Mary-Anne Murphy Mary-Anne Murphy

Momentum Learning Pānui October 2022

Spring is a time of renewal and offers us all a chance to appreciate our environment and take advantage of the longer days. It is also time to reflect on how we might nurture ourselves in the last few months of 2022. This term’s pānui offers some suggestions on how you might incorporate well-being into your planning for 2023 and beyond.

As always, the pace is high and there has been a lot happening for the Momentum team, read more about what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

Spring is a time of renewal and offers us all a chance to appreciate our environment and take advantage of the longer days. It is also time to reflect on how we might nurture ourselves in the last few months of 2022. This term’s pānui offers some suggestions on how you might incorporate well-being into your planning for 2023 and beyond.

As always, the pace is high and there has been a lot happening for the Momentum team, read more about what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

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Mary-Anne Murphy Mary-Anne Murphy

Momentum Learning Pānui July 2022

Where did the last term go? It seems to have taken the sun and left us with the grey days that signal winter has us in its grips. Spring can't be too far off though, given the sunshine-yellow daffodils popping up around the country!

It’s been a busy time for the Momentum team, read more about what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

Where did the last term go? It seems to have taken the sun and left us with the grey days that signal winter has us in its grips. Spring can't be too far off though, given the sunshine-yellow daffodils popping up around the country!

It’s been a busy time for the Momentum team, read more about what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

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Mary-Anne Murphy Mary-Anne Murphy

Literacy across the curriculum - NCEA

Reading and writing skills need to be actively and systematically taught across the curriculum. But what might this look like? How might it be done in all/any subject area? How can all subject teachers contribute to essential literacy learning outcomes?

Reading and writing skills need to be actively and systematically taught across the curriculum. But what might this look like? How might it be done in all/any subject area? How can all subject teachers contribute to essential literacy learning outcomes?

The following six literacy strategies can be used across the curriculum to activate and embed reading decoding strategies. These could be used as ‘peppered in’ mini activities within existing units, used as a daily dose of literacy targeting, as a starting/plenary activity or even activated as a main activity to decode texts together. 

ACTIVE NOTICING AND COMMENT CODES

Use ‘active noticing’ when reading. Students could use colour to colour-code or add comment codes along the margin to practice being active readers. Comment codes could be ‘I’ for interesting, ‘W’ for wonder or ‘X’ for connecting to a previous concept or idea. The comment codes can be individualised or designed as a class. 

IMMERSIVE READER

Use Immersive Reader plugin - this web-based plugin can be activated by highlighting text in a browser and clicking ‘read to me’. You can hear the text while reading, focus on one line at a time or even activate the features that highlight nouns, verbs and adjectives (word classes) to drill down on word selection and inference. There is even a translation tool to click on words and find a translation in another language to assist learners to access patterns and noticings with language. 

VISUWORDS

Use Visuwords to define new words - type the word into visuwords and discuss the ways that word families appear. Make connections between the words and the definitions. Click around the vocabulary and make new connections with language as other more familiar words or definitions bring clarity to the original word. 

ONE PAGER WITH TRIGGERS 

Use ‘one pager’ capture pages to capture understanding. Provide text boxes to capture learning as a result of reading. You can guide the student to notice and question by activating specific reactions with subheadings. ‘Something interesting’, ‘Something surprising’. ‘Something I’m not sure about’, ‘Something ambiguous’. 

QUESTION DICE

Use question dice to ask questions about the text. You could use digital dice to come up with questions that prompt questions that correspond to each number. Clarify, repeat, rephrase, so what, what next, why not, what if? You can co-design the questions with students to match the text type and create awareness about text types, audience and purpose.

REWORDIFY

Use rewordify.com to gain clarity and reword complex texts into more simple versions. Compare and contrast the versions. What would happen if it had to be rewritten with a character limit? Provide a twitter challenge to process and rewrite texts in class or online.

These are just a few simple strategies to trial with your ākonga. How else might you target literacy in your kura? Get in touch with us to explore more fun and engaging ways to embed literacy skills into your planning and preparation for literacy in the junior curriculum as well as for NCEA changes.  

Ministry of Education Priorities for professional development

NCEA literacy changes

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Mary-Anne Murphy Mary-Anne Murphy

Momentum Learning Pānui May 2022

Humans are adaptive by nature. We just need to look at our incredible capacity for neuroplasticity and evolution in recent times. Along with these challenges come new professional development opportunities to add to our ketes.

Read more about that and what we’ve been up to in this month’s panui.

Humans are adaptive by nature. We just need to look at our incredible capacity for neuroplasticity and evolution in recent times. Along with these challenges come new professional development opportunities to add to our ketes.

Read more about that and what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

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Mary-Anne Murphy Mary-Anne Murphy

Momentum Learning Pānui February 2022

The Momentum team have had an exciting start to 2022 and are working hard to develop a suite of resources designed to support you and your teams in this ever-changing environment. There’s a new support package on offer from the Ministry of Education that will interest you too - read more about that and what we’ve been up to in this month’s panui.

The Momentum team have had an exciting start to 2022 and are working hard to develop a suite of resources designed to support you and your teams in this ever-changing environment. There’s a new support package on offer from the Ministry of Education that will interest you too - read more about that and what we’ve been up to in this month’s pānui.

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