Teachers @ Work Conference

Mangere Bridge ICT lead teachers Don and Luisa, held a staff meeting to share their discoveries from the Teachers @ Work conference in Melbourne in May. The ICT team used that staff meeting as an opportunity to share the thinkers tools progression developed from our last ICTPD day with Darlene. They also introduced the staff to thinker’s keys as another tools to use and reviewed De Bono’s 6 thinking hats.

Integrating ICT into Teachers' professional development goals

Teachers’ individualised ICT goals are linked to the appraisal process. In order to meet appraisal standards each teacher has to show how their ICT goal has been worked on or achieved and how it has enhanced students’ learning.

Thinking hats: Debono skills are integrated within the Mangere Bridge school wide plan. These are displayed in the classrooms and teachers use them in a variety of ways as attention directing devices which focuses children’s attention. E.g. during discussion, when problem solving, brainstorming and story planning.

Parent Evening @ Mangere Bridge

The purpose of the parent evening was to showcase the teachers' professional development in ICT and Assessment. Staff put a lot of work into preparation integrating a variety of ICT tools. The evening was well publicised and extremely well attended. Feed back from families who attended was very positive! Requests were made to repeat the evening over two evenings. The children at Mangere Bridge are very lucky to have such a dedicated team of teachers working for them!

Royal Oak Tree of Learning- Planning Pathway

As mentioned in a previous blog, Royal Oak Primary has been working with Darlene on developing our own personalised 'Learning Pathway'. This individual pathway has been developed by taking ideas, strategies and terminology from various approaches that have worked well within our school.

All staff have been given copies of the pathway and notes on each of its 3 stages. Our next step is to come together in Week 9 to plan our learning focus for term 4 using our pathway...I will keep you posted on how this goes!

:-) Helen.

ICT Lead Teacher Day- August 07

On Monday 20th August the ICT lead teachers from the 4 schools in our cluster met at Royal Oak Primary School. Well once again we came together for another productive day of professional networking, discussion and idea sharing.
We begun by updating each other on what was happening at our schools and sharing examples of our planning.
We then travelled to Robertson Road Primary to view their 'interactive wall displays' and discuss relevant ideas and issues with their Deputy Principal.
As always, when we meet with other teaching colleagues, we were involved in professional dialogue and walked away with many suggestions and ideas to trial in our own classrooms/ schools.
A great day thank you! :)

Quality Classrooms 2

Enjoy this one too!!!

Quality Classrooms

In Room 3, we brainstormed ideas about 'Quality Classrooms.' Then we talked about the behaviours which would support a Quality Classroom. We talked about working above the line (Quality) and below the line. The children made use of the brainstorm and the discussions to make a photostory about Quality Classrooms.

Enjoy the Photostory
Chandana

Introducing the Royal Oak Tree of Learning

At ROPS, the ICT-PD team have developed a personalised Learning Pathway for our school.
In term 3 all teachers are focussing on following the 'Planting the Acorn' stage of the pathway.

This is the first acorn (Blooms Remembering) on our pathway. The different coloured leaves represent junior and senior terminology to be used.

Uses of THINKING AND LEARNING TOOLS @ M.B.S.

This year Mangere Bridge School's focus has been on developing teacher understanding and use of thinking and learning tools. Mangere Bridge staff have been intergrating of use of thinking hats into their learning programmes. The following photos are how teachers have developed these in their classes.

Digital Acrostic Poems from Room 3

The children in Room 3 took digital photos of their buddies. As a whole class we then brainstormed some words which described them. Then they chose some words which described them and also matched the letters of their names. These are some of the Digital Acrostic Poems which they have come up with.

Te Papapa School

Oranga School Journey

Oranga School is on a learning journey. This term our whole school focus has been based around the ocean. Each syndicate is exploring a different question and attempting to follow through an inquiry process.The essential questions we have looked at are shown in these photographs.

Strategies for improving spelling

Effective learning of spelling will draw on auditory, kinaesthetic and visual processing and it will ensure that students are learning to spell words that are relevant to them, words that emerge from their own reading and writing combined, and word families.

Many teachers use the strategy of LOOK - SAY - COVER - WRITE - CHECK. This strategy needs to have explicit directions to ensure visual processing is occurring. The strategy given below is designed to ensure that visual processing is stimulated.

1. Select three pens of contrasting colours.
2. Write the word in lower case letters (there is more pattern to the shape) on the bottom of the page.
eg. friend
3.Say the word phonetically(gives an auditory memory hook)
4. Look at the word very carefully. Take a photo of the word.
5. Close your eyes and try to see the image of your word. Look at the image and say the word. Break it up into the colours and try to read it back to front. This becomes possible when you are looking at the image of the word.
6. Read off the letters which you can see.

Since you are looking at image of the word and visualising it, you will say it right!!!!!

If you teach this strategy to your children a few times, they will learn it. When they have mastered it, they will 'see' the mistake if they have spelt a word incorrectly.

This strategy helps to internalise images. It does not rely on rote learning.

Have fun teaching spelling by using this innovative teachnique!!!

Chandana

Maungakiekie Cluster Meeting

We have met for the first time in 2007 and decided to create our own blog for each of us to add to.