My Guiding Principles

During the beginning of my second year within the BTchLn we had an assignment where we had to create our guiding principles as a beginning classroom teacher.  We had to based our guiding principles in relevant readings and research and compare our findings to what we have seen on placement in order to come up with our own guiding principles.  The guiding principles are set within the social and emotional, cognitive, and physical environments in a school setting.  To show all of this I created a Prezi.

Below are screen captures of my guiding principles.  Feel free to have a look at the full presentation here.

Physical: Access to resources

Physical: Time management

Cognitive: Deliberate acts of teaching

Cognitive: Interactive learning experiences

Social and emotional: Building positive relationships

Social and emotional: Scaffolding
This guiding principle is strongly linked into the cognitive aspects of teaching and learning.

Though I created these guiding principles almost two years ago I still hold fast to them.  However, I have expanded and reflected on these principles to develop my guiding principles today.

We All Learn In Different Ways

I am a strong believer in learning through a variety of activities, wether it be centered around the curriculum learning areas, the values of the kura, the key competencies, or activities that are designed to be enjoyed and help strengthen relationships.  Below are several photos from my time amongst various primary schools.

In this photo we are baking shortbread biscuits to go home on Mother's Day to celebrate all the wonderful ladies in our lives.  This activity was a lot of fun (even though we ended up with flour everywhere)!  Through this activity I was able to see children's personalities shine in different ways than during the daily program.  Everybody strengthened their relationships by enjoying each other's company and having fun.

This photo and the one below are taken at the school disco we had one Friday afternoon.  This was one of the options for the school's "fun afternoon" as a part of the school's PB4L.

During this time I was able to interact with students from around the school and, really, just have fun!

Once a week students all went to KiwiCan, a program based around the school's values and learning how to enact the key competencies.  It was important to interact and participate as a teacher during this time because we were the able to take that learning and extend on it in the classroom in order to make the learning meaningful and worthwhile for all students.

 Ōtumatua Friday Quiz

This is a screen capture from a quiz that myself and another student teacher co-created during our time at Halswell School.  It was an activity designed for the students to have fun, integrate ICT in a way they hadn't experienced before, and to celebrate the learning that they had done over the time that we had been on placement.  Have a look at the full quiz here.

Circuit Training Unit at Hornby Primary School

During my third placement at Hornby Primary School (MLE with years 1-3) I designed a circuit training unit.  This fit into the school wide focus on sports for that term.  We began by looking at what circuit training is and a circuit that the Crusaders rugby team use in their training sessions.  The children loved getting up and being the tuakana by showing what each activity was (i.e. lunges, squats, planking) and the teina very much enjoyed trying the activities out!  After that we did brainstorms that looked at individual sports, what muscles were needed to be developed, and some exercises that could help us in that.

Furthering on from that children were able to design their own circuit based around a certain sport. They needed to research which muscles needed to be developed and the certain activities that would help do just that.  Children worked collaboratively to research, design, and create their circuit.

The next step was to give it a go!  The initial plan was to buddy up with another group and teach each group their circuit, explain why they chose those activities, and their process for designing the circuit. However, Papatūānuku didn't bring out the sunshine and gave us rain instead.  But that didn't stop us! Instead we decided to do the circuits in the hall and have randomly selected groups teach and explain their circuits to the rest of us.  Have a look at how it went!

We started off by setting expectations and reiterating school values so that all children could be successful in this environment.

All children introduced their circuit in their groups and explained the activities and why they chose them.  I was there to tautoko if need be.

This is how we set up our stations and we had them as a rotation for one minute at each station. 

Here are some of the stations in action!

All children were highly successful in their circuit trainings and had a lot of fun!  This learning didn't just stay within the allocated time frame for the unit, either.  We then used circuits for fitness for the week and I often saw students creating and teaching others their own circuit during break times.  Tau kē!