INQUIRY TOPIC TE MARAE

 For my inquiry topic on Te marae I utilised my 'imagination room' and turned it into a small marae. I stapled red, white and black sheets to the ceiling and walls and decorated the door with chalk paint.

 Inside one of the activities is a magnetic board with maori vocab labels for body parts the akonga can match.

 One of the art activities in conjunction with the unti has been weaving a kete.

MATHS....NUMBER

I love thinking of neat ways for my akonga to learn about number and these pipe cleaner were tu meke! They really enjoyed manipulating the pipe cleaners to make their numbers. I found it a really effective way to teach number formation, how to read numbers, order numbers and we also talked about numbers before and after.  Some extension activties included getting an akonga and a friend to put their numbers together to make a big number, finding them on a hundreds board and talking about the numbers before and after

TAUPARAPARA

Each morning in my class we start with our tauparapara.

We recite a karakia, the school pepeha and sing a waiata.

Here are the school karakia.

We say this one at the start of the day. 

We say this karakia at the end of the day.

Here is the school pepeha.

Our waiata is tena koe

tena koe-hello to one

tena korua-hello to two

tena koutou-hello to all

haere mai everyone-welcome everyone

Each day before kai we say this karakia kai

LETTER OF THE WEEK

Each week in my class I centre on a letter and it's accompanying sound for a whole week! Most of my akonga come in with very low literacy levels so need to revisit the sound and letter many many many MANY times and in many many many different ways in order to learn them.

 I do an adapted 15 minute Yolanda Soryl phonics session at level 2 which also includes some music and movement courtesy of Go Noodle and You Tube. My akonga at other levels go to different teachers so I can really concentrate on those early learners. My session is around 20 minutes. It is fast, fun and a large dollop of concentrated learning.

My akonga really enjoy Usher's ABC and it sets a nice fun tone to learning. They are also very kinesthetic and visual learners so it really makes a difference. We always finish with a Have Fun Teaching song and ABC Mouse as they both help expand the vocab of low literacy students and teach consonants, sounds and letter formation.

My lesson looks something like this...
Usher's ABC
Meet Mr Tongue
Picture cards
Letter formation-in air, on boards with white board pens
Sound story
Word of the week
Revision of previous weeks letters
Have fun teaching song
ABC mouse song

....and in the beginning there was......something....

It is 2016 and I have been teaching off and on now for almost 23 years.

This year I found myself having to make up a teaching portfolio as part of the New Zealand teacher registration process....evidence to prove to whomever wants it that I am who I say I am and that I do what I say I do in my classroom.

One word.......accountability.

So here it is...a labour of love for the job I love and the kids I adore.

Enjoy!