Thoughts at the end of Term 2

I truly can't believe that we are nearly half way through the year.  It feels both like this year has already passed by so quickly and that I am still brand new at everything.  When thinking about this term there are things that have gone smoothly and things that have made me feel like I am drowning.  Thankfully the things that have gone smoothly have all been inside the classroom and the other things have been outside of the classroom. 

During the term I have had a number of different students begin to test the boundaries and so I have put in place a number of behaviour management systems.  We now have systems in place that both reward individual students and the whole class and that provide consequences for individuals and the whole class depending on the situation.  Having positive whole class incentives has lead to the students providing each other with positive peer pressure to be doing the right thing at the right time always so that the whole class is able to benefit from this.

I have been running gymnastics for school this term and have really enjoyed the opportunities that this has provided me to get to know a number of students that I would not come in contact with on a regular basis if I was not running this programme.  I love gymnastics and so this also provides me with the opportunity to let off steam, contribute to the Lynmore community and take my mind off things that are bothering me.  I am really looking forward to the competition next term and watching all the children that I have been coaching enjoy competing and participating in a setting that many of them are unfamiliar with.

Growth - In order to ensure that I am maintaining a growth mindset I have been thinking a lot about what has been successful and what I can influence to change within the next term. Below I have listed areas that I believe I can influence and begin to work on right from the beginning of next term and that are measureable.

Goals – Term 3

Professional
To begin to more confidently share the knowledge that I have around teaching and learning and specific subjects with my peers.
How will I achieve this?	-          Share my knowledge in team meetings, when observing others and if a colleague is stuck and I can help out in any way.
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          When I no longer have the mindset of the fact that I am a BT and that none of my knowledge is useful when compared with teachers who have been working for a number of years.
To back myself and not question my ability as a teacher at every moment.
How will I achieve this?	-          Take on positive feedback that I receive from parents, colleagues, students and management and connect it with what is happening within my classroom so that I am able to see that their feedback is genuine. -          Celebrate each success that I have as a teacher.
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          When I receive feedback from people such as the principal and my tutor teacher and don’t dismiss it as them simply trying to be nice.  When I believe that other people are providing me with feedback that is honest and when I am able to question their feedback and see that it is evident within my practice.
Classroom
Ensure that all of my planning WALTs and learning outcomes are derived directly from my team planning and meet the needs of each student within my classroom.
How will I achieve this?	-          Ensure to have my team planning open when doing my weekly planning each week. -          Use my formative assessments to ensure that the planning is directed at the level that each child is at. -          Use hot spot teaching to ensure that if my formative assessments are slightly off that that child still receives teaching that is differentiated to their individual learning needs.
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          Sharing my planning with my tutor teacher and receiving her feedback that she believes that this is occurring -          This will always be an on-going goal as my planning changes each week and therefore this will need to change also.
Reflect every week on the children’s targets with them and ensure that they are meeting these and if they are not that there is a plan in place that will help them to meet these.
How will I achieve this?	-         Use Friday’s writing time to ensure that the children have a specific opportunity to reflect on their learning goals. -          Conference with students if they are unsure about where they are in relation to achieving these goals.  Sit down with these children and provide them with resources that will help them to achieve these.
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          When children begin to independently reflect on their learning goals and are confident in knowing whether or not they have achieved these and what their next step would be.
Develop the ability within my children to lead their conferencing with me about areas in which they think that they could improve.
How will I achieve this?	-          Question children when I work with them in conferencing before sharing my opinion on their work, what they have done well and areas in which they can improve
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          When the children are able to come up to me and confidently share their positives and next steps before receiving feedback from me.
Stay on top of my marking for strand and independent.
How will I achieve this?	-          Create a timetable for when to do marking of each subject and make sure that I stick to this timetable.
How will I know when I have achieved this?	-          When my marking is always up to date.

Sarah's Superheroes

 

My release teacher is head of an ICT company and provides both my students and myself with some amazing learning opportunities for how to integrate ICT effectively into our programme in a way that enhances the learning of my students. She has helped me to create a website that will record the learning, fun and excitement that happens within Room 3 - http://sarahssuperheroes.weebly.com/learning.

