Teacher Only Day 2 June

 Teacher Only day for the Tamaki Cluster was held at Pt England School on Friday 2 June.

We begin with a prayer in Samoan as it was Samoan Language week.

Next we looked at our school's data on Ed Potential. Looking at the data showed that PES was doing well in reading compared to other schools. Writing at the Year 4 level had a steep climb from the previous year which was good. It seems a bit puzzling but on further reflection it could that with students regularly back at school after covid there could be a steep climb. These students would have been in Year1/2 when covid hit. 

One of the graphs we were shown was the results of the observations around teaching reading. I found this the most interesting as it made me think about what I do. I think I am very good teaching decoding and comprehension. The higher thinking skills not so much. To be fair I have had students in the past couple of years who I have needed to teach these skills to.  I decided my personal goal this year was to work on critical literacy.

I wrote these notes on the day:

• Critical literacy themes - look at society eg. gender roles, culture, bias.

• Shared vocabulary relating to critical literacy themes - metalanguage around the theme eg. dominant, inferior, judgemental, positive.

• Different perspectives identified - readers being aware of social constructs represented by authors in texts, ie no text is neutral.

• Using evidence from the text - refers to specific sections of the text.

• Teaching authors' positioning of readers - explicit teaching of how texts represent particular views, voices and interests and silence others. Either consciously or unconsciously.

During the circle chat, I did pick up that there were videos on inferential skills on youtube which I thought would be good to use to help develop inference and also higher thinking skills.