Today was our first intermediate school - a school catering for Years 7 and 8 only. We arrived at 9am and we shown into a classroom with a Canadian teacher. She even had a Canadian flag hanging at the window. Her class was focusing on the school theme: PB4L (Positive Behavior for Learning) and she read them a "big book". After reading the book, the students had to take a perspective and write a diary entry from that perspective (the story was about a lion who let a mouse go, and later when the lion was caught in a trap, the mouse chewed a hole in it for the lion to escape from). Three of the students shared their stories.
Next, we went into the room of an Australian teacher. This class was looking at poetry, specifically, "The Witches" by Roald Dahl. They seemed to have a good idea of different poetic devices prior to reading the poem.
The third class was an accelerated class of Year 7s, and here we saw Literature Circles being run as they should. There were about five groups, all reading different books, and the teacher was completely hands off. We all wandered around and watched the groups, and all were on task and working well. I talked to one group who said they enjoyed literature circles, but that they would prefer not to change roles every day (I mentioned this to the teacher who said she was going to ask them for feedback later and that she thought what they said was good to know and was able to be changed. I liked her flexibility and openness). They said that they didn't read the book out of class because it would spoil the book, but that the discussion director would take the book home the night before to organize the questions.
Our next stop was the bilingual, or probably more accurately speaking, the Maori enrichment class. This was comprised of a larger group of students (33, I believe) who had applied to be in the class. They were not all Maori children by any means, although there were at least two children who were fluent in Maori. I spoke to one young lady who was so very eloquent. She said she was happy to be in this class because they studied other cultures and that this was the only way the world would know peace - understanding other cultures. She was a Year 8 student.
After seeing this class, we went into the reading intervention room where we were given an overview of what happens. It was really very interesting, and certainly warrants further study. The teacher uses NLK - neural linguistic kinesiology - meaning that before each session she has the kids perform exercises to music, exercises which demand cross body movements (she spoke about Brain Gym here). She firmly believes that this is what helps children the most. After the exercises, she works on their reading and handwriting. Again, she believes that getting children to write cursively improves their reading because they see words as whole things rather than individual letters. I think this deserves some research. She showed us her results, and she claims most students make about 4 years progress in 6 months with her. I hope the others blog more about this because I am sure to have forgotten something. I am, however, looking forward to reading some research about these ideas.
Our next move was to the staffroom where we had our home-brought lunch of rolls and cheese. While we were eating, I heard the sound of the kapa haka group and dragged everyone to the hall, telling them they would never have experienced this before. So, in we went and watched the group practice for the Polynesian Festival to be held this Sunday. It was fun.
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