Sharing: Day 9, Term 3, 2025

Kia ora koutou,

Key reflections from RPI Day 9 are:

Connecting with Manaiakalani | Dorothy: Dorothy highlighted the positive impact of edublogs, explaining how blogging encourages comprehension, creativity, and student voice. She shared examples of learners’ blog work, including book selfies, Google Slides, recordings, and summer learning journeys. Class sites and blogs were identified as the main online spaces to make reading programes visible, while also allowing children to learn new ideas and skills from each other’s work.

Essential components of participating in a community of readers through Learn | Create | Share. Blog detective activity: Find 4 things about Jaxson (I can't remember the prompt exactly- I'm sure it was way more creative and catching!).

Would I use this in class? Yes. I like this activity because it has a clear structure and specific prompts. Tamariki are required to use their listening, reading, and comprehension strategies to complete the task, rather than responding in a random or surface-level way. I find this often happens with commenting on blog posts, so the “blog detective” activity is a nice segue into encouraging thoughtful and quality blog comments.

Visible Reading & Learning. Planning strategically for ‘share’ on learners’ blogs - the what, when, how and why. It’s useful to have students complete a quality check before posting, but since not all work can be checked by teachers, adding a disclaimer such as “This is a working blog, some mahi may not be checked by a teacher and may contain mistakes” helps set expectations.

Collaboration and connection between learners: People cannot get around by ourselves, as we are interdependent, so it is important to support learners to work collaboratively. This includes listening, reading, and responding to others through blog commenting and peer-to-peer feedback. Quality blog comments should be positive, thoughtful, and helpful. Collaboration can also be encouraged through activities such as co-creating responses to texts, taking photos together in the Plastic Planet activity, or creating “how-to” videos in literacy. In reading, collaboration provides further opportunities for shared learning and deeper engagement.

Collaboration in Reading: This was a create task for students to do at home with their parents. Tamariki are to interview their parents at home on Te Koroneihana via google vid and share to their blogs. This is an example of collaborating at home with whānau.  

RPI Overall:

The RPI journey has definitely lived up to it's name (INTENSE), filled with knowledge, learning, activities, and meaningful connections in reading. I have gained a great deal and am confident it will make me a more effective teacher. Highlights for me included exploring critical literacy, responding to texts, fostering reading for enjoyment, and designing creative learning tasks.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Naomi, Amie, and Kiri for their excellent facilitation, and to Manaiakalani for creating RPI for us. While the learning has been extensive, I am looking forward to consolidating and applying these insights in practice. Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro, nōnā te ngahere.

Ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōnā te ao.

This whakataukī highlights the transformative power of knowledge. Just as a bird is sustained and empowered by the forest’s fruits, a person is empowered by learning, which opens up the wider world—something RPI has done for me.

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa,

Nā Whaea Tiaira :)

P.S. Check out my certificate!

Creating: Day 8, Term 3, 2025

Creating: Day 8, Term 3, 2025

Phew! We’re coming to the end of the RPI journey, but the speed and volume of learning does not slow down. Future learners, beware…

Today’s overarching theme was “Create.”

Dorothy spoke about the importance of giving learners the opportunity to create, as it engages and empowers them in their learning. I really liked this quote by James Gee (New London Group):

“Don’t empower people to just be consumers but empower them to be producers and creative thinkers.” This is such a great quote and so valid in todays society. My class and I just finished a piece on overconsumption/ fast fashion and how wasteful we are being. It makes you think of how wasteful we are in other areas of life as well. Create tasks help generate this sort of thinking. 

Dorothy also spoke about Sisomo, which stands for sight, sound, and motion. (Fun fact: the guy behind Toyota’s “Bugger” ads goes by SISOMO and uses it in his TV advertising.) With digital tools, we can now create like never before. For example, the podcasting tool in Adobe Express is another great way to support "create" tasks.

Professor Jonathan Neelands, Creative Fellow at Warwick University (England), had some really insightful messages in his video. I missed a few parts, but here’s what stuck with me:

• Mixing people is valuable—it brings variety and different ways of thinking and working.
• We need to do more in the arts, sciences, and technology areas to foster creative thinking and learning.
• This approach will help develop ambitious students—not just for themselves, but for society as a whole.
• STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) continues to play a key role in nurturing creative thinking.

(As the day gets on, there tends to be more create tasks so my note taking starts to look like bullet points instead, as seen below)

Creative thinking: 

• Not being passive about texts but being creative about texts.
• Because of AI- We need critical thinkers to navigate that space i.e. when to spot a fake, scam
• We need to produce and explore these areas so that they can be critical of what they see online
• Learners who have the opportunity to create are more likely to be engaged. 

