Our School Goal this year is on improving writing.
Earlier in the year, my wife was contacted about a educational conference that was being offered for home-schoolers and teachers by Andrew Pudewa, the author of Writing With Excallence. The conference was entitled Spicing Up Your Kids' Learning.
I applied for leave to attend the conference and my request was granted and my course and travel costs were also covered by the school.
The Conference was held at the Bishopdale Reformed Church in Christchurch, August 10-11 2018
The following topics were covered:
- Nurturing Competent Communicators - The Power of Linguistic Patterns
- The Four Deadly Errors of Teaching Writing
- Fairy Tales and the Moral Imagination
- Paper and Pen: What the Research Says
- Mastery Learning
- The Four Language Arts
- Seven Keys Of Great Teaching
- Teaching Boys & Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day
- Lessons Learned From Three Decades Of Teaching
- + Question times
The conference helped very much and enthused me lots and gave me a lot of things to think about in regards to the way I teach and the way I could be teaching Writing.
In blogs to follow, I will share What I learned...
My wife and I also bought a couple of resources that I hope to use.
Bible Heroes Writing Lessons With Structure and Style
Teaching Writing, Structure, and Style - Seminar with practical workbook and 12 DVD's
While Year 7 and 8s were on their leadership camp Judy-Anne and I decided to have a camp themed week ourselves at school. Although there were many activities organised there was a lot of free choice and free time. At the start of the week we noticed many of the students struggled to find things to do or choose an activity as they were so used to be being told what to do. Eventually after an hour or so we noticed children settling into a task or game that they had created and become immersed in something that really interested them. Even the older students when given boxes, tents, sleeping bags, sports equipment etc and a few prompts were thoroughly engaged in building huts, playing camp and organising games. We found this was a really great way to get to know the students better, know their interests and found many things to follow up with in the classroom based on individual interests which promotes motivation.
We were lucky we had so many parents volunteer to take activities such as cooking, sewing, bees wax creations, campfires and damper. The students really got into the spirit of camp week and we found there was less behaviour problems when the students were allowed that freedom to choose which I guess relates to play based learning.
