2013 General

4th February 2013

I was really happy with the way day one of 2013 went. All the students were in a very good mood and incredibly excited about being in our new classroom. Together we came up with the class treaty. I decided to involve the students in this as I thought that if they came up with the ideas they are more likely to stand by them. It also enforces to them that we are one as a class, it is not them vs me.
I made sure I set clear behavioural boundaries from the get go and I am pleased with how these were received.
I asked the students to write a letter for me, introducing themselves and telling me what they expect for 2013. I will use this as a writing sample to put them in their writing groups. I also feel it is a good way to see what the students think their own strengths and weaknesses are.
As a means of including the parents in to their child's education as much as possible I sent a newsletter home with the students, introducing myself and outlining my goals for 2013. I asked them to tell me the best from of contact for them. I will use this to contact them when I have both positive and negative things to report about their children. I want to the parents to feel like they are just as much a part of Room 6 as their students are. I figure if we start out on the right track it sets positive foundations for the year ahead.
Overall I am very happy with how the first day went. I am genuinely excited for what 2013 in Room 6 has to bring :)

14th February 2013

Over the past few days I have adapted my lesson planning (particularly reading and writing) as I felt I was moving too fast and advanced for my students. During week one I introduced some of the reading and writing independent activities that I have set up for the students and was intending to have these up and running by week two. However while introducing them to the students I realised that for some the task was much more complicated than I expected. For this reason I decided to disregard the guided reading lessons I had planned for the week and instead continue with whole class reading. I still made sure that the students had a book to take home each night. Whole class reading then allowed me the time to go over the independent activities with the whole class. It gave the students the opportunity to ask me any questions they might have regarding the content or instructions prior to them being expected to complete it independently. This also allowed me the opportunity to reinforce to the students the A1 quality of work that I expect from them 100% of the time. Too often I believe that students (people in general) settle for below par work if they believe they are not expected / not capable of producing / achieving any better. Setting clear high expectations for the students encourages them to work towards producing the best work they can.
I have emailed four of my students parents to inform them that their child received a certificate in either our school wide or team assembly. Too often parents are only involved in their child's learning regarding negative issues. One of my goals for this year is to celebrate the success of the students in Room 6. Making parents / caregivers aware of these is one of the key steps to achieving this goal.

15th February 2013

Team 1 and 2 had their first Maori lesson together for the year today. This is a great opportunity to let the Maori students in our classes display their talents and lead from the front. It is also a great way to introduce the students to aspects of the Maori language / culture they may not be familiar with. Using everyday commands within the classroom helps with this. From Room 6 in particular Gianna, Paton, Nadia, Keisha and Toby did a fantastic job as leaders of the Waiata. They helped demonstrate the actions of the waiata to the new students and to those who may have forgotten over the summer holidays. It was wonderful to see Gianna and Paton in their element. At times in class they tend to fly under the radar as they lack confidence in their academic abilities but on stage, in front of an audience they shine.  I believe it is so important to allow the students to express their passions and talents at school. Failure to do so runs the risk of that talent dying away and that is a very sad situation in deed.

18th February 2013

Today I realised the importance of planning and double checking all the equipment prior to carrying out a maths lesson. My intention for today's lesson was to teach the students how to convert a strip graph to a pie graph. The lesson the day before taught the kids about strip graphs and I was really happy with how well they seemed to take on that new knowledge. Today however, after successfully constructing a second strip graph together I realised that my 'strips' were not long enough to go around my pie graph template. This made it very difficult to interpret the pie graph correctly. After school today I re-made the strip graphs to fit around the pie graph template and will do this lesson with the students again. I do not feel it is fair to take this lesson in to account when assessing them on statistics as I take full responsibility for any lack of understanding from the students regarding how to construct and read a pie graph as a result of this lesson. 

Our Value Chain 

Today I introduced the idea of the 'values chain' to the students. Each time they do something that reflects the DSS value of the week they write it on a piece of paper and make it in to a chain. I feel this is a positive way of recognizing the students who are making a real effort to display the school values and it also creates a fun way to encourage the students to get involved.

21st February 2013

According to the results of the STAR testing, the most, if not all of my students have difficultly with synonyms and sentence structure. In response to this I have added an extra element to my guided reading where I select a variety of words from the story the students are reading with me for them to go away independently and put those words in to sentences. I then ask them to write a word that means the same next to this word. The aim of this is to increase the students vocab knowledge. I have also printed off some synonym resources from Sparkle Box which I will encourage the students to use during choosing time.

