TEACH LIKE A PIRATE - ASK AND ANALYZE

"Capturing your thoughts validates their worth" pg 47

Where and when do you get your best ideas? What do you do to remember them?

"Creative ideas don't come out of the blue; they come from engaging in the creative process. That critical process starts when you ask the right types of questions and then actively seek the answers".

Pinterest is my favourite. I often find myself scrolling for nothing in particular just before bedtime and this is when I will find an idea that I love/want to share with my class or adapt it/change it. Remembering ideas from Pinterest is easy - save it to my board.

I also believe some of the best ideas are from the great teachers around us! Sharing/asking questions/general conversation about what one another is doing.

RAPPORT - TEACH LIKE A PIRATE!

What is rapport? Why is it important?

Connecting with all students in a environment that is safe and supportive where children feel valued. Rapport is building trust and respect with all students in the class.

"Kids can tell the difference between teachers who only seem to care about them when they are sitting in the classroom, and those who see past the "student" to the unique person who resides inside."

IMMERSION - TEACH LIKE A PIRATE!

Are you a lifeguard (more focus) or a swimmer (total immersion)?

I think I mainly sway towards being a swimmer. Yes I may have the odd lesson where I stand back but most of the time I'm immersed in the learning with the children.

Interesting in this section...."Student's can feel it when you are truely present".

I wonder if the kids have noticed I haven't been truely present this week....having nits, I have to say my paranoid mind has been in action and it's constantly been on my mind. I'm pleased to say I had my hair checked today and she confirmed that they were all gone :)

This also made me think of the Bin it, Bag it, and Bring it approach that Donna and Glenys introduced us too. 

What are 2 things you can do in your classroom to make the swap from focus to immersion?

Testing - this is a time where I'm not immersed in the tasks set for the children. Where possible I try to complete my testing in my extra value added time / CRT etc.

Independent group tasks i.e maths / reading - Join in on an activity after taking a group / have a slot where I join in with the children on their independent activities.

"Total immersion. Your ability to completely give yourself up to the moment and fully "be" with your students is an awesome and unmistakably powerful technique".

PASSION - TEACH LIKE A PIRATE!

In your classroom what curriculum area are you passionate about teaching?

I am most passionate about teaching WRITING! 

 

I love providing opportunities for children to use their imagination, engage in new experiences, be creative and share their stories with others. I love listening to my student's stories. Seeing them smile, laugh and be so proud of their work. Every student has a different story to tell and each piece of writing is unique and tells a different story. 

Within your profession but not specific to curriculum area, what are you passionate about?

I'm passionate about being the best teacher I can be, building some of the best relationships with my student's and being their for those kids who need that someone special in their lives. I want to be a breath of fresh air for my students and make their learning environment a positive and safe environment. 

https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion#t-67213

Completely outside your profession, what are you passionate about?

I'm passionate about my family. I love having family time with my partner and my wee boy. I enjoy renovating our house and moving forward together.

Art, craft, craft markets...

Cooking, baking....etc

Oh and gardening :)

I LOVED....

"It's about helping the next generation fulfill their potential and become successful human beings. It's no longer about memorising facts; it's about inspiring greatness." P.g 10

"no matter where they start in life, or how low they fall, they can still, through the power of self-education and their own efforts, rise to greatness." P.g 10.

"Passion is all about being on fire in front of your class." P.g 12

Hui Term 2

First Hui yesterday afternoon for Term 2. We have moved onto focusing on actions for the next four weeks, then body parts between weeks 5-8 and then finishing the term with Matariki in weeks 9 and 10. I took our first session yesterday and for it being the first day back after a two week holiday and an afternoon session I thought the children did well. Two children from each class get an opportunity to come up to the front to complete their mihi and we have now extended the mihi for our Yr 3 students. This seems to take a very long time as most students need help to complete their mihi. For example they don't no what their parents first names are, they don't know their iwi etc. I believe it would be beneficial for each child to have their own copy of their personal mihi. These could then be laminated and practised over the week and brought to the hui session to make this part of the hui more beneficial. 

