Terry Locke - Poetry PD

Tonight's Professional Development is hosted by poet Terry Locke via Zoom (due to the current Covid-19 lockdown in place!)

Writing Apprehension

Prior to the session we completed a writing apprehension questionnaire - this was interesting as it made me really think about my thoughts on writing.

• Teachers can be strong influencers of young writers - both positive and negative
• Can the opinions and apprehensions be changed?

What is Poetry

• "Best words in the best order" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• "A momentary stay against confusion" - Robert Frost - a sense in that we all need something to hang onto when lives are in disarray - a way of making sense of our lives
• It can resist definition in many ways

Concrete Language - enable a reader to respond sensuously to an experience

Abstract Language - language or ideas or concepts  - its main purpose is to reason through generalisation or argument

Messages from tonight to consider with future teaching

• Have you had a 'red pencil' experience from a teacher?
• Our primary role is to respond to the writing - respond to the ideas in the message

First Sample Piece of Writing

Our first writing task was about a place that had special meaning to us.  Once we had completed the writing we needed to highlight our concrete words/phrases in yellow and our abstract pieces in blue.  This was my piece:

And then feedback received on the above piece of writing from Terry Locke:

Further Research & Readings

Book:  Beyond the Grammar Wars

Book:  Close up for Poetry

Sharp Reading - Comprehension Strategy Instruction

Today's PD focused on a new way of teaching comprehension. This process is for those readers with a reading age of approximately 8 (PM levels 18 - 25).

STOP asking content questions 

START prompting for Strategy use

"Once the strategies have been introduced the teacher's role is limited to prompting students to be active in deciding how they might process the text" - Pressley

Follow a clear teaching and learning model:
Explicit Teaching of Strategies - explain; model; guided practice (20%); independent practice (80%)

Use cover cards to: slow down the reader, don't read on, keep their place and show you when they are finished.

Clearing the roadblocks ... three important parts ...

• Are there any roadblocks?
• Have a go at clearing it?
• Have you cleared it?

Convince Me!

This really encourages them to dig deeper into a sentence and teachers provide feedback using the triggers (prompt card).

Ideally, for top groups, three - four paragraphs per day - but start with an easier group and look at less paragraphs.

Further Reading:

Otauira - Session 1

Tonight was the first PD session by Horizon Consulting and the team at Owhata Marae which focus on understanding the issues in our local environment.

Our session starting with a brief introduction and receiving some light reading before we headed out to Waikauwau, or Hannah's Bay as it is known to the locals.

As we walked through the reserve we received information about how the land that the airport currently resides on was taken from the local hapu.  Prior to the 1960's much of this land contained housing and was a walkway for tamariki to hikoi between two marae's walking past the fruit trees that still grow on the site today.

Land that is visible on the top of this picture (at the lakefront) was to be returned to the hapu if the ownership of the Rotorua Airport ever changed hands (which it did in 2014) - this was part of an agreement signed back in the 1960's.  Unfortunately the local council have yet to return this to the hapu so they are looking at taking their case to the environmental court to get this enforced and returned to them.

As we walked back along the waterfront, it gave us a chance to reflect on the information that we have received this week and wonder how this reserve would look if it hadn't been repurposed for the airport - how could we use this information in the classroom?  What systems were involved and who has been let down by the systems that were in place last century?