Reflecting on my own learning.....

This term I have embarked on an intensive language professional development course and as I was driving to school I was reflecting on my journey this term as an adult learner. I realised that when learning something new and quite complicated that stories are a really good way to solidify the knowledge and make it easier to recall information.  Then I had an idea... if this works for me, and I know it has worked for the tamariki in the past to recall knowledge,  maybe it is the pathway I need to take to further the development of a resource for my inquiry.

 So I am looking to use a legend as a metaphor for self management and retell this as a digital book, linking specific parts of the story to self management characteristics.

I want to use our staff at Hornby Primary School, the tamariki and also art work that the tamariki have created  to illustrate the digital book. Time to prepare a storyboard. The legend will be in the middle of the book somehow and the tamariki will discuss the legend, learn some strategies from it and use these to make change for the better.

Time to storyboard and get the planning underway...

I took some photos, a short video and captured the tamariki's wonderful artwork to illustrate the book. At this time I hadn't really decided on which legend I was going to use and I had a play around with a couple of different ones. I eventually ended up using the legend of Nukutāwhiti and how he voyaged to Aotearoa.  Because I work in a bilingual classroom, it was important for me to develop this resource for the tamariki through both a mainstream and a Māori lens.

It took ages to pull it all together but I was really happy with the finished product which is below.

My next step is to create a unit plan with a variety of lessons that can be used to further develop the self management key competency.

Prior to developing this resource I got the tamariki to take a questionnaire about their attitude  in the classroom with a focus on key competencies. After working with the resource,  I plan to get them to retake the questionnaire again in Term 4 and analyse that data.

Self Manager Book Click on this link to view storybook