ISTE 2024

Reflections from ISTE 2024: Navigating AI, Wellbeing, and Accessibility

I was incredibly fortunate to attend ISTE 2024 in Denver this year — and what an experience it was! To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and “overwhelming” doesn’t even begin to describe the sheer size of the venue and the incredible range of opportunities on offer. From packed workshops to rapid-fire taster sessions, thought-provoking breakout discussions, and the mind-blowing exhibition hall, there was simply so much to take in.

Going in, I had set myself three broad goals to focus my learning:

• Deepen my understanding of the rapid developments in AI and what this means for education — especially around responsible, ethical use.

• Explore sessions addressing the social and emotional impacts of technology on learners.

• Discover innovative tools and strategies around accessibility, particularly for neurodiverse and struggling students.

By the end of the conference, I came away with more questions than answers — but that’s exactly what great learning does! I now have a much deeper appreciation of AI’s potential as a genuine game-changer in education, not just for saving time but for unlocking new forms of creativity and engagement. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude stood out as the “big three” in the AI conversation, and the possibilities they offer are both exciting and daunting.

One of the biggest takeaways for me was the wero  we face as educators. With all the current demands on teachers, from structured literacy to curriculum refreshes, how do we also upskill staff in the responsible and effective use of AI? The learning curve feels steep, but the professional responsibility is clear: we need to model thoughtful, ethical AI use and equip our students with critical thinking skills to recognise bias, ask good questions, and be discerning users of these tools.

The sessions I attended on student wellbeing and accessibility were equally powerful. There is so much innovative work happening globally on how to use technology to better support inclusion and meet diverse learning needs.

ISTE 2024 left me energised, challenged, and excited about the future of learning. There’s a huge opportunity here — but also a responsibility to ensure technology enhances, not hinders, what matters most: human connection, equitable access, and meaningful learning that is fun!

Loved the Big Blue Bear too!

RPI - Day 3 Text Selection

Today was a good to keep thinking about the affordances of technology and how we can leverage these to provide better experiences for our ākonga. There’s a tension or challenge there around keeping up with/ahead of the game.

Some brief reflections ...

It’s good to be thinking through systematically the teaching progression/logic and being mindful of the need to keep connecting to writing.

How do we continue to grow capacity throughout the school around critical thinking …not waiting until our kids are in the Senior school?

I liked the template for considering text types being used across a time period  …I wonder how conscious we are in reflecting on this?

I also came away thinking about how redundant our Library has become in terms of it's core purpose. It is a hugely under-utilised resource How can we make better use of this space and encourage people to use it properly again??

Reading Programme Intensive - Day 1

Today has been a great opportunity to reflect on practise. What works? What do we believe are those critical components of a Reading Programme? How can we cultivate good, motivated, engaged readers in our classrooms - and just what a hugely complex business it is!!

It's been great to think through the various components of what makes a good reader, what we as a school are doing well, and what we really need to hone in on to make a difference.

I'm excited to be led on this journey and to have something clear and explicit around a common practise model, with the ability to tailor it to your particular school and context.

I am really looking forward to seeing more of our homegrown content in this area. And how we can continue to enhance the mana of our tamariki in terms of their self efficacy in Reading. 

My wondering is around how closely this will align with the MOE's Curriculum Development?

BSLA - Is it the Magic Bullet??

 In 2020 as part of my studies I wrote ... According to the detailed ‘Best Start Literacy Approach’ (BSLA) website “The approach is based on several years of research trials investigating the most efficient and effective methods to support children’s early reading, writing and oral language success.”  For any teacher on a passionate quest for the answer or the magic bullet, it does sound just like that. The programme and accompanying resources, the ‘Ready to Read Phonics Plus texts, have recently been released by the Ministry of Education.  The programme is presented as a 3 pronged approach encompassing ‘evidenced based’ literacy teaching, monitoring assessments and whanau engagement. So is it the answer? 

