Day 2 Reflections on RPI - Know Your Learners

Today's theme for this week was Know your learners as Readers. At the start as always it was great to see our enthusiastic presenters doing their mahi in their positive and experienced way. Being able to revisit our homework through our readers profile survey was a good start and quite doable until we were taught what their reading comprehension assessment results could possibly mean. That was quite a hurdle to jump over as there was quite a bit of English jargon that I needed to get my head around and somewhat out of my learning space. Thus we perservered and managed to upload names onto the teacher workbook with the 10+ columns of evidence required for each student. Thankfully for some reason all my students were not showing on the individual report where I discovered Local Inferencing, Interpret and Integrate were my PAT Reading next steps. What did I learn that increased my understanding of the kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme ? There is a lot of technical jargon that is used for assessing and reporting back to shools and parents however Manaaikalani tries to break this down in some way through examples of challenging activities that I think works well in Primary Schools and is being utilised in Colleges. I am needing to adjust planning to fit these activites in. What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading? Continue to engage with my students through the Nature of Science which are Communicating Understanding Investigating Participation and Contribution. What did I learn that could be used with my learners? There were some good insights about the whale and sharks task board which could be implemented into Seaweek which is this week. How to write up weekly taskboards with Learning Intentions, WALT, WALHT, Learning Objectives. What did I learn that could be shared within my wider community, with either colleagues, or whānau/aiga? The Library is a very useful facility for our community, colleagues, whanau/aiga to visit and learn from. Connecting classes to using the library more often to take out books or to even use the search up a book title author on our OC portal page is quite effective for all to use. Thanks Presenters Ngā mihi

Profile Survey Reflection

First and foremost students were able to fill out the survey about themselves ✔ 14 completed survey 25/2 10 completed today 4/3 Email 24/24 First Name 24/24 Last Name 24/24 Otaki College 15/24 Year Level 24/24 Then after receiving feedback from the survey here is a short summary. PART ONE: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT READING? Q1 4/24 likes reading at school Q2 3/24 ss like reading books digi or non digital Q3 2/24 ss like reading other digital texts in own time Q4 5/24 students are enjoying a book for enjoyment Q5 7/24 students thought reading texts in their own time helped them Q6 6/24 ss have never borrowed a book from a library Q7 7/24 ss had no texts they liked to read in their own time Q8 6/24 could not list 1 favourite book Q9a 6/24 students have never had a teacher suggest further reading Q9b 6/24 students did not do further reading Q9c 12/24 could not give an example Q10 16/24 had no for their response PART TWO: HOW SKILLED ARE YOU AT READING? Q11 8/24 ss are good at reading Q12 5/24 teachers think they are good readers Q13 13/24 family whanau thinks they are good at readin Q14 Q15 When it comes to reading I want to get better at… Life skills and success: Being a good reader is important for being successful in the future and helps with almost everything in life, including having patience and learning many things. Employment: Reading skills are necessary for a good job, as reading is required for most jobs and older people with good jobs often read a lot. Understanding and knowledge: It is important to be able to read and understand information, become smart, and learn. Practical application: Reading helps with school, spelling, and passing tests, and allows people to read things that are important or needed. Q16 5/24 did not know why it is important to be a good reader Q17 2/24 did not know what to get better at in reading Overall the reading profile was very helpful to attain these results as a benchmark for this class. As I had said earlier that it would be great to take the students to the library, I needed to taihoa on that as there are a few management gems to getting to know my students before they go into the peaceful and quiet learning environment. One must persevere and search for topics in science that will engage these learners to read! Like today no one was interested in Seaweek the Ocean or the sea creatures. We discovered all students were interested in Food. And engaged in something they were all familiar in so we played kahoot 75% accuracy Food and Nutrients 55%. It is a start!

Reading Intensive Practice

 Friday February 13 2026

Today was the first session of our Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of an effective reading programme ? There were various topics which involved: Connecting with each other,  What  characterises a good reader? Teachers as Readers  Across the Curriculum  Grow good Readers Research and bringing that all together before the end. Talk about Intense! There is a lot to take in about what makes a good reader and how to follow the process and criteria of using the pedagogy and research that will enable me to teach good reading skills to my students in my classes. 

   

• What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading? I could possibly visit the library more with my students once the reading survey has been completed and we can identify a possible list of topics that could be related to their interests.

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  The first thing I could do is to get my students to do the reading survey. The next most likely task set would be to gather the data and information about what my students enjoy or don't enjoy about reading.                                                                                                         

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• What did I learn that could be shared within my wider community, with either colleagues, or whānau/aiga? Read for knowledge Read for Understanding! Read for Leisure! Read for Life! Thank you Kiri, Gorgie and Amie.

*Please add images / slides to make your blog more interesting.  

