Manaiakalani TOD - Term 1 2021

Kia ora koutou,

I hope everyone is enjoying their non-contact time. In the last week of Term 1 I was fortunate enough to attend an end of term hui with other facilitators from around the country. I always find these meetings inspiring and motivating. This year we ended the four day hui by joining the Manaiakalani teacher only day. I felt extremely privileged to be able to hear so many amazing educators share their effective practice. So I thought I'd pass on some of my learnings.

The TOD was kicked off by a key note by Dr. Rae Siʻilata and Kyla Hansell. This was truly inspiring but also humbling as it challenged some aspects of my practice that I hadn't considered before. A few simple take aways from this session were:

- Don't call them ESOL students! ESOL is a programme not a student.

- Privilege the people in the room e.g. next time I'm starting a staff hui with our karakia I will offer any Te Reo Māori speakers the chance to lead us.

Photo by Fiona Grant

Digging a bit deeper into the keynote (the full presentation can be found here), another message that resonated with me was that we do not have to be bilingual ourselves in order to allow students to use and utilise their first (or second or third...) language. 

There are lots of resources out there including dual language books and websites like The Coconet that could be extremely valuable. We can also give students opportunities to output (speaking, writing, presenting) in their first languages. It's about showing that their language has value and realising that getting stronger in a first language also helps develop the second language.

The input and output approach got me thinking about our pedagogy of learn, create, share and then this slide appeared:

While planning Cybersmart sessions I'm always thinking about the balance between the learn, create and share parts of the lesson. This got me thinking about giving students more opportunities to their thinking, creating and sharing in other languages.

In our Inquiry PLGs in Term 1 we looked at creating texts sets using authentic texts. My plan at this stage is to move onto other HLPs this term, in particular discussion and critical thinking. Unpacking students' prior knowledge will fit really nicely with this. It was interesting to hear the discussion about the following book cover and how students predicted that the text was going to be about praising the lord! It shows that students' prior knowledge comes mostly from the language and culture most familiar to them.

If I had to summarise my takeaway from the keynote in one question or provocation I guess it would be:

"Whose knowledge are we valuing in the classroom?"

Workshop One:

For the first session I had a refresher on Explain Everything from Clarelle and Khismira. It's always good to have a play on Explain Everything and see what ideas other people have when creating projects.

Workshop Two:

It was a pleasure to work with Cam Cameron from Kootuitui ki Papakura to present our workshop based on the MIT project of Sarah Daly: Accelerating Reading Comprehension Through Questioning.

Workshop Three:

For the final session I attended T shaped literacy skills for juniors by Rebecca Jesson. It was a real pleasure to see how seamlessly Rebecca connected texts to pick up the big ideas and themes. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the junior teachers in Ako Hiko.

Photo by Fiona Grant