Enviroschools' Workshop- Maori Perspectives

Mt Biggs So lovely to have Dicey and Jayne come along. The workshop fitted beautifully alongside our school-wide Te Reo focus this year. Ideas on tikanga, Enviroschools' resources, community resources and the guiding ES principle related to Maori perspectives. I feel a lot more confident and equipped to incorporate Maori perspective into the Envirokids and Green Team programmes and will need to follow- up on some queries I have with Rowena by email.

Formative Assessment

Have been doing some reading to clarify the role of questioning in formative assessment - something I have pondering on... Two informative readings- 1. Formative Assessment- Implications for Classroom Practice- Bet McCallum 2. Self- Assessment- Association for Achievement and Improvement Through Assessment Questioning skills - as students develop higher order questioning skills,the level of thinking is also improved... metacognition Key texts /resources to follow up- 'Questions- assessing and developing children's understanding and thinking' Manchester City Education Department 'How do they walk on hot sand? Using Questions to develop learning' Suffolk, LEA, 2002, www.slamnet.org.uk/assessment

iPad activity sheet

Created a card for each group's reading box to indicate the iPad activities for them to use during daily 5. Working well- need to think about names. Already means it's in use 100% of rotation time.

Flipped Learning/Flipped Classrooms

I keep coming across references to these and eventually did some research on the official website http://flippedlearning.org/Page/1 Still thinking...

Think- Pair- Share

Have used this strategy many times but thinking about it as a tool to enhance comprehension has made me consider many positives of this thinking tool. I shall make more use of this and build an anchor chart with the students to formalise its use in our class.

Multicultural Education

I love the text that accompanies this Ella Jenkins song- fits so beautifully with Kia Kaha principles

WALTS on blog

Started using Walts and photos to demonstrate them- thinking this could be a good communication tool with families and should generate some discussion at home. Also went online to record observations students made about gecko photos posted onto the blog. I was not happy with the layout of the text though and need to research how to improve.