Week 8, Term 3 2013

My week 8 goals were:

• Incorporate more hands on learning tasks
• Use my assessment to inform my planning
• Use open ended questions.
• Focus on the positives
• Continue consistent behaviour management
• Have a greater wait time when children are answering a question
• Take notes during guided sessions

This week maths has gone really well. My level 2 group has been focusing on using grams to measure weight, my level 3 group has been focusing on using millilitres and litres to measure volume and my level 4 group has been focusing on finding the volume of a cuboid. The majority of my class are really getting in to measurement because it is so hands on and they are making the links back to home easily.  One of my goals this week was to ensure I know about the next steps for my learners and I did a bit of research around them before teaching each group. I did pretty well and was able to extend my top group when they understood the taught strategy. Next week we are continuing with measurement and the children will be completing a post unit assessment which I hope to see improvement in.

Reading this week has gone well, I have my top 3 groups reading chapter books suitable for their reading age and they have been required to summarise each chapter after reading. My top group did this well as they have already had a lot of teaching around what a summary is however there are large gaps for my other two groups and I will be spending time focusing on how to summarise.

My students are starting to take advantage of the Daily 5 programme and the fact that it is free choice so next term I will be spending some time refreshing their memory on how we do things in Room 4.

We have spent a bit of time on art this week and I am pretty pleased with how their pictures have turned out. My goal was to get them using different tools for painting and not being afraid to have a go – they are getting there. We used a variety of tools including paint brushes, paper towels, straws and sticks. I found the plan on that Artist Woman's website and just adapted it to suit my class.

          An example of Room 4's blossom trees.

Over the next 1-3 weeks I will be setting up conferencing times with my students starting next term and this will allow me the opportunity to find out what the kids know and where they have gaps. I will be setting this up for literacy and numeracy.

My week 9 goals are:

• Focus on the positives and give children more praise.
• Continue consistent behaviour management
• Have a greater wait time when children are answering a question.
• Take notes during guided sessions.
• Ensure I know next steps before teaching lessons.
• Provide children with more feed forward.