Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

 Today is the last day of term and the whole cluster is spending it together in Professional Development at Glen Taylor School.

The day started with a great keynote by Dr Rae Si'ilata and Kyla Hansell

Are we teaching in a negative language manner. Helping them succeed in English but loosing their own language?

Privilege the native speaker. Highlight the speakers of the language in the classroom.

Integrating the communicative modes - listening, reading, viewing - input channels - speaking, writing, presenting - output channels - the 6 need to be integrated.

ESOL - English For speakers of other languages - it is NOT A PERSON - adding english not replacing their native language.

Ideas learnt in one language can be transferred. Prior knowledge in English only is too limited.

Make meaning in stronger language and cultural world view.

You don't need to know the language - you need to be willing to share the power.

Treat the language varieties, used in context, with respect.

Meaning focussed learning.

Online content - all in English.



I went to two presentation over the day.

Argumentation Boards

Discussion - using their prior knowledge

Unpack the vocab to understand the prompt.

Scaffolded resources and reading - guided reading - lots of element of choice to decide what to look at and read. Taking notes while they read and watch. Maybe scaffold the notes with questions etc.

Output could be an essay, paragraph, screencastify of themselves talking. It does need to be an open debate - small groups/ whole class.

They need to pick a side so they don't end up just agreeing with each other.

They can be easily added to a scheme of work - it is not a huge different thing to do - use it as a hook to a topic.

The prior knowledge section is important as it gives all students a voice to say what they know.

Setting up talk rules - you are arguing against ideas not people.

Link to presentation here to see speaker notes and links

Getting the talk going in reading

Talk shows understanding and level of understanding.

Talking while reading helps them to unpack the text by listening to the thoughts of others.

The best way to communicate is through talk.

Thinking critically is needed more and more as the students get older. Bringing in talk when they are very young will help build this. Play based learning / talk moves / personal interests etc

We all talk while reading with students, but we need to spotlight specific strategies.

Reading to - students can focus on thinking critically rather than worrying about the reading.

Shared reading - support with the decoding - listen and enjoy - there can be a teacher focus while the reading is going on to highlight certain things.

Guided reading - explicit teaching strategies for reading. Rewindable elements so they can look back and remember parts they have forgotten. Use students rewindable items as well as the teachers.

Independent reading - own choice of reading. Good way of upping the reading milage for students.

Question matrix - thinking widely when reading a text.

Link to presentation here to see speaker notes and links