Student Led Conferences

Last Thursday we had Student Led Conferences (SLC). These went really well and the learners were able to tell their parents all about their learning. There was a lot to organise prior to the actual day and with help from my Senior Syndicate leader, I was able to get everything organised. 

Each student wrote a script with a LS2 buddy and linked their favourite pieces of work to show their parents.

I created a bookmark that include all of the important learning links for the year. This was given to parents to help them get involved with their child's learning and to make everything visible to them. This also included links to Steps Web and 

Bookmark

Link to script

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

For the last day of Term 1 we had a Teacher Only Day. This was facilitated at Glen Taylor School and brought together the Manaiakalani Cluster. The entire day was based around effective reading practice and implementing this in the classroom.

The first workshop I attended was facilitated by Danni Stone and was around Argumentation boards. Below are the notes I took during this workshop:

Presentation 

• A good way to introduce differing opinions and debate.
• Simple but controversial prompt topics encourages opinion based discussions.
• Creating a slide deck for students to fill in allows for "ano ako" (rewindable learning). It also prepares students on debate points and informs further learning.
• Splitting into two teams "for" and "against" means everyone gets a say during the debate/discussion. This also gives students the opportunity to learn from others and change their views on the topic.
• Giving them resources to use for their research such as challenging articles, perspective pieces and videos are a great way to scaffold students.
• It is important that the teacher remains on both sides of the argument as this can skew students' opinions.

The next workshop was called "Getting the Talk Going in Reading". This was facilitated by Chantal Millward and Robyn Anderson.

Presentation

• Question dice are a great tool that gets the discussion going. It is an easy activity that can be used for group and independent work. The dice help to develop comprehension by allowing learners to choose the question and find the answer within the text.
• To further develop their questions learners can add modal verbs such as would, should, will, could and might. Adding these extend not only their thinking but their questions too.
• As a group task they are able to discuss their thinking, question ideas and the evidence that supports their answers.
• Another great task Robyn and Chantal talked about was perspective pieces. The learners take on the role of different characters and have to explain their thoughts based on this characters point of view. This allows a more complex way of thinking while taking everyone's perspective into view.