Currently in Aotearoa, New Zealand we are having a rapid shift in pedagogy and this is reflected in our new English and Maths Curriculums. Lots of our kaiako (teachers) are working double time to lean into new spelling, writing, and maths scope and sequences, while finding their own rhythm within this new learning and teaching. All within our first term of 2025.
Although the Science of Learning is not new to many the amount of new information through PD, staff meetings and daily planning and teaching is huge. A current cornerstone word is 'retrieval', there is so much discussion around, "how can we help our students build their memory and knowledge by pulling information out, not by just putting it in?" But what about our teachers?
As my role as Year 2 teacher, Junior Literacy Lead and Apple Coach I am developing a digital bookshelf for staff to help them cut down on cognitive load and support retrieval through simplified planners and modelling resources for writing made with Pages and Keynote. These resources are based on our writing scope and sequence and are designed to be used digitally as part of a modelling book, printed for hands on manipulation for our teachers and kids, as well as being adapted for their own teaching and planning resources. Having choice, variety and time to go back to digital books when, or if needed will hopefully help in this process too.
As well, there will be scheduled staff meetings, modelled lessons and informal conversations. These are to support teachers to implement sentence level fluency and aspects of composition, such as writing to inform, persuade and entertain. I have attached an example of one of my digital books, 'Writing to Entertain.'
I would love to hear how other coaches are supporting staff with new learning and retrieval of what is most essential to them and their students.
April 21, 2025
This is great, Bex. I hear from school leaders about the cognitive overload all the time and anything we can do to lessen that is very welcomed by teachers!
Also great to see you sharing some of your resources with teachers here on the forum! I know teachers who do this as a way for their colleagues to access content like Pages and Keynote docs. They often have a link to their profile page and teachers can see all their posts. Could be an idea to upload some of the editable resources you have here…😀
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