Kāhui Ako ki Orewa

Rāmere, te 27 o Whiringa-ā-rangi

Building connections

Last Thursday we met with leaders from the Pupuke Kahui Ako to look at our journey of moderation across our Kahui Ako.

Collaboration of kura, within our own Kahui Ako and across other communities, is a defining characteristic of the initial goals and vision when Kahui Ako’s were first established. In building our connections beyond our own cluster we enable kaiako to work together and benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience, thereby building capacity for sustained improvement for all students. This is certainly a positive outcome of this initiative.

Through the discussion we shared our own pathway of embedding our moderation practice in writing. Looking back at our 4 years involved in this focus area it was very evident that we have made huge progress in building a collective capacity in our understanding, consistency and trust of assessment in writing. By using the LPFs as an overarching assessment tool across our kura we are developing a common language in writing between primary and secondary schools. Our next step would be to unpack further the transitions between curriculum levels as we continue on our development journey.

Tuhituhi/ Writing focus group workshop

On the 23 November the writing focus group met to work on tasks that we had set over the year. This was the second attempt at meeting together so we were keen to get our mahi completed! The beauty of collaboration is not only the ability to tap into various perspectives and ideas, but also to share responsibility for our students’ learning and a coherence to their learning journey.

Posters– these have been critiqued and reviewed and can now be printed for across kura use. They will be available on the Orewa Kahui website and a laminated copy will be given to each school. These posters (community wide graphic organizers) are simplistic in form with the idea that teachers will explicitly teach each step as needed, depending on their year level. Our aim is to have a shared language in specific text types: Explanation, Persuasive, Description, Narrative and steps for the writing process. Folder for posters here.

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Kids Speak Progressions – these are completed and will also be available to all of our students. Many teachers have been looking forward to using these with their students. Resource / planning – time was spent in developing long term units that are specific to writing in curriculum levels 1- 4. The aim of these units is to build on a consistency of language in the teaching of writing.

Link to progressions here. And link to glossary here.

Thank you to all teachers involved, your collaborative efforts to develop resources that help enable positive educational pathways for our students and teachers has been fantastic.

Maths/ Digital Curriculum Group

As reported last week, OC students visited Orewa Beach School to demonstrate and share a robotics lesson. Students and teachers were inspired to give it a go themselves. Our next steps in this initiative is that the college will be sharing their resources (mainly Spheroes) with the primary school to trial in their own time. If anyone in the community has resources that they would like to share or use, please contact Linda. l.rubens@orewacollege.nz

Literacy Progressions for years 1-10

As a Kahui ako group of in school and across school leaders, we have spent many hours grappling with understanding the Learning Progression Frameworks and PaCT. Two schools in our kahui have taken the leap into PaCT data, namely Orewa College and Wainui School. As we near the end of the year, here are some of our observations.

One of the most common criticisms from teachers about LPFs and PaCT is that they can’t see a direct alignment with the NZC levels. It is there, and it is certainly evident in PaCT when the signposts have been entered, but it does not overlay the framework. The more we work with both the curriculum levels, and with PaCT, the more we have come to understand why that is. Here are our observations, based on MoE PLD and readings from The design and development of the LPFs

• The signposts go from the most basic conceptual step, through to the most sophisticated step, with everything in between. This gives clarity to the students’ progress because it is not constrained by time, as the NZC levels are. The LPFs and PaCT give a quantitative scale for measuring the relative difficulty of each aspect. This scale runs both horizontally and vertically, knowing that some skills are harder to master than others. The design of the model followed a robust, rigorous and reliable process.
• The illustrations in the LPF website are from samples gathered from across New Zealand, trialled and moderated by more than 800 teachers.
• We have found the process of marking based on a set of illustrations to be comprehensive and reliable. The system we have followed was to take a piece of writing, go to the signpost we thought would be the correct one and check the work against the illustration. Then made the decision if it was the best fit. And it is best fit, not perfect mastery of the skill. To speed the process up, we clustered our students into similar ability groupings so that you spend time looking at a set of illustrations for a group of students.

• The LPFs encourage teachers to have a mental model of progress for their students. That is why you don’t need to have piles of student work physically lying in front of you in order to make judgements. Obviously you’d need evidence to back up your judgements, but the big picture idea of student’ progress should be something you know. This in turn helps the teacher to understand what their students need help with. When confirming PaCT judgements, we should be confident about our professional judgements.
• The LPFs indicate the teacher’s understanding of each students’ progress. While PaCT tracks that progress.
• With the revamp of NCEA literacy and numeracy standards, we feel confident that this journey that we have started is both responsible and rewarding. And the ones that stand to benefit are our students

Success at OC – from a Student’s perspective

This is the story of one of our international students. She has shown a dramatic improvement since she arrived at the beginning of the year (I’ve paraphrased it using some of her own words):

When I first arrived I really wanted to go back to Japan. In term 1, I couldn’t understand what the teachers were saying or join in with the class. I couldn’t speak with other students or make friends. After a while, my results started to improve. I started joining in with the class and making Kiwi friends. Now I don’t want to go back to Japan because I have so many nice friends and I hang out with them all the time. I can participate during lessons and I understand most of my classes.

This is what her teachers did that helped the most:

· Studying grammar

· Writing essays

· Listening activities

· Explaining things to me individually (sometimes outside of class time)

· Telling me what we will do in the next class so that I can prepare

· Giving me vocabulary lists

· Using a translator

Her teachers also helped her by communicating with each other and the ESOL teachers. This allowed us to share strategies and resources. We simplified tasks or assessments where possible to ensure that she didn’t become overwhelmed. This also meant that her ESOL teachers could give her time in ESOL class to work on projects and give her extra assistance with writing tasks.

Speech Therapy Homework Success

This is the story of Harrison and the dedication and hard work that his mum has been putting in to give him the best start. Harrison has autism and is the only ORS funded child at his school in Wellington. He has now transitioned into full time at school. These three videos show H and his mum engaging in speech therapy homework exercises. His school has also taken on the teaching/learning techniques which supports the home/school connection to success. Using simple tactile resources, he is able to demonstrate his understanding. The number of words have increased as well as the requirement of the activity. His progress is phenomenal, as you can see in these videos, as his mum works with him regularly. It is so special to see and hear the enthusiasm from his mum, Mel and the enjoyment of success in Harrison.

A month and a half ago

4 weeks ago

2 weeks ago

Te Ahu o te Reo Māori National Delivery 2021

This year, the government has run a pilot program to train English-Medium teachers/kaiako to be able to confidently normalise te reo Māori in their classrooms. The pilot program was limited to a few selected communities across the country and opportunities were limited.

The good news is that it looks as though the program will be rolled out nationwide for those wanting to participate in 2021. The details are yet to be confirmed but if you are interested in going down this route, you can make a request for information by following this link. The official website is found here.

Kāhui Ako Meeting Dates for term 4

22 October: Meeting at Orewa College all ISLs

29 October: Maths/ Digital Curriculum Group PD Day

5 November: Meeting at Orewa College all ISLs

19 November: Meeting at Orewa College all ISLs

23 November: Writing Group PD Day

26 November: Final