Weeding the garden

Weeding the school garden and planting seed potatoes is an activity I have been using as a language experience.  It has been good for reinforcing new vocabulary and I have seen some new words such as "trowel" popping up in stories.  I enjoyed David's description: "The potatoes looked like they had crab legs" describing the buds on the potatoes.

Positive norms posters

Some brainstorms my class did about what Jo Boaler's positive classroom norms meant to them.

Reflection on Term 3

Term 3 had its challenges - I tried a new kind of taskboard for my reading with a must do/may do system, but it became very chaotic.  I went back to my usual taskboard but decided to have my big book in between two of the rotations, separating them.  Apparently that is what they do at Koru School so that the children can pack up fully in between tasks.  I still feel that I need to hone my reading rotation system at guided reading time, perhaps for next year I will look into doing Daily 5.
I have been getting the children to read aloud to their reading buddies and this is having a positive effect on some of the lower readers.  It gives an extra chance to practise reading for the children who go to Reading Recovery.
For writing we focused on narrative and the children enjoyed using some story starters Shabnam gave me - they had different characters and settings and we did some shared writing together.
They are getting good at identifying the characters, setting, problem and solution in a story - I have noticed they need work on taking this from a plan to a coherent narrative.
For maths Karen S. gave me some scrapbooks for my maths groups to work in and some suggestions about the maths routine.  I have found this has been really helpful, particularly for my children who are lower in maths.   Working in the scrapbook is quite motivating and a good way to collect evidence of their work.
I got some children to do a simple pepeha for Maori Language Week and they did really well on stage.  Getting them to practise it in different settings like in front of the team and in front of the librarian worked well.
Term 4 will be busy with cultural group practice, planting some potatoes in the school garden, drawing patterns and end of year organisation.

Reading recovery observation with Siope

I observed Vanessa doing a reading recovery session with one of my students, Siope.  She got Siope to focus on how the letter sounds felt in his mouth.

She got Siope to hear the beginning and ending sounds in some words and Vanessa finished writing the words.  She then made a sentence strip of a sentence Siope had said "He is putting makeup on."  Siope put the sentence back in order.

She then got Siope to practise some high-frequency words: 'is' and 'am.'  She emphasised stretching the words to hear the sounds.

Then she got him to practice the word 'my' with magnetic letters and gave him some sentences with the word 'my' - 'My brother is called Saia.'  'My class is Room 6.'

Vanessa then got Siope to read "We Dress Up."  She reminded him to turn the pages the right way.  She made connections between the text and the pictures as Siope read.

She got Siope to find some words in the book that started with an S - "scarf" and "snake."

Takeaway:  I noticed the way Vanessa really got Siope to pay attention to the sounds in the high-frequency words he was learning, as well as just recognising the words.  I will use this strategy with Siope's reading group.  

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.  

Observation of reading recovery

I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my children, Tui, reading at Level 7.  Tui started off by reading a familiar story called "The Leaf Boats."  Hitha got him to point to words with a chopstick as he read.  Hitha reminded him to pay attention to commas as he read.  She drew Tui's attention to words and punctuation he had missed.

Then Tui read another seen text - "Mother's Day" while Hitha did a running record.  She got Tui to choose a picture from the story to talk about.  Tui then wrote a story about the picture.  Hitha drew a sound box to help him with the word 'gave.'  She reminded him that the e on the end of gave was a 'magic letter.'

Hitha paid attention to Tui's letter formation too, when he tried to write 'breakfast' she noticed that he wrote his 'f' backwards.  She put a sticker over the f and got him to rewrite it.  She wrote his story on a strip of paper then cut it up and got Tui to put the words back in order.  She then focused on fluency, getting Tui to read it back "like a story."
Takeaway:  Watching this reading recovery session reminded me about using story strips for writing - this is an activity I haven't done in a while and would be good to use for my lower writing group. 

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.  

Observing maths in Room 9

I watched Karen S. teaching a maths lesson in her Year 3 class.  I found it valuable to see practical aspects of how she set up the lesson.

Karen had the problem set up in modelling books for the groups to use.  The problem was: "Mrs Schwenke bought 3 groups 15 currant buns from the market.  How many currant buns did Mrs Schwenke buy altogether?

Karen put the children into 3 groups of 4 and got them to explain what was happening in the story.  She used the 'talk moves' language, saying "Can I revoice it for you?"

When the children understood what the problem was about they worked with their groups - Karen chose who was going to be the writer for each group (everyone wanted to write).

