Paua drawings

 I was very proud of these paua drawings my class have been working on - I passed around a polished paua shell and got the class to notice things about the shell - the colours and patterns they could see, the texture and shape of the shell.  I then got them to draw the shell with pastel and outline details with black vivid.

They wrote a description of the paua shell and I got some of them to read their stories at our assembly.
I think the observational drawing we have been doing has been great for noticing objects carefully and has helped with thinking of adjectives in writing.  The paua inspired these pieces of writing:

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.  

Observational drawing

My colleague who is doing her TESOL diploma has been using observational drawing to support her literacy programme.  After talking to her about how good it was for getting children to notice details, a very useful skill for reading, I tried some with my class.  I collected some plastic toys and interesting objects and modelled noticing the details in an object by pointing out the feathers on this penguin and the lines on its feet and beak.

The children had a go and produced some great drawings - they have been getting better at noticing the details.

Behaviour management

Since the start of Term 2 I have been using a behaviour management system from Michael Linsin's book "The Classroom Management Secret."  His main idea is that you need to have a clearly defined set of rules, phrased positively,  and a step by step set of consequences for not following those rules.  You need to teach the rules explicitly and also get the children to act out instances of not following the rules.  I have read elsewhere that it's a good idea to get a child to demonstrate following the rules, not following the rules, then following the rules again so that the last impression they're left with is the desirable behaviour.

My rules are:
1. Listen and follow instructions.
2. Raise your hand before you speak.
3. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.
4. Respect your classmates and your teacher.

My consequences are:
1. Warning
2. Time Out
3. Time out in another class
4. Contact home

I have displayed these rules and consequences on the board, and have made magnetic names to move through the list of consequences if need be.  I have found that having the rules clearly displayed makes me give more precise instructions like "My instruction is...sit quietly and listen for your name on the roll."  It has been good to be able to hold behaviour accountable to a specific rule - "I'm giving you a warning because you have broken our rule about keeping hands and feet to ourselves."

I have struggled when at times children have refused to go to time out in another class.  At this point I have moved them to the next step - a phone call home.  I would like to work out a better way of getting children to comply with this step if they reach this point with their behaviour.

Overall I think this system has helped me to be more consistent with noticing and managing behaviour.  I have kept a checklist of where on my chart each child is at the end of the day and this has helped me track behaviour patterns.  I will keep using this system in Term 3.

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.