Term 4 and EOY Reflections 2019

Term 4 and End of Year Reflections - Abby Johnstone

Te Tiriti o Waitangi	Term 4 introduced Waiata into our school. This was my first time experiencing the learning of te reo songs, with the guitar and actions. The children thoroughly enjoyed the experience and are looking forward to showing off their new skills in our end of year school concert.  The tikanga that goes with the waiata was quite special to watch. The way the girls put their hands on their hips in a different way to the boys. The way the boys slap their chest with such pride in their eyes. Being at a 98% pakeha school, this was again quite special to see. Looking back throughout the 2019 academic year, I can see te reo becoming more and more accepted, used, and understood school wide. I will certainly be making my 2020 goals with this in mind.
Professional Learning	Term 4 has shown me less formal professional development sessions, but more insight of how a school works in a community. I’ve dealt with a multitude of businesses and parents in preparation for our annual school gala. This, being the first gala, made me put my every effort in to ensure I did my part to make it a huge success and something that the community will look forward to in up-coming years. Formal PLD has taken place in form of: Wellbeing with Toki Pounamu Trust, asTTle, PAT testing, JAM and GLOSS testing and our school reporting system, Spotlight.  I have continued my fortnightly meetings with my mentor. These meetings have been a great asset to ensure I’m on track with what I’m providing the children. We’ve discussed many things over the year, PLD, pedagogy, effective practice, behaviour management, the six teaching standards, code of conduct as well as just what is working right and what I’d like to change in my classroom and teaching pedagogy.  These meetings have been great to ensure I’m doing what I can to ensure the children have an all round education within the New Zealand Curriculum and that I’m also doing my best to meet their individual needs.
Professional Relationships	My professional relationships have certainly been successful on the next level within the school community due to the annual school gala. I have made connections with local businesses and parents alike to ensure the whole school gala was a success. It’s so important to get people ‘on side’ with the school and our activities. I feel I bring excitement to the children, inclusion to the parents, and trust and honesty to the local business people I had the pleasure of dealing with. I knew that with this being the first annual school gala day, relationships I made would be paramount to all future events. There’s a fine line between asking, pleading, taking for granted, expecting etc. I know this was a successful area in my school career this term as I received thank you emails from parents, including parents of children that I don’t teach. I have also worked closely with RTLB this term to provide a programme for three children in my class. This has been an eye opening experience as she makes it very clear how the children’s brains are working and what I can do to support them.
Learning-Focused Culture	The children of Kotuku have taken on their ownership of their learning goals through the programme ‘Spotlight’. This enables children to select targets at their own level and work toward achieving those targets in our learning sessions. The targets come in the different curriculum area and are personalised for each level. It is then the children’s responsibility to provide evidence that will show me the target is completed. Children are aware that at least three types of evidence are needed to ensure the learning has ‘sunk in’. This system gets the children excited for learning. They are more focussed as they want to achieve as many targets as possible. Sometimes, the children rush their work, but we discuss this and now that we’re into our third term of the Spotlight programme, the children are understanding that it’s all about quality, and not quantity. The children in Kotuku understand that I have high expectations of my learners. I have demonstrated this in a way that makes the children comfortable with coming to ask for help or assistance to meet their learning goals.
Design for Learning	This term I focussed the ‘sharing’ of the learning on children’s interests. The topic was ‘celebrations’ and the children could decide how they wanted to show their learning. They wanted to make dioramas.  In learning about international celebrations, the children were encouraged to relate it to New Zealand celebrations and, specifically, how different it was to Maori celebrations. They could see that the differences came through not only in the culture, but in the history of other countries compared to ours too. Children had clear learning steps for their term 4 project and ‘checked in’ before heading on to the next stage. These dioramas have written and published information about the celebration and country on it. The children thoroughly enjoyed this activity.
Teaching	I feel that this has been my most successful term of teaching. A big part of this is working closely with RTLB to ensure that everyone is getting the same learning opportunities in the classroom. Due to extra funding, I have learners with special needs now getting the time they need with one to one learning. This has then enabled my attention to be focussed on the rest of the ability groups to ensure successful learning happens to all. The classroom has seemed much calmer and children have been very motivated to learn. There are times when I ask the children what they would like to do today, and they will always ask for free story writing! Another thing I have been doing more throughout the year is keeping the learning opportunities authentic. It’s no good talking about big city and limousines in different examples, it needs to be local, to be what the children know ie. balage, tractors, fishing and hunting. The children’s eyes light up with anticipation, waiting to be asked their experiences of just things. One thing I need to focus on more next year, is oral language. While we have many opportunities to talk, listen and discuss, I think this class needs a reminder of what makes a good speaker and listener. Next year I intend to make a ‘news’ roster where children will get to share their ‘news’ once a fortnight. Even though the children are older, they all love this sharing and it’s something I didn’t do this year.
Summary	In summary, I think this has been my most successful year teaching. While I’ve not stopped teaching, New Zealand has a way that truly focuses on the children and their needs, rather than what ‘should’ be done. I feel extremely lucky to be at a school where we are all lifelong learners and it’s okay to ask questions, where we can explore different pedagogy and share with staff if it worked or not, where we can say if we’re having trouble or confusion with something and someone will help us look at it in a different way. Learning through play is a new concept for me, and although I haven’t ‘dabbled’ in it much this year, I have enjoyed what I’ve seen of it so far, and intend on doing much more of it next year.  Kōtuku class members have become very close this year. This will give us all a great start to next year as we can begin our learning adventure very early on in the year as we’ve already established working relationships. I’m very much looking forward to 2020 at Lake Brunner School!