Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day Friday 16th April 2021

 

On April 16th, I attended the Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day. The professional development focus for the day was on literacy - and reading in particular. I attended three well run sessions with highly knowledgeable presenters. My chosen workshops were: Enhancing Reading with Explain Everything; Effective Reading Practise; and T-shaped Literacy for Juniors.

I found the workshops helpful for some areas where i am focussing on my teaching practice. For example, I now use Explain Everything in my reading program when I see my reading groups and this is helpful for creating reading response tasks and also helps my efficiency and preparing resources and materials for my students. I feel I have a more digitally enhanced and more effective teaching practice based on attending this Teacher Only Day.

Implementation Report for the New Zealand Ministry of Education

 Our team discussed and shared our thoughts about the Early Literacy Project report written by Alison W. Arrow. We shared 3 things that resonated with us and 1 thing we would implement in our class. For me, the things that resonated with me were:

1) Reading should be taught using an explicit phonics approach.

2) Teacher's are more effective when they have the requisite phonics teaching knowledge.

3) Literacy Learning progressions should be phased out. but some good stuff should be retained.