Week 3:
Torbay Primary School

November 29, 2013

This week I continued to have some incredible experiences with the children in my class, along with some of the children from other classes. I got to see some really interesting and innovative teaching techniques that I will be using when I teach a small group next week. One of these techniques is with teaching reading. The students are learning about rhyme and distinguishing the different sounds in a word, along with being exposed to plenty of literature. My mentor teacher uses an engaging technique for teaching students about rhyme and syllables, called the Treasure Chest of Junk. This treasure chest is, as it’s name suggests, filled with “junk” or different items or toys that can be used to help students develop their phonemic awareness. I have seen it used for students to find items with the same or different beginning sounds and ending sounds.

In addition to using the Treasure Chest of Junk and many other reading or sight word puzzles, students do daily reading groups. This week I have started taking out a reading group during this time and it’s amazing to see what a tremendous difference this small group experience can make. The students love getting to read their level-appropriate books together. These books are attainable for the students to read because they have lots of pictures, as well as repetition in the storyline. This helps students build their confidence as readers while developing their skills at recognizing a good sentence and a well-developed story.

This week I also got to teach a lesson on Thanksgiving, since it is coming up soon. The students have been learning about holidays from around the world so my lesson fit well into their curriculum. For my lesson I decided to keep it simple and hands-on. I shared a silly Story of Thanksgiving video as told by hand turkeys and then the students drew their hand turkeys and completed the sentence “I am thankful for…” The result was completely adorable and heartwarming.

On Friday, I got to chaperone some of the older classes trip to a cultural festival called Onepoto. This was a massive gathering of all of the Kapa Haka and Pacifica cultural groups from the primary and intermediate schools around the area. There was traditional Maori food and incredible dance performances. Jacob was performing in both of Torbay’s performances so I made sure to take my group to them. Both performances included a beautiful, flowing dance done by the girls, which was occasionally punctuated by war cries from the boys. Then as the girls’ dance was ending the boys stomped forward doing the fierce and powerful Kapa Haka chant. The whole performance was amazing and moving to watch.