13th August 2013
Destine Greatbatch Alim Group Observation
I took so much away from observing this group today. I found it really helpful to see the different ways of 'making connections' to solve multiplication problems.
Destine was using the 5 times tables to help her students work out more difficult problems such as 8 x 4.
The five times tables are one of the easiest to learn so it was great to see how you can draw upon this knowledge to teach the students more difficult multiplication problems.
8th August 2013
Julianne Jackson Alim Group Observation
It was great how well the students responded to this more focused group of maths. I found it really interested and helpful to see the differnt ways of learning now to add and subtraction numbers over 10 - by recognising their position in the place value houses. Watching the satisification on the students faces when they got the questions right proved to me how effective using materials is. The students were provided with place value houses and ones, tens and thousand blocks to help them put their numbers together. Rolling the dice to find the number the students are asked to create is a fun and effective way of making sure that they are getting a range of numbers to create. I think this is something that can be used in my classroom but I will start off with the lower numbers as my students are not quite ready to use thousands and tens of thousands.
Here are some photos of the groups using the materials provided to help them add and subtracting numbers and make numbers with the values of tens of thousands.
30th May 2013
Julianne Jackson Y4 / 5 Teacher: Writing Observation
I took so much away from observing this writing lesson. Julianne's focus was on sentence structure and encouraging the students to incorporate nouns, verbs, adjectives, different sentence beginnings / endings in to their writing.
I found this topic very relevant as I feel it is the next step that my students need to develop. I am confident that this will help to develop the depth of my students writing.
I was greatly encouraged and excited to see the way Julianne conducted her writing time. I liked the way she allowed the students to write numerous sentences (whilst still focusing on the intention of the lesson) rather than insisting they use the new skill learnt to write an entire story. This is something that I have struggled with in the past as I found I was running out of time for my three writing groups to each complete an entire story (inclusive of the new conventions) in one week. Regrettably this often meant that stories would rarely get finished and I fear this would prove detrimental to the students learning as I was losing sight of the authentic context of their writing - something I believe is vital if you are to maintain the students motivation to write.
Having just started Term 3, I feel this is an ideal time to try out Julianne's approach to writing. Already I am excited about the improvement in the quality of the students writing I am expecting it to have.
