Welcome to my Professional Learning Blog! This year, I am teaching in a 1:1 Chromebook classroom with Year 3/4 students at Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand.
At this point in the year, I am so proud of the progress that my Teir 2 children are making. It is quite evident that the extra small group time they are receiving in their tier 2 group, as well as the work they are doing in class is making a massive difference in their reading fluency and word recognition. As I prepare for Running Record testing during the next few weeks, I am excited to see the progress of these children and to see what my next steps in teaching might be as we progress through the middle of the year.
Now that we have concluded our Running Record testing I am very proud of the progress these children have made. After consulting with their tier 2 teachers, I have decided to move them from reading BSLA books to the PM books to better equip them with the comprehension skills and ability to complete learning tasks for their level.
Moving forward, I would like to have my focus be the group reading at Turquoise/Purple to better equip them to complete work at this level across all subjects and to improve their comprehension strategies when reading more involved texts before the end of the year. I would really like to see these children move to silver by the end of the year so that they are no longer 2+ years behind but rather only one year behind moving up to year 5.
At the end of 2025, I began training as a year 4 teacher in BSLA. As my training comes to an end this term, I am looking at how I can better implement small group teaching using the BSLA readers and teaching processes with my Year 4 Tier 2 students.
During the first portion of the year, I am going to focus on working with these tier 2 groups through my modeling of target graphemes and how it directly translates into student accuracy during the word-blending phase of book introduction.
My overall Inquiry Question is:
How effectively am I using 'Vocabulary Elaboration' and 'Story Grammar' mapping to prepare students for the specific linguistic demands of the new text?
My hope is that through my whole class taumata I can introduce the strategies of vocabulary elaboration and story grammar mapping that will directly fall into completed and successful independent tasks with the children. I do recognise that those in my tier 2 groups will require a little extra assisstance as the year progesses, which is why I will be placing some focus on my small group interactions with them a well.
This year, I have been focusing on my maths teaching while implementing our new maths program Prime Maths. My students are doing very well and we worked hard to understand and implement this new focused way of teaching maths.
For my final Vosaic observation of the year, my question was: Has the teacher implemented a lesson that allows students to explore mathematical concepts, using manipulatives as tools for discovery, while also facilitating meaningful mathematical discussions and problem-solving?
The progam had this to say about my lesson:
Yes. The teacher implemented a lesson that uses manipulatives for student exploration and supports mathematical discussion and problem-solving.
Manipulatives used as tools for discovery: The teacher instructs pairs to each take 10 counters and to combine and split them to explore division. The class physically combines to make 20 counters and then splits into two groups, and later students are encouraged to use counters or draw on whiteboards/MacBooks for practice.
Exploration of mathematical concepts: The teacher models and elicits conceptual understanding of division as “splitting into groups,” connects division to multiplication as its inverse, and demonstrates multiple symbolic forms of division. Concrete examples are used (20 rings into 2 groups → 10 each ; 9 seahorses into 3 groups → 3 each ; 20 chicks into 4 nests → 5 each at.
Facilitation of mathematical discussion and problem-solving: The teacher prompts pair talk and checks students’ grouping, asks guiding questions, asks students to write number sentences and explains how to record division, and has students both draw representations and use facts to check answers .
Opportunities to justify/check answers: The teacher models checking division via multiplication and has students demonstrate by counting or using multiplication facts.
Evidence-based moments to highlight
Moment 1 (manipulative exploration): Students combine counters and split into two groups to discover 20 ÷ 2 = 10.
Moment 2 (conceptual discussion and representation): The teacher connects division to multiplication and shows multiple symbolic representations and a fraction connection.
Conclusion
Overall, the transcript shows a lesson structure that integrates manipulatives for hands-on discovery, prompts partner discussion, models representation and notation, and reinforces conceptual understanding and checking strategies—supporting meaningful mathematical exploration and problem-solving.
At the beginning of the year, I was most worried about how to best implement the use of manipulatives to springboard conceptual understanding and mathematical vocabulary development. Now, I fully believe that take the time to read the teacher notes and follow them as a guide for my maths lessons I can easily achieve this in my lessons on a daily basis.
The summary of my lesson provided me with more feedback that I will consider moving forward into next year, primarily providing more opportunites for students to talk during our math sessions especially during the we do/you do portions of our lessons.
