Writing! Writing! Writing!

Well we all know Writing is a huuuuuugggggeeee passion of mine and if I could I would teach Writing all day long! We end Term 1 and I can happily say I'm amazed with how my Writing programme is ticking along and the high standard of writing being produced by my wonderful students. They know I have very high expectations of them but they always rise to the challenge and by the end of their writing session they are super proud of themselves. Every child is able to write the short date and underline it using a ruler, the children are writing on every second line (some still needing stars in their margin) and they are all writing amazing sentences about the experience we have completed on the Monday. We write a class brainstorm on the Monday together, sometimes we do a map plan on this day also. I take loads of pictures during our experience, whether that is making popcorn, planting our flowers in pots, making fruit kebabs etc. I then make a sheet up which has pictures of them doing their experience and all the words we used in our brainstorm. This is ready to go and stuck in on the left hand side of their page so that they have a reference to turn to before their writing session. I have a lot of ESOL students in my class this year and I really find the visuals and the class brainstorm already stuck into their books helps these students a lot. Whilst I'm working with a mixed ability group the other students are either making a plan for their writing for the week, completing a fine motor activity, completing a jolly phonics sheet, creative writing or doing cut up sentences.

Next term our focus for Writing is:

Like this term we will still complete an experience on the Monday, whether that is brushing our teeth, making something healthy etc. We will do a classroom brainstorm about what we did and the steps. We also have some amazing opportunities to complete personal recounts about our visits when a guest speaker comes to visit us and also about themselves and their family. I'm really excited for another wonderful term of writing :)

Delving Deeper - Collaboration and Innovation in Schools.

Jane Gilbert presented at the Delving Deeper conference at the beginning of our day. She talked about Collaboration and Innovation in schools. Many points she made about collaboration raised questions, ideas, thoughts in my head about how collaboration is working in our junior team and how I could better myself as a teacher in the junior team and/or how our team could collaborate better also.

Strong collaboration is "not just sharing, pooling or exchanging existing ideas - this just reproduces existing ideas". I love this!! We as teachers are creative and forward thinkers but yet so many of us get trapped and collect and use ideas developed by others. I feel it's important that I remember to process the ideas raised, change ideas and make that idea better if possible. It's important as we travel along the collaboration journey that we create not best practice but next practice. This world is forever changing around us and it's so easy to hear or see an idea that is being used collaboratively and use it but how can we make that idea better.

Jane mentioned that productive collaboration requires deep engagement with ideas, with colleagues, with difference. It's important that if I don't understand the context about something that is being said, instead of going along with the flow, I need to think how can i get something from this person? ask questions. I need to always pay attention to my own learning and development needs and to my own on-going cognitive growth and ask myself....what am I getting out of this? How can I get more out of this to make me a better teacher.

Delving Deeper 2 - Rich Mathematical Classrooms PD

Nicky from Papanui Primary School shared with us some useful links, websites and books to explore and try out in our classroom. Since exploring some of these tonight I believe I can use some of her links etc with my children.

To use picture books with mathematical content can be an effective way to engage students and explore problems within entertaining contexts. Below is a link to each strand in Maths as well as the levels with different picture books to suit.

https://nzmaths.co.nz/picture-books-mathematical-content

Nicky mentioned Jo Boaler and her website www.youcubed.org and that we must sign up as it's a brilliant website for current research, tasks, resources and videos. Since having signed up tonight I have explored the website a little and already I have found rich mathematical tasks to try out with my groups. I will most likely try some of these rich mathematical tasks firstly with my most capable math's group.

Nicky also mentioned using Talk Moves in the classroom. This sparked a reminder to give these ago again with my YR1 class like I did with my YR3 students last year after Sophia's presentation about these. I used the posters to remind me of using these each math's lesson last year (Sophia made for all staff). I need to hunt these out!

http://www.mathsolutions.com/documents/9780941355537_ch2.pdf

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LzPnq3l_6evuOYsDiRDjABTjH4uyYxUWswsT8BiW5aI/edit

Leaving this session with Nicky today, what I took away from this which has stuck with me is providing challenging tasks is great and that it is important not to rescue the students when they are struggling as the challenge is what our students need. 

To always be creative - to use lots of materials, use equipment, whiteboards, get the students drawing and to use lots of visuals. The use of using all these things often gives opportunities for children to show their ideas and communicate these back to the group.