9T English 2025

 Kia ora koutou katoa, this year's 9T English class has 26 students from around the district. They are an amazing group of learners who always arrive, happy and cheerful and ready to do their work. We start our lessons with a Do Now Activity either working out of their English Basics workbooks. Or, completing a Rapid Reading Respose card. This activity will normally take about 10 minutes. Then students get on with the days lesson. In Term 1 we started with our Speeches. They had 5 weeks to research and gather information about a chosen topic. The topics were (1) Someone I admire (2) A special place I like to go to (3) Determination creates success. All but one student completed their speech in front of the class and were duly awarded a grade. The second unit of work was a Biography of themselves. These were great to read and for me to find out more about each student in my class. 

In Term 2 we are working on a Novel Study and the book is called Cuz by Liz Van Der Laarse. Students are completing this work at the moment. For those who have already completed the unit. They have extension work An intro to Canva - Smart learning. They are creating resources based on our novel Cuz. 

I am looking forward to the rest of this year with this amazing group of students. Nga mihi nui 

Term 3 Under Way

Kia ora koutou, it is Term 3 already and our 9T English class is starting with our unit on Creative Writing. This is an enjoyable unit to teach as the students start looking at similies, metaphors, personification and other styles of writing to think creatively and to write creative pieces of work. The jungle scene below is used, starting with nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs setting the foundation for students to look and think outside of the box when writing. 

About Us - 9T English

 

Kia ora koutou katoa, this is our 2024 9T English class. Whaea Katie to the right is our teacher aid/supporter and I, Whaea Annette are standing to the left of the picture. 9T is the year 9 Reo Rua class and the majority of them are fluent speakers of Te Reo Maori. They have also been raised, steeped in Maori tradition and customs or tikanga as it is called.  These students are very academically charged and love to succeed. In Term 1 they completed their speeches, short story studies and a biography piece of themselves. This term we have started with our Novel Study unit and the book we are reading is called CUZ by Liz Van Der Laarse. We are enjoying reading this story because it is set in New Zealand and the main characters are Maori. So, until next we blog, tēnā koutou katoa. 

PLD Training to start the year off

 Kia ora koutou, today is our first full day of training before school starts and the students arrive.  Updating my website and trying to make learning exciting is a goal for the year. Breaking news is an app that I will be using to make learning a bit more intersting for my 9T English class. Here is an example of  what they can create. Using an image and write a small paragraphy would be great. 

Portrait of a teacher

 Kia ora mai ano. This year I was asked to sit for a senior class of art students so that they could sketch and draw my portrait for their art portfolios. I was humbled and very pleased to sit for them one morning in Term 2. The students asked a lot of questions about my upbringing. Where I was born and raised and information about the town in which I grew up which was Moerewa. After the sitting they (the senior students) would come to my office and show me their sketches and drawings. Here is one of them that I was allowed to have a copy of. I am very chuffed to have it. The tuna/ eels in the backround of this drawing represent Moerewa's nickname which was tuna town while I was growing up. 

Story Board Planning

 Kia ora ano e tatou ma, story board planning is a cool way to get students to map out their own stories before putting it together either in writing or by video clip. Here is a sample that I gave my students in order to get them thinking about what they wanted to say. 

Novel Study - See Ya Simon

 This Term we have studied a novel called See Ya Simon by David Hill. David is a New Zealand author and the story was based on a 14 year old boy called Simon, who had muscular dystrophy. Although Simon had this debilitating disease it did not stop him enjoying life to the full, attending school and having great friends around him. One of the chapters was able poem writing in their English class and they likened it to creating layers of an onion. Each layer had its own ideas which formed the poem. Our class turned it into an excercise about writing a poem about ourselves. Here is my example of the poems we wrote in class. 

 

2023 - Term 1 Learning with 9T English

 Kia ora koutou, this year has started well for my Year 9 Totara class of 27 students. Due to the chrome books taking a while to get into the hands of our year 9 students we switched and started with our speeches. This was a big ask for these new students who barely know each other and asking them to create and deliver a speech in front of the whole class. However, they perservered, put their heads down and got on with the task. The three topics were (1) Someone I admire (2) An issue in school or the community (3) Determination creates success. In week five all but one student completed and delivered their speech, they were amazing. We then moved onto completing Biography's which should have taken five weeks but only took three. Therefore we were able to move onto our Novel study which was meant to have started in Term 2, but these students are so quick and onto it. They have started two weeks early. Here is a photo of this year awesome 9T English class. I am looking forward to this year of leaning. 

Film Study

 Kia ora ano. This Term 3 we are learmning about Film Studies and in particular film techniques with my students. One of the techneques we looked at was mise en s'cene - or put in the scene. This is where students look at the set design, costumes, props, compsition, lighting and the general visual environment. 

In order to highlight this technique we decided to creat our own scenes using the backround removal app to pop characters, people, animals, props into our created scene. 

Here is my simple example of what we are creating. 

