Welcome to my Blog

Kia ora, my name is Marielle Brown and I am a beginning teacher at St Francis Catholic Primary School in Christchurch. I am teaching in a collaborative year 0-2 hub with 4 other teachers.  Our hub is a purpose built Learning Through Play environment.

This is my first job since recently completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching at the New Zealand Graduate School of Education. During my time at the Graduate School I went on 5 placements that were 6-7 weeks full time and through this I was able to gain a lot of practical experience inside the classroom. This has put me in good stead for beginning my career in teaching. 

I am loving my new role at St Francis. I would label the school to be highly innovative and progressive. Being in an environment like this is extremely valuable to me as it is supporting me progress forward in my teaching and learning journey. Some recent professional development I have been taking part in is; The Structured Language approach to Literacy and Jane Considine's 'The Write Stuff'- Transforming the teaching of Writing. 

I am passionate about teaching and enthusiastic about learning. This blog will be an insight into my teaching and learning journey. Feel free to comment or ask any questions!

Ngā mihi nui 

Marielle 



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Structured Language

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St Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary School adopted the Structured Language approach to Literacy near the beginning of this year (2020). Before taking on my role in Term 3 as a teacher in the Kakano hub (year 0-2) I was fortunate enough to attend a Professional Development course directed by Liz Kane on this approach to teaching Literacy. Since attending this PD course I have taught this approach for over a month to a small group. In this post I will share a brief overview of the Science of Reading that has informed the Structured Language approach. As well as some personal thoughts and insights into my experience with observing and teaching/facilitating the programme.  The Structured Language approach is directly based on the Science of Reading and what we know about how the brain works. The Science shows us that learning to read and write is not a natural process. The written code has not existed long enough for us to be 'hard wired' to read. In contrast to this spoken langu...
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Project Based Learning

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