instruction helped when ākonga were first learning how to use basic facts knowledge to solve addition and subtraction problems. We used popsicle sticks as a resource to differentiate the tens and ones from the equation and visualise the question in groups. The students were honest and used a growth mindset to answer the equations as best as they could. I want to continue developing my direct strategy but try inquire more with ākonga as well once they begin to master equations and in all learning areas. The end of the week led to cross country practice, we have our annual cross country event at Ashhurst Domain in week four. Friday led to me teaching the poem of the day, this was a waiata called Pakipaki Tamariki Ma, I taught my first Te Reo Māori lesson exploring language and repetition through the waiata. I encourage learning of te reo kupu (vocabulary) as referred to in the poem. I used a direct teaching approach to teach this but moved to a more cooperative approach when we all began singing and learnt the waiata to go with our newly developed kupu. I really enjoyed this lesson, and so did the tamariki in my class. In the next Te Reo learning session, I would like to get ākonga more involved with practicing our newly learned kupu. I will do this by trialling call and response techniques without the video playing. It was an excited and frantic first week back, but I am motivated and excited to keep learning and growing in my professional practice.

Week Rua: 10th-14th May

My second week of teaching at Ashhurst school was an effective and trialling week of practice. The teaching approach of ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ came into fruition throughout this week. I began to drive deeper into what I was doing throughout my lessons and what impacts I was having on ākonga in my groups. I was using the thumbs technique to encourage feedback of my practice from tauira in my class. Monday led to teaching writing small groups, where we were focusing on Time Connectives, and Sequencing. Click here to find a link to these sessions. Ākonga were excited to learn a new concept with writing and it’s something I checked use for in their recount writing sessions. I posed different examples of questions where ākonga could use our materials like whiteboards to write down how they might add in time connectives for teaching their friend how to brush their teeth. The sequencing ideas group also jumped into learning for sequencing ideas. Here I did explicit teaching around the topic on what this is, and how we can use this to help our understanding of writing, but nonetheless, ākonga took up the challenge of re-arranging examples into the write sequence. Here I drew from student’s prior knowledge by asking them to think of nursery rhymes and stories they were already learning. Little Red Riding Hood was used as an example for sequencing.

Reading throughout the week was building on reading and writing ou and ow words, as well as learning how to summarise. Here I would try to connect with real-world examples so that words were familiar to them. Many ākonga come from rural backgrounds so creating words that spoke to them was a way I could keep them engaged throughout the lesson. Asking students to try write examples like I can count three cows, was a way I could establish the topic in a sentence where they can visualise this and build from it creating their own examples and scaffolding their thinking into the lesson. I introduced the think, pair, share model to ask ākonga to think about other sounds and sentences these vowel teams could fit into. Here is also when I took the opportunity to rove and make it known to other students that I am still available if help was required for other tasks around the classroom. Maths throughout the week grew and I could see that I was making a difference in the learning of tauria in my classroom. I began to develop my own resources creating a worksheet to act as an assessment resource but fundamentally solidify the understanding of the strategy for use as practice for ākonga. Click here for a link to worksheet. What I have learnt during this week is that the why behind our practice is just as important as the doing. If the idea and mentality behind why we use assessment or resource for further developing a strategy isn’t useful, then something in our planning behind the why needs to be amended. The week ended with poetry and a resource I tried to develop to help ākonga think about this poem within their school values. A few tauria made a great attempt at this but in conclusion I believe that this worksheet may have been too difficult in thinking for year three and four and it’s something that can be used for older year groups.

Week Toru: 17th-21st May

This week was quite an exciting teaching week, but also a big week for me as a Kaiako Pitomata too, I had my graduation day down in Wellington on Thursday of this week. I was very lucky to be in such a supportive environment and classroom by leaving mid-week.

The week began with my first full control day on Monday the 17^th of May. Being in full control gave me a glimpse into my already growing knowledge of how to run the classroom. The days began with our morning mahi, here ākonga know how to start the morning on the mat and show our school values in all aspects of school life. Being up the front felt normal, I have already learnt how to hatch and fly so today embarked me spreading my wings and taking flight from another solo perspective. We moved onto our first netball session as a class, and for me being a part of sporting activities with the tauria is one of many reasons I have enjoyed teaching at Ashhurst School so far. We get to grow experiences together and I believe this is another reason our professional teacher-student relationship develops during the year. Writing grew to a new stage of learning, not just explicit teaching but more diving into the collective inquiry of teaching. I posed a motivational video called ‘A whale’s tale’, which got ākonga excited about environmental stability and thinking more about how we can clean our oceans. The video posed for a recount, begun to grow discussion around other issues exposed in our world today. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, I was able to solidify the Remember and Understanding level’s of thinking and as a next step potentially move to the apply stage, and guide ākonga to think more about how this writing can help cleaning up our oceans.