17th May 2013

I have just re tested the students on their basic facts and number knowledge. I was really pleased with the progress of some students but overall the results really highlighted for me the areas that I need to put more focus towards. Based on the STAR data I have been doing starter activities everyday to try and address the areas of concern mainly answering word problems, multi choice questions. Based on the results of the knowledge tests I have decide to alternate between number knowledge starter activities and the content covered in the STAR data. I believe that if a different area of the number knowledge was covered each week I would see a big improvement in the students results. They seem to thrive off whole class teaching situations as they like challenging each other and like the 'thrill' of being challenged. I also feel like they benefit greatly from mixing between and feeding off ability levels. A question that may seem to easy for one level is actually quite beneficial for them as they are able to explain to the other students how they got to the answer in completly different from me (kids speak) which at times is much more effective. The more capable students also like the feeling that they are the 'teacher' and can have an impact on the learning of their fellow students.

07th November
Today we had our second discovery day and I was in charge of 'sinking and floating'. It was a wonderful day to give the students a chance to explore and investigate lots of things that they don't usually get the chance to do. I found it very exciting to see different students rise above and really come out of their shells. Students that don't tend to say much in class really were in their element which was exciting to see. This reinforced to me that it is really important to cover all areas of the cirriculum to see the true strengths of all the students.

2013 PRT Release

Thursday 14th February:

Today I have completed running records with the two lowest reading groups in my class. Based on my guided reading during week one and two I felt that a few students may need to be shifted groups. The groups I had formed were based on the data that I received from their 2012 teachers. It seems that some students have moved down at least one level over the summer holidays. This is always to be expected and is one of the main reasons I decided to complete these running records today.

Thursday 21st February:

Professional Reading

Effective teaching strategies for Maori students in an English-medium Numeracy Classroom

-      Joanna Higgins.

The intention of group work is for teachers to work specifically with a group of students to develop knowledge and strategies at their stage on the framework. According to Fraivillig, Murphy & Fuson’s (1999) model, the role of the teacher with a group is when emphasis is given to eliciting, supporting, and extending concepts in response to students’ actions and explanations. I agree with the inquiry based approach to group work in which power-sharing interactions between teachers and students are promoted, where the culture of the child rather than the culture of the teacher are central to the interactions, where learners are taught to critically reflect on their own learning, and where there is active engagement of students.

It is suggested to think of your groups like a ‘waka’ – it is about “groups within a group”. Everyone should know what everybody else is doing. “That’s a whanau thing”. You should build up the lead group as a starting point of co-construction of understanding, that is, that “knowing” and understanding of learning can be passed on. One group should be helping out another group, not just a one-on-one… that’s a concept that Maori students are comfortable with… they understand that it’s my responsibility to help someone… Tuakana teina is because of age, but maths is because of knowledge and strategy. So it’s a responsibility thing… They’re quite happy to take it on and they like it because from the learner, the less able learner gets a new version of it. The ‘lead group’ can become a tool of instruction. This creates a co-construction dynamic by which the class’s understanding of mathematical ideas is shared. It brings the students all together and helps them all in the end. It is important that the teacher defines the nature of the activity that will occur in the mathematics classroom. Students must have expectations of the activity. The actions of the teacher are critical. The teacher should check with all the members of the group even if they are not expecting an answer. The students should also retain the right to ‘tell the teacher’ what they need. This is a way of protecting the mana of the students when taking a risk of being wrong appears to be a pivotal point for many students.

As teachers we should not be afraid to hand the teaching reigns over to the kids. If a student looks like they are really lost get one of the students that do understand to explain. “Maori kids love that, they love having that role, they love being able to work with other kids. When deciding on the ‘teacher-student – student’ relationship it is important to team them up with someone they get on really well with, but won’t be silly, but that person is responsible. This helps to break down the risk taking barrier of being wrong.

“Maori kids can do it but it’s the style you do it in… It’s the way you do it, you can’t isolate them, you can’t make them feel bad for not knowing… That’s the trick… you know… keeping them on board.”

