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.