9. The presentation to Mr Jacob Mana and the Local Iwi.

On the day, we had the presentation at 2.30pm. The principal, my teaching assistant and my tutor teacher were attending as the company owner and representatives of the local Iwi respectively.

I booked the hall so that we could have the morning and afternoon to rehearse. At 11am, they practised in their teams whilst I put some of their work up on the wall. There were a lot of unfinished works but I was not phased by this, we did what we could and concentrated on the hands-on stuff.

Next time I will use what I have learnt to improve the transmission of the learning into other curricular areas. (More detailed photos of their work will appear in the last blog of ONLY photos.)

Then we set about the final rehearsing. Three girls from the same freeze frame were absent so we had to re-jig and get rid of one of them (5 instead of 6). Instead of me calling out the six-word poem at the beginning of each freeze frame, I split this in between the two girls with nothing to do. One of them was obviously too quiet so I asked who would like to do it and found a loud replacement very quickly! I have to tell you that it was REALLY difficult to give up that job. The poem coats the FF in drama and my booming voice was perfect! But, yet again, the kids came through and their projected voices were great! I stood out of the way and did not participate AT ALL. I just took photos and walked around...proudly! They were so good! They finished with a Q&A and they all seemed very proud of their efforts.

Host Laura's Welcome and Introduction.

Setting the scene..with the Six-word Poem... ...Very dramatic!

Pressing the 'button' to get the FF moving...

Like a real company...

Committed...

Invested...

Engaged...

...giving their all!

Telling their stories.

Comments

1. Starting out

Welcome to our blog! We are Miguel Garcia and Viv Aitken. This is what we look like: Miguel is a beginning teacher at Intermediate level, living the dream in New Plymouth. Viv is a lecturer, research and PLD facilitator based in Palmerston North. We're using this blog to record our planning and reflection conversations about Mantle of the Expert. We're hoping our posts will be of interest to teachers starting out in Mantle. We'd love to get comments, tips and advice from experienced teachers too - all comments welcome! We'll be sharing our ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs and hope to include contributions from children in the class as well. Viv says: What brought us to this point? Well, last year Miguel bravely embarked on his first attempt at teaching in Mantle of the Expert. He came to me, his prev...

10. Responses and Final Reflections.

Phew! All done, what a ride! I think it took us 7 weeks all in. Considering the amount of upheaval that we experienced, we did a great job. What I wanted to prove most of all was that YOU CAN DO THIS. In a very short time. I'm a 2nd-year teacher struggling to get my program together...but won't I always be? Yes, the cross-curricular work was not to the best standard but that was through my inexperience. I now see that I could EASILY have improved the standard of the work by either: making the quality of the work PART of the Mantle having some forethought about my core subject teaching, and theming that work according to the topic and our focus My MOTE was very separate from my core subjects. This needn't/shouldn't be the case. I did this because it was the first term and there was too much going on with assessment and class setup and what not. Next time I will integrate the MOTE story across the curriculum. It's easiest to do with art but making it pa...

5. Writing and researching

It's now week five and the formal commission is underway... Miguel, can you describe how the class responded to the VOKI presentation? From what you told me, it sounds like it was a rich opportunity for aural language as they listened, inferred and questioned. I also liked what you said about holding back from directing the children and instead asking "how do you think the information should be presented to the client?" I think you found the children came up with ideas similar to what you would have planned - plus some other 'angles' you hadn't thought of...? I'd love you to share some more on the temptations to lead and the benefits of walking alongside the learners - this sounds like a really important part of your experience... Yes! After watching the video (I spoke about 'Voki' on the last blog, see images) I asked: "so...how are we going to do this?". And then I went quiet, resisting the temptation to lead. We have time restra...

Miguel's Mantle of the Expert adventures

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