I feel inspired by this article and research and will am to implement it in to my maths programme to the best of my ability. Most of the Maori students in my class are struggling with mathematics so I feel they could really stand to benefit from this approach. I may set aside a time on Fridays to do ‘buddy maths’ so the students have a chance to learn from each other and have that time exploring and investigating together rather than too much teacher direction.

Thursday 28th February 2013

7.45am this morning I met with RTLB Moni Donaldson regarding Jacob Thorburn's progress in my classroom. Our aim is to put his parents mind at ease in regards to Jacob's progress. We discussed his classroom behaviour and talked about the systems I have in place to get the most out of Jacob. I am pleased with the progress he is making in his reading. I have been encouraging him to physically make the sounds of tricky words whilst reading as I feel this helps him make more sense of what the sentence might sound like as a whole. I also prompt him to look at and talk about what it is in the pictures prior to reading the text as often many of the tricky words are verbalised before we start reading. I have also set up a daily check list which encourages him to stay on task and work to the best of his ability. So far this is proving to have a very positive influence as he is increasingly following instructions the first time and the quantity of his writing is increasing. These two aspects are both included on his chart. Moni reassured me that the steps I have taken seem to be working well for Jacob and will report this to his parents. It is good to know that I have someone to support and guide me with these issues as it is the first time I have had a student with such learning difficulties in my classroom

Professional Reading to improve Maori achievement in the classroom and how I plan to put this in to practise.

Sabbatical Report:

Sabbatical Purpose:

To investigate programmes and practises that enhance the relationships between families, communities, schools – in particular those that improve the achievement and engagement of Maori children and their Whanau.

Rex Allot

Purpose: To investigate programmes and practises that enhance the relationship between families, communities, schools – in particular those that improve the achievement and engagement of Maori children and their Whanau.

It has been established that schools and student learning are strongly influenced by ‘trust’. There is also solid evidence to demonstrate the impact of families and communities on student learning and achievement. This is why I have encouraged an open door policy in my classroom. I have re-evaluated my writing plan so that the groups are mixed during the initial planning stage of writing so that ideally the top students will support the lower students and help them develop confidence in their writing. The students need to know that I trust them to work together and that I have faith in their own abilities. It should not always be me teaching them, they have plenty to learn off each other. This supports Field’s (2003) belief that “by managing connections with one another and keeping them going over time, people are able to work together to achieve things that they either could not achieve by themselves or could only achieve with great difficulty.”

I feel to get a child fully engaged it is important to identify those children who are not engaged and find out why. Again this explains my reasoning to try mixed ability writing groups at the planning stage to see if the ‘higher knowledge’ students provide some support to the less abled students.

The regular emails I send home informing the students’ parents of their child’s progress meets one of the criteria according to the research that helps bridge the gap between home and school to promote Maori achievement.

Overall I feel I need to develop and cherish the bond between home and school. I will look in to organising an ‘open day’ or Grandparents evening to encouraging the link between home and school. If the parents / wider family members begin to feel more comfortable in the school environment they should become more willing to help their child with their education.

Thursday 21st March

The majority of my day today was spent organizing my teacher inquiry with Caroline. My inquiry focus for this year is writing, and I have chosen two students in my class who are struggling with their sentence structure. Caroline and I came up with a variety of different strategies to engage Jacob and Natalia in writing. Natalia really struggles with sentence structure so I plan to give her a variety of sentences that have been constructed incorrectly to see if she can put them back together herself. My main focus for Jacob is to get him to write independently. I aim to set Jacob a variety of incentives if he reaches a certain goal of writing independently I realise that this will take time so I plan to start with a goal for him to write 3 sentences by himself and further it as need be.
I feel with some specific teacher to meet the needs of these students they can make steady progress throughout the year. I will make regular reflections on how my inquiry and the progress of these students is going.

Thursday 23rd May 2013

This morning I observed Julianne's writing lesson. Her focus was on writing two sentences using 'and' or 'but' to combine them. I liked the way that she didn't get them to write an entire story using this concept but instead just got them to write at least four sentences. To me this seems like a very effective way to get the students really focused on achieving the learning intention as opposed to getting lost in the all the other concepts of story writing also.
In addition, I was very impressed with her independent activities. The students that were not working with her in a group were all on task and doing relevant work. She uses a range of spelling, grammar, writing activities that keep the students engaged. I think the key to the kids staying on task is that the independent activities do not to too long to complete so there is not too much time for them to get bored or off task. Next term when I go back to my writing groups I may try so of these new activities.