Energize Ōtaki

 Today we had the privilege for Leigh Ramsay to come to ŌC from Energize Ōtaki to speak with some groups of students so that they could listen to the expert and ask some questions.

Energize Otaki

 

Power to the People

Week 6 is timetabled for Research. Each group has a question that they are working on as a group to find out about for sustaining energy in Ōtaki. We also had a look at What is the average power bill in Aotearoa?

Group 7 - 

 Lillie Eva Pearl Preslee can we use Ōtaki waterways to generate power

Group 8   

 Potiki Ranginui Louis

Group 9           

 Jayden  David  Rose Lyla  Zion

Group 10  

 Maleah Zoe Bijou Lahaze Hinemapuia

Group 11 

 Manu Kaziah Taylor

Today's focus was to research on their question, complete the week 6 group planner and reflect in their blog as well as comment on two other blogs. There has been a lot of collaboration going on amongst peers unrelated to the topic at hand. 

DFI 9 - Revision

Today's Blog was titled Revision.
Time out was taken to reflect on where we had come from, the various gems we had picked up on the way and the whole journey with the Manaiakalani Facilitators throughout this nine week course of Digital Fluency. This was once again demonstrated in our Digital Bubbles where we were able to feedback on what had worked well over the week including any difficult areas of concern.

Following this we had a presentation of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa on Ubiquitous by Dorothy.

  The message which I received from this presentation is that life long learners need digital devices to tap into learning about anything and everything. There are a variety of resources and tools which can accompany ones learning if we all but use what is available and learn from the different aspects and experts who live and breathe this methodology and pedagogy. And from the slide it shows:

The rest of the morning was focussed on sitting the Google Exam which was very intense and 3 hours long. Reflecting over the test: If I had a chance to resit which I will probably need to I would first complete the questions which I am familiar with first and then return to those which I would need more time to complete. A'e that seems to bring back memories of sitting exams way back in the days when we had strategies on how to sit exams. Some dinosaur ideas still remain and are useful in the 21st century and with digital and online testing!

1. The thing I am most proud of is that I was able to implement my new learning into my teaching practice having to change the way I think and present to my learners who were already on their way with being streaks ahead of me in their digital fluency.
2. One of the things I regret is not strategising the way I sat the exam. As mentioned previously I should have attempted all the questions I knew first and then returned to the rest of the more difficult ones to spend more time on.
3. I will be taking a lot of gems from the whole of this course. The positivity and empowerment seen throughout the weeks, the pedagogies and the challenges that we face with learners growing as future leaders of tomorrow in both the real and digital world.
4. Loads and Loads of ideas, tools, aspects, rules, processes will be taken forward into the 'new' era of schooling. I think the thinking process of learning anywhere anytime with anyone as written in the Ubiquitous slide is the new schooling for me. And also the learning as a shared network where tools are available for all! On that note here are some of the tools which were shared from the last session of today.

 

DFI Session 8 - Computational Thinking

Today's session was all about Computational Thinking.
The day started as usual with Karakia followed by WWW where it was a good way to collaborate and catch up with members in our Digital Bubbles with facilitator Nicola. A very positive response about how we are heading towards the end of term looking forward to the end of Week 12.

The Manaiakalani Pedagogy and Kaupapa covered to day was "Empowered"
What I learnt was that through
technology and the devices being used, these were not only a tool for learners and educators but an expensive tool for life time learners. The slides which were visual and had meaning showed that the schools from Tamaki were all in the socio economical decile one area surrounded by neighbouring Decile 10 schools. Over the years of determination and a clear vision the programme has grown through the empowerment of many involved.





















This was followed by the Chalk n Talk of an Introduction into Computational Thinking and Higarau Matihiko. There were various links into programmes that have been produced over time from Te Papa and Through the Manaiakalani Outreach programme, teachers are supported to acquire digital fluency required for effective teaching, planning, assessment and professional learning
Teachers learn how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes
Supporting teacher digital fluency and confidence to deliver the curriculum in a digital environment in a 1:1 digital learning environment.

The technology strands were visited with the processes and Cybersmart alignment to the new Digital Technologies Curriculum. The following links were shared with us so that we could go online later and have a look. 

After this was unpacked we were able to have a play with the various coding tools offered. I had the opportunity to choose from the basic and stay on basic coding. Makey makey was fun and Microbit was a challenge where I was fascinated by the heart made shapes, name and emotions being transferred from computer to microbit. Here are a few of my creations caught on screen.

Achieved Puzzle two with 6 lines of codes.

Another achievement of completing the first level of sample minecraft.

My first intro to microbit enabled me to follow the instructions carefully.

 

This was fun makey makey I think.

The final time was spent on tips for resgistering for the upcoming three hour test, helpful hints for completing our blogs with the check list  and what further requirements needed for practice and staying empowered as life long digitally fluent intensive learners!