End of Year Reflections - what worked?

Term 3 Reflections

Reading Programme - hows it going?

Engaged boys!!!!

My journey with providing a folow-up activity using EE (explain everything application) has been very interesting and challenging.

Thanks to the amazing tech skills of colleagues PES has created a shareable bank of EE's.  

As a class teacher this has required a reliable internet connection (most days!) and the use of 'smart share' on the Hapara teacher dashboard to allocate the EE to each childs ipad.

As the children have got more proficient with EE's and their ipads, I have realised that we can not realistically keep churning out the EE activities and that the top reading groups (L15-18) need to show me their learning more independently by creating their own EE.

For example the main learning progression for Week 7-11 was retelling a story.

I learnt that the students needed to look at the pictures to aid sequence, then I needed to remind them in my teaching group (micro-group) of the 'beginning' 'middle' and 'end' parts of a story.

I also learnt to play to their strengths and that they worked better at getting the job done when they worked in pairs. The stronger oral language student was the recorder and the other student was the organiser and book handler. 

This group are now much more able (after taking turns in each 'role') to do this independently. As is usual in a micro-group this pointed out organically, the next learning point. This group needs to work on making meaning of implied or inferred information which the author may not make clear.

Guess what their learning progression will be for this Week?

Signing off for now,

Jody   

Literacy Magic!!!

At PES we have had some wonderful professional development over the years with Dr Gwenneth Philips and her First Chance literacy programme

We have revisited the specific prompts used to keep consistency in our pedagogy throughout the school. They WORK!!!!

Enjoy reading this and you are welcome to use the knowledge to trial in your own class.  Happy reading.

Gwenneth Philips Literacy Strategies

Reflections. . .

Did I get the 'complexity' right for the students?

Task: Create a 'generic' template in 'Explain Everything' for use as a starting point for a teacher supported reading group.

The next slide, which I will insert this week will ask students to look at what is different about two characters and describe why they are different. EG: Little Chimp eats with his hands and the bird eats with a beak.
Lets see if this is levelled correctly for my Level 12 (recently tested by Running Records) group.

My first 'generic' EE template. . .

We collaboratively created some generic EE (explain everything) templates to use for the lower reading levels, whilst trying to encourage the start of higher level thinking with the action word DESCRIBE which comes from the SOLO pedagogy of learning.

I trialled this template with my top reading group (Green L12) and it was hard work with an 80% teacher input to 20% child input. I will re-present the learning opportunity to this group as I am sure multiple opportunities will ensure success.

I will report in next week to say how they did. . . 

The power of collaboration and 'cool' colleagues. . .

Collaborative Inquiry Meeting

16/2	Meeting Agenda	Questions	Meeting notes, links
1	Share personal inquiry foci	What are my students doing now? What am I doing now? What am I wanting to change? Why? What am I going to try that I think will impact my students’ learning	Learning the Kawa of care for iPads Learning expected behaviour for the classroom Learning to use the camera on the iPad Identifying and using icons Higher order engagement beyond a simple cut up sentence or rote learning words Extending vocabulary through oracy activities (and reading/writing for Laura’s class)
2	Inquiry Reading and discussion	Summarise 3-4 main points What does this mean for my inquiry?	Learning needs to be re-cyclable Self-regulation is very important Teachers and learners need multiple opportunities to practise Challenge our existing teaching practice = and have the support to do so Give things time to embed Take risks
3	Sharing first steps of action plan	What am I going to do, try, observe, research in the next fortnight. be ready to share this and how it went with the group in week 5	Jody and Susan - to have top 2 groups working in EE at teacher table Karen - investigate and create some projects with an oracy focus to unlock prior knowledge and encourage engagement Laura - To set up a template that includes practice skills and also promotes higher cognitive engagement in literacy. To look into Solo Taxonomy and see how this may apply to Year 1-2 students.
4	Another pair of eyes - a group member will be your observation partner for the next fortnight. Arrange to “see” what they do now. When they share what the state of things are next meeting you will be able to contribute to this.	How can I ‘see’ what my partner is doing?  (this may be visits in class if you can, looking at their site or planning (ask for permission to view) or it could be discussions) What is the impact of what and how they teach on their students? What do you notice?  (Remember this is the baseline, you are looking at what is happening at the beginning of the year and before you both have implemented change)	Sue + Laura Jody + Karen - both will try some things & get together for informal chat in about a week

Loving Learning in the Digital World

I wonder what these could mean?

This is a blog which will track my professional learning in taking my pedagogy from a 'blended' environment to a 1:1 digital classroom with Year 1 students.
(5 year olds)