Recap: 

• What do I need to change? More hands on create tasks and give the students more opportunity to be collaborative (My focus for the next three weeks).
• Engagement and empowerment= why create is so important
• Use looser and tighter ways to design create to learn 
• Opportunities for choice- and collaboration: feedback, co-construct, digital word walls, the chapter examples on a google site rather than on google slides like we are use to is useful for learners being able to work at their own pace. 
• One shot film- Here is my submission about a book title called, "Pitiera by Kiwa Hammond".
• Stencil designs- To go with work about a book for the Koroneihana (Coronation).
• Use remove background to put tamariki into spaces they won't get the opportunity to go to.

See you all on day 9. 

-Tiaira :)
 

RPI Thinking: Day 7, Term 3, 2025

Tēnā koutou, 

Today was another super interesting day delving into the fascinating world of critical thinking. It has always been an area of intrigue for me because of the contentious and interesting nature of the themes and ideas you can get into, but to be honest, I haven't been brave enough to start in class! Day 7 has definitely helped me to make it easier and more achievable.

The core takeaways from today's learning journey were incredibly valuable: we explored the various levels of thinking, gained a deeper understanding of Bloom's Taxonomy and its higher-order thinking skills, and discovered the power of provocations and themes and learning how to do this by "zooming in and out" on ideas using various language features. 

The levels of thinking: Getting tamariki to be able to distinguish questions based on literal, interpretative and evaluative thinking helps to develop deeper levels of thinking. 

Bloom's taxonomy: This video was awesome and made it easy to understand.

What is the theme of your reader? I.e. prejudice, stereotype, gender issues. 

My theme for 'Te Tino Pōtae o Pāpā': Staying true to yourself, individuality? (Not sure about this so feel free to help!) 

Provocations: A statement that provokes critical/ thinking (preferably contentious to arouse juicy discussion). My provocation: "Old, tattered, holey clothes must be thrown out."

See my activity below about pāpā's holey pōtae:

Zooming in and out: 

Zoom in= what language features does the author use to show us this (theme).

Zoom out= What other evidence connects or reinforces the idea of individuality/ staying true to who you are (theme). 

Language features: similes, metaphors, idioms etc.

To conclude, exploring critical literacy, with its rich themes, thought-provoking provocations, and intricate language features, and witnessing how it all fits together, has been one of my favourite RPI days yet! Thank you Naomi and Kiri. 

-Tiaira

DAY 6: Vocabulary (& Decoding)

Tēnā koutou, 

The question below inspired me today following RPI Day 6: Vocabulary (& Decoding). 

What long term plan do you have to systematically develop learners’ knowledge of morphology? 

I would like to start teaching morphology in my program, specifically prefixes, suffixes and root words. I have been exposed to a little bit over the years but it hasn’t been a priority, until now. The RPI space and also BSLA has really exposed this side of learning in my program and I understand the importance of it for our learners to be successful. The challenges that I face are the lack of easily accessible resources in te reo Māori.  

I would like to start with the prefix/kūmua ‘whaka’ and ‘kai’ and introduce root words/ tumu as well. The lessons would be a part of my reading rotations and how I see it working in the future is having a prepared worksheet of words from the text like ‘whakarongo’ and ‘kaiako’. Tamariki then dissects the word into a kūmua and a tumu, they define the two parts and then put the word back together followed by the definition of the word as a whole. See below for an example from 'Paekupu'. 

My ultimate goal is to create generic templates that do not require ongoing work. These templates would have the same instruction on them and ākonga would apply the learning to the text of the week. For example: identify 5 kupu in this text that have a kūmua + tumu. Define the two then define the word as a whole. Tamariki then create a poster on google drawings and then share it to their blogs. This would become a normal weekly activity.  

Another goal of mine after day 6 is to start a word wall. 

Homework is starting to become strenuous but the flip side of that is I am using the content for my Class on Air Episodes so as to not let it go to waste. So, two birds-one stone! 

See you all on Day 7, 

Tiaira. 

Day 5 RPI Homework: Practice Implementation

The above shows my interpretation of incorporating independent activities into my papa mahi or task boards. You will see this in the 'kōwhiringa' section, located at the bottom right-hand side of the task board. My independent tasks include creative activities such as tāoreore (animation), pānui whakaahua (poster), and pixel art.

Although these may not be considered 'high-expectation independent activities' like those on the Epic website, they serve as a placeholder for better things to come (fingers crossed!). As I mentioned in my last blog post, many of the independent activities recommended on RPI Day 5 were in English, which means they don't apply in my kura.

I’ve been discussing with my mentor ways to incorporate high-expectation activities into my timetable—but they require me to create them myself... (sigh). If there are other examples of what teachers in other kura have done, I’d love to hear from you!

