My Preproom

After all, it isn't Māori learners who need to change, it is us. Teaching with cultural responsivness - I thought I was alright at this, but it just goes to show, that we are never done learning...learning about ourselves, learning about others.  This is my ako. These last school holidays I was fortunate enough to go in the place of a colleague to a hui in Wellington about embedding Tātaiako into our school. I thought I would be over my head, but it turned out to be just the perfect PLD I needed, right now.  It was run by TRCC and was THE best conference I have ever been to.  A big claim, I know, but there it is. It began at Te Herenga Waka Marae with powhiri and yummy kai.  We remained at the marae all morning, surrounded by its visual beauty, sheltered by it in the Wellington rain.  The first session after kai was Toku Ao, where we each shared a taonga and/or kōrero of cultural significance to us.  It was emotional and heartfelt.  Pe...

Why would you want to use it in your teaching resources? Most URLs are very long and students often miss-type them when entering them Most URL addresses have_underscores in the URL and you can't see them in a printed resource because the underlining that indicates the section of text is a link covers up the_underscore Students who are pre-literate or who struggle with their literacy can just scan the code and it takes it to the right place straight away Senior students in your classes don't have time to fluff about typing in long URL addresses, and feel that there are much more productive ways to use their class time. What is a QR Code? What is a QR Code This is a QR code - it is like a bar code and when it is activated, it will take you to a website or other kind of digital information.  now you know what this is, I bet you will see them everywhere. You need a QR Reader to be able to scan one of these with your devices camera.  QR Readers are free...

Reflection Our department.  The people working in our department at the moment have gelled.  They are energetic, sharing, and are willing to try new ideas by pushing their boundaries.  They support each other when you need a hand.  I am excited to work with them, I get new ideas from them all the time. I published an article in the New Zealand Science Teachers' Magazine.  This took a lot more to write than I expected and the editor, Melissa, was enormously helpful.  It was about a teaching inquiry project I did in 2014 which was inspired by a young south Auckland man, Joseph Iosefa's, TED talk "Brown Brothers", combined with Carol Dwek's growth mindset ideas, and class of Y11 science students who struggled with learning.  Invisible borders  and barriers affect all of us and we all need to kick down our borders to find our purpose. In 2015, I took this a bit further and used the ideas of breaking barriers with ...