2018 Leadership Review - Aimee Courtney

2018 Leadership Review - Aimee Courtney

Junior Team Leader:

Our junior focus for T3&4 has been on Te Awa. For this, I organised for two sessions with Sally from Watercare. These were on 7 September and 7 November. The students from all four junior rooms had a great time creating rivers and thinking about how to protect our Awa.




Learning Through Play:
In our two NE classrooms, we have been developing a learning through play approach. We are still in the early stages of this journey. As part of our investigation into this, we visited two local schools that are further along in their play based journey (Ramarama & Pokeno Primary). These visits combined with our training day with Longworth Education were inspiring but showed that we have a long way to go. Our vision is to create an environment where students are able to explore, become physically involved in new experiences, and be confident to try new things. Our focus has been on developing the key competencies through learning through play.


Things we have noticed:



Smoother transition to school
● Stronger social and emotional skills
● Greater self management
● Improved oral language
● Student agency evident
● Self-differentiated play
● Teachable moments capitalised on
● More active risk takers
● Children are happier
● Creative thinkers
● Leads into all curriculum areas
● Responds to their developmental stage




Challenges:
● Letting go of control
● Mess!
● Finding the balance between play and formal lessons (Curriculum coverage)
● Space and how it’s used
● Resources/materials

Next steps:
● Tracking – investigate way to track the efficacy of PBL
● Seesaw – How can we use this to record the student’s learning through play better
● Reporting to parents – how can we share these better
● Sandpit – We have had two different contractors come in in T4 to draw up plans for a PBL focused sandpit/water area outside Rooms 1&2. Follow up to get the quotes for applying for grants to help with the costs of this.
● Investigate using Barbara Brann Building Blocks Screen across the NE rooms to track efficacy of PBL.

PLD Instigated for Junior Team

• 21 March - Yolanda Soryl - Primary Phonics Training
• 27 August - Mandie Hildreth RTLit - invited to attend Junior team meeting to discuss classroom reading programme - frequency and focus – this led to some modelling by Mandie for Cassandra in Reading and Writing.
• 14 September - Longworth Education - The Nitty Gritty - PBL and the curriculum
• 13 November - Barbara Brann PLD - Implementing Casey the Caterpillar Handwriting Programme

Health Promoting Schools:
The main focus for this unit was to reestablish Tuakau Primary as a “Cool Schools - Peer Mediation” School.

The aim: "Conflict is a part of everyday life; it's how you deal with it that makes the difference."

* To raise awareness of conflict and conflict responses
* To develop empathy so that individuals listen to each other with understanding
* To teach life long conflict management skills
* To develop leadership in giving service to others through peer mediation
* To empower individuals in making positive choices for building successful relationships
* To grow respectful, global citizens who value diversity and human rights

I organised for the 5th June 2018 - Teacher only day - full staff training on Cool Schools programme with Lisa Gibson from The Peace Foundation.

Liaised with Whare Maanaki and Te Waahi teachers to select possible students to train to be peer mediators.

• Developed a training schedule and student workbook.
• Ran two whole day training sessions with the selected students and 6 additional 1hour sessions over T3.
• Set up a roster and distributed it to mediators, teachers and office.
• Developed a possible training schedule for 2019 see below.

2019 Possible Training schedule

Challenges & Changes?

Time was the biggest challenge. It takes a lot of time to set up the training and monitor its implementation. The programme recommends that classroom teachers do a mini unit study in classes at the same time that the mediators are being chosen, that way the students know what to expect from the Mediators. This was not done this year and if we continue to use the programme my recommendation is that this happens school-wide in 2019. Resources are available in the Cool Schools Folder in the Drive and the training manual itself.

Another challenge is keeping the mediators engaged and motivated to do their scheduled duties. In the information pack, it suggests that students who want to be Peer Mediators apply for the positions. We didn’t do that in 2018 instead teachers gave me a list of students they felt would be good for the ‘job’. Perhaps opening the roles up to more students to ‘apply’ for the positions would mean the students are then going to be students that want to do the mahi needed.

After the initial training was completed it was difficult to find time to meet with the peer mediators. The programme suggests that Peer Mediator meetings not be held during lunch but instead during class time. Finding a time to make this work for all the Mediators, teachers, and my schedule was a challenge and would need to be addressed in 2019 if the programme is to be as effective as it can be.

Another possibility for 2019 is a Peer Mediator ‘slot’ in an assembly where they can do a reminder about values and maybe pick a key value they are looking for that week and those are the students that the Peer mediators can give stickers to.

SENCO

In Term 3 I took on a portion of the SENCO portfolio. My roles included:

• Be the school liaison with the RTLB service – meet regularly with the Liaison RTLB to track open and potential requests for service.
• Attend Termly SENCO meetings and feedback to the leadership team.
• Co-ordinate Screenings for students (e.g. Dyslexia portfolio/profile)
• Assist with the writing of ORS and ICS applications
• Gather data and submit ESOL funding applications.
• Timetable the students who will receive ESOL support.
• Liaise with Angela around the delivery of ESOL programme – support where needed.

Literacy:

During my time as leader of literacy I have:

Purchased high-interest readers for older students working at lower levels of the curriculum - in consultation with the senior teachers.

supported teachers with Literacy programmes to raise student achievement - within my Junior team, in particular, I did this through the invitation of Mandie Hildreth (RTLit) to our team meetings to look at how we can enhance our literacy programme for our target students. This lead to some modelling sessions and sharing of resources by the RTLit.

With assistance from the previous Literacy Leader we put together assessment tools for taking writing samples using asTTle for the beginning of the year and then for T3 I put together a kit for teachers to use the curriculum exemplars to make OTJs.

Ran a moderation meeting for whole staff. In this meeting, we looked at making OTJs using a combination of bookwork and the curriculum exemplars. Looked at general statements around writing and in groups sorted them to agree/disagree/unsure.

Reviewed Schoolwide expectations around “Writing Standards of Work” in consultation with teaching staff.