Manaiakalani Staff Meeting - Term 1

Robyn, Chantal and I led our first Manaiakalani Staff Meeting for 2018. The focus for the first term is always 'Share'. One of the questions posed was to reflect back on our own professional learning last year. What did we discover during our spiral of inquiry that was effective in making a difference?

For me I did a lot of work getting my students using Reciprocal Teaching strategies, I probably could have gone further using our digital skills to record and reflect on sessions. However I was really pleased with the students confidence in talking about text and their results in our end of year assessments.

My suggestion for teachers starting out this year, and choosing an achievement challenge to focus on, based on their data, is to look at what was done last year across the CoL. 2017 CoL Inquiries. What worked and what didn't? What could you build on, adopt, or adapt to meet the needs of your 2018 learners?

Manaiakalani School Leaders - Term 1

Chantal and I at the Manaiakalani School Leaders Day.
A fantastic opportunity for rich discussions about data, achievement, and barriers and successes over the past year.
Looking at:
Language Acquisition.
Robust discussion about how we set up our 'Spiral of Inquiry' for the year.
Data Narratives

Data discussions

Great to catch up with Dot today to talk about our new Kahui Ako roles and how our Manaiakalani data is looking. Lots of questions! Watch this space for some possible answers over the course of the year!

WFRC feedback

It was great to hear Dr Rebecca Jesson sharing the Manaiakalani data this afternoon. This was a great opportunity to reflect on how we are going as a cluster, a school, and as a teacher. My main take away was that the acceleration we are achieving in writing needs to be replicated in reading and maths. Another point of interest is how we can continue to grow our success into year 9 and 10. Congrats to Tamaki College, Dot shared their NCEA results. Well done everyone, our results speak for themselves in terms of acceleration and our goals for our students.

Abundance of Language

Dr Jannie van Hees spoke to the Kahui Ako teachers last night at our meeting about the use of language in our classrooms. We were challenged to think about activities we set for our students and what it might be like for them if they don't have the vocabulary to go with a certain task or learning opportunity.
We talked about “Language in Abundance” and what this might look like in our classrooms and for our students.

My notes from the session

Teacher Only Day PLD

One of the take away messages from this morning discussion with RTLB on Understanding Behaviour and Responding Safely.


Our students come to school with a wealth of knowledge but sometimes also with a lot of stress in their home lives. We see only a small part of their experience.