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.