The BSLA has been designed and developed particularly for New Zealand children and the NZ context,  researched by both Massey University and  the University of Canterbury. The research of Gail Gillon and others, provides compelling evidence to suggest that this ‘one size fits all’ approach is part of the answer.

This structured approach does not appear to have regard for ‘exploration, risk taking or agency’ and is prescriptive in nature. In fact the texts are specifically designed to be “constrained in word and sentence structure” (BSLA Summary) and one would have to question how engaging these could be?  Furthermore this approach seems to diminish the importance of all the other skills and knowledge or competencies that the child brings as a reader, explicitly teaching the learner to focus at the phonemic level to decode words first and foremost. This approach could see the learner overly focus on deconstruction of a word rather than meaning making. While this resource and pedagogy clearly builds on the known it does not appear to consider the ‘funds of knowledge’ that the child brings to the classroom. Gaffney & Jesson (2019) explain “Each child’s existing expertise, reservoirs of knowledge, and ways of knowing and doing, are their unique resource base to contribute to their continued learning” and this approach does not seem to harness this resource effectively.

After A critical examination considering both learning principles, theory and literature... I concluded,

When reviewing the literature for the BSLA, two themes or features of the research resonate. Firstly, the resource and research that underpins it, appears to have a rather narrow focus on phonological awareness and the importance of the development of these skills to set children up for success. Secondly, the initial research on which this resource is based was done with children that had SLI (Gillon et al., 2020). Therefore, I am brought back to the question raised by Gaffney, Smith, Commack, Ash, Mackie and Mudgway (2019) “Which ones are worthy of children’s time?” (p.5). In considering this resource the research that is missing is a longitudinal study to examine whether children who have acquired the sequence of skills and learnt to decode books are set up as lifelong readers? As Nicholson (2006) states “ long-term success is the litmus test of every intervention” (p.33).
This programme, in conjunction with the PLD offered, (which provides for teachers to develop their own linguistic, content, and pedagogical knowledge) along with the texts that support this curricula, is a positive resource for teachers doing their utmost to be responsive to the needs of their learner. However, there is an element of caution which suggests that we may be inclined to ‘throw the baby with the bathwater’.

This year I have been lucky enough to be trained as a facilitator for BSLA and mentoring a teacher in our school so that we can together look at how effective this intervention is in our context for our learners. The most current research shows promising results so I am excited to see what impact we can have on our tamariki. So we are learning by doing and in the process continuing to put a critical lens on everything we do so that we can find what works for our kids.

Watch this space!!

T- Shaped Literacy

 On our continued journey to improve Literacy for our tamariki, this afternoons PD was delivered by Dr Rebecca Jesson from Woolf Fisher. This focussed on Literacy for Juniors particularly our Yr 1 - 3s.

She revisited the 'T Shaped Literacy' hypothesis which is derived from the thinking or theory, that to learn about words and to learn to read, you need to read widely. If we are to produce life long lovers of reading and effective readers we need to ensure they are capable of reading widely.

We know we need to practise to read, as we know we get better at something by practising the skill frequently and repeatedly.   So are we Reading widely enough in our Junior classrooms? In her discussion of wide reading she discussed the idea of Reading 5+ a day books. A great reminder and somewhat of a checklist was provided for us around the various types of reading that should be happening in our classrooms everyday. Reading to, exposing them to both new word and world knowledge. Shared Reading, Buddy Reading and Independent Reading along with our Instructional Reading. This all contributes to building that reading muscle. 

The challenge for us in this is whether we are doing each of these on a daily basis and how we can use the affordances of the technology we have to support this!

How can we read more deeply and more widely at the same time complement, contradict, and support our learners to become more critical in their reading. Dr Rebecca Jesson carefully guided and cleverly unpacked T Shaped literacy at a Junior level by helping us to consider the Themes within and across texts and how with careful planning, these can be unpacked within a weeks learning. What a great foundation we will be creating for our tamariki who are learning to read if we start doing this when they are in the critical learning to read stage. By choosing text sets that both complement and compete with a theme, the teacher is able to really support and provoke learners at a deeper level to understand and think about the characters, what they might learn or how they develop. 