Thursday 30th May 2013

This morning I observed Judy Easton taking a 6 year net assessment. I found it really interesting learn in more detail at what level the students should be at before they come to Team 2. I liked the way that in the dictation part of the test, the student does not loose marks if they have spelt a word wrong but they only reason they have spelt the word wrong is because they have not include a letter that they can not hear when we sound words out. For example - Hom for Home would still be marked as correct because when you sound the word out you can not hear the 'e' on the end. So really the student is just responding to the sounds that they can hear.

Thursday 11th May 2013

This morning I completed running records with my second to top reading group. I was pleased to see that two of the five of them are now ready to move from Junior Journals to Part 1 Journals so I have added them in to my top reading group. The other three students that didn't quite manage to go up a level all have very simple things to work towards. Things like, reading the words correctly, responding to punctuation and using a variety of strategies to unpack tricky words.
This morning Maggie showed me how to sign my students up to the Internet sight 'Sumdog' which is a maths sight for the students to practise their number knowledge skills. I plan to use this as a homework task and an in class task. I have used their latest knowledge test results to determine what skills they need to practise as the website allows you to specifically choose the / restrict what skills you want the students to learn. I am excited to see at what rate this helps to improve the students number knowledge abilities. I have been using worksheets both in class and for homework but I think this is a more exciting way for them to practise their maths.

Thursday 27th June 2013
This morning I observed a running record lesson of Judy Easton (Reading Recovery Teacher at DSS). The student had just recently completed reading recovery. I found it very helpful to see how she interacted with the student once the running record was complete. She asked him to read over the sentences that he had made a mistake on to see if he could identify his mistake. I believe this is a useful thing to do as it helps to identify the next teaching points for the students as both the teacher and student become aware of what the focus of their reading should be.

Thursday 1st August 2013

Chunk Check Cheer
Today I have been reading about the integrating the 'Chunk, Check, Cheer' spelling programme into the classroom. My reasoning for this is that I have found my students are doing very well on their weekly spelling tests but often struggle to transfer their knowledge of these words in to their everyday writing. For this reason I have decided to put more of a focus on Phonics this term to check the students understanding of word sounds, blends and families.
After a discussion with Liz (who currently uses the 'Chunk, Check, Cheer' spelling programme) I have decided to introduce this into my own classroom so that the students are not only furthering their spelling knowledge, but they are also developing their understanding of word families, blends and chunks. I struggle to see the relevance of learning words from a list if they are not able to transfer and use their knowledge of the make up of these words in everyday life.

Thursday 21 November 2013

Today I observed Dale's reading lesson as I will be teaching Year 5 and 6's next year. The first thing that struck me was the increased level of independence the students displayed. My students (Year 3's) are very good but they tend to need a lot of direction and reassurance to stay on task.
I liked the way Dale had a variety of activities for the students to do based on the text they are reading.
She gets lots of her follow up reading material from the 'Reading Comprehension Box'. This provides the students with a variety of material (different texts) and different activities to complete at the end of it.
I liked the way she used modelling books with her reading that focused on Sheena Cameron's Reading Strategies. At this age, reading aloud, focusing on fluency and expression is not the main importance but digging deaper in to the students understanding of the text eg. different types of text, persuasion, topic related words, questioning, summarising.

This is something I am really interested in focusing on next year as it is one thing to be able to read a text well with expression, but if the students are not understanding (or able to relate the new knowledge to their prior knowledge) there is not much point in reading at all.

CRT 4th December 2013
Today is my CRT day as a part of Team 2. I am feeling a bit nervous about moving on to Y5/6 next year but I know it will be a good experience. I have just seen my class list for next year and many of the students I had last year are on it so this is some comfort to me as I am familiar with them and them with me. The thing I am looking forward to the most about starting in this new age group as it gives me a chance to really try new techniques and routines in the classroom. My main goal for the beginning of next year is to set clear expectations, not only for behaviour but bookwork also. This is one thing that I feel I was not clear enough about at the beginning of the year with my Y3's and so I found it quite difficult to try and reinforce it throughout the year, as I didn't feel I had even set the right foundations for this expectation to be met.
Seemingly simple things such as book presentation can seem trivial but I feel these kinds of expectations and placing a high standard on them displays to the students that quality work and high expectations will be expected and set from day one. I hope that this approach will encourage the students to realise that they can achieve to a high level in every area of the curriculum if they set their minds to it. I really want to instil this belief in them and have them understand that as their teacher I will do anything I can to help them achieve their goals.

