Manawatu Standard Junior News

Below is an article written by four children from Lava (Room 6/7).  Their article, along with four advertisements created by children from GRi11 2.0 (Room 10/11) was published in the Manawatu Standard Junior News.

At College Street Normal School we currently have 593 College Street Kids (including us) who come to our school 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. We are a large primary school and have more than 40 staff. 

Our school vision statement is ‘Go For Gold’. This means we always try our best! We learn about how we can use the Habits of Mind and Habits of Heart to be successful in our daily lives. At CSNS we all love learning new things. Our main learning areas are maths, reading, writing and integration. We learn in comfortable environments. This means we don’t always learn at a desk. Instead we can sit on ottomans, benches, beanbags and on the floor. For reading, writing and maths we have a range of tasks to complete. We get to choose when we do each task and who we learn with. So for example, we have people crafting their writing, while other people are researching for their inquiry. 

We all get to use devices to help us with our learning. Every child has a Google account. We can access our learning at school and at home on any device and share our learning with other people at the press of a button. It is faster and easier for us and our teachers! We also use our devices to share our learning creatively by making movies and animations. Each class has a blog where we add posts about our learning and fun events we have at school. 

Every child gets the opportunity to participate in our sports rotations every week. We learn skills for a range of different sports including badminton, basketball, soccer, golf, tennis, table tennis and touch rugby. Our main school sports events in the year are triathlon, swimming sports, cross country and athletics sports. 

At CSNS there are lots of extra curricular activities we can participate in. We have sports teams, dance groups, choir, Kapa Haka, jump jam, drama club, chess club and conservation club. There are also other academic activities we can participate in such as Mathex, Otago Problem Solving Challenge and ICAS Testing. 

At lunch time we can borrow sports items from the PE shed, get active with a game of soccer or rugby on the field, hang out with friends on the playground, swing on the monkey bars, or take a break on the deck. 

Last term our whole school performed at The Regent Theatre in our school production ‘Cinderella and Rockerfella’. There is always lots happening at CSNS. Please check out our school website (csn.school.nz) or our Facebook page for more information.

Sharing our Journey

This term, our Middle Syndicate teachers used some of their classroom release time to visit our Senior Syndicate spaces. It was particularly exciting to watch and listen to our children explain their learning to our visitors!

Learner Pathway Co-construction

Classes are now actively using their co-constructed learner pathway to help develop positive learning dispositions and competencies. Throughout the year teachers have built the children’s understanding and application of the key competency managing self. The children have explored the concept of ‘The Learning Pit’ and developing a growth mindset. Children can explain their strengths as a learner and their next learning steps. The teachers have really encouraged and supported the children to make honest reflections. 

At our last CRT day, we continued to explore agency and discussed ways we could provide some children with the opportunity to lead their own learning. In order for our children to lead their own learning, they need to ensure they are being personally challenged - the learning has to be hard if they are actually going to be developing and growing their knowledge, skills and dispositions. We are looking forward to exploring these ideas during the rest of the year.

Day to Day Learning and Teaching

The children are learning to take responsibility for managing their learning throughout the day. In some of the classes, a maths time operates from 9.00am - 10.00am and the children manage the rest of their learning from 10.00am - 3.00pm. One class has incorporated maths learning across the day.  The children select which literacy, maths or integration learning task to complete, when, where and with who. They are responsible for prioritising their time on a daily basis so they can complete learning tasks before required deadlines. At this stage of the year, this process is significantly guided by the teacher for many children.

At times throughout the day children might be involved in:

• Optional workshops with a teacher e.g. Learning how to organise ideas into paragraphs, learning how to write an argument, multiplication strategies workshop.
• Small group learning with a teacher e.g. Guided reading group sessions, guided writing group sessions, maths problem-solving group sessions, spelling group session.
• Individual conferences with a teacher e.g. Touching base in relation to a research task, providing feedback on a piece of writing, getting started with a maths problem-solving challenge.
• Learning co-operatively in peers or small groups e.g. Completing a group research task and communicating learning, attending book club meetings.
• Learning independently e.g. Crafting writing, silent reading, reading follow-up tasks, completing assessments, practising spelling words, practising basic facts. 
• Whole class learning e.g. Writing motivation and modelling, maths rich task introduction.
• Syndicate learning/activities e.g. Sports Rotations, Syndicate Singing. 
• School events e.g. School assemblies, cross country.

Assessment for Learning in Writing

If our children are going to lead their own learning, they need to develop an understanding of themselves as learners so they can articulate their strengths and next learning steps. 

As part of writing learning in Term One, the children co-constructed the writing process and discussed the features of great writing across a range of text types. We explained to the children that we wanted to share the responsibility for assessing their writing with them by using the same writing matrix. 

Katie and Clive trialled this idea in 2015 and this year we want to use this approach across the Senior Syndicate. Our goal is for the children to use this tool to help them lead their own learning as it provides direction for future learning.  The matrix will help the children know which workshops to attend and allow them to request workshops to support them to meet their learning goals. The teachers worked with the children to support them to assess themselves on the matrix, highlighting what they had achieved and their next learning goals. The children are now starting to add their own evidence to support their assessments.

Traditional Teaching Style in GRi11 2.0

Reading and Writing Learning

Reading and writing learning in the Senior Syndicate looks and sounds different to what our children are use to. Katie explored this concept to help the children understand all of the reading and writing skills they are applying and developing when they are researching.