I loved the lyrics and music to Ka taea e au and thought this was a great song to include for our action hui lessons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ehsUjQhMUM

Moving forward I would space some of the songs out better between activities as I had put a lot of the songs near the end of the lesson. 

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. 

Professional Development - Improving Boys' Literacy Skills

Staff Meeting - 29/03/17

Virginia shared her experience and knowledge on a workshop she attended about Improving Boys' Literacy Skills at our staff meeting last night.

Writing, Writing, Writing!! I love teaching it and I believe I give many opportunities for not only boys but the whole class to take pride in their work. Sharing their Writing to the class, sharing their Writing with their buddy class, the office, uploading their Writing to Seesaw, sharing their Writing at assembly.....the list goes on. I praise students often and I have noticed the difference in boys when I praise the positive work they do during a Writing session and how that helps them to want to keep Writing and produce Writing that is quality. Finding out what the boys want to be when they get older and using pictures of this and explaining how those people take pride in their work may work as a good reminder and visual for the boys in the class. I thought it was interesting when Virginia mentioned using stickers to motivate boys as I could relate. Some people would think stickers would never motivate a boy or excite a boy about their work. The boys love stickers in my class and I even use them when children are on-task at the jelly bean table etc and it works a treat.

Having attended the Sharp Reading workshop, I feel my Reading lessons are now tightly structured and well focused.

Buddy Reading - happens on a Wednesday afternoon and it is fabulous to see the older boys reading to the younger boys in my class.

Ideas for teaching boys Writing/Reading in my class.

Choosing topics that interests them.

Having a boys Writing session on Friday. Boys can bring something from home to write about in their session. Discussion about what their toy is and what it does at the beginning of the lesson.

Experience on a Monday - having a few that are crazy, boy related activities that the girls will still enjoy.

Use more graphics, pictures and storyboards.

Link I loved and would use that Virginia mentioned at the meeting.

pobble365.com – photo of the day

This is an amazing resource that I will keep in the back of my head for a time where I could use it. Maybe not with my Yr1 class but def a fantastic resource to use with a senior class.

Last year I did a lot of work around my Yr3 children having a growth mindset and I used class Dojo as a resource to help children understand the brain and the neural pathways etc. I believe my Yr1 class would benefit from this again this year and I see the importance of squeezing it into my timetable. Virginia sparked my memory to pencil this into my planning and teach my children about having a growth mindset.

Week 3 Reflection - Term 2 - 2016

Writing

Last week Jan, Virginia and myself got together to collaborate ideas around Writing and plan what we would like to cover over the term. Over the next three weeks the children will be learning to make their stories more interesting by adding detail. They will know they have achieved this if they can add WOW words and use their senses in their stories. Last week we did Leaves as the topic for Writing. The children loved going outside to rake the leaves off the footpath. They were really excited to give lots of ideas for the different senses. I was really impressed by the Writing produced by the children and am looking forward to seeing more progress over the next few weeks when we do the topics, Bubbles and Pop-corn. I began ability groups for Writing this week also. Last year I found my Writing to be really successful working with Writing groups. This year I had began Writing as a whole class due to the many children being out of the classroom in our Writing slot (MST children and Te Tipuranga) but I didn't feel I was covering the needs of the children as well as working with smaller ability groups. The children seem to be loving working in groups for Writing and I felt the Writing produced this week was fantastic. It was easier to really focus on not only the needs of each separate group but individual needs also.

Team Assembly

Woooohoooo!!! It was our time to shine in our team assembly. Not having planned for a team assembly, I was super excited for my children to share some of their learning and to get some of my less confident children up on stage to speak in front of the team and not the whole school. The children who spoke really got a confidence boost and were grinning from ear to ear about getting up on stage. I had set some challenging expectations for some children and they made me so proud! Jabez and Shamony shared their full Mihi and it was great to share some things that the children have been doing in class on a powerpoint. Team assembly is a fantastic opportunity for children to present/share their work in front of children, parents and teachers. 

