A post about catch-up posts needed...

I keep meaning to blog about all of the awesome stuff my students and I have been up to.

• Year 10 English - Currently working on their Poetry Wero (challenge). They have to find five poems and use MAPIT to analyse them. Then they also need to write five of their own poems - no analysis needed. Hopefully they will choose the right medium to do their selection. Some have chosen Minecraft, PPT, booklets etc
• Year 10 Social Studies - Been working on the Holocaust this term. I think our focus will turn into Human Rights throughout the year actually because the other topics and units will merge into the same kind of perspective... human rights and sustainability... human rights and migration... human rights and etc :) They're currently working on their individual inquiries. They did a pretty cool big brainstorming session last week. Hopefully they appreciate seeing their work on the wall today. Need to also talk about my SOLO work with them too...
• Year 11 English - Finished their drafts of Creative Writing - Now and Then... and now reading their selected novels. We're doing literature circles. Need to figure out how to make this manageable and also worth mine and their time. Worksheets are all well and good but I feel I will end up flipping my class sooner than later as I need to talk individually to the students and having re-watchable videos will hopefully help. 
• Year 12 English (Pink) - Have finished their EAP assessment on hunting and are working on their Party in the Car assessment at the moment. I gave them their choice of novel last Friday too - All John Green novels - 'Papertowns', 'Fault in our Stars' and 'Looking for Alaska'. Same thing - lit circles and also needed a range as we originally had a class of 39/40+ but since class has been split... best to still give range as students have read the novels or watched the Fault in Our Stars film... Have really enjoyed seeing their analysis begin to come together. Though I think we did the Party in the Car assessment better last year - mainly because we'd done it after our Film analysis so there wasn't a need to do so much scaffolding to be able to do the assessment. Also - there is a range of abilities within the class in regards to the film techniques and analysis. And... the lack of curtains and reliable projector has made the teacher scaffolding and analysis side more difficult. I've tended to work individually with each group and help analyse by picking out a couple of things as they've been choosing their videos and discuss certain techniques in relation to impact on audience. 
• Year 12 English (Yellow) - This class has also finished their EAP's.. though they may need to fully complete/fix up a few more bits and pieces within their assessment. There is also a range of Year 13 students in this class who are fixing up their literacy requirements from last year. Differentiated learning is basically the only way I teach this class. We are currently working on the two short stories - 'His First Ball' by Witi Ihimaera and 'Her First Ball' by Katherine Mansfield. 
• I've also got to catch up on posts on getting #EngChatNZ back up and running, my latest PLD session with NZTA which I'm travelling via airplane through Cyclone Pam today to Wellington... and also on my plans with Class Dojo this year and #DojoChatANZ, and the journey we're currently having at Heights with GAFE and the PLD I've been doing to upskill to help my school move forward.