When it came to presenting the answers Karen put the children into lines.  When a group was presenting and drawing circles on the modelling book she asked "What do the circles represent?"  I thought this was a good idea, making the connection that the circles represent something from the problem.  Karen was encouraging, saying "Well done for being brave and attempting this," reinforcing positive attitudes towards maths.

After the children had presented their answers Karen made the connection that the problem could be represented as 3 x 15, which was the same as 15+15+15.

Lilianne reminded the children about splitting numbers, that it could be worked out as 3x10 + 3x5, so 30 + 15 = 45.  She reminded them that this is called the distributive law.

Takeaway:  I liked the way that Karen glued the maths problems into modelling books to keep track of them and so that the children could read the problem close up (one of the maths mentors mentioned that this affects their processing of what they read).  I liked the way she set up her groups with everyone sitting in lines and a specific job in the group for each person.  It was good to see the way she used the language from the talk moves and that she encouraged the children for being brave and standing in front of the class, acknowledging that it could be difficult to do this.  

Pasifika Dual Language Texts seminar

I went to a talk held by Dr Rae Si'ilata at the Universtity of Auckland on Wednesday night - it was about 'translanguaging and storying with Pasifika dual language texts.'
Translanguaging, I learnt, is having input in one language and output in another.

Dr Si'ilata's main message was to value the languages children bring to school.  She said people used to believe that if children were strong in their first language then there was less space in their minds for learning English.  The understanding now though is that if children are strong in their first language this will support them to have a strong understanding of English, too.

She showed some practical examples of children using the Pasifika dual language texts.  At Holy Cross School the children were reading 'Let's Go' and making their own version of the book online with photos and audio files of them reading it in different languages.

She showed the blog of a colleague who was using Pasifika stories to engage her learners: http://kylahansell.blogspot.co.nz/

She mentioned that the audio files of some of the stories online had the words read too fast, so the school had used children's older siblings to record slower versions.

Takeaway: This seminar gave me some ideas about how to use the dual language texts in my class.  I will look into good apps for making an online book and use this with a simple bilingual text like 'Let's Go.'

Observation - writing in Year 1

Yesterday I observed Jas teaching writing in her Year 1 class.

First she went over the 'letters with long sticks' - d, f, h, k, l, t.  She had these on a handwritten chart.

She talked about what good writers do - saying that it's important to use finger spaces so our words are not mashed together like mashed potato.  I think this explanation would appeal to my class.

Then she set up the two groups who were going to be writing independently.  One had a box of sentences like "I like to shop." printed out big and with a photo.  That group had to write a story from the card and illustrate it.  The other group had a box with sentence starters like "My brother is nice to me because..." on one side and options like "he reads with me" or "he looks after me" on the back.  I thought these would be really effective for independent writing activities for my low group and that the everyday topics would appeal to them.

When the two independent groups were settled Jas sat down with the group she was writing with.  She had a picture of a pig glued into the modelling book.  They briefly discussed the pig, how it had four legs like a dog etc.  Then she said she'd like them to write "Look at my pig."  They counted the words in the sentence.  Jas had some big word magnets on the board and she got children to go and find the words on the board. She then got them to compare the words from the board with the words on the alphabet card. She got one child to be the 'spacer' - making the finger spaces in the modelling book.  When they got to the word 'pig' in the sentence, a word that wasn't on the alphabet card, Jas gave them different options for hearing the letter sounds.  "Is it 'i-apple' or 'i-insect?'  Is it 'g-goat' or 'g-orange?'"

Then she got them to read the completed sentence from the beginning and to record it in their books.

Takeaway: I would like to make some sentence starter cards for my low writing group as an independent writing activity when they are not writing with me.  I really liked the way that using the magnets got the children to physically go and find the words.  I would like to get a set of these to use with my class too.  

PTC 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

Spelling lesson observation

I watched Shabnam teaching spelling with Leytia.

She was revising consonant blends and had written them on a chart like they were equations.

b+l=bl

c+l=cl

d+r=dr

s+t+r=str

s+c+r=scr

She defined blends as "2 or more consonants put together to make a new sound."

Shabnam then wrote up some letter combinations and asked the children "Is that a blend or not?"

The first one she put up was 'st.'
One child said it was and Shabnam restated "So you can hear the sound of the s and the sound of the t...is that what you're saying?"

She then put up "ch."  "Is that a blend?" she asked.  "Why or why not?"

