Keeping Up with Mrs Faalili

One of the many lockdown struggles with this group of boys has been trying to get them connected in their calls, by choice. Wanting to connect in. Each time I'd pop on their calls, there was only ever 1 or 2 of them connected. This has been ongoing, since we first went into lockdown.  You would've seen on a previous post that I had sent my group of boys an email in an attempt to connect in with them.  Today we got to catch up and how good it was to finally connect with them and just chill. We spent a small bit just talking about how home learning is going, the struggles etc and then spent the rest of it just listening and laughing to their stories.  Today reminded me that we, as educators need to be going the extra mile for our tamariki. It's not detailed in our job description but I believe that this is a way to break down barriers and build on our connections with our tamariki and whanau. Why should we go the extra mile? Because if we don't, who will? If we don't,...

Sitting in a lockdown thinking about the next steps for my Hiss Hass Hoos Boys  While in lockdown we will connect online, during the school day . The goal is to support them in their learning tasks as well as check in on their well-being , how things are going generally. This will give me an indication of who may need other support.  The aim, when we're back at school is to use ALL strategies to support the boys in making tracks in their writing. A few years ago, my colleague Christine Tupou had real success with her ALL group in writing and the boys that I have this year, present very similar abilities and struggles in their learning. I aim to replicate this and apply it to the group. What she did was  > GAP ANALYSIS - identifying what they were able to do, where that fit in writing matrix and then identifying where they're expected to be (Level 4).  > Sharing that with the students - she did the same thing with her target students, and unpacked, compared the...