Week 3, Term 2 2013

Week three has flown by, I can’t believe how fast it has gone. Am beginning to see I have way over planned, but that is fine – would rather over plan than under.

Maths has been good this week, have finally started to get the children into slightly deeper thinking and explaining the strategies they use to work problems out. Our rotations have been set and the kids are following them. I have been having to keep on top of them to ensure the noise level remains low and the children are staying on task however they are very good so far. Will have to ensure I change my rotations on a regular basis so that they aren’t getting board. I am also using my modelling book each lesson to keep a record of childrens learning and show them how I work problems out.

Maths modeling book - have one for each group

After having read Chapter Two of Laney Sammons Guided Math book I have had to rethink my overall teaching, it got me to take a step back and look at my class through the eyes of a student. I did this and realised my classroom doesn’t really shout out ‘Maths’ like it does for the other subjects. So I spent some time on Thursday creating a Maths ‘word wall’. The children created these themselves so that it means more to them than if I had just done it.

Our word wall - created by children

I have fully implemented the Daily 5 programme into the class which consists of read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing and word work. The children already knew how the programme runs so it didn't really involve much setting up. Children have been going off task fairly easy so I need to ensure I stay on top of this.
My guided reading sessions have been really good and even though I get twenty minutes per group I feel that it isn't enough so I may increase it to half an hour per group and that will give me a little bit of extra time to help children set up activities after their guided session. An hour and a half is a long time for the children to be sitting so I have been including a 5-10 minute break for exercise and fruit and this breaks the Daily 5 up a little.

Writing has been really good and the children are starting to gain an understanding of how to use descriptive writing to make a sentence more interesting and although they are not where I want them just yet they are starting to get the idea. Next week I have to take writing samples of the whole class and analyse them which will be a good reference to go back to at the end of our descriptive writing unit and compare against.

Our inquiry has developed from using the thinking hats for our questions to grouping our questions into similar groups and deciding on a main question. Today was spent brainstorming how we can research our questions. I then spent twenty minutes modelling and teaching how we use each form.

Our next step in inquiry is to use these research methods to find answers to our questions.

Overall the week has been much better than last although the behaviours have become worse as they continue to test me, I have implemented a couple of new behaviour management techniques to get on top of the behaviour.

I had a release day this week and it was great however it went so fast. I spent the day doing running records and a probe…but did them incorrect so am going to do some next week the correct way. It was good though having a refresher on how to do them.

I have also put a couple more items on my wall, the first being the different reading strategies that children use each day.  I have also made a smaller chart that informs children on the strategy we will be focusing on for the week.

Reading strategy that children will focus on for the week.

The second is having my WALTS for each subject on the board so that children are aware of them and only have to look in one place to find them.

WALTs for the main subjects

The week has been good, next week is going to be really busy as we have a CRT day on Tuesday and winter sports on Wednesday which I am really looking forward to.

Have a great weekend :)