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.

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.

PTC 4

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

Restorative Practice PD

Zentangle

For the last few weeks we have been doing a class swap once a week to get the children familiar with their classes for next year.  I have had a group of Year 3 children who are going on to the senior school this year.  They have had 3 1/2 hour sessions so I decided to get them to make some zentangle bugs.  This was the one I made as a model to demonstrate the technique and different kinds of patterns to use:

I was so impressed with the artwork they created in this short time:

I showed the early finishers a zentangle hand I had made to put in my relieving go-bag and they created their own, tracing around their hands:

A fun and effective way to explore patterning!

Cress heads

 In Science we have been learning about what plants need to grow and survive.  To provide different contexts to learn this information I provided a range of different plant activities.  We grew cress and wheatgrass from seed in these cress head containers and in a 'cress diary' recorded the plants' progress.  We experimented with growing bean seeds in different conditions after making predictions about the conditions that would be best for germinating the seeds.
We cut out images of things that would help the seeds to germinate and placed these on plant diagrams.

And when the 'cress heads' had grown nice and long we gave them a haircut and sampled them in a sandwich.
PTC 8  Demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn
ii  Provide opportunities and support for ākonga to engage with, practise and apply new learning to different contexts.

Skittles and fruit loops

We did algebra for our strand maths last week and to make our patterning a bit more hands-on I brought in some skittles and fruit loops.  We practised continuing patterns on pattern cards and making up and recording our own patterns.  

 The student engagement in this activity reminded me of the importance of making lessons hands-on and using different materials to demonstrate ideas.  Having encountered the materials in everyday life made connections between prior experiences.

PTC 8. Demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn
i. enable ākonga to make connections between their prior experiences and learning and their current learning activities

The RTLB I have been working with recommended that I read a chapter from this book to support strategies that we have been using with a child who shows defiant behaviour.  The chapter was on positive praise, and talked about how important positive praise was to children who have trouble regulating their emotions.  It pointed out that with these children it can be very difficult to find positive behaviours to praise so teachers need to train themselves to notice them.  Webster-Stratton talks about one teacher keeping stones in her pocket and moving a stone from one pocket to another each time she praised the target child.  I have read a lot about practising gratitude being a way to train the brain to notice positive things, I guess this works on a similar principle.  In the chapter Webster-Stratton talked about the importance of even praising steps towards the desired behaviour.  I would like to read the whole book when I have time and will definitely put effort into noticing praiseworthy behaviour - important for all children not just those behaving defiantly.  

7. promote a collaborative, inclusive and supportive learning environment

i. demonstrate effective management of the learning setting which incorporates successful strategies to engage and motivate ākonga ii. foster trust, respect and cooperation with and among ākonga