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.

2017 Inquiry - Sustainability

The last couple of years have been huge - we have done heaps and along with our kids have learnt so much, and with the closing of 2016 and the movement of Staff I was left wondering about sustainability!
When I first came in to my job as an AP I was lucky enough to have been included in many of the aspects of this job already. So whilst it was a huge learning curve and big shoes to fill, I had been involved enough at that level that I was aware of a lot of what  needed to be done. But it led me to reflect on the enormity of the learning for a new teacher in our school. There is so much to get their head around all at once.
Therefore my big question for this year is ... How can we use the affordances of the Technology to ensure that what we have learnt is not lost when a person or people leave? Or if you have not been present for the rich and varied PD we have received to help us towards raising student achievement where can you access this? This coupled with some great reminders  ...
"If it's worth teaching it's worth capturing"  "Ubiquitous Learning is Rewindable" ...has helped me to shape my inquiry.

I have been thinking particularly about our PD. We have received much over the years and need to ensure that the best of this is retained so that in our continual drive to hone our Pedagogy we have gathered and are able to share the learnings.

So my mission for this year is to create a site to capture our PD and the particular gems that we have gleaned along the way and make sure that it is 'rewindable'. Along with this to capture some of the expert practitioners that we have doing what they do best to illustrate what this might look like in our classroom to produce the best possible outcomes for our learners.

A Timely Reminder!

An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement 

Today I attended a course around  the 'How to' but more importantly  the effective use of the Observation Survey. This was run by Jill Stephenson and Nicki  Hillyer.

It was great to have a refresher of this and be reminded of the power of observing a child’s early literacy skills and the ultimate purpose of this. Carefully recorded observations can lead us to modify our instruction to meet the learning needs ...' (Clay. 2005) 

This also covered an in depth analysis of the Running Records. Another great reminder about the real place of a running record in this time as we are leading up to testing and gathering summative information I was reminded of the value of this as a formative tool and the huge amount of information that one can gain from the assessment tool. Also some interesting discussion around the tools that we use. More food for thought!

So refreshed and ready to observe ... next step is to practise ….

Unfinished business ...a Term 3 Update

My Inquiry started with a greater need for formative assessment and collating all the data and assessments that had been previously completed as this group of learners were new to me.  This identified several areas of need or trends with this group of learners.



Firstly a need to focus on a solid understanding of place value to allow them to cope with Stage 7 problems, also fractions, and a need to further develop their maths language, particularly words or prefixes associated with place value needed developing.

The kids all generally had a great attitude to Maths  and were  keen on solving problems.

During group teaching sessions rather than just focussing on one particular strategy or concept, there was on focus on teaching/reinforcing both knowledge and strategy in the same lesson making explicit the link between the essential knowledge and understandings relative to the strategy or problem that the children were learning.

We also took time to engage with the learning progressions to ensure that the kids were able to see where they were at and what they needed to understand to progress to the next stage in their maths.

Whilst focussing on a particular strategy we also  looked at multiple ways of  solving a problem and sharing of all of those strategies.

Anecdotally I felt my kids were making progress in their ability to handle place value and tackle more demanding problems, and articulating their strategies.  We had lots of aha moments along the way ...and I loved getting back in to the classroom.

Face to face time was a big challenge throughout the term with various groups having responsibilities or sporting commitments which encroached on valuable teaching time.