Powerpoint:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PpNISGjbo1h-rU0bLV86IP9dDm_dZSDAD_bKD-csL5Q/edit#slide=id.p4

PB4L

I had a wonderful experience going to Linwood North School to do their set with Glenys. It was a great learning opportunity and I came away with many ideas to promote positive behaviour for learning in my classroom. At Linwood they mentioned they teach a PB4L lesson each morning from 9 - 9.30am. They have displays visible for all children to see what their PB4L focus is for the week and every child has a great understanding about what PB4L is and the rewards they can gain from demonstrating what is expected of them. This week (Monday WK4 T2) I taught a following instructions PB4L lesson and I'm going to try teaching/re-teaching/revising expectations etc over the week as well as making sure I have a new PB4L focus each week. As Sandra (Principal - Linwood North) mentioned, Positive Behaviour for Learning is needed before anything, whether that is Mathematics, Reading etc. They have really strong systems in place for each teacher to follow and is used effectively throughout their whole school. 

Autism New Zealand

Monday the 18th of April Robyn Young came to Addington School to present to the staff about Autism and Autism New Zealand. I currently have one student in my class who has recently been diagnosed with Autism and have another child joining our class at the beginning of next term. The information Robyn presented to us was very helpful. She also provided us with ideas to use in the classroom. Something that really stuck walking away from the meeting with Robyn was about difference and that even though as teachers we are open to teaching in an environment that accepts culture of difference, we also need to teach this to our children to enable them to be accepting to all. "We are all different. The world would be a boring place if we were all the same. Sometimes there's a name for difference and one of those words is Autism." Words that also come to mind are TRUST AND POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS - Although this is aways a focus for me to have with all my students, trust and positive relationships with their teachers is really important for children with Autism. 

Robyn mentioned a positive way to share and explain what Autism is to children.  

DVD: In My Shoes 

http://www.inmyshoes.co.nz/

As one person with Autism describes it:

It's isolation of a special type that us strong and protective. It is a way of living in a unique whole personality separate from others. A quiet shy life can be happy too. Negative descriptions come from those who observe on the outside. I have beautiful experiences that I would never give away."

My understanding of Autism is that people with the disorder have trouble communicating and relating to people around them. The disorder varies from person to person. People who have Autism are born with the disorder and it can't be medically tested for. Some difficulties include social-emotional reciprocity, understanding non-verbal communication, difficulties in creating and maintaining relationships and demonstrating restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour, interest or activities. 

Ideas for the classroom:

-Children like routine (Visual timetable - explain when change is going to happen *IYT LINK)

-Children saying "I can't, I don't want to" (Don't have the communication to say they didn't understand, need further instructions - Be aware of this and check in to make sure they understand the task)

-Give choices (Choice between two different things - Don't say you need to...instead we need to as it will help take some of the pressure away from the person)

-Visual cues (Link to making visuals for children http://connectability.ca/visuals-engine/)

-Counting to 5 after having given an instruction. 

Links to Provisional Registration Criteria

4. Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice. 

ii. Participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community.

Class Dojo & Seesaw

Class Dojo and Seesaw are apps that we use in our class, Kānuka (Room 9). Class Dojo is used as a behavioural management tool. I give out points for children demonstrating the school values, on task, working quietly etc. Children also loose points for calling out, not on task etc. Over the last few weeks, 76% of parents in the class have now joined the class and are able to log in to see how their child is doing in class each day. We have also started our class blog. We put up at least one blog per week. Often I will write something up for the class but we have also done a few posts together in class. I'm really happy with the amount of parents that have got on board with Class Dojo. I use the messenger to contact parents and send out reminders. The parent's feedback has been really positive and they love being able to use one app to see progress, what we are doing and being able to contact me, all from the same place.

Seesaw is an opportunity for children to share their learning with their parents. Each child has their own blog/learning journal within our class, Kanuka. Children are able to take a photo of the their writing and record themselves reading their story. They can write over a photo to explain what they are doing. We have two short spaces each day in our timetable for a different three children to share something with their parents. Every new item that children upload gets sent to me to be approved before being sent to their parents.

These ICT apps provide opportunities for children to engage, practise and apply new learning in a different context. It also enables children to revise what they have been learning about and feel a sense of pride in their work. I have found the the quality of work is to a high standard and that the children are motivated to do tasks knowing that they get to share their learning.

