Observation 30/03/17 - Reading Recovery

Observation 30/03/17

Today I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my lower students, Prinze, reading at Level 2.  

Prinze started off by reading a seen text - ‘My Little Cat’ while Hitha did a running record.  

She then got him to read a new text - ‘Big and Little’ - which contained that familiar word - little.  I noticed the way Hitha was careful to introduce new vocabulary like the word ‘foal.’

When Prinze came to a word he was unsure of, ‘kitten,’ Hitha covered up most of the word so Prinze could only see ‘it.’ She then added the ‘k’ sound.  I have been trying to do this more with my reading groups and have noticed children in the higher group pointing out words within words.  

Prinze then went to the whiteboard and sorted the magnetic letters for the letters he had been working on - g, o, a, b.  He read the letters and said their sounds - he got confused between the b and d so Hitha got him to practise writing upper-case and lower-case bs.

Prinze then made and broke the word ‘go’ and Hitha asked him how we could make that into the word ‘going.’ She got Prinze to write the word with the whiteboard marker and pointed out to me that Prinze has a habit of writing letters from bottom to top - this made me think I need to reinforce letter formation more in class - we do our ‘always start your letters from the top’ song but perhaps I need to make this clearer.  

They then went on to a familiar story - “My Little Cat” and Prinze chose a picture from the story to write about.  Hitha got him to say his sentence slowly before writing it - “My little cat is in the bag.” getting Prinze to hold the idea in his head for long enough to write it down.  When Prinze left too much space between words Hitha covered up his errors with stickers and got him to do it again.

Prinze practised the word ‘bag’ by putting the letters into a sound box and then had a quick practice of some high frequency words - ‘little’ ‘is’ ‘it’ ‘if.’

Hitha then introduced a new book - ‘The skier.’  She said ‘have you ever seen a movie where people go skiing?  Before you go skiing you need all your gear.”  This book had the word ‘going’ so linked back to the word Prinze had been practising.

Takeaway: I found it really helpful to watch the way Hitha introduced new texts and to hear what she had noticed about Prinze’s handwriting. The way she made connections between words that Prinze had been learning and his books was valuable and made me think about how I could make more links between the sight word songs that we do in class and the books the children read.    

Observation 8/3/17 - Reading Recovery

Today I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my students, Tui, reading at level 7.  I found it really helpful to see the way she introduced a new book “Bingo’s Birthday” to him, just reading the part on each page where the character was talking, and talking about the picture.  She stopped Tui at the point where the girl was giving the dog a present and got him to predict what might be in the present then went back to the start and got him to read to check if his prediction was correct.  This established a purpose for reading - I reflected that I had been giving too much of the story away when introducing texts.

When Hitha got Tui to read a book he had previously read she got him to choose a picture to talk about - I thought this was a great oral language prompt.  Tui wrote down what was happening in the picture then Hitha turned this into a sentence strip - Munni has been recommending that I use these but I hadn’t seen them in action before so it was valuable to see. Tui reconstructed the sentence and Hitha gave it to him in an envelope to take home.  

Hitha also got Tui to sort magnetic letters on the whiteboard into groups of the same letter. I thought this would be a great activity for some of my children who are struggling with their letter recognition.  

Takeaway: Use magnetic letters as an activity to help with letter recognition.
Use cut up sentences as a way of helping with sentence structure.

Observation 22/2/17 - maths in Room 21

Today I observed Lilianne teaching maths in Room 21 with Year 5s.

They were working on the problem “Team Matai’s classes were using 3579 ipads and Team Manuka’s were using 1756.  How many were they using altogether?”

I liked the way Lilianne got the children to read the problem then flip their papers  over while she clarified parts of the problem.  

Another group was working with Niu in the back room on working out what ⅜ of the number of ipads was.  An important message I noticed Niu giving the children was “You must always give a reason for your answer.”

The first group that explained their answer split the numbers into thousands, hundred, tens and ones and added those.  

Takeaway: I liked the way Lilianne made a link back to the context of the problem at the end, saying “That was a lot of ipads to add up.”  That was a good reminder to me to do the same, so that the problem remains meaningful in its context.  

Observation 8/2/17 - maths in Room 21

Maths in Room 21
Today on my PRT day I observed a maths lesson with Year 5 children, as I have been learning about the 'Bobby Maths' approach.  To start with the teacher, Niu, got the children in pairs to talk about the maths norms - they clarified what some of these meant.  For example, for "Depth is more important than speed" one boy said "Depth means going deep into your brain." Niu also clarified the expectations for the maths programme - that children need to contribute to their groups - "No passengers" and need to ask questions if they don't understand.The problem they were working on was one they had done for homework "If 297 people attend a church and 229 stop attending, how many will be left?"  There were a few variations on this problem and the children were able to select which one they wanted to answer.  The teachers in this classroom had identified subtraction as an area that needed work so were focusing on this. The children got into small groups (4 is the ideal size) and worked on solving the problem.  They had a range of strategies - some split the number into hundreds, tens and ones and subtracted using these, one group used an algorithm, one group used materials, one used a number line...After about 10 minutes the groups got back together and each one had to demonstrate their strategies.  The other groups were encouraged to ask questions if they needed clarification and the teacher asked them to check that they could add their numbers together to check that their equations were correct. The main learning I took away from watching this was that children were discouraged from putting their hands up so that everyone was engaged, not just those who wanted to put their hands up.  I need to check whether this was the policy in all curriculum areas in this class or just in the maths programme.  I noticed that this increased engagement and the idea of 'no passengers.' I will be interested to see how this approach works with my Year 2s.

Takeaway: Encourage children not to put their hands up at maths time - emphasise the idea that anyone can be called on and that everyone needs to be engaging with the problem.

Observation - maths in Room 4 15/2/17

It was interesting today watching a maths lesson with children the same age as my class, after watching Lilianne teaching maths with the older children.  

For Shabnam’s warmup she got the children skip-counting in 2s by getting them to clap one quiet clap then one loud clap.  

She also got them to show her numbers with their hands and was then able to check their understanding quickly.  She got them to make doubles with their hands.  

She then set up the group norms - “How do you work as a team?”  While the children talked about that Shabnam settled the other group, who were working on equations in their books.  

The problem Shabnam was working on with her group was “At church lots of people came.  There were 17 boys and 10 girls.  How many people came to church.”  She connected it to the children’s prior knowledge, asking “Who goes to church?  What do you do at church?”

She then asked “What is the question asking you to do?” One child said “put together” and Shab asked “What are we putting together?” She asked some children to repeat others’ answers and got them to agree/disagree/say they’re not sure with their thumbs.  

I found it really helpful seeing how Shab set the problem up and connected it to the students’ own lives, and her use of the think/pair/share strategy.  

She brought the children back to the mat when some of them were not coping with the problem and asked them “What were you counting?” - linking back to the context of the problem.  She reinforced listening to others “What did Irma just say?” She drew one pair’s explanation on the board - they had drawn each person - then explained there is an easier way to do this - to count on from the bigger number.  They held their heads to practise putting the bigger number in their heads then practised a few examples with this new technique.  

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills