Learning from our 'future' students

Sometimes our students become our best teachers.

With the hectic schedules we have as teachers, I have found checking out students' blogs from our primary schools really useful in understanding what they are learning and how they are learning it.

I decided to start with the year 8's because I am interested in seeing what strategies they know and which ones we could adapt, particularly around writing.

Andrew in Room 2 at Point England Primary, shared his presentation about 'Explanation writing' and used a framework that explored how to use 'Structure' and 'Features' in their writing.

Here are a few others that give awesome reflections about their learning, that I hope to utilise:

• Vili is making inferences using images

• Mataio completed a Jigsaw reading

• Pilinilosi teaches us about persuasive writing

• Ta'ani knows about recount writing

• Aneelis knows about reciprocal reading
• Tom knows how to consider other people's points of view as well as Sheales

As our students complete their asttle tests over the next few days, I will look at how to utilise the strategies from these posts to inform our practice.  I've also looked at comparing how we tackle explanation writing across departments.   Using Andrew's model, I've put on a drawing what departments use.  From this, I hope find a common 'Tamaki' approach to explanation writing as our kids often move from class to class hearing a different version of the same thing.