Reflection

Working with this group was very exciting. I had a lot of prior knowledge about the country of their choice, (India) so it was easy to teach. In these lessons, students have tried to find facts about India so to plan their holiday for two weeks. For this they had to find the best time to travel, how is the weather of India different to New Zealand, cost of food and lodging, currency exchange and the culture that they would find when they visit this country. Integration with other curriculum areas helped them make connections to their experiences. This enriched the study even more.

Integrating unit studies with different learning areas helped students to learn lots of new words. This has helped them to explain their learning better. At the ‘Ako’ evening, students were seen explaining difficult words like, lodging, shared accommodation and currency exchange to their whanau. This made their whanau feel very proud of their children’s learning.

Next steps

It is my passion to integrate topic studies into different curriculum areas. Aaron Wilson has emphasised on building vocabulary at almost every Manaiakalani PLG meetings. Anne Sinclair has always talked about teachers talking less and students talking more and I could not agree any less with both of them. I urgently feel I have this big responsibility where students are given ample opportunities to develop their vocabulary bank so they are able to express themselves more clearly and topic studies provides a fantastic platform for it.

So my next step will be to continue to integrate as many learning areas as possible into a unit.