CoL Blogs 1 and 2

I injured my wrist over the holidays and typing irritates it so here's my handwritten blog post:

Week 10, Term 1

Goals:

To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: Monday night between SAC days because I wasn't stressed about the second SAC day and didn't need to prepare anything, and Saturday morning with hubby.

• McDonald's eaten: One mental-health stop for a Cookie Time McFlurry and small fries after a particularly difficult day. It was worth every single calorie. 

Image stolen from the internet

• Casual sports games played this week: None again, but 5-a-side touch starts next week. It will be a chilly season!

• Books read: I've started to read The Madonna's of Leningrad by Debra Dean. It's only rated 3.8 stars on Goodreads, but I'm enjoying it a lot. It jumps back and forward in time between Marina's experiences in Russia during early WWII and her present life as she struggles with dementia. 

• Teaching highlights: 


• The teaching highlight of my week was the total silence that occurred for about 3 minutes during the Year 9 double-period Reading Comprehension this Thursday. It was beautiful. The sound of concentration. Everyone was engaged in ReadTheory, or answering comprehension questions, or producing a DLO. I have never, NEVER had a Y9 class have complete engagement like that before, and I wonder if it was in part caused by the repeated structure of the reading lesson across 4, now 5, weeks. 

• CoL things:  
• I still need to go and interview Y9 students who made accelerated gains in reading during Year 8, but this Monday/Tuesday they have Y9 camp so alas, that must wait till next term! 
• I continued to visit Primary schools to share my booking sheet, and had my first booking! 
• I'm going to visit Robyn at Panmure Bridge on Monday about her upcoming space unit. We had our first TC CoL teachers meeting with Soana and Russell and established how we will share with staff, and run the cluster 'Create' session at Tamaki College next term.

• HSA things: SAC conferences went fairly well with 7 of 11 parents coming in with 6 of 11 students. One parent is interested in being on the BOT, so that is very exciting. I'm sure they would do a lovely job.

• Teacher well-being support: alas, I was off sick on Friday.

• Gratitude emails sent: one to Graham, to thank him for his amazing work planning the Goat Island trip and opportunity for students to compare Pt England reserve with a beautiful marine reserve. He worked to really short deadlines and planned a large trip for half of Year 10, and kept them safe in the water while they were there. Students (and supervising teachers!) had a fantastic EOTC experience, and I think he is in part responsible for the number of applications I received from Y10 students to attend a Science day at AUT in the holidays! #makingsciencegreatagain Thanks Graham. 

Week 9 - The End is Nigh

Goals:

To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: Thursday night between HSA Leadership camp days, when I felt stress-free enough to take an hour for myself.

• McDonald's eaten: Three trips again. None this coming week, I promise.

• Casual sports games played this week: None AGAIN - and it's starting to just slightly affect my self-esteem now as I feel I put on weight when I don't play during the week.

• Books read: No books but I read a magazine article for fun about Duchess Meghan Markle. She seems so sweet :)

• Teaching highlights: 


• Year 12 are writing their assessment so there is little exciting happening there.. 
• I only taught Y9 once last week because of the HSA trip on Thursday and Friday, and that period was just a massive uphill battle on Period 6 to get them to write compare/contrast paragraphs about hokey pokey that we made Friday P6 the week before, and lava/pumice. I had even taken the time to record their instructions, so the low-reading-level students could listen and still be able to learn:

• Year 13 have been stretching their brains and wrestling with the concept of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) analysis near the end of their learning about selective breeding. We had a nice double-period of slowly moving through a video, creating brainstorms, and sitting together in small groups and talking. It wasn't a particularly inventive lesson, just patient and collaborative. 

• CoL things: Half of my COL time this week was taken by an HSA directors meeting. I still need to go and interview Y9 students who made accelerated gains in reading during Year 8, but this Monday/Tuesday we have student achievement conferences and next Monday/Tuesday they have Y9 camp so alas, that must wait till next term! I will try to conduct some research into more reading comprehension interventions I can implement with the class :)

• HSA things: Period Zero numbers dropped last week back down to 5, but I am hopeful that after the Student Achievement Conferences these numbers will increase. 
• I took the class to a two day Leadership Conference on Thursday and Friday, which was undoubtedly the highlight of their week (and my teaching-week too)! There, students met other Y11's who will be travelling with them through secondary and into Health Science training at University. Here is the video from the trip:

• Teacher well-being support: this week I taught 7 staff members how to make scones! Glynis even went home and made some more over the weekend and sent me pictures :)

Showing the way of the scones..

Ladies ready to bake! (Alex taking the photo).