 

She has also shown us how to make iMovies and has create iMovies for us that capture aspects of the children's learning. Below is an example of movies that she has created about bike safety lessons that we received from a local policeman and about our music lessons.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcbwgaS38oU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQFfh0nVWY

Student Led conferences - encouraging my students to have voice in their learning and own goals.

Working through student led conferences and preparing students to have informed discussions with their parents about their learning has really opened my eyes into how much I guide them through the discussion process. Whilst some of my students were able to independently discuss with me where they felt their next steps were others were waiting for me to provide them with these.

At the moment we are implementing a new type of goal setting programme for the students where instead of targets constructed by the teachers for the teachers, students have voice into what they think their next steps should be and record these in the back of their books. We are doing this in writing at the moment and this should help the students to feel that they are identifying their own next steps and have control over their learning. The students complete a national standard evaluation at the end of each piece of writing and identify what areas they have achieved and which areas they are still working towards.

I am hoping that through making the goal setting and evaluating whether or not the goals have been achieved a routine process all children will begin to feel comfortable leading conferences and discussions about where they are successful or not. I will be making this part of our weekly writing routine from the beginning of next week (Monday 23rd of June) onwards.

Keeping Kids Engaged

Over the past week or so it has seemed that the students in my class have been unengaged and unmotivated. The reason for this eluded me until I was in discussion with my tutor teacher yesterday. As a class nothing we were doing changed and therefore I could not figure out why the children's attitude had. My tutor teacher pointed out to me, in a round about way, that that was in fact why the attitudes had changed.

If children are expected to do the exact same thing the exact same way every time, they quite simply are going to get bored and become disengaged. Children need to be challenged in a variety of ways and I have had to question whether my programme is allowing them to do just that.

In our afternoon programme which is currently focussing on simple machines the children were doing hands on work, but the very similar types of hands on activities each time. When I questioned a student on what a 'load' was she was unable to tell me. My TT suggested having the students come up with a rap that requires them to explain all of the concepts covered in the unit before they try and solve their scenario. I am going to give this a try - who knows how it will go but I will make sure to come back and reflect on this. In the mean time I am going to be as creative as I can and ensure that every child has an opportunity to learn and reach their full potential within every subject area.

Reports - about targets or about children?

I am currently writing my first set of full class reports and have liaised with four to five different teachers about what they need to include, how to write them and what to focus on. At first I struggled with what I needed to incorporate to meet the school's standards of report writing, but after sitting down with my PLG leader it became clear that the most difficult part of writing reports was going to be ensuring that my spelling, grammar and punctuation were dotted and crossed. In terms of what was included in reports we simply needed to record each thing that each specific child has achieved that aligns with what the MOE determines to be the national standard for each age level. In essence, what 'targets' has the child achieved in the first half of the year. Next steps for each child simply were transferred from the target that child had set and ways to help at home aligned easy teaching points with the next steps.

Discussions that I have had with parents in my class and discussions that I have had with teachers leave me wondering who we are reporting for, are we writing reports because it is a MOE requirement and we are trying to successfully tick boxes or are we writing reports to genuinely celebrate and express concerns about children who are placed in our care each day. I know that the majority of teachers I have had this discussion with would prefer it to be the second one but they find that with what and how we write being so prescriptive it is hard to do just that. I know that the parents that have come in to discuss their child thus far this year have not queried about what numeracy strategies and reading comprehension strategies their children are applying to their learning but rather about the Hauora and total wellbeing of their child each day. They want answers to questions such as is their child happy? Does their child contribute in class? Are they confident when working with others? Are they engaged in authentic learning? Is their voice heard? Are they making progress in their learning? Questions that I am able to answer without looking in their child's book because I have formed relationships with that child, work closely and conference with that child about their learning each and every single day and because I care.

I care about education, I care about children and I care about each and every child in my class reaching their utmost potential throughout their year with me. I care about engaging parents with their child and their child's learning and encouraging parents to support their learning at home. I care about supporting what is happening in each child's home in my classroom.

