PE and Health Kahu ako Meeting

Yesterday afternoon (28 August) I meet with the heads of Pe and Health from Gore High, West Gore and Matuara Primary. The purpose of the meeting was to share what each school was doing for their PE programmes so that we can better streamline our programmes through the different levels.

We shared our longterm plans. I have a few ideas for Longford's long term plans and want to start doing things on a better cycle. This probably has happened in the past, but seems to have fallen by the way side since I took over the roll. I also want to start a Google site with PE plans and activities clearly on it. (Something I may look to do over the holidays)

We also discussed reporting against the PE and Health curriculum and how hard it is, and wondered if it would be better to report for PE and Health using the Key Competencies. I will ask around other schools and see how they report. They don't have standards to report against until NZCA.

There was also discussion around how long we do PE and Health for each week. Gore High year 9's are timetabled in for 2 1 hour sessions, and 1 hour of health a week. They were pleased that we are doing 2 45 minute sessions timetabled here at Longford.

It was interesting as all schools are looking at Sexuality/puberty in Health at the moment.

Some take home points I have from yesterdays meeting is:

• We are on the right track here at Longford
• I need to sort out a cycling longterm plan of when we do PE activities
• I need to look at swimming and see if we can do water safety
• Cross country - We are the only school that it was optional for - this will need to change next year West Gore struggled with some of their learners with other siblings at Longford
• Look at creating a Google site with all PE information.

Well-being in the Health and PE Curriculum

Last week I was fortunate enough to go a PLD session on Well-being, which was run by Susannah Steven from the UC child well-being institute. (9 August 2019)

She was fantastic in that everything she shared with us was evidence based. I took several things away from this PLD day.

The first was that feeling good - the presense of contentment, happiness and feeling like you are able to engage with life and functioning well - feeling of being in control, maintaining positive relationships, being satisfied and having a sense of purpose need to be run at the same time. You can not build up one, without having the other.

She talked a lot a bout the state of well-being being a process. This in turn should be changing how we view the health curriculum here at school. Health should be viewed in a holistic sense, it is not just the physiological body. If we view health holistically it will change the way it looks in the community.

Susannah also referred lots to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We can not expect greatness from our students if the basic needs are not being meet.

I was thinking about out Health and PE programme and thought about how we can best use the subject area to increase our students well-being, and what changes we can make to address this.

Chapter Chat - Follow up

My class and I have finish our first Chapter Chat session for the year. It was the first time I had run it, and was the first time my students had been involved.

Overall my students enjoyed the choices of activities. My biggest concern is that some of my students failed to really push themselves, this is something I am going to need to watch next term. One student hasn't handed in work in, and the only work she did complete was the art activities.

I have finished this term of Chapter Chat activities, and whilst I really saw the benefit of doing it and sharing I found it extremely hard to keep my students motivated and pushing themselves with the harder activities. I also found it frustrating that other teachers who I work with where using my programme, without sharing anything back in return. With camp also happening in week 1 of term 3 I was wondering about continuing it for term 3. I have asked my students what they wanted to do, and they too decided to have a break from doing chapter chat. So next term we will be doing a Book Club style activity. Watch this space..

Running Records

Ren went over Running Records to ensure that all teachers understood how these were done and that they were confident to perform in them in their class. This PD came about after a conversation I had with some other teachers that I was doing them in my class.

How do my students know what they are learning in Mathematics

This term I have changed up maths in my class to make it more realistic for my students. I have given each student a copy of the Numeracy progressions for Geometry (What we are focussing on) and have got them each to identify what they are able to do. This actually took a lot longer than I thought as some students we very careful about what they put. Once they identified their gaps, I then put on some workshops for what I thought were gaps in their learning. This was working okay, but I wanted to see what I could do better and how I could make maths more engaging.

Thus I decided to get students to give me workshop topics on a Friday about what they needed run. As a class we then select four options, and then the students sign up to these. I have seen a real growth in the few weeks I have been doing this. Students are relating back to their Numeracy Progressions and really thinking about what their next steps are, and what they need to work on. Some students are signing up to more than one workshop and are very engaged when they come.

By getting students to select on a Friday what they need workshops run on, means that I have the weekend to plan for maths, and can start Monday running. Maths classes have a real buzz, and students are engaged with their learning.

Currently my maths programme is Monday - Thursday Workshops and activities and Friday is whole class problem solving. In whole class problem solving students are put into mixed ability grouping and given a level 4 problem from the NZ Maths website.

Next Steps: Start getting the students to design their activities when they are not with me, currently I assign work that they need to do. I am going to start looking at Number Strand, and run workshops on Geometry. I would also like students that are more confident to start running workshops too.

The Effectiveness of Teaching PE Skills

This term the school has been doing Volley Ball I started this by writing a unit to cover the skills my kids would need. I have booked the MLT stadium for all the classes to use. On the first session I thought about giving all my students a rubric so they could highlight what they couldn't do, and set goals around the skills for Volley Ball. After chatting to my class, I realised that most of them had never played Volley Ball so giving them the rubric without first trying the skills would be a fruitless waste of time. Thus we headed over to the Stadium without any pre teaching.

Once we got to the stadium I showed the Students the Four basic skills needed to play Volley Ball. These being the Under Arm Serve, the set, the forearm pass and the spike. I demonstrated each skill to the class and then let them loose to have a go. I then brought the class back and explained a modified version of the rules, then got them into four teams to have a game. When we got back to school, students were then able to identify the skills they needed to work on. I feel like doing it this way worked better as students were able to experience the skills required.

The next session we looked at under arm serving, I am using a kiwi sports manual aimed at Year 5&6. Whilst it is aimed at younger students, I have found it beneficial in being able to break down the skills into easier teaching sequences. Most of my students are beginning to have success with underarm serving. I am enjoying being able to float around the class and help with any that are struggling.

Overall my students are really enjoying Volleyball. They are slowly improving in their skills and having fun doing it. All are joining in.

My next steps with these PE lessons are: Ensure ALL students are arriving at school with the correct PE gear, as some are not. So far I am trialing using Banqer and "Fining" them if they haven't brought their gear. I am also going to put something in regards to having correct gear in the class "Licensing system" I have introduced to the class.

Bamford - Observation of teaching Practices

I was in Christchurch for an athletics competition, so decided to visit a lower decile school to gain some ideas for Longford.

Bamford school is a full primary school located in Woolston Christchurch. It is a decile 3 school with a new senior management team and quite a few new staff.

I was in a year 7 & 8 class and notice that the students seem very low in their learning, this was confirmed by the teacher as true. Some of the students struggle with behavioural issues and this affects their learning. However, their teacher is working on behaviour with leadership roles within in the school which is engaging the students better.

The classroom set up in the year 7 & 8 Class was they had assigned seating, but where at tables rather than desks. The students had cubbies for their equipment, but the teacher has larger containers on each desk that their books and pencil cases live in. I questioned this, and she said it was because they used to muck around at their cubbies and were wasting time.