Dio

Diocesan (Dio) is an all girl private school that is a decile 10 school.  The school had students from Year 1 to Year 13.there was also a preschool that had children as young as 4 and a half.  A lot of infrastructure was being built, and the school had a lot great facilities for the students. Dr. Lindsey attended Dio so it was interesting seeing where she was educated.

The schools employs tutors for the students. Teachers can refer students to a tutor or a student can refer themselves if they think that they need some extra help. The first tutor was working with five students. The students were reading two different articles. On the side of the article the teacher put boxes that said character, action, setting, outcome, etc. that the students filled in as they read the stories. The teacher moved back and forth from groups for students that needed her help. Students highlighted words that they did not know and were working on self-monitoring their reading. At the end of the period, the students discussed the methods they used to comprehend the story. One thing I found surprising was that the students were looking forward to taking their spelling test and were upset when the teacher thought about cancelling it.

We got to observe another tutor who was working with two girls to prepare them for their upcoming test. The teacher was awesome! She was very funny, energetic, and creative. She had a great chart on the board that had four sections. The sections were types of words, how they are used, word sounds, and descriptive language. One of the main focuses was the different types of sentences. They read a paragraph of a prose piece and the two girls had to answer questions based on the text. I think that the girls really did learn the material because they were able to pick out the literary devices and sentence type and explain the effect of it for the piece.

We also went to the schools assembly after morning tea. One girl spoke about the importance of the school being a community. Then, awards were given out for recent sporting events. At the end, the school’s kapa haka group performed.

Dr. Lindsey and I observed a Year 10 math class. The students were given data sheets that listed ages, heights, foot length, wingspan length, bedtime, and waketime for a group of boys and girls. The students had to pick which area to look at and then analyze the data. They were given the choice to do a box and whiskers plot or a stem and leaf plot. The lesson was similar to one that I would expect to see in the United States, and I did not see anything special about the lesson.

We observed the gifted classroom. The students talked about wearable technology and the advantages and disadvantages of in a previous class. During this class, they were looking at wearable technology from an ethical perspective. The girls had to pose ethical questions. I was really impressed by the discussion that the students had over the topic. The students designed “smart clothes” for clients as if they were in the year 2035. They had to draw their idea and explain all of the features that the clothes had.