Week 5, Term 2 2013

Week 5 has been a really good week in terms of children’s behaviour and the routines. It was a short week with Queens Birthday but I feel it didn’t affect children’s behaviours.

My class all  now have place mats on their desks and I am really pleased as I found them referring back to them during maths and writing. I found some online and then altered them to suit my classes needs. I have two lower students so they have slightly more simple ones than the rest of the class. I left a blank space where the children all drew an image that symbolises something is special to them.

Place mats used by two lower students.

Place mats used by the rest of the class.

Maths went well this week and I had my first observation from my tutor teacher on Thursday and it went better than I expected. She gave me really good feedback in terms of thing I am doing well and things I need to improve on. Through this discussion I determined that my areas of focus will be:

• ·         To incorporate the WALT and SC and unpack it with children
• ·         To use the modelling book more
• ·         Begin to use open-ended questions in all curriculum areas to get students to reflect and be able to explain their learning.

After reflecting on this I have also decided to change my rotations and work with only two groups a day for 25 minutes each as I have found 15 minutes just isn't long enough. I will only see two groups per day but I will be able to ensure children fully understanding and can go more in-depth before moving onto independent tasks.

The Daily5 rotations are going good. I have introduced the use of a class wiki so children can do word and writing activities on the computer.

I also took time during guided writing sessions to conference with each student to determine a goal they want to work on. This is in their reading books and also on display in the classroom.

Class reading goals.

I have also put a copy in each groups modelling book so I can refer to it during guided sessions.

I am going to be changing Daily5 next week so children have full choice on what activities they take part in. I know it isn’t going to run smoothly but with practice I know my students can achieve it.

Writing time was spent editing their stories from last week. They had to edit their own, then read someone else’s and give them some tips on what they should edit some more. Once they had done that they came and I conferenced with them individually. During this conference I questioned them on whether they had the correct punctuation, spelling and structure. After doing this activity it is clear that children need a bit of work on editing and this will become our focus in the next few weeks.

Over the weekend I will be marking the children’s writing using e-asTTle. I will then be taking it to our staff meeting on Monday for our moderation.

Have a great weekend. J