The initial lead in of this exercise had many interruptions - a student leaving early because his mother had arrived to collect him, another teacher looking for members of their reading group and an ESOL teacher coming into the class to collect the students in their ESOL group.

Mindfulness is something that is done after morning tea, on previous days I had been able to use mindfulness time to interact with the children at their tables and get to know them better as well as support their thinking.

On reflection I possibly should have used a time that was more settled however since the only times the whole class is taught is for writing and I didn’t feel ready to lead 60 plus children at brain blast time. Perhaps an even better approach would simply be to write up the mindfulness questions more thoroughly on the board and then go around to the tables the children were working to assist as required. I had found previously that talking with children while they were working at their desks was a successful way to engage in a way that led to me knowing and understanding them better.

For example on the board I could have written;

Mindfulness:

Imagine you are leaving your house heading off to school....

1. What is the first thing you notice?

2. What is the next thing you see?

3. What is one thing that is hard to find?

After I introduced this exercise to the class I followed up by going to the desks where children were working and checking to make sure each child knew what to do and was able to do their writing.

I did find one child who wrote twice as much because she lived in two houses, this isn’t something I had thought of beforehand and in retrospect I should have been aware of.

Part 3:

Get to know ākonga by learning names and using their names as much as possible.

With AT’s permission take class roll daily to assist with name learning.

I started this on Day 2 of my practicum. I used 4 different greetings - Kia Ora, Morena, Good Morning, Ata Marie. It definitely showed up that I didn’t know all the children’s names yet as it was difficult to spot the children I didn’t know well. One of the children asked “Ke te pēhea koe?”, which stunned me a little and I wasn’t sure what to say. I followed this up with her soon after and asked her how I should answer the question, she taught me harikoa is the word for happy, so “ke te harikoa”, would mean I am happy which would be a good response.

On Day 3 of my practicum I knew the children better so it was a smoother process, however it still showed up who I wasn’t sure of the names of. I added Tenā koe to the greetings, and I was able to answer the question of “Ke te pēhea koe?” with “Ke te harikoa”.

In the afternoon I took the roll again, with a phone which had all the children’s photos next to their names. This helped me with the children I still wasn’t sure of. We had the complication of some of the children being away from class in workshops, but the other children knew they were there so helped me.

By the end of the first week I was confident with the names of all 27 children in my class.

Week 2:

In the second week I built on the knowledge I had gained and worked on getting to know the names of the remaining 60 children in the hub. I continued to talk with children as they were working in hub time, and helping students with their follow up. Since I was also taking reading groups I had a chance to get to know the children in my reading groups that weren't in the main class I was with.

Week 3:

In the third week I took time to talk with the mother of a student who is attending health school for most of his learning and attending class 2 mornings a week. I did this in order to better understand what he is experiencing outside of the classroom, in the hope that I would also be able to relate better with the child as he is selectively mute making interactions with him limited.

In Summary:

As I became more familiar with students, starting with their names, then understanding them as learners I was able to support their learning in a collaborative way to enhance participation and engagement. One example of this was in writing time one student was sitting with a closed writing book not writing. When I talked with him I came to understand that he was unsure how to start his writing, and I noticed that each day this student would need support to get started with his writing, despite understanding what was required of him. This meant that when I checked in with the class as they were working I would go to him earlier rather than later on to scaffold his ability to find a starting point for his creative writing.

Reflection from the lesson:

The ākonga were engaged in the lesson and contributed to class discussion with their ideas.

The first part of my lesson plan took longer than anticipated, so the second half of the lesson was continued the following day.

The stories were simple and I was pleasantly surprised how engaged the children were when being read to. I had anticipated that I might need to manage a few students behaviour in order to read the story but this went very smoothly with everyone in the class listening.

Reflection from my goal - On reflection I found using Talk Moves challenging with the class as this is not how the children are used to contributing. These students seem to be used to an opt in model of learning, for example they only read aloud in reading if they volunteer themselves. They are continually encouraged to contribute, but not made to.

I chose contributions from students that put their hand up, and as children contributed their ideas I asked and allowed time for other students to also contribute their ideas.

I modelled paraphrasing of ideas rather than calling on specific children to re-state what a child had told the class.

Week 3:

Part 4:

Use Talk moves in another instance (ideally the third week) with the aim of enabling learners to learn from one another and collaborate (story substitution but also linking to observation of the real world outside). I will reflect on how my implementation of Talk moves enabled learning from one another and collaboration.

The lesson that I had started at the beginning of the previous week was still inspiring the children so in order to respond to the interests of the children I continued with this as the base of our writing lessons rather than supply a new story.

The lessons started to focus on how to end a story, and I read 2 simple books with very different endings to demonstrate and initiate class discussion about how to end a story, and what makes a good ending to a story. How do we know that a story has finished was the question that as a class we found answers for, in order to inspire the end of the children's own stories.

30.03.2021 - Observed a relieving teacher with writing lesson to support the ākonga in finishing and publishing their stories from the lesson I started last week. In particular I noticed the instructions were clearly written on the board for the children to refer to (as well as being explained). This teacher used this approach in other teaching such as whole class brain blasts. This is what the teacher wrote on the board:

• Finish story,

• Self- edit

• Buddy feedback (2 stars and a stair)

• Show teacher

• Publish on chrome book.

31.03.2021 - I took the writing lesson, and engaged the students by asking children directly what they needed to do to complete their work. I felt that it was appropriate to be more direct in asking for individual children's understanding of the tasks as I knew they had already been instructed clearly yesterday and it was reasonable to expect them to know what to do. I also asked a children to repeat what another child has stated, and asked for contributions for any further requirements to the instructions for students to be able to complete and publish their work.

This whole writing lesson sequence lasted a lot longer that I had anticipated (2 weeks) yet it gave the class opportunities to get ideas from each other, to collaborate, to keep persevering with developing an idea and take charge of their own creative writing. Every day I was approached by students before the writing lesson who wanted to keep working on their stories which I thought showed their developing ability of having agency over their learning.