Victoria University and Karori Normal School

Yesterday we spent the day at Victoria University and had the opportunity to talk with lecturers and advisors (advisors are paid by the Ministry of Education to go to schools to help with different areas of the curriculum, in this case, literacy. They are welcomed by schools and are not seen in any way as being people sent in to "fix" things or judge them). We looked at a couple of literacy courses, and I was quite impressed at the amount of material they are able to cover in a relatively short time. There was some disappointment expressed that Victoria had cut the number of hours required fori literacy education, and we heard that repeated in the school. It seems that the lack of literacy education in this university is being definitely noticed in the schools (the decision to cut literacy classes was not made by the lecturers in the College of Education; it was made at a much higher level). It made me feel fortunate that we in Morehead still have a good hunk of literacy in our curriculum However, when looking at the course outlines from Victoria, I wonder if perhaps we could do more? Karori Normal school is a full primary, decile 10 school. It has about 710 students right now, but this will climb to about 780 by the end of the year. There are a lot of younger staff at this school which is both a plus and a minus. It's a plus because they can be moulded into what the school wants, but it's also a minus because they've missed a lot of the PDs (the ones held in previous years) and therefore the school must spend more money getting all the staff trained in the same areas. We went into a couple of classes, and yet again I was impressed at the way New Zealand children are able to articulate their learning. They know why they are doing things, what they need to work on, how they need to work, and seem to genuinely "own" their learning. I have asked a lot of children what they are doing and why, and not once have I heard "I don't know" or "Because the teacher told us" or "Because it's on the test". This has probably been perhaps the thing that has impressed me the most. After leaving Karori Normal, we visited Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand. I could have spent a long time there because there is so much to see. Afterwards, we drove around the waterfront, visited a sheepskin warehouse, had dinner, and returned the rental car. We're now in the airport awaiting our flight to Auckland.

Diocesan School and onwards...

Well, it's been extremely difficult to get online over the past few days, so I think we've all got a bit behind in our posts. I want to talk a bit about Diocesan before moving on. Diocesan is an all-girls, decile 10, private school in Epsom, Auckland. The roll is about 1450, with students from New Entrants to Year 13. We mostly focused on Years 7-13, specifically on an area called the LEC (Learning Enhancement Center). I was most impressed with this. The LEC deals with all kinds of learners: those with identified needs, those with as-yet unidentified needs, gifted students, and self-referred students. In other words, ANYONE who wants or needs enhancement with their learning. Girls can make appointments and receive help in any area, often in literacy related things (e.g. reading and understanding science texts). Some girls are part of a literacy program that they can elect to do in place of one of their subject options, others make appointments to see an LEC teacher at appropriate times. The gifted program was neat. I got to see about 12 girls in Years 7 and 8 working on an inquiry project about creating technologically based clothing. The girls had already discussed the ethics involved with this, and were now designing an outfit that would suit a particular group of people. They had a kind of design brief, but they had a lot of freedom. The discussions the girls had (they worked in pairs) were outstanding. Here's the really interesting thing. The girls in the group can be selected through testing, parent ID, teacher ID, or self-appointment. The program is always run as a high level gifted program, so any girl who really doesn't "fit" will drop out after a short while. In other words, it is a program available to all, focussed on gifted (not bright learners), and seems great fun. Some of the girls in the group are not in the top groups at school for math or English, but are working with the gifted - because they are. I thought this was fantastic! h After Dio, we took a plane to Christchurch where we spent the night in jail. I shared a cell with Jody, and the girls were next door. Next day, we took a train trip to Greymouth and it was amazing. Such scenery!! We spent the following day in Greymouth and Jody and I rented a car to drive up the coast. The girls opted to stay behind and go to the beach. We drove up to the pancake rocks and then to a seal colony just south of Westport. It was a fantastic drive (ranked one of the 101 (?) things to do before you die by the BBC!!!). Saturday had us returning on the train and again spending the night in jail. On Sunday we went up the East Coast by bus (the train is not operational because of the earth quake), then over the Cook Strait by ferry. We spent the night in a motel and today we went to Victoria University. Had a great day talking to different people who work there, including several advisors. We learned a lot, but I can't go into it quite yet as we're all attempting to share the same Internet code! LOL