Observations

Maths Observation Y4 with Dale Veitch 30th August 2012

Intention of Observation

To experience alternative ways of teaching mathematics with groups of differing learning abilities. 

Structure of Lesson 

Beginning:

Whole class counting up in a particular way – odd / even numbers to 30

Times tables

Jumping in 5’s to…

Interactive Board Activity

Interactive Board:

Modeling Monday

Tick a Box Tuesday

Word Problem Wednesday
The students know how to complete the maths problems on the board prior to working independently in their books.

Group Work:

<- As the teacher, use the materials first to introduce the problem to the students and then ask them to write the equation

<- Always state the WALT before continuing the lesson

<- Ask the students to draw and expression on a face to indicate how they feel about the learning
     

     Refection of Observation:

d   I took a lot away from this observation. In particular, how many different tools you can use in one lesson to meet the needs of all the students. I thought the whole class interactive board activity at the beginning of the lesson was an effective way to refresh the students memory and understanding of the topic. I felt that by allowing the students to physically show their working using the interactive board it encouraged the students to take ownership of their own learning. The independent activities are a good way to allow the students to understand the new concepts in their own time. Her use of modeling books (getting the students to record how they felt about the lesson at the conclusion of it) is a great way to track the students progress and understanding of the new learning.

      What I will implement in to my classroom:

     Due to teacher aide time constraints I must move immediately in to group work in my maths lesson. I will therefore allocate a whole class teaching time at the end of the maths lesson. This should give the students a chance to put their new knowledge in to practice and to appreciate and draw upon the learning abilities of their peers.

Writing Observation Y1 with Caroline Heald:

Intention of Observation:

To observe a writing group and how to get the best out of those students whilst maintaining whole class management. See a variety of independent writing activities for the students to do themselves.

Group Work:

<- Encourage the students to chunk the words they are not sure about.

   - Model to the whole class the focus of this weeks writing

Whole Class:

<- Select two students to share their writing at the end of the lesson

Independent Activity:

- Word Power: List / Brainstorm as many words as you can about a particular topic. 

Reflection of observation: 
I liked the independent activities that the students had to do. I felt that they were targeted at a good level so they can work independently but still challenged their new learning. Giving students hands on independent activities rather than worksheets works well as they are genuinely interested in the new learning as it relates more to their prior knowledge eg. boardgames at home etc.

Tuesday 24th October 2012 Mentor Teacher Observation - Cynthia Irwin - maths and reading

Next Steps for Maths
- Be clear that I have introduced the WALT properly at the beginning of the lesson and that all students understand what this means. I will do this by re-wording it in to 'kids language' and ask a student to re tell the group what it is they will be working on during this lesson.
- Make the most of the materials and maths games that are relevant to the topic. Ensure that when students have finished their independent activities they know which games they should be working with.
- Introduce new maths games within the teaching lesson. By doing this I will know that the students understand what they should and understand the new learning when working independently.

Next Steps for Reading
- The results of the students STAR testing showed many at the critical level for vocabulary. I will introduce the 'synonym' independent activity and create a 'vocab list' in their reading books where the students write down a word and try and think of another word that means the same. This should also help to develop their use of interesting and exciting words in their writing.
- Brainstorm synonyms within each guided reading group and progress it to an independent activity.
- Use the big book to talk about vocab and different words for things. Encourage the students to ask when they are unsure about what a word means.

Monday 5th NovemberObservation at South Makarikiri School

Focus of observation - behaviour management styles and literacy learning.

Literacy Ideas:

-       Phonics, sound of the week

-       News based on the sound of the week and the students have to guess what their news is. For example (TH) a student brought a thistle in as news.

Handwriting:

-       WALT on the board

-       Laptop handwriting: a chance for students to practice their upper and lower case letters. Allows them to learn about spacing and line spacing.