How do we plan for this learning? Start with a provocation and in doing so consider the NZC. To find out more - follow the link ...definitely well worth a watch and listen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHH3nsyz1dQ

So where to now in 2020?

 In the first half of this year we agreed that we would focus our attention and PD around the development of, and ensuring schoolwide consistency in Maths. We took our new learnings and understandings from DMIC and looked at our use of a text to grow our capacity and ensure that we were clear in our shared understanding of continuum of learning across the school. And then along came COVID 19 which obviously meant that we had to hone our efforts and attention on our Remote Learning and ensuring that our Community was well served under lockdown.

On return we reset,  and as we had intended in the second half of the year our 'Teaching as Inquiry'  has been focussed on the Teaching of Reading. 

Our goals, as outlined in the presentation from our first Staff Meeting are ultimately to achieve a more cohesive schoolwide approach to teaching reading and literacy so that we can continue to raise student achievement. 

We are continuing to be guided by and to use the Gwenneth Phillips prompts that we know work for our tamariki and 'The Reading Book" by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey to help us to become more consistent and explicit in the way that we teach reading, and will be guided throughout by Rebecca Jesson from Woolf Fisher as our 'External Expert'. 

We have formed a Reading Committee and are meeting regularly to co-design this piece of work so that we get the best 'bang for buck' for our tamariki.

Sleepless in Studentland #1

Naku te rourou, nau te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi.

During 2019 I was lucky enough to be awarded a Teach NZ Scholarship which enabled me to take some time away from my position at school to focus on some areas of interest that I am most passionate about, and to work towards gaining my Masters.
My expectations and goals for the year were to continue to grow and develop my professional knowledge and capacity so that I would be better placed to serve our school, tamariki and their whanau in the future. I wanted to focus most particularly on Literacy and Psychology, and gain a greater understanding around kids thinking, learning and behaviour. Each course that I chose and completed helped me to consider the impact of my learning for ....

So here are just a few very brief snippets from my learning journey in the first Semester...

In Semester 1 the Literacy Theory and Practice paper covered 3 different aspects - Bilingualism, Reading Comprehension and Writing.

In this paper I was challenged to consider just how truly culturally responsive we are and in fact
further to this, the degree to which we use culturally sustaining pedagogies in our school needs a thoughtful and critical lens. In digitising our spaces we have worked hard to accelerate learning, optimise engagement and let our children’s voices be heard but it seems we may have missed a unique opportunity to capitalise on the affordances of the technology, and coupling this with culturally responsive pedagogies to produce improved outcomes for our bilinguals, which make up such a huge proportion of our school population. We could do more to capitalise on the funds of knowledge and attribute even more value on the cultural capital of our learners.

With the lens on Writing, it would seem there is still much needed research to be done, specifically around the teaching of Māori and Pasifika students. As Gadd suggests if we can get it right for our struggling learners, the practise will benefit others. And, although research is much less abundant in the field of writing, there appears to be strong agreement around the complexity of the teaching of writing along with an acknowledgement that the explicit teaching of self-regulation is an important and critical factor for learners. Students don’t come to be self regulated without a careful well scaffolded approach to modelling that leads the learners to greater independence.
Throughout this literature around the effective teaching of writing, there is a recurring theme which highlights the complexities of the various aspects which all need to be present for raising student achievement. The body of research around writing only serves to highlight the complex nature of teaching writing effectively. It seems our learners struggle to generalise their writing skills and apply it to a similar or ‘related task’ with any degree of independence, suggesting that more extensive modelling would be an appropriate intervention with these struggling learners.