I care but at times I question whether with the reports that we write and the multitude of targets that we have to meet for board and Ministry requirements children are able to see and feel that care. A child in my class the other day was hit in the eye at lunch time, I was on release and so only saw this child after school, but between lunch time and home time this child came across five other teachers. I asked him how he was feeling and whether he had informed any other teachers and iced his eye and he replied that he had not as they all looked too busy and he did not want to stop them from achieving what they had to have done that afternoon. Their target for the afternoon so to speak. At what expense are we setting and reporting on targets?

A question that I ponder each day is if my students were to report on me as a teacher, as I report on them, would they be reporting on whether or not I was setting them targets and analysing their results of these targets within a week or would they report on me as a person? I can only hope that they would report on me as a person and recognise that I care for and love these children. I feel it my duty to report on these children in the same way I hope that they would report on me at this time of the year, not against targets but against progress that they are making as a person. The small box at the bottom of the report with the smallest text is the most important box on the whole report in my opinion and I can only hope that I can use those five lines to share with parents their child's successes as a person and any concerns I have.

Linking Learning with Life.

The first week of school has passed by in a blur with two days of relievers and a myriad of tests and out of classroom activities taking place. So here I am, on the Monday of second week, finding that I finally have time to reflect on the week that has past.

Cycle safety played a massive part in last week. The children were taught road rules and how to cycle safely on the roads by a policeman. Once they were competent on the practice course they were allowed to participate in a road ride which each and every single one of them thoroughly enjoyed. The children were hooked into their learning because it was physically active whilst still allowing  them to reflect on and cognitively engage with what they were learning. They could see the purpose of the activity and make connections with their everyday lives as many of them bike to school and go riding with their parents. This is  a video of all their favourite moments put together on iMovie by Wendy Stafford: http://leos-learning-lab.weebly.com/12/post/2014/05/bike-safety-with-constable-neil.html.

Today, during reading time, a student started making connections that I had not expected him to make so early on in the unit we are doing on fairy tales. 'H' was comparing and contrasting the fairytales of Jack and the Beanstalk and The Helium Seed Watermelon Boy when he noticed the difference that a good ending makes to a story. He discussed how when he was writing he wanted to focus on creating an ending that left the reader engaged and feeling like they had connected with the story. Another student jumped in at this point and mentioned that it is similar in life but instead of writing the ending to the story it is the choices that we make that determine the ending of each 'mini story'. I was blown away by the insight that these students had had in a lesson that had not focused on making such connections. I cannot wait for us to begin our fantasy writing unit now where these students will have the opportunity to focus specifically on the endings of stories and how different endings affect the audiences perspective on the whole story.

My most significant goal for this term is providing students with activities that link their learning with their own lives in a visible way. Here's hoping that if both my students and myself continue on the path that we are own this goal will be a highly successful one.

Time for Term Two

As I sit here on the last day of the holidays it is hard to believe that I have been in charge of my own classroom for twelve whole weeks. At times those twelve weeks flew by and it seemed like I had been teaching for far longer but at times it felt like I had only been teaching for a day - there are always 1000 new things to learn.

Heading into Term Two I am determined to take the most out of the experiences that made me a stronger person and better teacher in the first term and apply the lessons I learnt in them to every new challenge I face. Observations, chats with colleagues and just taking a moment to breathe and laugh with the children when out on duty all helped me to realise that I am not the only one on a path of learning but so are all of my colleagues. They may be at different stages of their journey, but nonetheless we all have something to learn from and teach to each other.

I am nervous in a much different way this term then I was last term. Where last term I was concerned about whether or not I would be able to teach my students effectively now I know that with preparation I can do that and am instead nervous about the amount of assessment and reporting we need to fit into a term that is three weeks shorter! Moderating writing, e-ASTTLE, IKAN and writing reports all seem intimidating when you are a new teacher who has never done them before but the biggest lesson I learnt last term was that people don't realise this unless you ask for help so that is definitely something that I aim to do more of!

I am so so excited to see my students again - never would I have thought that I would miss working with them as much as I have done. I am most definitely looking forward to another fun-filled exciting term with them starting off on the first day with bike safety.