This is probably my FAVOURITE lesson! I have used this to teach about Pentecost and also the Ascension  This lesson uses candles to show how Jesus came down to the world, lit the hearts of his disciples and so many others, and then returned to Heaven.  By blowing out the original candle and the children seeing that the other candles are still alight and can go and light more candles or hearts, the children can see how although Jesus is no longer on Earth with us, his light is still in our hearts. I have done this with Year 1s, 2s, 4s and 6s. They all love it. It was used here to demonstrate the light of the Holy Spirit.

All Souls day

Last week was All Souls Day (as well as black out day for the All Blacks!). We talked about how All Souls day was all about praying for our family members who have passed away and asking Jesus to take them into Heaven to be with them. I love how young children think. Our conversation quickly went from this to Halloween, and one of the children asked if it was All Souls day because it's so scary and people are dressing up as ghosts. We went and visited the crosses of loved ones children throughout the school had decorated. Some of the children went really quiet while we looked at them, and I could see they were really taking it all in. Bless their little hearts! 

We wrote a little prayer and made a class page with the people we wanted to pray for. The children decorated these and put them in their RE books. One of the boys in my class recently lost an Uncle to cancer and I think he enjoyed having the opportunity to remember him and talk about him with the class again.

This was from earlier on in the year, the children making groups to 10. They love working together. 

Mixed ability grouping has it's benefits definitely, and I use them a lot, especially for problem solving type tasks. Differentiated learning in classrooms is gold in my opinion. Whether it be mixed ability groups or similar ability. It needs to happen always. This is one of the reading groups we have in our class. We were learning to read to answer questions. I loved how they discussed their ideas with each other. Clever girls! 

Last week in my class I gave the children these cards to sequence based on the big book we had been reading (big books have so much learning within them!). The children had to problem solve, work as a team, share, talk, justify their thinking, compromise, and agree. That's a lot of work for 5 year olds. They did so well. I did this in mixed ability groups. All groups completed the task except one group who needed me to scaffold them with the book in hand. 

haere atu

This 4 minute movie was a whole terms worth of work. It started off in Te wiki o te reo Maori when we read the Ready to Read book Haere Atu as our shared book.

We rewrote the story, using a cheetah (because one of the students LOVES cheetahs!). We focused on so many different things from alliteration (Sneaky Cheeky Charli Cheetah for example), verbs, going back and adding detail/changing stories to make them better. All while integrating Te reo Maori.

Making the movie took a longggg time, but once we had finished, we invited the children's whanau in for the premier. The children loved seeing themselves on the big screen while eating their popcorn. It was a great learning experience for us all.

Thought I'd put these pictures on my blog. Sometimes as a Mum you have to do things a little differently! Sophia wanted to be in her carrier even though Mummy had laminating to do! Luckily, I could do both :)

Our roller board prints. They were a challenge! But the children loved doing them. Another simple way to easily integrate Te Reo Maori into the classroom..using 'na' instead of 'by'

My daughter Sophia LOVES hearing our Kapa Haka group sing. It probably reminds her of when she was in my tumtum! She had fun eating her kai with them before practise one day. 

Maths problem solving

The children loved doing this problem solving activity. The 3 little mittens lost their kittens. Mother Kitten needs 2 balls of wool to make mittens for each kitten, how many balls does she needs altogether? 

How much money will she need if each ball of wool costs $1? $2?

Sarah, who I job share with took it another step further and said the kittens now lost their buttons, and they had more fun with this.

My Learningville photo's

This was a really cool way to show the diverse cultural heritages we had in our classroom. Saying 'look how far these Learningville Citizens have traveled to learn in our classroom!' made the children laugh.

One of our fun days, riding bikes down to Olympic park. These days are so important to build those deep quality relationships we need with our students!

This is by far my favourite unit I have taught. I think this is because I learnt so much through 'teaching' this unit. It was a technology inquiry unit and once we got our ideas flowing, they took over! This newpaper backed document showed our plan for the whole technological process from the problem to our solution. So much fun and the kids and I were so inspired throughout the whole journey!

I was very lucky to be invited to the lovely New Market Primary school last week to continue our planning mission and our course facilitator Michele joined us for a few hours. Wow, so much information she gave us! I can't wait to take this knowledge and put it into action at my beautiful school. The kids LOVE learning the reo, and it is so important!

They are great girls to work with :)

I have had the privilege of working with the inspirational Michele Coxhead over the past month, over three sessions at Kohia, and then some time at New Market Primary school on building a Te Reo Maori programme in schools. It is an amazing journey we are all on, it was so good to meet other teachers and principals who are as passionate as I am about it.

 I am excited about the next part and have been researching and making resources like crazy! Love it.

My certificates ;)

Te Reo

My biggest passion in education, well, one of my biggest passions, is Te Reo/Tikanga Maori, so there will be lot's of that on my blog.

 Our heritage, our history, and it should be our future too.

On that note, here are some pictures I found on facebook. Pretty useful!

  Right from when I was 13 years old I felt drawn to it the culture and the language. I even arranged a meeting with my school Principal as a 3rd former, and took him my notes on why I should be allowed to study Te Reo Maori through the correspondence school.  

He let me and I loved it.

 I don't know as much as I want to, but I am always learning and REALLY hope to inspire other people, especially our tamariki, to gain a love for it too. I am so lucky that I am at a school which has allowed me to deepen my knowledge and work with the children in this area. I have big hopes for more to come.

Learningville Memories

I first want to remember my first Year 4 class as we did some amazing things.

We set up a whole money system in the class, we were called Learningville, and each citizen had a 'job' they had to do each day for a week. We had the normal stuff like the technicians who's job it was to turn the laptops on in the morning and off in the afternoon, the mail man/lady who did notices etc, then we had police officers who gave out tickets to people who were disturbing the peace in Learningville (ie talking when we were trying to learn, leaving gear lying around, coming to class late, even not pushing in chairs!) We had the doctor who held the special kit with plasters in it and the librarian who kept our class library looking beautiful. Each child was 'paid' to come to school each day, and got a bonus if they had their diaries out, signed on their desks before the bell went.

We had pay day on Fridays and the class was buzzing every week. We counted in tens and hundreds and talked about place value. All the children also put money into a 'class savings' account, they had to get to a certain amount by the end of the term to have the celebration they chose (we ahd a market day one term, pjs, popcorn and a movie another) Each week we used our calculators (or just our minds) to add up how much we had. The children could also 'purchase' things with their own money, from computer time, to taking 2 friends out for a game or the whole class. Then the Police officers would go around with their notebooks and collect ticket money.

It was an amazing learning process and I can't pinpoint every bit of learning that came with it because it was so enriched in everything we did. Learningvillle grew and changed over the year as the class came up with different rules and our treaty was re-written and signed many times!

I don't want to forget this idea as it was so valuable and I hope to do it again one day.

We also had a class wiki, the link is below.

Learningville wiki

First time blogging!

Well this is my first time blogging...ever! I've wanted to do it for ages but haven't had the time/courage to 'just do it'. So here I am, this is my blog about my classrooms and career.

I am in my 6th year of this amazing, ever changing profession and am currently working two days a week as I am also a full time Mum to my son Damynn who is 12 and my daughter Sophia who is nearly 14 months. Needless to say life is busy! And never ever dull!

 I work with new entrants at St Dominic's Catholic Primary school in Blockhouse Bay. The purpose for this blog is for me to put down any awesome achievements, ideas or 'things' that happen in my classrooms. Then, in 20 years when I am needing inspiration...I can come here! I'm very excited to get started. Here we go...