Check out my wee guys showing Mish Mash TV around the school:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-m5TPqdLhs&safe=active
Tuesday, 18 March 2014
Saturday, 15 March 2014
Week 6, Term 2 2014
This week went by really fast I had a day out for a PRT course on wednesday. The rest of the week was spent doing my normal class routine.
Maths went good however my learners didn't meet the expected outcomes and I believe this is because they really only had 2 teaching sessions during the week. I will be continuing the same learning intentions next week.
Writing was ok, we started the week by going on a bear hunt and then writing about it. I then had Lisa from Te Toi Tupu Literacy and English Language Learning in my class on Thursday doing a modelled lesson. I found this really good and got a lot of ideas for how to run my writing lesson that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. On the other hand it was a hard day because it really dawned on me how little I know and how much I have to learn but I am looking forward to the big challenge I have ahead of me.
Reading has been good, Kristen observed me this week and gave me some good feedback so I have taken that and built on it. One thing I was required to do was look at the triggers to move children from magenta to red and 3/5 children are displaying these so I have moved them up a group. The rest of my groups are learning decoding strategies and are working on being able to use these on their own.
We started learning small ball skills this week and I have tried to turn this time into games that help them use the skills they are leaning.
For topic we started looking at the scientific process. Our first experiment is looking at how plants grow in different conditions (I was sent a planting kit by Dairy NZ through Rosie's education so I am incorporating it into our science). I think that science is going to sit well with the majority of my students as they seem to have a keen interest already.
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
Individualising Learning for Boys and Girls by Mike Scadden
Today I went on my first PRT course for the year. Our focus for the day looking at the different ways a male and female brain works and was taken by Mike Scadden of Brain Stems.
The day was broken up into three sessions, the first was spent looking at concentration time. I have found this year with my class that they can only stay concentrated on a task or activity for 10 minutes at the most. Mike talked about the blood in our brains drains and settles else where when we are not up and moving every 12 minutes and this can be lower for children. He suggested having children up and moving every 6 minute and this could be as simple as standing up and sitting down. I have been trying to do this in my class however I need to keep track of the time more frequently. We also learnt that when I child has lost concentration they tend to fiddle and this help to turn the brain back on - I have lots of boys in particular that do this. I have found some manipulative's to give them so they are not tempted to fiddle with others.
The second session was spent looking at the way we talk and give instructions. We discussed how important it was to go over instructions slowly and clearly. Mike also said that although we have expectations of children's work we need to make sure we make it clear what we expect each session. We also spent the time looking at listening styles, I came out as a connected see photo below of how we figured this out.
Session three was spent exploring classroom displays (keep minimal for boys), questioning and feedback.
Questions that we ask need to be specific and we don't need to ask why questions because they don't contain learning.
Feedback needs to come from the learner, when doing this with a student take go along the process of:
- What were we trying to do here?
- Show me where you have done that?
- What are you going to do next?
- Clarify with any questions.
- Add positive comments.
- Add next step comments.
- Complete with summary.
Over all I found this a great course and can relate a lot of the content I learnt back to my own classroom and I look forward to working with some of his ideas.
The day was broken up into three sessions, the first was spent looking at concentration time. I have found this year with my class that they can only stay concentrated on a task or activity for 10 minutes at the most. Mike talked about the blood in our brains drains and settles else where when we are not up and moving every 12 minutes and this can be lower for children. He suggested having children up and moving every 6 minute and this could be as simple as standing up and sitting down. I have been trying to do this in my class however I need to keep track of the time more frequently. We also learnt that when I child has lost concentration they tend to fiddle and this help to turn the brain back on - I have lots of boys in particular that do this. I have found some manipulative's to give them so they are not tempted to fiddle with others.
The second session was spent looking at the way we talk and give instructions. We discussed how important it was to go over instructions slowly and clearly. Mike also said that although we have expectations of children's work we need to make sure we make it clear what we expect each session. We also spent the time looking at listening styles, I came out as a connected see photo below of how we figured this out.
Session three was spent exploring classroom displays (keep minimal for boys), questioning and feedback.
Questions that we ask need to be specific and we don't need to ask why questions because they don't contain learning.
Feedback needs to come from the learner, when doing this with a student take go along the process of:
- What were we trying to do here?
- Show me where you have done that?
- What are you going to do next?
- Clarify with any questions.
- Add positive comments.
- Add next step comments.
- Complete with summary.
Over all I found this a great course and can relate a lot of the content I learnt back to my own classroom and I look forward to working with some of his ideas.
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