Workshops for Kaiako

This year we have run a series of workshops for Kaiako from across our kura.

This year we have run a series of workshops for kaiako from across our kura. At the end of term three, we ran a workshop in the Science department. We developed the workshop we had previously presented, by using specific Science content and therefore tailoring it to address specific literacy needs within Junior Science. Kaiako tried out strategies designed to help students read and understand Science texts by working collaboratively, using repetition, speaking and listening. As we have found in other workshops, they were keen students and became quite competitive when completing the tasks!

Alongside this work we continued to collaboratively plan and teach our Year 11 English class. We were keen to find out how students who were multi-lingual learners felt about being part of a mainstream English class. In term 4, we invited students to a lunch time feedback session about their year in a collaborative class. We interviewed them in small group settings so we could capture their thoughts on the year.

Positives included: “Liked the group work”, “Learnt more complex English words”, “Met new people”, “It was hard at first understanding the content but it got easier”, “Felt more involved this year because this class has so many students and its busier”, “More discussions in class and I felt comfortable”, “Easily able to make friends when I see them in more than one class (science, maths etc)”.
Negatives included: “It was difficult to be in groups with Kiwi students because I was nervous about understanding them or being understood but I do need to challenge myself”, “Not as much teacher attention in a big class”, “The Kiwi students were quiet and didn’t participate as much as I thought and I was surprised by that”.

This feedback was valuable and will help us next year when we are teaching. We found workshop type lessons were an effective way to reach all students. It also proved to be a way of fostering collaboration with a variety of students and helped students feel more confident to participate by giving their ideas or feeling better about asking questions.

In 2022, our goal is to hold multiple workshops for teachers in department and by choice. In 2022, we intend to continue research into literacy in academic disciplines and to work with kaiako to develop specific learning units in different subject areas. We have had a productive year and look forward to developing our project more in 2022