Thursday, July 18, 2013

English Conference 2013 - My workshop

Yesterday I presented my first workshop at the NZ English Teachers Conference in Hastings. It feels a bit daunting to present to your peers but I was very lucky and the people what chose the workshop had some great questions and made me feel comfortable. 
I thought I would post a link to my Prezi, which is mostly photos/images I used as prompts and the link to the padlet with resources. Please add to the padlet any resources or links that have been of use to you and share with others who might find it helpful.


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

A reflection on Term 2 and what next.


After counting up all the teaching weeks to-date is seems 21 weeks have flown past and there are only 12 teaching weeks before NCEA exams. This little piece of information I shared with my students. Despite being the final week of school many of them have a renewed focus in class.

Again I am super impressed with my Year 10 class. We decided to enter the Mix and Mash competition which has a deadline in August. I am a little worried about the time frame but the students have been motivated and engaged with their different projects. Those that did not want to enter are creating storyboards or working on creative writing.

I graduated earlier this term with Masters in Teaching, which was a huge achievement and something I am quite proud of. It has however, led me to thinking about what my next step should be. I am still somewhat unsure and this sense of what next and for what purpose makes me feel somewhat unsettled. What I am finding is that I love working with teachers as much as with students and I have a strong interest in the potential for change in education – so how to combine the two?

As a teacher at an independent school I took to opportunity to apply for a TSB grant offered through the ISEA. I recently found out that my application was accepted, which is very exciting. My proposal was this:

I would like the opportunity to visit a number of schools in NZ and Australia that have redesigned their learning spaces to reflect a 21st century approach.
A number of primary schools, intermediate schools, secondary and tertiary schools have made this change. However I am interested in how an English classroom which caters for students studying NCEA can be redesigned.

There has to be a solid pedagogy behind the design of learning spaces and I would like to put together a portfolio that contains case studies of different learning environments including the pedagogy and vision of the schools. From here I plan on creating my own 21st Century learning environment. I plan on documenting this change and the effect on classroom learning.  I want to make this information available for other teachers and schools.


I plan to create a blog with what I discover and my journey.  Any help, advice or guidance would be very welcome. Either via this post or through email.