Rotorua and Waikowhai Intermediates

On Friday, after visiting Royal Oak Primary, we drove to Rotorua where we spent the weekend. We stayed in a large, beautiful home on the shores of Lake Rotorua, and it was very peaceful. We didn't all do the same things, so I'll let you know what I did. On the Saturday we drove around the town looking at some of the boiling mud and water pools. The earth's crust is very thin in Rotorua, so there's a lot of geothermal activity. After lunch we drove south to a river (off the main road) which was hot! I enjoyed sitting under the waterfall and digging my toes into the pumicey bottom. The stones were hot and the lovely hot water was like a massage. After the swim, we drove home and changed for the Maori hangi which also included a tour of a constructed village and a concert. I loved it. We were driven back to our car on a bus, and the bus driver was pretty cool. He sang songs and drove around a roundabout several times as we all sang "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes". The next day I went luging with my family and Jody. It was so much fun! There are three different tracks and you speed down them on a sort of go-cart thing. When you get to the bottom you catch a ski lift back up to the start. Oh, to get to the luge, you go up on gondalas which give an amazing view of Rotorua and the lake. After the luge we returned home for an hour or two before heading off to the Polynesian Spa. I stayed with my sister and her family which meant we could only go in three pools (one was a fresh water warm pool, and two were sulphur pools). The pool had a policy that children under 8 had to be accompanied by their parents IN THE SAME POOL! So that sort of spoiled the trip. We wanted to sit in the hot pools while the kids (who are great swimmers, btw) used the big (and much cooler) pool. We were only 2.5 meters away, but that wasn't good enough. Personally, I thought that was a stupid rule; I think that the basis for accompanying a child should be ability to swim, not age. But, noone asked me. After the pools, we got some fish and chips and went back to the house to eat them. After a dose of House I went to bed. Next morning we went to Rotorua Intermediate where we were greeting with a Powhiri. It was amazing! I filmed the haka which the kids performed, and we sang our song. Then we were taken around the school, visiting lots of classes before the end of the day. It wish I could say a bit more, but my brain is really tired. In fact, all of me is really tired. I took lots of photos though, so when I go back through them I'll be able to say more. Today we went to Waikowhai Intermediate. This was the school where I did my first two years of teaching, so it was really nice to go back there. They showed us lots of different literacy lessons, including work with grammar and word study, word detectives, guided reading, SRA, and Rainbow reading. Again we saw a lot of group work, and while it is true that there was off task behavior, I think it was tough for the kids having all four of us in the room. My gut tells me that the off task behavior was tolerated more simply because the teacher wanted to show us how s/he conducted reading and didn't want to waste time. I could be wrong, but I did note that most of the kids had evidence of quite a bit of work in their exercise books, indicating they are definitely on task quite a lot! We drove home after school, and I immediately started booking all the travel and accommodation for the next few days. We are heading to Christchurch tomorrow (and will have limited internet access for the next 6 days or so), so that should be interesting.

Glen Eden Intermediate

Yesterday was Glen Eden Intermediate School's day. Originally, I was going to go to Avondale (because I used to teach at GEIS), but Jody went instead. It was actually a blessing in disguise because I was able to catch up with a few people I used to teach with. It was SO much fun reminiscing and talking about old times! We went into several different classes and saw some interesting programs. A couple of classes were involved in inquiry learning (a New Zealand focus) and were asking questions, researching, and preparing presentations. They had good scaffolding available, so it wasn't just a case of "Look up things about Endangered Animals and do a presentation on it". Rather, they had to develop questions and subquestions, then talk to their teacher about which ones to choose before even thinking about starting (oh, brainstorming topics came first). I was impressed with how interested and involved the students were. We also saw a lesson on alliteration and assonance. The teacher was focusing on making the students' writing more powerful. After discussing this, they all went outside and wrote a passage describing place (i.e. where they were). I was impressed with the writing I saw... very descriptive indeed. In the afternoon we visited a class which was doing what the teacher called "Book Clubs". This involved the students being separated into two groups of girls and two groups of boys. Each group had a different book that catered for their interests and reading levels. I was really impressed at the conversations that insued. Book clubs isn't the same as Literature Circles, but there are similarities.

Piha and other interesting places

In case you are interested, we are currently staying at my sister's beach house in Piha. Here's a weblink you can follow to read more: www.piha.co.nz The big rock in the middle of the beach is called Lion Rock because... well, that's what it looks like. The surf at this beach is usually very big, and there are lots of drownings here... however, it's important to note that these drownings never take place within the flags (i.e. those who don't swim between the flags are the ones who are likely to drown). Another website of interest is www.kaurilands.school.nz - this is the school we visited today. You'll get a feel for a New Zealand school by taking a peek! :-)