Day 5: Planning a Reading Programme

Day 5: Planning a Reading Programme

Dorothy: Connecting with Manaiakalani
Dorothy started her session by talking about ubiquitous learning—how technology now allows students to learn anytime, anywhere. She linked this to multimodal learning, pointing out the value of using different types of content, like videos, newspaper articles, and written texts etc, to make learning more engaging. Dorothy also shared a story about asking a few younger students what they were learning, and they couldn’t really explain it. She went on to say share how important it is to go over the learning intentions and success criteria with our students, and how even casual conversations with students can help us check their understanding of the purpose.

TIMETABLES/ PLANNING:
I really enjoyed going over the timetables and planning and seeing examples of what other teachers are doing. Seeing as I am new to this role (teaching year 8's), this section of the RPI is definitely an area I NEED to improve on. Prior to joining RPI, I used a timetable to show my students what to do and where to go. Since joining RPI, I have been introduced to a task board so the goal now is to migrate from a timetable to the task board. See below: 

Timetable:

Task board: 

Other main take aways from todays session: 

• Mahi tracker: Seeing other examples was great, however, I do like the more simple ones. 

• Read Like Writers: Write Like Readers: The activity we did today was great! Writing is an area I need more support in so seeing examples like this broken down is very helpful. 

• Lack of Māori resources: There were times in todays session that required us to explore different websites like epic and readworks but these do not come in Te Reo Māori which meant that I would need to do a lot of work for it to be beneficial for my students and I. I wonder if there are websites out there similar to epic and readwords that are in Te Reo? I only know of Kauwhata Reo, which don't quite do what epic and readworks do.

Overall, today's session was incredibly valuable and truly inspiring! I always come away having learned so much. While the information can be challenging in the best way, the learning opportunities they provide are outstanding. Thank you! 

APRIL ICF ENERGISER WITH MARIA 2025

Tēnā koutou katoa, 

Today I joined the Google Vids group hosted by the wonderful Maria. I have had some basic practice with google vids but today I played around with adding music to my video. Here I am playing around with sequential cooking pictures.

Another thing that I enjoyed was learning about the avatars on Adobe Express. A lot of tamariki are shy to record their faces in videos while reading so this will be an alternative for those students. I thought I could use the avatars on adobe for rewindable learning and interactive tools on my class site. 

Negatives: Adobe is slow. The search function for images doesn't give you want you want.. not accurate. 

Mauri ora! 

Text Selection | Day 3, Term 1, 2025

 Day 2 Homework reflection: Task board

Homework this week was to introduce a task board to a group of tamariki and I forgot! At the last minute my mentor teacher had a great suggestion to record a reflection session on the task board used instead. So my students and I reflected on the learning intention and success criteria and the feedback I got from the tamariki was all positive (Very sure of themselves or good teaching??). I used Rob Wiseman’s Angry Angus Challenge (ground rules for talk) to guide us in this discussion and the tamariki really liked this which is great because I will be using this idea in my first Class on Air Episode. What I also liked about this session was getting feedback on how well the students felt they did in the learning and because the conversation turned to, "if you think you were not successful, why do you think that and what would you need to be more successful?", which generated some profound kōrero. 

How do I make this work for me?

I am learning how to make task boards work for me and my class.  At the moment I am mainly using it to front load multi modal texts related to the reader of the week. I have linked our weekly reading tasks to the task board but it is not exactly to the template recommended. I might need a session on setting up task boards?

DAY 3: TEXT SELECTION

As a teacher, day 3 made me really reflect on my planning, systems, programs, coverage (or lack of) in terms of how my classroom operates! The gaps in my teaching practice are soooo huuuuge and it's kind of overwhelming but I am an optimist and I am totally open to all types new information coming at me so don't get me wrong, I don't see this as a failure but just a whoopsie in my learning journey :D Also, this is my first year with Year 8's so it is all new to me! 

My 3 main take away from todays session: Grouping, text sets, summarizing.

Grouping: I group my learners based on ability and behavior. Research says that mixed ability grouping has it's benefits also... How might this look in my class? Something to take away and think about.

Text sets: I found this very interesting because I think I was getting text sets confused with multi modal. My understanding of multi modal was a bunch of different forms of text's about the same topic i.e. videos, books, website on gardening. However, see below for an example of a text set:

LIGHTBULB MOMENT! Sooo, when we were given time to start compiling text sets I got excited but also overwhelmed again.. How might I do this when my focus genre is explanation? Explanation = how things work = theme?  Would I be successful in this task if I compile a text set based on how things work i.e. light bulb, fan and hot air balloon as long as the structure is the same?

THEN.. this made me think about how I need to provide my students with all types of genres in my program, not just explanation. Lots. To. Do. 

Lastly, summarizing: I enjoyed learning about summarizing because this is not an area I am familiar with in terms of teaching. I found the slides easy to follow and understand. The task was a great way to see what it might look like in a classroom context and the dialogue helped too. 

RPI Day 2: Know your Learners as Readers

Recording yourself while reading + oral book review = PODCASTS!

