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. 

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.

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.