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.