Creative Writing

Kia ora koutou, this week we have had a teacher trainee Caitlin Thomas, who is studying at the Auckland University, come in and teach our 9T English students creative writing using the SEXE paragraph writing technique. In lesson one students were asked to chose a favorite song, locate and highlight all the nouns, adverbs and adjectives. This activity took a couple of lessons. Yesterday Caitlin worked with the whole class. They chose one song Gangster Paradise by Coolio to study. Using the SEXE paragraph model they started with a statement and what the song is about. They explained in greater detail, their thoughts. They then gave an example by way of a quote from the lyrics, and followed this up with another example before ending with an open link for further discussion. Here is the work our students completed in a lesson.  

2022 Starting with 9T English

Kia ora koutou katoa This year will be my second year teaching Year 9 English with students from the Totara Reo Rua Unit. There are currently 28 students and they are amazing young people very keen to learn and increase their knowledge at Secondary School level. During the first three weeks when we realised we would not have our chrome books until later in the Term, we jumped straight to our second unit which was Speeches. The three topics were (1) an issue at school or in the community, (2) someone I admire (3) determination creates success. It was amazing how many chose the third topic and the content of what they wrote and spoke about was inspiring. I can see very clearly that this group of students are going to be a preasure to teach. I am looking forward to the year ahead.

Back at School under Alert Level 2

Kia ora koutou
We have been back at school for the past two weeks and although only two thirds of the school returned and the students have been locked down in their Form Class bubbles all day, they seem to  be enjoying the experience. We are currently learning about Migration in Year 9 Social Studies but in order to give the students more digital learning tools Whaea Kerry Boyd-Preece joins us for one hour per week and broadens their knowlege base with exciting digital learning lessons. Recently they have been creating cartoon portraits or avatars and I have created one to show what they are learning. It is a bit basic but it was fun to create.

Online Teaching and Learning

Kia ora everyone

Well, week two down of COVID-19 Lockdown and my students in 9R are getting used to joining our google meets everyday and staying in touch with me and each other while we continue our SST learning. When they want a quick conversation they will make contact by google hangout otherwise I see them all in the meets. This week we have also been joined by 9K so that was great sharing with that awesome group of students. Here are a couple of our classes captured on screen shot.

 Above is a lesson run by Kerry Boyd-Preece our Manaiakalani facilitator in school, she is working with the students on their cybersmart footprints.
We are so fortunate to have her expertise and support in our classes.

To the left is Vaughan and Whaea Wai who is her teacher aid and who joins our classes every day.

9R Students Term 1

Here are the awesome students of 9R Social Students in Term 1.

Preparations during COVID-19 lockdown

Kia ora
What interesting times we are living in at the moment. This is my first Blog post for 2020 which is  long overdue.During the first two weeks of the lockdown I got onto my classsroom website and re-wrote all of the learning resources to make it easier for my Year 9R students to work independantly from home when school starts again on April 15th. It was quite a task, but very rewarding. I also added 3 short screencastify video clips to help talk my students through their work.
Here is the first video clip created at home. 👀

2019 Completed VR Short Film

In 2019 our 9M students created a virtual whare to express who they are and where they come from.
It took a while to create this video and it is self explanitory narrated by Ben Wynyard and Kiro Wikaire. I am very proud of this work that these students put ttogether and I hope you like it too.

Virtual Reality in 9M SST

This Term my 9M SST class is studying Kiwi Culture. We have been working with Monika Kern & Kerry Leaf from the Waitangi Treaty Grounds Education Centre. Both Monika and Kerry have been teaching our students how to use 3D applications and tools and I got them all to each create a poupou/ designed post that would represent who they are and their culture. They also wrote out their pepeha/ place of belonging and Kerry put it together in a Virtual Reality whare/house. I am hoping that Kerry can video tape a 3 minutes short movie which we can narrate and put audio/sound to so that I can enter our class into an upcoming film festival in November. Here is a taste of what we have created.

Animation Action - Toolkit Learning

So this afternoon I joined a toolkit session with Maria Krausse and created my first animation short slide. Wow it was lots of fun and I was able to create this small scene. I hope you like it.

Waitangi SST Trip

Yesterday I took my 9M SST class to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds Education Centre. We have been booked into a two day Raranga Matihiko - Weaving Digital Futures program with them. We were met by Monika and Kerry the educational tutors and taken into the Centre. The students were split into two groups, boys and girls then while Monika took the boys on a walk to the museum, treaty grounds, flag staff and the big house. Kerry stayed back with the girls allowing them to have a tutu with the digital tools and devices. Then the groups switched over. Our students will be creating their own stories using 3D vertual technologies and I am really looking forward to seeing what they will produce. Here is a photo of our boys posing in the rain before we had to quickly run back to the centre. It was a great day out.

Back to School

This is my 9M Social Studies class who have just taken a couple of minutes out of class to get a photo. We are currently working on Migration this term and are fortunate that Reyhan one of our students is from Fiji, so he has talked to the class about what it was like for him and his family when they decided to migrate to NZ.