Monisha said "You can't hear the c and the h."

She then put up "sh."  She got them to imagine putting the letters together.

She gave them "wh" and asked if the letters could be separated.  She gave Irma the word "whale" and asked if the w and the h could be separated in that word.  She then introduced the idea of digraphs.  "So if it's not a blend it's a digraph."
She shared the purpose of this new learning: "We are learning this so you'll be  able to use them in your writing.  Sometimes we have to sound things out but we can't.  So we just have to know them."

Observing Leytia modelling a writing lesson

Yesterday I observed Leytia teaching a writing lesson with my class.  Her focus was on vocabulary.

Leytia started with some quick formative assessment.  She asked "Where do sounds belong?"  "In a word" was the answer she was looking for.  "Where do words belong?" "In a sentence" the children replied.  

She wrote up a sentence "My hair is black."  "What's the noun?" she asked.  "What's the adjective?"

She got the children to describe their hair and eyes and supply her with some sentences.  She got them to identify the noun and adjective in each one and reinforced the idea that an adjective describes a noun, you can't have an adjective without a noun. 

Leytia then brought out a "feely box." The children had to reach in one by one to feel what was inside without looking in the box.  They then had to come up with words to describe what they felt.  She wrote them up classified into "Feel" and "Touch."

She then got the children to guess what the object was.  They guessed glue, slime and paint.  It turned out to be a small shoe covered in slime.  She asked what the noun was..."shoe!"  

She then gave the lowest group a writing frame, which she wrote in the modelling book.  This was "The slime felt_____ and ____.  She got them to write a new sentence with the same structure.  Prinze, for example, wrote "The slime felt cold and sticky."  

Takeaway:  I liked the way Leytia scaffolded the lowest group by giving them a frame to use and giving them the freedom to choose the adjectives they wanted.  This would work with lots of different topics.  I also liked the way she did  a quick formative assessment at the start of the lesson to check the children's understanding of a noun and an adjective.

PTC 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

Writing observation in J8

I observed writing in J8 - they were working on using commas correctly.  

Sandhya started by talking about punctuation - she gave the example of  a full stop being a kind of punctuation.  The children clapped their hands with a fist to demonstrate a full stop.  

Then Sandhya modelled a sentence with commas.  She said "I like apples, bananas and pears."  She got the children to repeat it after her, to hear how the comma would make you say the words.

She then role played a sentence with commas by getting some children to stand up.  She said "I like Esita, Jacob and Hamid."  pointing to each child as she said their name. 

She then wrote the sentence on the board without the commas and chose children to write the commas in a different colour.  

The children's writing task was to choose three to five words from their red dictionary and to use them in a sentence.  They then had a follow-up worksheet.

Takeaway:  I liked the way Sandyha used role playing to visually represent the sentence - it made it come alive for the children.  Another good tip I picked up while observing was that if Sandhya wanted a child to come back later she would wave her hand around her face like the hands of a clock.  This was a great non-verbal signal to come back later.  

PTC 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

Reflection on Term 2

Reflection on Term 2

The class has been more settled in Term 2.  I think this is because I have been following behaviour management plan carefully and identified routines that needed to be clarified.  I still need to do further work on getting the children to use voices of an appropriate volume, and looking after property. I am going to work with the RTLB in term 3 on this.  

Using language experiences has continued to be useful for engaging students in writing.  We have done lots of food-based language experiences like eating mango, telling the difference between sugar and salt, icing gingerbread cookies and eating sour lemon.  

In maths, I have some students who have been struggling with simple addition - I have been giving them lots of practice with picture cards with dominoes on to reinforce this.  I have noticed that having the visual representation of the numbers really helps and most of these struggling children are now able to write a simple addition equation correctly.  

In reading, I have been looking for an alternative to the taskboard.  I would like to have more of a Daily 5 kind of system, where children have a choice in the order they complete activities, as long as they complete them in the given time.  I have been reading about how to introduce parts of the Daily 5 such as building reading stamina, so may introduce this in Term 3.  Other ideas are a must do/may do system or a change to the way the taskboard is organised.  

I am thinking about starting a new reading group for my very low readers just focused on sight words and alphabet - having had a new girl start who is very low in reading and writing is making me think I need this.  

This is the list I made of things to change for Term 3:

Must do/may do system for reading instead of taskboard? Or Daily 5?

New songs

Display maths resources better - small labelled boxes on top of trolley.  

