Google sites

Monday 30th November

Had a brilliant PD session with Julie from core education, working on 'Google sites'. I have established a good start to my site for the Lifestyles group, which is a combination of Home Economics, Health and Physical a Education. I am really happy with the start that I've made and am starting to see how I can use this fluently with the classes.

Staff and Students engage in the taste testing opportunity 

Fresh fruit salads made by my Year 10 Classes. This was selected the most popular on the day

As a school we are looking at improving the healthy options for our students in our school canteen, within my  Year 10 classes we trialed three different foods, a crispy chicken that is made from cornflakes and lots of spices, which is then grilled, to a choc chip biscuit that replaces the sugar with apple sauce and the fruit salad. Each taster was asked to place a token in the jar of the product they would most like to see the school canteen. The fruit salad was the overall winner and was trialed in the school canteen that following Friday.

Have been working with my Year 10 classes to try and get them to be creative when designing alternative and healthier burger concepts. The above picture was of the rice burger in which there was no bread used but was replaced with the rice. The patties incorporated the Japanese flavours of a teriyaki glaze. Students were a little nervous about the wasabi but many gave it a go.

PD at Papanui on Thursday for Hospitality. This is the second of our cluster meetings and it has been so beneficial being able to get together with other staff from around ChCh schools to see where we are at in comparison.

We spent the morning going through moderation and checking to make sure our marking was okay. It was such a nice feeling to know that the doubts and issues that i was having were shared with the group.

The middle session was looking at units and having pair and group discussions with people doing similar units, seeing how they were run and sharing some of my ideas. I told the other schools about my blogging of the paper work for hospitality and many were thinking of doing something similar with their classes.

In the afternoon CPIT came in and talked to us about what they are offering at their facility today.
 http://www.cpit.ac.nz/study-options/our-study-interest-areas/food-and-hospitality
It was good to finally understand the links and see the pathways that my students can then move onto. Was really interested in the new Degree of Hospitality they are looking at running in 2017, some of us staff even volunteered to be tasters for the new course.

October 20th
Today I tried a new teaching philosophy in my Childcare class: Reggio Emila Approach.
The Reggio Emilia Approach is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education which values the child as strong, capable and resilient; rich with wonder and knowledge. Every child brings with them deep curiosity and potential and this innate curiosity drives their interest to understand their world and their place within it.
The child is incharge of the direction in which their learning travels. 

So today I gave my students of what an Reggio Emilia lesson would look like, they spent time gathering objects from outside, each returning with a variety of objects. We talked about why they selected those objects and then referenced them to spring and the changes we see in nature during spring time. The students were then asked to design pictures that would give us a story. Below are examples of their work.students said this is one of the best lessons they have done in childcare this year.

Monday 14th
Tried making Gnocchi tonight as i am making it with my Hospo crew tomorrow, so needed to make sure i knew the process. Was fairly straight forward but need to make sure i boil the Gnocchi longer than what i did i think. Think the kids will have fun trying to do this.

professional learning

Have had a peer show and tell at school today showing the awesome study staff are doing with their classes and Google apps.