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! :-)

Waiau Pa School

It's quarter after four, and I think it's safe to say that our whole team is exhausted. Kelli was sick overnight, Jody missed dinner and slept for about 12 hours straight, and I was sleepy most of the day. Brittany taught her two lessons today, and she did a good job. One of the boys in the first class (science) told my sister that she should adopt some of Brittany's teaching strategies! (Of course, it would help you to know that the strategies to which he was referring was the use of Mars Bars to teach about tectonic plate theory!).

Waiau Pa is a high decile, country school that goes from Year 0 to Year 8. The population of the school is a little under 400, so it's a small school. The students seem pretty well behaved, and seem to benefit from a lot of out-of-school experiences such as music and dance. They seemed confident and eloquent. Many of them spoke to us and asked questions.

I was talking to the caretaker at lunch time and mentioned that we keep snakes. He said there was a turtle in Room 4 and that I should visit, so immediately after lunch he escorted us to the room where I met the teacher. She stopped the class and had me up the front answering questions about snakes and turtles. The kids had done a lot of research (so had the teacher) because they had a red-eared turtle in their classroom called Myrtle. Apparently Myrtle came from another teacher and was supposed to have been a female. The room 4 teacher had done some research and concluded Myrtle was a male. I was able to confirm that - Myrtle is most definitely a very healthy male turtle!

I was impressed at the questions the students asked. They asked about all sorts of things including why Myrtle stretched out his arms, and dug in the stones. It was a pleasure to be in the class (I think it was a Year 5 class), and I told the teacher they could email me any questions they might have (of course, I'll probably pass most of the questions on to my reptile-guru husband!).

After the turtle talk, we watched a "Rock Star" competition with a Year 7 and 8 class. They were focussing on risk taking, and the teacher had challenged them to get up and sing in front of the class. He was really encouraging and supportive, and there was quite a lot of talent in that class. Several students sang, and you could tell it was not easy for them all. One of the boys (seemed like a troublemaker) got up and sang and was amazing. He has a wonderful voice. It made me sad to think that in some Ky schools where they have dropped music because of funding problems, these kids just don't get to shine. :-(

Maraetai Beach School

Imagine standing at the door of your classroom and having a view of the beach, ocean, and distant islands! This is the view many of the teachers at Maraetai Beach School have every day. Maraetai Beach School is a decile 10 school (highest socioeconomic indicator), and is set in beautiful grounds. It caters for year 0 (new entrants) to Year 8 (the Years 7 and 8 students were at camp today), and the principal is a former literacy advisor, so she was great to talk with. Her assistant principal was really keen on writing, so she added a lot of information to our collection too.

We began in a Year 0 class, and worked our way up to Year 6. The school works, as have all the schools we have thus far visited, via inquiry. The students therefore take ownership of their learning and literacy is woven into all they do. We watched more group work where each group did something different including computer work, board games (Upwords, Junior Scrabble), small whiteboard work, reading plays from school journals, and working with the teacher for example.

We watched one teacher teaching his class a song - they sang, played the xylophones, and the recorders all to the same music. It was very interesting. He also had a times table competition in groups - the kids really seemed to enjoy that.

After visiting the classes, I spoke to a beginning teacher. It was her release day (every beginning teacher in NZ gets one day per week release in order to visit other classrooms, other schools, plan, meet with tutor teachers, attend PDs, or go to beginning teacher meetings), and she was using it to plan. She went to Waikato University and spoke very highly of her training. We will be visiting Waikato on Monday.

Then we spent more time with Lesley and her assistant principal of the junior department, Tamara. They are keen to host some of our Kentucky students! That was wonderful news! Perhaps we can use Maraetai in future classes.

Pukekohe Intermediate School

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.