Reading and maths grew to explaining our hotspot activities which are used to launch our lessons. The levels of maths groups changed and this week I worked with explicitly teaching Change unknown’s and working on Equal equations. The worksheets excited many of my students and this is something I carried on developing and tried to create questions that push students’ level of thinking but provide effective practice of the strategy.

I began moving up to four reading groups, but many were still working on the same ideas of vowel sounds and summarising. The summarising groups grew in confidence over the days I worked with them. The key ideas worksheets identify how they broke down the story into main ideas. One thing I noticed about my teaching is that I need to continue to pose questions through reading, to make sure ākonga understand the story but making sure that they have completed the book. Click here for questions I would pose through reading.

I was back in class on Friday for my last full control day of wiki toru, here I expanded my poetry lesson to bring in a subject I am very passionate about Te Reo Māori and Music. Teaching the māori alphabet and waiata A Haka Mana was exciting but a little nerving too. I had taught a little bit of reo before, but teaching a full session was new for me as a Kaiako. The tamariki went into it very open and the mana of tauira and Kaiako was shown, much respect to our language was shown throughout this class and tauira wanted to keep learning and singing waiata. I have grown in knowledge of te reo māori and have a lot of respect and strength in wairua towards teaching te reo māori in our classrooms through this practicum.

Week Wha: 24th-28th May

This week embarked on my final week of teaching at Ashhurst School. I had full control days on Monday 24^th, Wednesday 26^th and Friday 28^th of May. I have found that my teaching and knowledge of pedagogical practices have grown a lot through the past weeks. I had my appraisal visit on Monday, here I was teaching Writing a writing class on We’re going on a Bear Hunt. My teaching practice involved explicit teaching as well as inquiry-based teaching. Ākonga were very keen to share their thoughts during this lesson to explain what happened throughout the book. Writing recounts is a great way for students to try summarising and explore practice surrounding this. I got great feedback from this session on how I can develop and explore it more – I need to continue to make it known from the beginning the why behind recounts and exploring further forward-thinking during the lesson. Tamariki on Thursday created some exciting and explicit recounts which developed from this planning stage. Tuesday was our whole school cross country day, here I was out with tauira cheering them on throughout the run and acting as support on the track. I tried explicit teaching with writing small groups, as we were working on new writing strategies, Onomatopoeia and Alliteration. I noticed that my teaching examples worked well to guide ākonga on this new journey in writing, they were able to come up with their own too, which helped me gauge and understand that students were learning these language features well. I did my best to guide motivating discussions about these and how ākonga could use them in sentences. Prompting questions is something I hope to continue developing throughout my practice. Reading and Maths was another time of trialling new idea’s as a Kaiako pitomata. I began to experiment more with materials and resources this week, using magnetic letters, playing maths games, and drawing images on whiteboards. The tamariki I taught in these groups were excited to try new materials and this helped their understanding. I found that some students were not so keen on writing in their books, so trailing these new materials helped ākonga express their thinking in maths and reading.

The last day ended with heading to the library in the morning, I was able to explore more spelling and basic facts testing with ākonga, also seeing a GLOSS test for maths helped my understanding surrounding assessment. Throughout the poetry lesson, I tried to explore discussion and the use of think, pair, share to enable a safe space for tamariki to talk about being good friends. This led to an awesome collaborative discussion but provided confidence for ākonga to draw images of themselves being good friends to their classmates.

During the last block I taught a lesson on Recycling, I found this to be a meaningful and expressive lesson in creativity, but also bring in much real-world thinking. Ākonga drew ideas about recycling from prior experiences and our first session on the topic. I used explicit teaching around how the recycling process starts in Aotearoa but provided many videos and prompts for discussion surrounding how we can be leaders in recycling. This led to drawing posters about creating awareness for rubbish collection within the Ashhurst community. (see examples here)

The day ended in the whole school assembly. During Prac 1B, I found myself growing in my teacher presence and continuing to grow the partnership between myself and the ākonga in my class. I’ve felt a trust has been built and this is something I will always cherish and remember during my teaching journey as a Kaiako.