Make box of activities for lowest writing box to do independently.

More number recognition/ordering activities for lower maths children.  

Add velcro to the Colourful Semantics sentence cards so they’re easier to use.  

Group norms for maths clearly displayed to remind me and the children of these norms.  

Writing PD with Leytia

This term we have been having writing PD with Leytia Leota-Preston.  I observed two writing lessons with her (in Shabnam and Sandhya's classes) and she observed one of my lessons.  One of Leytia's key messages has been that language experiences are valuable for engaging writers (especially boys).  One of the language experiences she talked about at our PD session in the holidays was dissecting a hammerhead shark.  When I watched Shabnam's lesson on adding adjectives, I got the idea of using post it notes to collect student voice.
When Leytia came to watch my writing lesson I got the children to taste a small piece of mango.  I got them to go around in a circle and describe the mango.  I then got them to write their description on a post it note and identify which of the senses it belonged to. I added the post it note to a a chart organised into the different senses.

The resulting writing had some great descriptions using a range of adjectives.  

Supplementary Inquiry Team

I am part of the Topic supplementary inquiry team at my school.   We are focusing on improving the teaching of Social Sciences, Technology and Science.  In Term 2 our focus has been on Technology and the Year 2 team has been focusing on making a rain hat from recycled materials.
These are the hats the groups in my class have been making:

I like the way they are all so different.  

 The team has been looking at the skills we would like our children to have in technology, based on the "indicators of progressions by level" technology document.  We decided on:
Identify (plan, test)

Explain (explore, research)

Describe (explore)

Evaluate (compare/contrast).

We looked at our planning to work out how we could plan experiences that would develop these skills, and discussed how we would assess these skills.
While it would have been good to spend more time on the rain hat project I felt that my class successfully used the materials to create a prototype.  They loved having some freedom to explore the materials and refine their projects as they went.  Next time I would probably spend more time talking about how to identify what worked and what didn't work, and how to make constructive changes.

Testing the rain hats on a rainy day. 

Observation 29/6/17 - Maths

I watched Siale’s maths today in Room 7.  Half the class were doing repeated addition with her and the other half were working on independent problems.

First, Siale revisited the group norms and reminded the children that the norms apply to any group, like a sports team too.  She used humour - “Remember we are family, don’t let the little red hen do all the work” to reinforce this.

The class were doing a repeated addition problem.  “If Anzac had $2, then his nana gave him $2, then his uncle gave him $2, then his mum gave him $2, how much money did he have altogether?

Siale asked questions to clarify:

“What is the problem about?”

“Who is in the story?”

“What did she (Mum) do?”

“How do you know?”

“How many numbers are there?”

“What’s it called?” “Repeated addition.”

Then she said “Ok.  Let’s attack the problem.”

I liked the way she asked questions that drew out the children’s thinking.  

After the children had worked on the problem for a while, Siale rang a bell to signal it was time to stop.  I liked this non-verbal signal - it reminded me that I could use my bell for this.

I also liked her reminder for putting away the pens - “Lid on, pen down, lid on, pen down.”

Two groups presented their answers.  Siale was careful to position them so that they weren’t blocking the board.  After they had explained their answers she brought the rest of the class to the mat and talked to them about repeated addition and how that can be represented as multiplication, the ‘x’ sign meaning ‘groups of.’  She got the children to role play making 6 groups of 2, and 2 groups of 6, showing the reversibility of these factors.  

She then modelled place value in this kind of problem - “If you know that 2 + 2 = 4, you know that 20 + 20 = 40, 200 + 200 = 400 and 2000 + 2000 = 4000.  

Takeaway: From observing this lesson I saw the power of getting children to role play the problem, giving a visual representation.  It was interesting to observe Siale’s careful questioning and this has given me ideas about the way I will launch maths problems in my class.  

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 - 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

Bubbles

I have been wanting to try out some language experience activities with my class and decided to do bubble blowing as an activity to spark descriptive writing.  I bought some small party favour bubble wands and gave out one between two, with the instruction that one was to blow bubbles, and the other could catch or pop them.

I was struck by how engaged the children were in this simple activity and how positive their behaviour was (I have been finding transitions to outdoor activities challenging).  Afterwards we brainstormed adjectives we could use to describe the bubbles and the children wrote stories about the bubbles - I was impressed with their attention to detail when describing them.  This reinforced the effectiveness of using language experience activities and made me excited to plan my next one...making sticky slime.