Week 6 - Workshop 1

This week we all gathered in Wellington at Tapu Te Ranga Marae. A beautiful Marae with an equally beautiful story which you can read on their website. We spent two days participating in activities that focused around capability one: Gather and interpret Data, and capability two: Using evidence. We spent a lot of time observing and learning about the difference between observing and inferring. Some heated discussions were had over whether someones observation was an inference or not. Bridgette (our teacher) was wonderful in steering us in the right direction with some excellently placed 'go back and look again', or 'is the an observation or an inference'. I really enjoyed these sessions and can see how I want to implement this simple task into my schools science plans.

We were also incredibly lucky to meet Dr Craig Rofe from Victoria University. He is so passionate about enabling others to be culturally responsive in their practices, whether that be in the classroom/job or in your everyday life. I came away from our time with him feeling quite inspired on how I can make some subtle changes in my classroom and also our science programme to become more culturally responsive but also to do it with integrity. We all had searched up some Maori Purakau (narratives) from our local areas, we read them out and in groups did a role play. This was an enormous amount of fun which helped us bond as a group and better understand how the Maori Purakau is also so very important in how we approach science in our classrooms. Craig took us up into the bush to find some Rongo (plants you can eat/use), he showed us local plants that can be used as salves, to unblock your system, to make tea and antibacterial oil with.

The experience on this Marae was beautiful, enriching and inspiring. Thank you Craig.

Once we got back to the Royal Society Te Aparangi we began digging deeper into the nitty gritty of the science capabilities. We were given the opportunity to look deeper into some questioning techniques (Revoicing, Rewording, Pressing, Probing). We paired off and begin creating mini lessons that we will teach next time around. During these lessons we will be filmed so we can go back and critique ourselves. To break up this lesson planning we did some more observations using skittles and water. So simple, but so much excitement!

We visited two schools in the afternoons. Koranui Primary school where we met Di Wright who was a recipient of the Prime Ministers Science teachers award in 2016. I was amazed at the science that exudes from this school, their classrooms are covered in it, the teachers speak it and the playground grows with it. They have a bee hive that the students designed and built and now man, they make their own honey! They are heavily involved in a scheme to fix their local water ways as well. The Maori language and Purakau are evident in all their displays and in how the teachers question the students. I left inspired.

Then to Onslow College. It was a nice opportunity to get an insight into the high school perspective. The teacher there brought to light the issues with MLE classrooms when the students progress on into high school. We did an experiment with the students where I got to practice my new questioning techniques, and they worked a charm!

Lots of thinking came from this week. The biggest for me was the idea of 'culturally responsive practice'. I've been pondering a lot on how we can better integrate the Maori curriculum and the need for Purakau in our units, but also the simple task of using the Maori words during our lessons. When I return to school I want this to be a goal of mine, to integrate with integrity.