Dorothy spoke to us about KPE (Kōrero Pt England) which are podcasts that learners of Pt England school used to show their reading and understanding of texts. The benefits are not only fluency, comprehension and engagement but it also became a tool for other learners to watch and learn from. This made me think about how I might use this is my class...? Google Vid? Screen castify? What are the rules? What are the learning intentions? I need to be specific and on point! 

I have had learners record themselves reading via screencastify in the past but had not set up a follow up activity like a review or set up proper boundaries to make it successful or long lasting. I do see the benefits in fluency and pronounciation, specifically with Te Reo Māori with some ākonga mixing up vowels and blends etc. I also think that recording a "Podcasts" may peak the interest of the young people in my class (year 7&8), therefore they will be motivated and engaged. 

Summative and Formative assessments

This kōrero made me think about how much I do reflect and assess on a daily basis which is good because as you can see in the illustration above, it is like the Chef tasting the soup along the way rather than just hoping and praying the tamariki learnt something at the end of the term! Furthermore, this section of the RPI also got me thinking about all the ways I use formative assessments without even realise I am doing it. 

We spent some time talking about PAT testing and what I found interesting were these parts of the test:

a.

b.

Picture a shows us the child's correct percentage and on the right to that it also shows the average score from an average student in an average school in NZ. This is interesting to see how they measure against the average student in regards to each question. Picture b gives more information about how they answer questions and from both of these graphs you can start to see the gaps in learning. 

Moving forward

There are a bunch of things I would love to incorporate into my class however, I will start with a task board and some inferencing activities. The long term goal would be to set up the Reading Challenge as I was highly motivated after watching Carly's video. The challenge is the lack of resouces in Te Reo Māori. If you are reading this and have already set up a bunch of Te Reo Māori resources, I would love to hear from you! 

RPI: Tūhuratanga Ākonga/ Reader Profile Survey

These are some of the results from the reading survey with my Year 8 class. The results indicate that they enjoy reading at school but generally dislike reading at home. While a few students do enjoy reading for pleasure, it's clear that the majority do not. Check out our results:  

I like reading at school:

I like reading at home or in my free time:

I have a library card:

I go to the library to get something to read:

When we saw the survey results, some students laughed, some didn't seem bothered but the majority were pretty disappointed but determined to make a change. So, we talked about what we could do to improve our survey results if we were to take it again, and we came up with these three goals: 1. Obtain a library card; 2. Borrow library books; and 3. Read one book each week. When we spoke about how this will be measure we came up: 1. Bringing our library cards to school for a class photo; 2. Bringing our borrowed books to school; and 3. Completing a Google Form after finishing a book. I wanted to set manageable goals that engage the whānau, hoping to get that whānau buy in. One thing that the tamariki said may be a challenge is the 1 book a week goal. This of course being difficult for the students reading novels or tamariki who have busy schedules with sports and whānau commitments etc. Therefore we came up with the agreement that 1 book a week - fortnight is totally appropriate. 

Our homework/ 3 goals:

The google form allows us to track our reading progress by student name and reading group among other things. It has only been 2days since setting up the google form and I have already had 22 responses. It is becoming a challenge between the reading groups to see who has read more which makes it engaging and fun for the students but also encouraging tamariki to read. As you can see Maunga Ewharewha is out in front, while pīpīwharauroa has had only 2 responses. From this you may be able to guess who the readers are and who are not??

 

At the end of this term, we will review our progress, assess our current situation, and determine any new goals. I hope that by implementing these goals, we will see positive changes when we repeat the survey in later in the year. 

(N.B. The google form/reading tracker I am using was one sent out in one of the Manaiakalani after school workshops in 2023. It only has 6 questions, therefore not too strenuous on the tamariki)

Playing with google vid

RPI Session 1: Introductory Overview

In today’s RPI session I was reminded that reading is not only to learn but for enjoyment! Reading has never been my thing. I would rather watch a movie or play on my phone! Naughty, I know. However, when my sister puts me onto a good book I can’t seem to put it down. So, today was a good reminder that books can be cool too if you find the right one. As a teacher, I could change my whole attitude about reading to help foster that enjoyment in my students as well. Let’s go whaea Tiaira!

Check out these results from a year 5&6 class on reading:

One part of our homework is to conduct the same survey with our own tamariki. If anything, it will start the conversation around reading for enjoyment and it could prompt tamariki to be more active with their reading.  

There are two things that stand out to me from today that could improve my confidence in teaching. These are the ground rules for talk and using a task board. The ground rules for talk are going to help with how my students work together in a group and help with talking respectfully to each other. Although I have something similar to a task board, the one prescribed in RPI may allow early finishes to carry on with other work independently.

The picture below depicts older students reading to younger students in the library of a school. This is one example of reading for enjoyment among other great things like tuakana-teina, something I would like to implement in my class/ school.