This week my class and I have welcomed both Nicola Wells and Donna Ryan, two of our Manaiakalani Across School COL teachers, into our learning space.
Last term Nicola helped me to plan my science unit and not only shared her expertise, but also offered to come in and take a group of students through an experiment. The group of students working with Nicola were not only excited to take part in her lesson, but were also able to transfer their newly learnt knowledge and vocabulary to their inquiry sessions later in the week.
Today Donna and I had a professional catch up. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get her feedback about how I was supporting my high needs learners. She helped me to adapt my phonics program so that it is age appropriate for my year 7/8 students. Phonics is something my high needs learners need, but as they are eleven and twelve, using junior based resources is not the best choice to make. My teacher aid and I had already added our own twist to these lessons, and as we both had the opportunity to speak with Donna, have been able to build onto this. The best piece of feedback I got today was that our inclusive learning environment meant identifying these students was not something Donna was able to do immediately.
I am now looking forward to seeing my learners work through the stages of carrying out a science investigation with Nicola, and to implementing the suggestions Donna made to help us meet the individual learning needs in our phonics program. A huge thank you to both Nicola and Donna for their professional support.
I was an absolute pleasure visiting your classroom. I was so impressed with the way your students were so focused on their learning. Keep up the amazing work it was fabulous to see such explicit teaching happening.
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