Waipara Wine Festival

This past Sunday, Larissa and I and two of my girlfriends from school, decided to test New Zealand's claim-to-fame; their own homegrown, freshly brewed wine. We arrived to the festival shortly after twelve and I was once again brought back to the sweet aromas and sights of Hokitika - yes you guessed it, the Wild Foods Festival. The waffle hut was there, the White Bait people were there, and live music - live country music! They had the bajo going and everything. It was the nice little piece of home that I needed.

A few wine glasses later (one for me but a few for the girls), we were rockin it out on the 'dance floor' listening to some homegrown New Zealand bands. Ah, but the best was yet to come. Without the music though, we were having enough fun enjoying the middle-aged women who had had too much to drink and their versions of what they liked to call dancing. Priceless. But when the last band, the Bubblemen, came out, we were dancing up a storom to Johnny Cash and some of the oldies. The weather was fabulous and we couldn't have asked for a better day. Larissa even found herself a "costco" hotdog and we were all in our glory. It made a nice finish to the weekend!

Parent Teacher Interviews

Last week was parent-teacher interviews and I was able to sit in a on a few to see how this is all done. I have sat in on interviews before, but these ones were a little different.

I remember sitting in Nola Aitken's class for Ed on Assessment and watching a video on portfolios. I also remember thinking how great of an idea it was, a place to showcase students work and that it would be marvelous if we could all have that in our classrooms. Of course, we talked about it for a bit as a class and came to the conclusion, that yes, it is most definitely worth the time and the effort.

However, going into the schools was another story. Neither of my TA's that I had for PSI or PSII did portfolios so I did not have a chance to see them "in action." It is now that I realize, that it is only with the support of the entire school that my TA's could have used portfolios.

So, back to parent-teacher interviews. It was here that I saw how truly useful it is to show parents in a neatly and timely fashion, how their kids are doing. Right from day one, Paparoa spends the first few weeks gathering individual writing samples, reading levels, ability to understand blends in sounds, math skills, and much more. Once all of these results are accumulated, they are added to the portfolios, shown to the parents, and the parents can see straight from scores and Tanya's expalanation, where their child is sitting. It sounds simple, but it takes hours of work to get the sampling and testing done, then to grade it, put it on a scale so the parents can see and then gather everything into each individual portflio.

But this is only possible because students are started with their own portfolio as soon as they start school and they are passed from teacher to teacher after that. It is such an excellent way to show and view progress that it now seems useless to me to host the same type of interviews that I have seen at home; the ones that say 'oh, your child is doing well, needs some work on reading." With portfolios, parents can see for themselves that extra work needs to be done because the test scores are there to prove it. Although it may seem like a lot of testing, students understand that it is to go in their portfolios so that they can also see their own improvements. The tests are not seen as a big deal and students know that it is for their own benefit. And when portfolios are sent home, parents write a comment about their child's work and effort and the students get to write and say what they are most proud of themselves for doing.

I truly believe that this is such a great and unique way of assessing but also a wonderful teaching tool because it is a place where students can see for themselves how much they have improved and that their hard work has indeed paid off.

Kiwis just know what they're doing!

Camp Wainui and Ferrymead

Well, to say the least, the last few weeks have been quite eventful. I continue to find my place at school, learning new things about teaching and myself. I feel closer and closer witht he staff everyday and am truly oving all of the people I work with. I am so lucky to have made such close friends on staff!

The kids are great too, and continue to see how far they can push me on a daily basis. haha, they are so cute but succeed in sucking the energy out of me each and every day :)

Last week, I was lucky enough to go to Ferrymead with my class as part of our Settlers topic. Ferrymead is an education-based historical center in Christchurch where we learned a lot about the settlers of Canterbury and how the people of the olden days used to live. We got to see a classroom of 100 years ago, a movie theatre and picture, chores of the old days,a nd even an old bakery. It was so much fun!

Then just this last week I was lucky enough to have the opporunity to go to camp Wainui with the senior school because they needed some extra help. That too, was so much fun and I got to do some really cool stuff which included coaststeering and jumping off a 5 meter cliff as well as abseiling and free-falling with a rope out of a 14 meter high tree!!

But despite all of the fun and good times that I had (and believe me, there were many) it made me realize how much more I enjoy teaching the older kids. I found them much easier to joke around with, they could actually relate to me and ask me intelligent questions and I could have a decent conversation with them. Although I do love little kids, I think as a graduated teacher, when I am, that I will go for upper elmentary and maybe even junior high. Funny though, I never thought I'd say that!