Mālō e lelei,
My Name is Clarelle Carruthers. I am a year 4 Teacher at Pt England School. I enjoy creating with my class and engaging in art that inspires them to talk about the world and their own values and ideas. In my many roles across our cluster i have had the great privilege to work with lots of different teachers and see how different learning environments can foster collaboration. I try my best to draw on all I see and improve with every new experience I have.
I am a passionate and dedicated teacher who is committed to making a difference in the lives of my students. I strive to be culturally responsive in my teaching by learning about my students' cultures and experiences, and by using this knowledge to create a more inclusive and welcoming classroom environment. I am also committed to intervention, and I am always looking for creative and innovative ways to challenge and extend my students while addressing their individual needs.
This year in my teaching I have had to come up woth cretive ways of engaging children from a distance. Some way I have done this is by sharing more about my life. I have also made many phone calls and made checking on on not only children but their families a huge part of my role as a teacher. Through building these relationships I have found that children were more engaged in online learning and that made the transitions in and out of school easier for many of them.
Manaiakalani Class Onair is an opportunity to film lessons in the classroom and share them with the teaching community. It provides a place for me to share what I am doing in the hope it will help, support and inspire others.
Below are some images if you click on each image it will take you to a lesson I am particularly proud of from 2021. Along side each lesson link is the feedback I received from the amazing Anne Sinclair a part of the Manaiakalani team and former Auckland university lecturer with years of teaching experience.
"Dear Clarelle,
I liked them all! The Matariki art work represented the values the students had described such as growing, peace, love, care kindness in the very act of painting. It was so gratifying to see how they embraced Matariki in so many ways and in the process used literacy, music, art, maths, writing, reading, science to show their understanding. I know term 2 was hard but you came out of it with wonderful experiences for your students. Thank you!!"
Anne Sinclair
"The Minecraft Episode was like sitting with my granddaughter and going through her villages with the thinking behind them. I loved Empathy Village and the houses for each student. The Hero idea was also illuminating and gave us a mind picture to reflect on. Learning about people with the NPC’s also provided another dimension for thinking. I was completely caught up in the ideas and visuals."
Anne Sinclair
"You have utilised JamBoard so well as such a good teaching tooling different ways. The storyboarding technique for the FF was a perfect platform for garnering the work. Not being together has been taken to a new level of display and collecting and curating and performing the ideas. Keep pushing the boat out Clarelle with your ideas!! Thank you for making my morning."
Anne Sinclair
PES_Carruthers_Learnonline.pngCovid-Lockdowns have been a challenging time for all around New Zealand. I along with my wonderful colleagues at Pt England School have been working hard to create a sense of normal for our learners through connecting online. We are so privileged in our community to have access to devices for all our learners. During this time I made regular wellness check in phone call, sent email and engaged with children though video call. Below are some examples of how my team and I did this.
This site I part of our normal classroom site. In order to meet the needs of children learning at home we adjusted the site having a specific page with all the learning. Children were guided through the learning and we had a strong focus on consistency, reflection and opportunities to share feelings and ideas.
Walk it out.MOVThroughout the time spent at home I made over 50 videos modelling activities and explaining the learning for the week ahead. This allowed me and the children to stay connected even if they couldn't connect to the Google Meets.