Glynis' weekend scone attempt - looking fluffy!

• Gratitude emails sent: back to none again. Oops. 

Week 8 recount

Goals:

To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: Absolutely none in the week and it's taking a toll on my back, which is starting to get sore. So I made it a priority to go to the gym twice in the weekend. 

• McDonald's eaten: So. Much. McDonalds. At least 3 times. 

• Casual sports games played this week: None, and again, not moving around and sitting on my computer doing school work has started to have an impact. 

• Books read: Finally finished Mud, Sweat and Tears. I'm going to record myself reading it out loud for Stanley to listen and read along with. The story is really inspiring and I think he'd enjoy it.  

• Teaching highlights: 


•  Reading went really well with 9PKr last week. Students worked in three groups and moved through rotations of Read Theory, group reading and discussion with me, and creating their DLO's (although still not many students made it that far, reading took so long!) 
• During the double-period reading Dot and some guests from Bahrain came through to observe, and Dot kindly shared a short video she took of us reading during the period:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1965Gds4rfdyV9qJpbtdrd5Fjd0KjGXn-/view?usp=sharing
• The reading that we did this week was about Lake Taupo - its volcanic and mythical past. The reading activities are here, and the DLO outline is here.


• As always I changed the reading for the Ōkoki group, and this includes a video reading and oral questions that can be discussed (see below):

• Last week was also the annual forest field trip for Year 12, which is always a nice day out with the class. Rebekah particularly enjoyed it and said "that was even better than the zoo!" Other choice comments included "man I can definitely get Excellence in this!"

Looking at a tree.

Jean explaining how Nikau berries are adapted to attract the birds that disperse their seeds.

Footprints from an inquisitive mammal.. can you guess what it is? I'll tell you next post!

•  I also really enjoyed a lesson about inbreeding, outbreeding and genetic diversity with Year 13 where they split into groups and each presented case studies to the class.

Check out their presentations here:

Inbreeding horses

European Royalty

Florida Panther

• CoL things: Last week I attended three primary school's staff meetings to introduce myself and share my booking sheet. The moment of time to catch them is when they're planning their Science Inquiry topic term! I imagine that I'll be not busy for a while, and then towards the end of the term when people begin looking ahead I could be inundated with requests for help! 

• HSA things: Period zero ran with an increased number of students - up to 7 this time! 

• Teacher well-being support: last week was a 'juice tasting' - competitive, of course. 5 teachers came and joined me in guessing the colour, variety, country of origin, region, and descriptors that matched the words describing the flavour on the label of the 'juice.' 
• I joined in with teachers participating in the #hijabforhumanity:

• Gratitude emails sent: ONE! - to Carol because she let me run with my crazy, VERY last-minute hokey-pokey making idea. I approached her on Thursday to see if she would allow me to use T1 for the practical, and she said "YEAH of COURSE!" She even measured out and prepared all the ingredients so the lesson would run more quickly and smoothly. It was a fabulous period 6 science lesson and the kids really enjoyed doing something practical.
• For anyone wondering, the instructions are below.
• I think it is important that we spend one more lesson going over what a model is in science, and what the science of making hokey pokey actually was: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K0DBl0XkWVK2Qs_qJtftYiSCbbGFgBHfwl_wR4ip9yM/edit?usp=sharing

Across-Schools CoL Teacher Role Clarification

Click here to view the Drawing

Week 7 Progress...

Goals:
To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: Zero again. 

• McDonald's eaten: four separate visits.. two deluxe cheeseburger combos and a BLT bagel combo.. not a great week for the ol' saturated fat. 

• Casual sports games played this week: 1x 200m sprint against the Y13 girls during athletics. Early morning walks now that I'm more organised with my teaching.

• Books read: Still chipping away at Mud Sweat and Tears. If it's not finished this week I'm going to put it down and move on to something more entertaining. 

• Teaching highlights: 
• Getting on a roll with Year 12. We started the year learning a Y13 exam (Human Evolution) and the standard was high. Now we're back in Year 12 learning they have settled and are still straining to work at the higher level, which should set them up well for their first L2 internal.
• The second round of reading comprehension worked better with 9PKr. I think they're almost at a place where there's enough routine to get my Mum in to help groups with their reading. If I could have Chris reading to Stanley and Apete, Mum working with the girls and extending them, and me working with the two groups of boys, that would be pretty amazing for them. Lots of support. Lots of emphasis and importance on reading and understanding.
• Discovering https://readtheory.org/  