Room 9 - Classroom Setup!

Over the school holidays I set up my very first Year 3 classroom. I looked at different ways I could set up the learning space to help children be motivated and engaged towards their learning. With the intention of not covering up too many walls so that we can display lots of the children's work, I feel I have made a learning space where children will feel safe, happy and excited to be in the classroom. Bright colours are used, opportunities to use ICT devices to enhance the learning, Daily 5 activities, Maori language, and mainly having organised the classroom in a way that lets children move around and be able to access everything easily. Children desk's are in four groups (Whero, Kowhai, Kahurangi, Kakariki) to give children an opportunity to cooperate together, work collaboratively and build positive relationships with their peers. Going forward I plan to put wire string lines up in the classroom to allow more opportunity to display the children's work. I'm very excited for 2016 and seeing the children in the classroom be just as eager and motivated to learn as what I am.

Calendar Art Reflection

Swimming Reflection

What a blast Room 3 had at swimming over the last two weeks! After having attended the professional development meeting based around pb4l and writing a pb4l lesson plan for swimming  with Jan (Room 2 teacher), Room 3 worked together to come up with ideas on how we should act getting to and from the pool, when getting dressed in the changing rooms and in the pool.  We brainstormed ideas and role played certain aspects to enable children to understand what the expectation was in each of the three areas (getting to and from the pool, getting changed in the changing rooms and in the pool). Our role plays included making a bus inside the classroom with chairs. We practiced lining up and then entering the bus and filling the bus from the back first. We talked about not worrying about who we were sitting next to and how we act when we are seated on the bus. When role playing getting dressed, we role played taking our shoes off and putting our socks in our shoes. We also pretened to take of certain layers at a time and place them in their swimming bags. Overall swimming went really smoothly. Most of the time, Room 3 were very well behaved. I defiantly believe having taught two lessons around swimming in the classroom before swimming week helped and set the children up for success. Before swimming week I was really nervous about this experience but after these two weeks, I can now say it was a great opportunity and I loved seeing the development and progress of many of the children. It was great to see the children being risk takers and stepping out of their comfort zones. 

Quiet Critters

Recently I have introduced a jar of quiet critters to the class. These are pom poms that have feet attached made from felt and eyes which are glued on. Quiet critters have proven to work really well in Room 3. Due to the class often being loud when working at their desks, quiet critters allow for the environment to be quiet. The children know that the critters only come out when the room is quiet as it will hurt the critters ears and scare them, resulting in them having to be put away. This management strategy allows children to be really engaged and focused on their learning without any distraction from others. Each time we use the critters, the learning is to a high quality and all of the children have finished the activity in the time frame. I do find the critters work best when the task is an independent activity.  The children respond really well to this management strategy and are often very sad when the quiet critters have to go back into the jar. I have also thought these would work well when testing.  

Week 1 - Writing Programme

Week one, I really focused on getting my writing programme up and running. I have introduced writing group's to the class with different learning objectives for each. Each child has a independent writing journal as well as a group activity box to work from when they are not writing with me. We started off getting to know what was in our group's activity box on Monday. I used the fishbowl approach to do this and the children were really excited to use the activities. The activities I have used in each box are activities that suit the needs of the children in that particular group. They are creative and engaging and allow children to practice and apply their knowledge in different contexts. Problems that occurred over the week, was the time it took to pack up some activities and some children not using the activities correctly. We have since talked about our golden rules and how we treat other people's property and the importance of making sure everything is put back as they found it. This week they have been great and have demonstrated packing up quick and making sure everything is put away in the correct bags etc. Groups using play dough start to pack up slightly earlier. Group work really encourages akonga to take responsibility of their learning and behaviour and I feel most children are doing a fantastic job at working independently. I have definitely seen a huge improvement in just a few days. Narrative writing is going well, using character and setting cards has really helped children make a start quickly. Children are excited to tell me about their stories and I feel the amount of writing the children are producing has increased hugely.

