Simon Cossey Professional Blog

  As part of my professional learning I am working towards this goal:  By Week 5,  try some different ways of promoting peer-to-peer conversations during 'making time' so that our students felt comfortable sharing their ideas with their peers. The early childhood resource "Talking Together" from the Ministry of Education gave me some great tips: Environment :  - Provide activities that are creative and open.  - Choose activities that connect with the students culture and experiences - Small groups are most helpful for encouraging talk - The spaces should be calm and quiet without background music  Teacher prompts:  - Listening to a child talk and then responding with, "That reminds me of a time… does it remind you of a time…. " - Story telling - listening to a child’s story, recording and retelling (possibly with prompts) with other children joining in.  "That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of George. Has anyone got a different idea?" Using puppets to

Māori and Pacifica Giftedness  Workshop facilitated by Melissa Powell, Rosehill College  Image by  Thomas Wilken  from  Pixabay     I'm publishing this post that I wrote in September but didn't come back to.  Coming into this workshop and taking the self-evaluation I realised I knew very little about Māori and Pacifica giftedness - in-particular how giftedness is seen in these cultures.  I have this habit of projecting my understanding onto another culture and thinking it works the same way for them too!!  (Seems to be a bit of a pattern as it happens in other areas too... that's why these workshops are so important because they wake me up and help me to see through another window)  What I loved about this workshop was that it taught us about finding the strengths of our Maori and Pacifica learners and see these strengths through their eyes.  Here are some quotes from the videos we watched... ...giftedness is about leadership and generosity of spirit and wisdom... - Melind

 Circle Time - Professional Development Cycle  I have enjoyed meeting with Gretchen twice to discuss my professional goals for this year.  We decided that the context for my professional learning would be small-group circle times (which I help to facilitate twice a week).  I attained some baseline data by collecting an audio recording of my conversation with some of the students while they were doing their art. I was being conscious of using teacher talk moves: - repeating back what a student is saying  - giving wait time  - saying, "tell me more"  The conversation I had, mainly with M, was extremely interesting. He was discussing a number of deep topics that came from his art - an island. From this came a discussion about religion, politics and how people treat him.  This really showed me how art can open up conversations with students and allow them to talk about things that they have on their mind and topics that are important to them.  Gretchen and I discussed the recordi