Update: Term Two - Week 9

This will be a long one...

Y9 Social Studies:
At the moment we've been looking at the concept of leadership. What it takes to be a leader and more importantly the difference between leaders and the decisions they make.

We've been looking at Te Whitu o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi with the events of Parihaka. Today though we began our new class project where students have picked their own leader, created questions to find more information about them and where they showed their own prior knowledge about that person.

It was the first time in ages where this class were focussed and interested. When they did their last assessment they were the same. They're happy to do their classwork when it's relevant to them. For some reason I forgot this year to focus on my students and rather than teach things that I think might interest them (even though Parihaka did interest them for a few lessons... I think we went too long on it...).

Work where it relates to their own interests creates more relevance and self-management.

Y10 English:
We've been looking at spoken word poetry and traditional poems too. Focussing on overcoming obstacles and stereotypes. This past week we looked at To This Day and learnt how to annotate and identified language techniques. We looked at Sarah Kay's 'If I should have a daughter' and K Love's 'Million Dollar Melanin'.

With all my focus on trying to connect with that one student I forgot to connect with the rest of my amazing students who were all incredibly engaged and being moved by the poetry. I missed so many beautiful moments where students were in awe of the messages and I missed so many teachable moments too which I regret now. Hopefully I can fix them and connect them next week when we start writing our own stuff. We're going to try to do some blackout poetry...

Y11 English:

Finally got through the plot sumarry of 'V for Vendetta' and began the plot structure from exposition to inciting incident to rising action and agreed on the climax point. Everything after that was going t be done today except that we had our Y11 assembly today where students were talked to about the gap between Maori and Non-Maori in regards to achievement and the work teachers are doing with Kia Eke Panuku to improve this.

Y12 English (Yellow):

Trying to smash through all of the assessments before the end of next week. Combination of catching people up with their reading assessment for literacy requirements, working on their creative writing pieces for their writing portfolio, Party in the Car assessment and their visual verbal assessments. So much to do! But we're slowly smashing through them all. The credit sticker chart is getting way more colourful :)

Y12 English (Pink):

This class is nearly finished their visual verbal assessments. The problem with this particular assessment is that we need a lot of time to dabble with the technology needed to do it well, especially if you aren't particularly talented with art or that creative. So... dabble we will next week while on the computers I've booked in the library.

This classes sticker chart even has two Excellence stickers so far!!! :)

Looking forward to both Y12s film studies next term. But I just realised that once the film study is over they have their next exams and then it's Term 4 and then end of year exams and then end of year! And my Y12s who were once my Y9s will be Y13s next year... gosh. Time flies.