CoL Teacher Inquiry: Bursts and Bubbles

 Wow! We made it to the end of 2023! 

What a learning journey it has been this year! 

I am very thankful to have a inspirational colleagues by my side. 

Here is a reflection of my own personal learning journey this year and below that is a Google Slides summary of my 2023 Inquiry. 

Reflection of my personal learning:

The biggest impact of my inquiry has been the increase in my knowledge of the science of reading. I’ve learnt so much about the science of reading and I can see that there is still a lot that is unknown in this space - despite the common misconception the science of reading (or structured literacy) is fixed there are still so many questions especially within the space where the research meets classroom practice. I particularly like this articles by Dr. Christine Braid from Massey University titled “Tread Lightly” and as she states;

“The research to practice pathway has some cement already dry and other newer pathways that we need to approach tentatively.”

Alongside, my CoL teacher role I have been completing TESSOL papers at the University of Canterbury and I am interested to see how the research behind the science of reading work alongside that of TESSOL to best support our ELL learners to become successful readers and writers. I touched on this link by looking at the ‘vocabulary strand’ of Scarborough's Reading Rope but I am interested to look into it with more depth in the future.

Google Slide summary of my 2023 teacher inquiry.

 

 Bring on 2024!! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Tread Lightly - things we know and questions we still have.

 Things we know and questions we still have... 

Dr. Christine Braid from Massey University shared a series of interesting articles that I have linked here: Literacy @ Massy 

I particularly found this table interesting as in the education space and in the wider community have a view that "the science of reading" is settled... but in reality there are many questions left to be explored.    

I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Manaiakalani Film Festival

Our topic study for the term has been focused on "Farming" which was lead up to a trip to Ambury Farm at the end of the term. I filled this inquiry with rich language experiences to support the development of my class's vocabulary as part of my CoL teacher inquiry for 2023. 

We created our Maniakalani Film about our trip to Ambury Farm - one of the children wrote a song about the trip and with the support of our talented music teacher we put it to music and taught it to the rest of the class. Here's the link to our movie!

Before going to Ambury Farm the tamariki had been creating using the products that we get from farming. They made butter from cream, bread from scratch, lemonade, cooked scrambled eggs and will be making french fries using potatoes, weaving with wool and making our own ice-cream! 

I gave the tamariki as much opportunity as possible to be independent and experience making these things for themselves. Here are a few photographs as evidence of what we have been getting up to! I have displayed these photographs and key vocabulary on the wall in the classroom and it has been lovely to see the children looking at the photos and talking with their friends what we made.

Making butter - we made butter by placing cream in a jar (and a few marbles) and shaking it until it turned into butter. The tamariki enjoyed butter their own fairy bread!

We made bread from scratch using yeast, flour, water, sugar and oil. 

We made lemonade (with a few limes thrown too!) using lemons a tamariki in our class brought along to school. 

After much classroom debate and a taking in a vote in the classroom the children decided the best way to cook eggs was to scramble them, so that is what we did!