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. 👀