The Reading component of my studies lead me to consider carefully the reading proficiencies of a learner in the context of their classroom. It was great to have time to go back and consider the breadth of work done by Marie Clay and others. In 2005 Marie Clay wrote “... in the end it is the individual adaptation made by the expert teacher to that child’s idiosyncratic competencies and history of past experiences that starts him on the upward climb to effective literacy performances (p.63)”. This paper was a great reminder that pedagogy, knowledge and thorough assessment are all critical components to unlocking literacy for our hardest to teach.
Lai and McNaughton (2009) state “Understanding classroom instruction in relation to student achievement patterns is an iterative process of developing testing and refining hypotheses …” (p.93). This is affirming in the direction that we have taken with Teaching as Inquiry which if done effectively and thorough sees numerous iterations of this going on and when supported by research and effective pedagogy sees shift for the learner.

This ultimately had me reflect on what a complex business teaching is, where the classroom teacher is expected to be an expert or an in the field researcher and that we as part of the leadership, need to ensure that we provide the necessary support and scaffolds in the form of mentoring, collaborative teaching, and PLD to enable our teachers to grow their understanding and expertise in what is such a complex construct.

Along with this learning, came the realisation that I had grown very accustomed in my role at school to changing tack rapidly, juggling multiple balls simultaneously, whilst trying very hard not to drop any and never really having to focus my brain on one activity, much less an extended piece of text for any great length of time ... so this was perhaps my greatest challenge.

I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity that this year has given me and for those that seamlessly stepped in to the various responsibilities in my absence so that our Village continued to succeed!

DFI#8 Cybersmart and Devices

Today began with considering 'Cybersmart' and what that means for us as educators and the implications for our learners. At the heart of this is "empowering our learners as connected and confident decision makers".  Our kids are constantly facing challenges as they learn in an online environment and have to be equipped for the perils that they can potentially face.  When kids have ubiquitous access it is essential that just as we assess risk and any special circumstances that might need managing when preparing for  an EOTC experience, this needs to be approached with the same degree of forethought and preparation - "taking our kids online is one of the riskiest EOTC experiences that can be undertaken and the Cybersmart serves to ensure that they are well equipped for this experience".

Being proactive...
Cybersmart learning needs to have a schoolwide focus and should have an intentional introduction to each aspect of the Cybersmart Curriculum. If we are successful with the integration of this our learners will have a common learning language and a true understanding of the power and privilege of connectivity and online sharing.

We need to make sure that our learners truly understand that everything they do is visible online  and that they constantly consider what their digital footprint communicates about themselves.





Central to the Manaiakalani Development of 1:1 were the principles of the Treaty Of Waitangi ...Participation, Protection and Partnership and these resonate throughout the Cybersmart Learning.
The following Screencastify explores some of the content that sits within the Cybersmart Site.




Another great day of learning and challenges...

DFI#7 Empowerment and Computational Thinking

Empowered - the word that has been adapted from Agency is what today was all about, but of course this can't be achieved unless the other key factors are interplaying ...ubiquity, visibility and connectivity.

It's NOT just a tool ... the device that is, is so much more than that and teachers are continuing to  explore how best to enhance learning and develop pedagogy

"when it transforms the way we learn, offers us new unchartered experiences and opportunities ..." Dean Shareski, 2011.

"The Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment is about the advancing of RANGATIRATANGA; taking back control of their lives."  Pat Snedden


The default is Visibility, that is the learning and artefacts that support the learning should be readily accessible  - this empowers the child so that they don't have to sit and wait and have access to go back and take the time to check and reflect so whenever possible and practical the learning should be rewindable. I'm sure each and every one of us can relate to this having no doubt taken a Youtube tutorial on how to acquire a new skill, solve a problem or learn the latest dance move perhaps, you then understand the power of rewindability.

Further to this today we took a deep dive with OMG Tech to consider  - making Tech accessible for everyone ...preparing our kids for the future ...being responsive to the rapid rate of change that is happening in society.
And I proudly completed my Hour of Code - this is a quick introduction to Coding in a self led environment - check it out...

DFI #5 Visibility - 'Can you see it?'