Splat - Compound words

I have been doing a lot of thinking around my writing programme the last few weeks in preparation for term 4. Having new, creative and enjoyable activities I feel will get the children excited for their writing lessons. The hot spot game "Splat" was a favourite of mine that Katy (associate teacher) used when I was on placement at Addington School. She used this activity at the start of some of her math's lessons. I introduced this activity last week to practice our doubles at the start or end of a maths lesson, but I thought why not try it in my writing planning. I had printed out cupcakes which were cut down the middle, for example, one half being tooth and the other half being paste. I had put all of one side of the cupcakes on the board and would read out the other half. Children then had to place the fly swat over the first part of the compound word. What a hit! The children loved it! We had a big talk about not being the winner and that it's a fun game and it's o.k not to win. We also talked about nice comments we can say to one another. This definitely made the activity run smoothly. I feel this was a great way to introduce the compound cupcakes. I will be putting them in one of my writing group's activity baskets next term. They will be expected to match all the different cupcakes. We only used a few for our game but I'm sure children will like matching them up. I also thought another way the children could use them when having their group activity rotation would be to play the game memory with them. They turn them all over and have to get matching pairs. The child with the most matching pairs at the end is the winner.

Reflection: Talking, Reading, and Writing by Marie M. Clay

Last week Katy handed out a reading (Talking, Reading, and Writing) during our meeting to have a read over. What was a great read. It has also given me many ideas going forward. I strongly believe it is essential for teachers to connect reading, writing and oral language together.

I thought it was interesting when Clay talked about choosing texts for children. "Teachers should not avoid authors whose texts are hard to read. Rather, they should find ways to prepare their pupils ahead of time to work with new, unexpected, and unusual structures." (Clay, p.g 5). As teachers we should always be finding ways for children to progress in these very important curriculum areas. Different texts provides more variation between day to day reading and promotes new experiences. 

As a beginning teacher and having taken a few reading groups this week, I found getting through all of Virginia's reading groups a struggle. After reading I reflected on the lessons and felt I could have discussed parts of the text further to make the learning even more beneficial. "Conversations create opportunities for language to be expanded." (Clay, p.g 3). I ask myself, is it more important to see 3-4 groups to enable me to discuss the text in depth instead of all 5? Should we be spending a couple of days on the same book for those harder texts? If we are to not avoid more tricky texts do we need to allow more time for groups to get through those texts in depth? 

"Young children talk a lot, read aloud, mumble as they write, and reread their work aloud so teachers have opportunities to engage with language progress." (Clay, p.g 11). I love getting a few students to share at the end of a writing lesson. It enables students to read aloud to their peers. I feel I can then promote opportunities for greater thinking by asking questions to expand their learning and give them opportunities to want to write more about their story. We can be quiet a noisy classroom. I'm not really one to be able to handle a lot of noise in a classroom  as I feel when working in a group it's important for those children to be working in a quieter environment to enhance their learning. I had an aha moment when reading this as maybe I need to rethink how I feel about noise levels in a class. Obviously we are only talking minimal loudness anyway but when I do whole class writing my expectation has always been without any noise. 

Lastly we have been focusing a lot around the planning of our writing. Who, what, where, why, how and why? Clay mentiones why and how to be the most difficult question words in English. More focus around these two question words when modelling may allow children to find the task easier due to a few in the class finding this task challenging.

The bandage approach to fixing our sentences!

Last week our food of the week was cauliflower. We generated ideas for writing by learning how to plant cauliflower seeds. The children were really excited to write about their experiences from participating in this activity. I believe a lot of children loose interest in their writing after they have written all their points down. I wanted to create an engaging hot spot activity to get the children excited about editing their work. I had created four sentences about planting cauliflower seeds with many errors in each sentence. I asked children to put up their hands if they could see an error. They then came up and "fixed" apart of the sentence by placing a bandage over the error. I had prepared all the bandages to keep the hot spot activity short. I feel this was an appropriate learning activity to excite the children about editing their work. Children felt positive about going away to fix their own writing. This activity was really engaging and all children were excited to put their hands up to tell me an error. Children were able to take responsibility for their work as this activity set them up to succeed in editing their writing. A lot of children still found it difficult when correcting spelling errors. Overall I feel it was a great activity and will use it again during my planning for writing.