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 :)