Writing:

-        Whole class: write a story in a modeling book use who, when, where, what

-       Teacher: WALT above picture plan

-       Sharing Time: whole class sharing time after writing

Independent Activities:

-       Listening Posts

-       Letter / Word Picture Matching

-       Fill in the Vowels cards For example (C ____ P) = (CAP)

-       Word Power on white boards (synanoms, short words, similar words, opposities)

-       Publishing

-       Computer writing

-       Spelling: Words from their story. Five Times, Syllables, Dictionary Page, Alphabetical Order

-       Image – write captions for what they feel, what you think, ask questions – good for descriptive writing also

INQUIRY:

-       Shape It, Sort It, Seek It, Share It (focus on one per term)

Art:

-       BFG Dream Jars: Read the Roald Dahl Book and then ask the students to write their own dream. Draw a label for the jar and put something in it that represents that dream.

-       Toi Matarau 1 + 2 = teaching in visual art

Resources:

-       Reading Between the Lines

-       SRA Reading Laboratory (top group)

-       Peter Howard Books

-       Peter Clutterbuck

-       PM Writing Big Books

-       ‘Canvas’ Magazines

ICT Resources:

-       Study Ladder

-       Sunshine Online

-       Mathletics

-       Zip-Tales

General:

-      Important to incorporate ICT into the classroom as much as possible as it is becoming such a huge part of life

-       Allow the students the chance to do work themselves eg. Questions, independent writing to let their individuality flourish

-       Set clear expectations from the start

-       Inspired me to introduce a wider range of activities and get the students publishing their work more often.

-       Question Wall: Put an object or picture at the front of the room and encourage the students to write any questions that they might have about this thing.

-       Green Highlighter: Things we need to work on

-       Yellow Highlighter: The fantastic, amazing, awesome things we have done well.

-       I am happy with the way I set clear behavioral expectations

-       Need to focus on the positives more rather than the negatives. This sets a much more inviting, comfortable and friendly classroom environment.

I believe creating a bright and colourful classroom helps to make the students feel safe and secure in the school environment. By displaying as much of their work as possible on the walls helps to bridge the gap between home and school.

General

3rd September 2012:

Discovering where my students are at was my main goal for my first week at Dannevirke South School. I feel, after only the first week I have developed a positive repore with most of the students in my class. I feel like the students have the confidence to come to me and voice their concerns about their learning. This was evident during my maths lesson today. The squares maths group are currently displaying some difficulty with their maths. Carter in particular seems to be struggling with finding the tidy number to add in tens. I am pleased he voiced his concern to me as it enables me to adjust my teaching strategies to meet his learning needs. In response to this I will use lower decade numbers as I think the higher the number, the more confused about the learning strategy he is becoming. Rylee is showing increasing confidence with this strategy. She is successfully about to tell me in both the written and verbal form now she comes up with the answer using the appropriate strategy. I think she is ready to move on to three step equations.

I am really pleased with the effectiveness of the independent writing activities I introduced in the classroom. The 'spinning wheels' proved particularly effective as it sparked a sense of creativity in the students writing. I feel this holds them in good stead for including nouns, verbs and adjectives in their writing, something we are due to begin over the next few weeks.

I feel my classroom routines are beginning to sit well with the students. As soon as these become increasingly settled I will be able put 100% focus on my teaching strategies as opposed to behaviour management.

I am really pleased with my start in room 6 and am encouraged that the students will be great learners for the remainder of the year.

Professional Readings:

Teaching as inquiry reading 19.09.2012

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry

Recognizing Dyslexia

http://www.dyslexiafoundation.org.nz/info.html

A Guide for New Zealand Schools

http://www.4d.org.nz/school/steps.html

Small changes make a BIG difference

http://www.dyslexiafoundation.org.nz/3things.html

19th September 2012:

Today I introduced the independent reading and writing activities for the students to complete when they are not working with me or Heather. I maintained Aimee's independent reading and writing activities during my first week in room 6 as I didn't want to inflict too much change on the students at once. It also gave me an opportunity to determine the students attitudes towards learning and which students worked effectively (or not) together.  

Although I my intention is to introduce a range of new independent activities, initially I introduced a new one each day. This gave the students the chance to understand the new task whilst still having the comfort of the 'tried and true' independent tasks. 