"Can you see it?"
Todays session was focussed on the importance of 'Visibility' and the new and unique opportunity we now have in education to use technology to  allow ubiquitous access.

Prior to being visible there was a measure of how well you could 'read the teachers mind' and interpret what the teacher was expecting or where they were heading.
Technology has given us the ability to completely expose the learning and have no surprises. Implicit and critical  in this is that the learner must be at the centre of the learning and therefore every part of the learning process should be exposed to the learner.

We are lucky enough to have Hapara - 'making teaching and learning visible' as a management system to help ensure visibility for the teacher.

As part of the analysis of effective practise in Manaiakalani schools Stuart McNaughton wrote" Their use of class sites to make learning and teaching visible further supported student agency ..."

Applying Multi Modal Learning

As educators, our job is to strive to make learning engaging, and exciting for our students. In Manaiakalani we have termed this the Hook and know that hooking our learners in is essential. We need to keep asking  "Is what we are doing in class engaging?" ... Will it “hook” them into the learning and what we want them to experience?"  We need to be working to inspire our kids to go in and investigate further and using the affordances of technology allows us an enhanced ability to do this effectively. So we spent the rest of the afternoon looking at some great examples of sites and learning activities that have a range of multi modal texts and activities and then had a go at creating our own.

DFI#6 Enabling Access- Sites

2015 was when the Manaiakalani Cluster began to grow and included 5 new Clusters becoming The Manaiakalani Outreach Programme. This has continued to develop and grow to the point where today we are a connected network of around 22,000 learners and a huge group of educators from a diverse range of kura across the country. Over time meaningful relationships and a sense of belonging have continued to grow and develop.

​

"If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals". - Dorothy Burt

There has grown a pedagogy and kaupapa -  visibility is a critical component to sharing and there has been huge development in the use of Google Sites over time to expose 'Learn. Create, Share' with kids, whanau and communities.

Clarelle Carruthers shared some insight into the rationale and purpose of effective sites and some tips and tricks when creating in new sites. What a long way we have come from the initial sites we set up 'back in the day'!

And after a few reminders about the importance of planning for simple navigation and being mindful of the audience, I went back to the drawing board.






The site I am developing is still a work in progress but is intended to share some of the components of pedagogy that we have adopted that work for our tamariki ...

Digital Fluency Intensive - Day 4 Tohatoha

Sharing - Tohatoha has been happening since the beginning of time and the possibilities have been amplified by technology.
 Our Manaiakalani schools have continued to use Blogger as the platform to teach our kids how to share and be an effective and responsible online citizen "Work with learners to establish an authentic audience for their learning outcomes".

The Cybersmart Curriculum is critical component to ensure that every learner is " kind on line, internet-awesome, and positive" ...there is a common language that is explicit, consistent and deliberately scaffolded for our learners.

And a reminder that 'to get an audience you have to be an audience' ...


I had never checked out my maps before, this  might just be my new favourite App. I can see it as a cool way to start the year off when we are finding out about each other and where our whanau come from or where we'd like to explore in the future. So many possibilities in the classroom.


Dealing with Data ...
It was great to find out about some really useful add-ons in spreadsheets. My favourite two are rowCall and Cropsheet ...thanks for sharing. I love shortcuts!
I use spreadsheets all the time and it was great to look at using them more effectively and the data that can be generated out of them.

I took a closer look at one of our kids blogs to see what I could find out. The data collected by Woolf Fisher for Manaiakalani tells us that there are improved student outcomes if kids blog 3 times a week.
At a glance ...

What's Your Story? DFI - Day 3

A few key messages...

When using Google Slides ...

So What's your story? What are the key messages you are trying to convey?
Pictures really are worth a thousand words! So choose them carefully.
Ditch the Defaults. It's great to start with a blank slide and create your own.
Use consistent formatting and ...
Plan ...plan...plan!

"Keep the message to a tweet"

We had some amazing guest presenters from Panmure Bridge today, who shared their skills in Google Draw.

My first attempt  with Google Drawing ...learning to create yikes! Still a long way off from mastery level!

Thanks for the tautoko, Ms Tuiā!

'Don't throw the baby with the bathwater' ...Day 2@DFI

During todays DFI we focussed on  LEARN.

Putting it bluntly - "If you can be replaced by Digital Technologies then you should be!" Best practise or effective pedagogy are  still fundamental and indeed critical to improve student outcomes.
Effective teaching coupled with Digital Affordances will lead to accelerated outcomes for our learners.

In order for the learn to be effective  the following 3 things need to be in place.
Firstly we need to Recognise - what effective teaching practise looks like.
Then Amplify - to make a difference really great teachers use technology effectively and capitalise on the affordances. Looking to work above the line on the SAMR Model is ideal.
And if we are truly using the affordances of the technologies available we can Turbocharge - enhancing the classroom experience to connect our learners.

Rewindable learning gives us the opportunity to be Ubiquitous - "if it's worth teaching it's worth capturing." So it was great to look at ways to make learning rewindable today.

I was reintroduced to Google Hangouts and thought this could be a handy way of collaborating with my fellow students on our various share assignment tasks this year. Along with this we played around with using Quicktime for screen recording and my first go at creating a tutorial is a little lacking, but a great reminder about making learning rewindable.

We explored the various settings within Gmail, so I have been brave and changed my Inbox set up to see if that has an impact on my workflow.

Some great handy hints to use Google Keep and I was very happy to learn that you could convert an image to text. So am wondering if I am neat enough in my note taking whether I could use this functionality.

Another great day of revisiting the known and delving into the unknown.

Back to the Future - Day 1@DFI 2019

What a wonderful day having time to think, learn, create, share and reflect. It was great to take a look back and be reminded of where it all began ...

It made me think about this group of learners that were our very first Year 8 Graduates  in our first 1 - 1 classroom using devices from Year 6 onward. How privileged I have been to share in their journey and what a long way we have travelled in a short space of time!
And a reminder from Dorothy that "Effective pedagogy via deliberate acts of teaching is the critical factor" to make a difference to learner outcomes.

So what did I learn ...I need to reorganise my Drive and was reminded about the power of Omnibox!

The tips and tricks were great and will undoubtedly help me to be more efficient!

I was also reminded of the challenge for our learners when trying new things - creating a Poster in Google Docs was a great chance to explore using Docs in this way and I appreciated the time to learn and discover for myself, with support on hand when needed for just in time learning.

And here it is, my data infographic - hopefully self explanatory??

Language in Abundance

"I can't say what I mean I can't tell you how I feel ...if I don't have Language"

Language In Abundance - 'it absolutely matters" another wonderful afternoon spent with Dr Jannie van Hees learning and being reminded about the importance of oral language for our kids!



One of todays resonating messages was the need to be very attentive to the sources that we are providing for our learners ...don't take things for granted - Quality matters! Quantity Matters!

You can have abundance without quality! We need to be "Champions of Oracy" for our tamariki and keep gifting new words and language groups for them deliberately and purposefully.


What else Matters - The Trio
Explicit attention to the Language that is carrying the meaning
Optimising Environmental Conditions - the social norms/expectations
Attention to Co-contributors

My wondering ...
We know that many of how kids have the Taonga of their home language that they bring with them - so how can we ensure that we encourage the ongoing usage of this along with being more inclusive of this richness in our classrooms?

As always a great afternoon of thinking and learning.

Brainwave Seminar

I was lucky enough to attend a Seminar by the Brainwave Trust on Normal Brain Development in Infants and how to Grow Great Brains ...
The Big Idea was that consistency, responsiveness and loving care grows children's brains.
Although I knew that the human brain does a huge amount of growing and connecting up in the first 3 years I was astounded to learn that an adult brain weighs 1400g, at the age of 1 a child's brain is already 1 kg and at 3 a child's brain weighs 1200g. Great food for thought in terms of those early years and the importance of opportunities     

I was particularly interested in the power of play and the ability of the brain to make connections through repetition and that play to a child is work - great to keep thinking about how this applies to the development of a Reception Class.

