Create Staff Meeting

I'm super proud of my students tonight. Today was the Manaiakalani Create Staff Meeting lead by our students. 

Room 2 student's taught our teachers how to make catapults. We took the teachers through the same lesson we did in class unpacking the read-aloud picture book 'The Bomb' by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan. Then we solved a technology problem by enabling a toy person to do a 'manu' into a swimming pool of water (container of water) by making catapults. 

One aspect of the rationale for choosing a read-aloud picture book was that I really wanted to work with this fantastic book, as the students could connect to the text and illustrations in so many ways. Secondly to share the power of read-aloud stories, role play, and storytelling to build comprehension strategies and open a gateway to exploration and new learning. 

When the difficulty of decoding is removed the brain can focus on imagining the story, making connections to text, and gaining meaning of the text itself. I’m not saying that decoding isn’t important, it is equally as important but how can we be thinking about the meaning of the story when we are using all our brainpower to decode? Giving students time to enjoy a text and equitability in accessing the text, is something of value to add to learning design. Reading to your students allows this to happen. Also, a read aloud story is such a fabulous way to launch a new topic and take students on a journey of discovery and learning. The opportunities and ideas linked to a text are endless.

The opportunity afforded by the create staff meeting, to teach adults being Tuakana, was so empowering. The students were increadably excited by the opportunity of being taken to another school to share their learning and weren't at all nervous. They explained their thinking beautifully. One of my favourite moments was when Trevor carefully thought about what he was going to say and perfectly articulated a sentence, you could see the concentration on his face as he carefully chose his words. 

The experience made me reflect on how few opportunities I give students to share their learning face to face with others and the powerful effects this has on the learner and their self-esteem. 

The experience was topped off by a trip to Mc Donalds which the children loved. 

"I'm going to write a story about this tomorrow. I'm going to say I went to McDonald's with my teacher" Trevor in the car on the way back. 

A big thank you to Manaiakalani for giving our students this opportunity, our school for letting us go, the other teachers for being great students and encouraging our little ones and Mrs Jalili for coming with us to McD's.