Monday 15th October 2012

Week 1 to 6 Term 4 Inquiry is 'Massive Mammals'. I had no clue to the students prior knowledge concerning this topic so I used the 'Tuning In' template as a starting point. During the first lesson I gave the students the time and independence to talk about their knowledge of mammals in groups before reporting back to the class. Not only did this determine my starting point for inquiry, I felt it gave the students some ownership of their learning as they thrived on the opportunity to share with their peers about what they already know 'before the teacher has even told us'. 

26th October 2012:

Running Records.

Helped me to pinpoint the areas of improvement in reading for each student. This uninterrupted reading time highlighted the areas for improvement

27th October 2012

The results of the students STAR tests showed many students vocab knowledge was at a critical level. For this reason, and after consulting with Cynthia I have made a conscious effort to encourage the students to ask when they do not know what a word means. When reading the big book I select a variety of words to ask the students. I have also introduced a synonyms activity for them to work on independently.

30th October 2012 Staff First Aid Course Refresher

I found the first instalment of this course very helpful. I learnt about the 'action plans' for students who have severe allergies and the different treatment options for patients depending if they are conscious, unconscious or 'dead'. I feel it really developed my confidence in my ability to deal with an emergency at school at attend to the students needs as best as I can. The severity of such things such as asthma attacks and allergic reactions further instilled in me the importance of keeping the lines of communication open and clear between, teachers / staff, parents and students. This will ensure that the best possible action is taken for the particular student in the unlikely and unfortunate event of a medical emergency. 

04 December 2012

Stephen came and spoke to me this morning about a parent of a child in my class who is concerned their daughter is getting bullied. I spoke to the apparent bully at school today to get her side of the story. I made a conscious effort to remove her from the classroom environment and kept a calm but firm voice to allow her to tell me her side of the story. Although her interpretation differed from the events that Stephen was told she accepted that she needs to make some chances to how she interacts with some of her peers.

I was happy with this and left the situation at that.

At the end of school however this child's mother came and spoke to me to tell me about her daughters severe dislike of school and how she has huge difficulty making friends. This concerned me greatly as I hate to think that at the age of eight years old a child is already having social issues and doesn’t like coming to school as I feel this is a important age to develop social skills to hold you in good stead for life. I am very determined to get to the bottom of this issue. I have decided to implement some who class social interaction and team work activities as a way of illustrating to the students how important it is to include everyone in things, and maybe just open the eyes of a few students who tend to be more selective about who they spend time with to how it feels when they are left out.

I will also monitor this particular students interaction with her peers both in the classroom and in the playground. After speaking with Cynthia about his I have decided also to ask Caroline Gyde to come and speak to this student regarding her dislike of school in an attempt to get to the bottom of the issue and solve it before it is too late. Year 3 students should be coming to school with an excitement to learn and be happy to be able to spend the day learning, investigating and having fun with their friends. I would love to make this possible for this young girl who is at the moment missing out on all of this. I believe raising her self esteem level is key to this and I will implement the steps as previously mentioned in an attempt to achieve this.  

13th November 2012

PRT Course Palmerston North

-      - If a student has difficulty articulating their knowledge on paper, ask them to use materials to show their knowledge and film it on your laptop. Use this as evidence of learning.

-      - National Standards do not take into account the progression of students. Even if a student is ‘below’ they may have moved a lot to get to this stage. It does not take in to accountant the social and economic situations of the students. There is more to a child’s education than numbers.

-      - You should never under estimate the importance of providing a culturally responsive and welcoming environment in the classroom to get the most out of the students. There should be a consistent link between home and school.

-      - Encourage the students to think about their thinking and question why things are created. – why some things are the way they are.

-       Learning as Inquiry: get them to think about he process of things rather than the product.

-       Check List of independent activities

-       Rubrix model on display – encourages the students to take ownership and responsibility for their learning.

Cultural Responsive Pedagogy:

Tataiako – Cultural Competencies For Teachers of Maori Learners

Ka Hikitia:

3 Key Principles

1.     Maori Potential

2.     Cultural Advantage

3.     Inherent Capability  - all have the capability to learn and be educated

Knowing, respecting and working with Maori learners and their whanau is very important!

Send positive notes home to the students parents – positive reinforcement.

-        Happy grams

Need to implement more Maori content into my weekly plan

Teachers Council Website – Tataiako (download)

Mathematics Standards Years 1 – 8

‘Think Boards’ – different ways of working out the same problem (write it,     explain it, draw it etc)

Resources: ‘Down the Back of the Chair’