Communication is Key

This year I have set up a new blog for my class.  Again I have done it on weebly, however I have made a new address so that it aligns with the other weebly addresses at my new school.  A further reason that I have kept them separate is that I think it is lovely for students to be able to look back on and reflect on the learning that they did last year, and so I have left that one open for the students to access - which will be especially helpful for the students who are now in BYOD classrooms.

This year in addition to having the normal features of learning, sharing. go to etc I have included my planning on my weebly so that students and parents are able to access it from home.  The amount of positive feedback that I have received from parents regarding this already is astounding.  They have commented both directly to me and to the principal that having the planning their really opens up the conversations that they can have with their 11 or 12 years old about their learning.  In their words, they have gone from receiving a grunt/very minimal reply when asking about their child's day to having a proper conversation regarding the learning rather than the doing.  I have also shared google docs with the students that have all of their upcoming WALTS based on pre-assessment tasks and games/interactive websites that they know they are expected to look at before they see me for these WALTS.  This has been very successful as it is allowing the conversations to be focused on the learning of the day in depth rather than staying at the lower end of Blooms Taxonomy.

Below is the link to my new weebly:

Room 7 Weebly

New School, New Adventure!

The beginning of a new year brings with it a new school year, which is always exciting - however even more so when it also comes with a new school.  The school that I have moved to this year is a complete contrast to the school that I have worked at as a PRT.  Where my last school was a large, urban school - my new school is a full primary country school with only 120 children!  I was, and am, very excited about working in a small school that has such a tight knit community surrounding it but what I was not prepared for was driving to work this morning and having to drive for a kilometre through the middle of cows!  This was the image I was confronted with this morning.

Nevertheless, cows included I have loved my start to the year.  The students that I am working with are very receptive to learning and have the potential to make accelerated progress throughout the year so that they are where they need to be by the end of the year.  

However, with a new class comes a new set of challenges.  With my old class we had defined what learning looked like, sounded like, felt like - they understood the learning pit and that if they struggled it was normal and a key part of reaching success with their learning rather than meaning that they were on the road to failure. With my new class, I am unsure of where they stand in regards to what they have been taught learning looks like, sounds like, and feels like.  This morning I am doing an activity with them where they will do a bus stop activity, brainstorming in groups what great learners do, what active learners do, what previous messages they have received about learning from their teachers and what is important to reach success in their learning.  I am really excited to find this information out from these students as this will form the basis of how our classroom will run over the next few weeks and how our HPE unit on Culture and Community will progress.  I think the following quotes quite nicely state how as a class we are unpacking the year together and all bringing our learning experiences to create our own expectations for each other.