8:30
I arrive at school - walked here in jandals today. As they get kicked off under my desk, I notice a growing pile. Better take these home tonight! Nude heels are retrieved from my bag, and put next to the pile. Teachers who lead projects have a meeting 'round the kitchen table today but as I don't have a project, I spend the 25 minutes catching up on things. Emails, quick look over attendance, quick check of Kamar notifications to see if there's anything that needs addressing.
8:55 - Hub Check-in
Leaving the office, I go out to my hub space in Foxtrot (oooh - that would have been an excellent photo op! I'll try to remember to take a photo tomorrow). Today I notice that as I sit on a couch with my laptop and do the roll, my hublings start forming the porohita (circle) without me prompting them. Win! Devices are still coming out, so that may be the next thing to work on. My quick question this morning is again reflective. Each student is asked to state one success and one challenge they have faced this term. I decide that this is an excellent thing to write down, and pull out my diary to note their responses. This is met with a little bit of a groan - I don't think they like the idea of being held accountable to meet their challenges! We only get half way around the porohita though, before it's past 9:10 and time for first block.
9:10 - Block 1: KAKAHU
 |
| Kakahu Google Classroom |
Our year 9 and 10 students are in composite classes, which we call the Foundation classes. Kakahu is a module, meaning that there are two learning areas being taught. Two teachers support the students through the learning - and support each other to make the learning deeper.
We started in the library today. A half hour reading session each week is awesome. The students are really valuing it, and for the most part are using the time really well. After half an hour, my co-teacher and I gave instructions for what they needed to do, each of us giving the things that the students needed to be achieving and what learning we were looking for for each learning area. This was the best delivery of instructions I've had this term - it was a tag team. Completely unplanned, each giving one instruction at a time, and each building on the other person's point. Pretty fun.
I then spent time looking through the students' work on Google classroom and working with individual students, while my co-teacher spent time checking in with small groups.
10:30 - Morning tea
I'm still adjusting to this 20 minutes deal! 30 minutes for morning tea was a luxury that I never took for granted and always enjoyed. I needed to catch up with two people - one of the clever techy teachers to help me find a missing message on Kamar, and with a DP who sent me the message.
10:50 - Block 2: KAKAHU
Twenty minute break, and we're back into it. Students are still working on completing their work for their portfolios so that we can assess them against the learning outcomes for the term (for English: To make sense by understanding that texts are crafted for different purposes and audiences - Oh no! I just spotted a typo in my mark book!! - and for Technology: To explore by investigating the nature and principles of design in a range of contexts).
How does this all come together in one unified course? This term, we worked on a play. They read plays and understood the structure. They read short stories and re-crafted them into play-scripts. They unpacked their characters deeply, making inferences about what the characters would be like as people. They created a wooden theatre and made backgrounds of the settings for the play that they adapted. Today, they were finishing their materials analysis where they are investigating the types of fabrics their characters would wear based on their inferences and interpretations of the story.
The students then either wrote their responses into their chart, or I filmed them talking through their responses and linked them to their forms.
12:10 - Block 3: LITHEO
We have been investigating feminism theory in Level 3 English this term. The students have read a number of texts around an aspect of feminist theory that has caught their attention. From this reading, I looked at all their topics and crafted a prompt for a seminar. In preparing their seminar, they will be addressing how texts are connected as well as using them as a window into society. Their seminar topic is The way a society treats its women determines the strength of its nation. This will allow every student to use their reading as a basis to ground their seminar in, while giving them scope to explore their ideas in depth and detail. This will also form the draft of another piece of writing for their writing portfolio.
I've also found this chrome extension that allows me to record the instructions and the doc as I'm explaining the instructions, so that the students can come back and listen to the instructions again if they need to.
The other tool I used this block was my OneNote notebook. These days it functions only as a whiteboard, but it in this function it works really well. I talk through the questions that the students ask, and then upload the image onto their Google Classroom.
1:30 - Lunch
Sitting in the staffroom, completing forgetting that I had students due to arrive to foxtrot to catch up on work for DBAD101. All I can do is hope...
2:10 - Block 4: LITHEO
Our second block today, where students worked away on preparing their seminars.
3:30 - Home time
Well, actually, I found my kids in the library sitting and enjoying books, so I sat with them and wrote this before I went home to sleep! :P
No comments:
Post a Comment