• CoL things:
• Had a Friday 7am meeting with Fiona, Russell, Donna and Clarelle around how we give support to the in-school CoL teachers and make ourselves accessible to teachers across the cluster. 
• You can book time with me to help with science (in the Primaries, probably mostly the Y7/8 teachers but can be anyone!) or with literacy (in TC - I'm no expert but I try my best!!)
• Here is the link to book any of us: http://www.manaiakalani.org/our-schools/col/col-teachers-across-schools

• HSA things: Period Zero launched with only 4 students of 11 arriving and studying with me for an hour before school on Monday. During tutor the rest of the week I tried to make it really clear that attending Period Zero is one of the only things they are required to do to be in the HSA - and if they don't attend then they won't be going on the leadership trip coming up. "You have to act like a leader to be given the opportunities of a leader." Furthermore, if they want to work in the Health Science field then they need to start showing they want that dream enough to get out of bed at 7am once a week! We'll see if there's an improvement next week. 

• Teacher well-being support: after Athletics news of the terrorist attach in Chch hit, so softball was cancelled. A weekend of reflection with my friends followed, up in Paihia.   

• Gratitude emails sent: a few thank-you's here and there for little things. 

Over Halfway Through Term 1!

Goals:
To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: ONE! Starting a routine now on Saturday mornings. I hurt my back hitting a PB on my squats though :( 

• McDonald's eaten: well... there's $4 coffee there (any size!) until the 1st April so.. lots. 

• Casual sports games played this week: 1 sad, sad game of touch that knocked us out of the semi finals. Going to start winter touch in Newmarket soon though.

• Books read: I'm not really enjoying Mud, Sweat and Tears by Bear Grylls to be honest. I can see why boys and men enjoy it with it's fabulously rebellious and active content, but the writing style is so.. simple. Too many short sentences, and reiteration of thoughts far too frequently.  

• Teaching highlights: 
• Trying out a reading comprehension activity with Year 12 after the PD Mark and I ran - mostly Mark ran, to be fair - on Tuesday. I was just the intro to the session, where I presented data to explain WHY reading comprehension is important for us all to be working to improve. Then Mark used the rest of the session to show HOW we can all do that. 


• First, I made this reading. In the case of Year 12, this required very little manipulation of the text from Stuff.co.nz - I just added one little paragraph of extra biological information that is relevant to their upcoming internal standard. 

• Then I made these activities to go along with the reading. The first activity, the prediction, happens before even giving the reading out. Students had to write their best guess about what the article or 'story' would be about. 

• Year 12 appeared to enjoy the reading comprehension activity. I made sure to explain to them why I get them to read out loud in a group ("people may be able to help you out with any unfamiliar words - and sometimes you can help them in return! Plus you just get to listen and read along for some of the article.")
• Some Year 12's have been struggling to meet my expectation of being on task for a full 45 minutes or a full 95 minutes. Some have proven unable to even make it past 10 minutes. But with this activity the 10-minuters made it to about 20 before having to be refocussed, and a 60-minuter made it to 80. Progress!
• I also tried an almost identical series of reading comprehension activities with the Year 9's to less success, but still moderate success. The activities were similar, but did include "asking questions" of the text before reading it again.
• The Year 9 class has two different reading levels - higher and ESOL.
• I also recorded myself reading the ESOL reading out loud so they could read along with me. 

• CoL things: I sat with Brenton for an extra hour after staff PD on Tuesday to help adjust a Year 11 PE student task. Alex nicely agreed to act as a Year 11 PE student to trial what our instructions led him to write. I also spent a few minutes talking to Andy before staff briefing one morning about 1 page student tasks, and then 3 hours today leaving feedback on his first draft:

I left feedback as both a student reading the task for the first time and trying to work out what I would have to do (this was easy because I have zero electronics knowledge and very little technology knowledge) and a teacher.

The feedback was on the task and the marking grid.

This was my attempt at simplifying the marking grid, but Andy will definitely have to check that it aligns with the standard completely!

This is the format that biology (and three Year 11 science standards so far) gives student tasks in. 

Here's an example of a Y12 biology standard task and marking grid that students receive. The tile isn't the standard title - it's a general title of what to expect overall! Then there's a little blurb describing what they'll be doing. Then (because the assignment is a report) there are headings with word counts and what to write about beneath them. 

The whole idea is that there's no mystery for kids! We're not trying to trick them! 

• HSA things: We had the opening launch for the HSA! 7 students and 5 of their families came along. The launch was a great success with everyone on board, and we shared food and set expectations and chatted together. 

• Teacher well-being support: we played Bingo this week - Katrina won $12 in the first round and Graham took home the $14 kitty in the second. 

• Gratitude emails sent: none, again. I will re-focus on this during this week.