The other big ideas that resonated were around 'attachment' and that it is the 'umbrella' under which all other development occurs.

Along with that the discussion around resilience ...Children are born adaptable but not resilient - we all too often talk about children’s resilience but they are not born resilient.

Ngā mihi ki nga kaiako o Pt England Kindy for hosting us, a great night of thinking and learning.

Confessions of a childhood Stutterer

I was privileged today to hear Judge Andrew Becroft speak and emphasise the need for us to ensure that we listen to the voices of our tamariki. Of course we think we do that in classrooms but are we truly actively listening and engaging with our kids? Are we really hearing or are we waiting to hear the response that we have intended to illicit from them?

He emphasised the  need to ensure that we have kids who can participate and communicate, so that no child is left behind.

"Are we getting it right?" Being child-centred and hearing children’s voices.

He went on to say "First we must help them find that voice then we must add it to what we are doing."

So how can we add children's voice to what we are doing? How can and do we gather voices/views/perspectives of the kids.

Perhaps from a schooling perspective there are more questions than answers but what a great challenge to think about how we can better work to capture our kids voices and really listen and include them as drivers of change and development.

It's been a long time ...

Confidence - we so frequently as teachers and school leaders ask kids and our staff to step out of their comfort zone and I must admit I am reluctant to do so! I was challenged around this today after a discussion focussing sharing via our blog and I reflected on how frequently I have written and failed to post ...so time to turn this draft into a published post!

So back to my own Inquiry ...todays Inquiry discussion was focussed around the monitoring phase of Inquiry.  The teacher as the focus ...what have you changed in your teaching? How are we monitoring Inquiries?? Lots of good questions were raised and I reflected that whilst I had done a huge amount of thinking and wondering which direction my Inquiry should take, and at the same time have continued to monitor and watch the development of other Inquiries throughout the school, I had not settled on an 'Action Plan for my own!

It seems to me that the Mentoring Model applied throughout the DMIC PD has been applied as an effective way of working collaboratively to share and shift pedagogy.

So what's the Problem??  Our DMIC Mentor will come and go, so we need to have a way of continuing to build on this throughout the school.

So my plan is to investigate 'What  the Mentoring Model looks like in action' and then how can we apply it throughout the school so that we can sustain and continue to share  the good practise that comes not only  from DMIC but whether we could apply this model more widely?

Next steps - make time to observe the DMIC Mentoring to see what I can glean from that model of working. Read more on the actual Mentoring side of this model and find out where else it has been used and to what effect.


Ko te tamaiti, te putake o te kaupapa
The child, the heart of the matter ...

Talking Matters - Korerotia mai

The Talking Matters Summit was a day of multiple opportunities to be reminded about the importance of Oral Language.


 Alison Sutton the Founder of Talking Matters set the scene for the day with - Why does talk matter? 
I loved this expression she used "Reading and Writing floats on a sea of talk" She highlighted, like many others the importance of those  connections between the brain and oral language and that it provides the platform for learning in life, it's importance in relationships and health and wellbeing.

Oral Language for Pre schoolers is an equity issue. We need to ensure all of our children are flourishing as thinkers - talkers and readers. 

One of the big take outs or reminders from the day was that not all talk is equal ...

We have an important role as educators to ensure that we are gifting our children a rich diet on a daily basis. We must ensure that our talk is varied and that our kids have multiple opportunities to serve and respond, to contribute.
Along with this children need positive talk, they need to be affirmed and encouraged and learn the language around this.
The richness of language in books was highlighted and reminded me once again of the importance of 'Reading To' our kids as this language is rich and varied and often much more complex than our every day speech. The example used was the language in Hairy Maclary, certainly not regular everyday language but language that is deliciously rich and most certainly complex.