Wednesday

Blog March 29, 2011 It’s been a busy few days. On Monday we went to Waikato University, and I enjoyed it. We were able to attend a mass lecture as well as a tutorial, and then visit all the resource areas of the university. These included a new library, a School of Education library, a graduate/lecturers’ resource center, a university bookstore, and a teacher-type store. The lecture reminded me of my own training where we sat in large lecture rooms to receive information, but the tutorials were a little different. In my day, we spent our time in tutorials discussing what had been taught in the large lecture. At Waikato, it was more a mini-lesson about an aspect of the lecture. The tutorial I attended was about guided reading and was quite informative. Waikato University has recently been ranked alongside Columbia University, and the lecturers expressed feelings of pressure they faced in order to meet the research demands placed on them, ultimately by the Ministry of Education. I was interested to hear that the government puts a cap on how many students can be in any one program, so they have recently been turning away approximately 1 in 4 applicants for the School of Education. Waikato seems well resourced, and certainly it is a very pretty campus with ponds and ducks, trees and pathways. It also seemed very large, especially when one tried to walk from one end of it to another with a very painful back! We drove back to Auckland at the end of the day, doing a “short” detour to Cambridge where we had dinner. (The short detour took us about 100km out of our way! Oops!). We arrived back in Auckland not long after nine pm, and I can tell you I was exhausted. I’m finding that driving is really rather stressful, especially because so much has changed and I have to keep focusing on staying on the left side of the road – not to mention some of the road rules are different from the USA, so I’m trying to compartmentalize my driving thinking! Anyway, on Tuesday we went to Bruce McLaren Intermediate. This is a relatively small school of about 300. Not too many years ago it had a roll of 600 but there has been rather an exodus to a couple of the more middle class (read: white) schools in the area. A big pity really because the school itself is a pretty nice little school with really good leaders. The principal seemed particularly intelligent, forward thinking, and analytical to me. The school is about one third Maori, one third Pasifika, and one third Pakeha (white). There are quite a few other nationalities represented too. More than half of the Pasifika students are from Samoa. They have the standard classes as well as technicraft (woodwork, metalwork/electronics, food, clothing, art, and craft). There are also two “independent learning” classes which comprise children who are self-directed. The idea, I believe, is to extend these students. There is an ESOL class (where they also learn French), and a special needs class (very low level learners) that moves back and forth from mainstream classes depending on the subject (usually PE and technicraft). It seems as if the NZ government is not going to fun these classes past the end of this year. I watched one interesting class whereby the teacher had played the students a song by an Australian singer/writer about the First World War. They then had to develop “freeze frames” around the lyrics. First, they were given some metaphorical examples from the text and had to freeze frame these (e.g. “living the life of a rover”), then they got themselves into groups and had to freeze frame the story in sequence, focusing only on the main points. The students really seemed to enjoy this; a lot of talking was going on, and certainly a lot of text checking also. After school, there was a staff meeting which I also found interesting. They had a person speak to them about a writing program that’s going to be instigated in their school soon. It was interesting to me because some of it sounded like the USA… focusing on the group just below average, having a special teacher come in to the school to show them “how to do it” Today, Wednesday, we went to Kaurilands Primary School. The assistant principal for the senior school (Years 4-6) was a lady I used to work with several years ago, so it was good to catch up. We were able to reminisce a bit! Kaurilands is one of the biggest New Zealand primary schools at about 700. It is a decile 8 school, but it is also somewhat multicultural. The school is on beautiful grounds, and the students have great places to play, including a stream (they're allowed to play beside it and jump over it but not to play IN it - I could well imagine that if there was a stream running through an elementary school in Kentucky, it'd be walled off. Would that be a correct assumption?). There's lots of native trees and bush on the property which is fairly large. All the classrooms lead outside, something that has been common to all the schools we've been to, and this allows students to work outside as well as in. New Zealand students definitely get much more time outdoors than Kentucky students do.

Saturday

Today is a wet, overcast day, and noone wanted to travel out to Piha, so my family went alone. The team spent the morning enjoying the peace; I slept! Then we drove into Waiuku for lunch and a little bit of shopping. Tomorrow we intend to drive down to Hamilton because we're due at Waikato University at 8:45am. I'm looking forward to spending time there, particularly as we have met up with two of their graduates, and they were very positive about their program. I'm hoping we'll pick up some good ideas, as well as perhaps unlock a few more "secrets" as to why NZ does so well in the reading department.

So far, my ideas include (and these are just ideas, so feel free to do some research about them!): a shorter day (9-3 with two good breaks - usually a 20-30 minute morning tea and play, and a 45-60 minute lunch and play), a connected curriculum approach (integration of the curriculum is HUGE here), constant differentiation and group work (not everyone is expected to be at the same level, and there can be as many as 7 groups in one class), inquiry based teaching (the student takes control of their learning - although we haven't seen this in ALL schools), and literacy rich classrooms (yes, even in the upper grades there is a huge amount of student work up on the walls, library areas, etc...). So far I haven't seen a single basal reader or anthology in a classroom - all reading is authentic. Worksheets are rare; in fact, the principal at Maraetai Beach School told us she'd BANNED them in her school.

So, that's my thinking so far. I'm sure there's more, but that will have to do for a rainy afternoon in Auckland, New Zealand! :-)