Moments

Moments which made me smile today...

"It's ok if you don't know how to spell 'because', you can look at the board"

Said by a student while I was typing up his work and I had misspelt 'because'.

"Miss, why are you so dangerous, always holding dangerous things"

Said after I 'saved' a group from a spider and put it outside. 

Modern Learning Spaces - lets give it a try!

This morning was a wet and wooly morning. 

Wind

Rain

Hail

What better morning, to try something new!

After watching Anne's video about changing her environment into a MLE within her current room, and her students choosing where they best learn, we gave it a go this morning.

During writing the students could choose to sit where they thought they would do their best learning and work.

Here are some photos of what it looked like...

We talked at the start about where we think we learn best, and why.

We also talked about that we're just doing a trial, so we need to think about our learning and if it does help us learn better.

Here is what some students said about it...

"I chose to learn by the door because it's a bit peaceful, and no body will talk to me too much."

"I chose to do my learning on the mat, because it is very comfortable there."

"I chose to do my writing in the library corner because it's a quiet place."

"I chose to do my learning under the table, because I like it there. It's very cool writing under the table."

"I chose to do my learning in the cubby hole because it's comfy."

From the teachers side of things, their writing was no different... but I see that as a good thing. 
With the choices of who they sit with and where, there was no deterioration in their writing, and I could still see all the students showing me good writing habits (i.e. word cards, conferencing with others, etc).

It will be interesting if I see any noticeable change as we go on so...


I think we'll be trying it again tomorrow!

Modern Learning Spaces

Modern Learning is all the talk at the moment, I've visited schools in Auckland and Wanaka which have been purpose built as Modern Learning Environments (MLE), and i've seen classrooms adapted to make them into MLE without the infrastructure change... I'm visiting one in Christchurch this week too, to see how they work their MLE.

One thing I hadn't really thought about was the students initial input into the process, here are two videos by Core Education which feature Anne Kenneally talking about pre turning her single cell classroom into a single cell MLE, and then how it was going once it had been set up.

It got me thinking about what I can do with my class next term, and about helping my students to learn and understand what helps them to learn best.

Anne Kenneally: Student designed learning spaces from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Anne Kenneally: Creating learning spaces from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Fabulous Friday Free choice Followup... Fail!

But that's what reflections are for right?

Monday to Thursday once my students have finished their writing (or think they have!), they move onto a followup activity and stay there for the rest of writing time/until I call them over to conference, look at goals and do our 2 stars and wish... then any editing that we think could be done.

The followup tasks are displayed on the screen like this

So the Blue Dragons start with me (the apple), and when they've finished their writing today, the followup would be roll and write their spelling words.

The Green Dragons are doing all their work on iPads today, and once they're finished they get to do literacy activities in the iPad (sometimes hard to police).

The Orange Dragons get priority for goals (the green tick), and once finished they're in the library corner, and...

The Red Dragons use the plastic alphabet letters to make their spelling words.

This system works really well.

The students know exactly how to 'read' it, and the students sit in their groups, so once a child is finished they are the ones who set up anything that is needed for the follow up.

As I said, this is only Mon-Thurs. 

Friday's is free choice seating, I choose students who have shown they have worked really hard to go on the iPads, and they can choose their followup activities.

The last few Fridays this has worked well, but today the day was against us.

We had mufti, our 'fish' were growing, and we had a very exciting remote control car brought in by one of the students which we watched and then were doing our writing about, AND it was a rather warm day. 

So the free choice followup became some students doing their choice and some students being excited about the day and not being engaged on anything... and of course this wasn't noticed by me until a visitor came in... always when there's a visitor you become more alert.

After the visitor left, I pulled them all in, we talked about if we were doing learning, and they were given set tasks again... without the iPads.

Angels.

All were engaged, all were working together in their groups, and I finished my conferencing super quick compared to before!

(And we had 2 students finish their goals! Woohoo!)

So to reflect on this I have thought of a few options...

I do like the free choice seating on a Friday, so I could have different pictures other than the dragons at the tables, and those students become that group for the day, which would mean I could still have a 'set' follow up activity displayed... I would just have to think about how I made it work, because then some tables may be full because all the students want to do 1 followup activity... but is that necessarily a bad thing? As long as there are enough resources and they're engaged/learning i'm sure we can make it work. 

Another thought is projecting the choices up on the board, maybe still having 4 choices, so they have something to base their choosing on... once again it could mean a mass at one activity, but i'm sure we could make that work.

Or Friday could be one followup activity for all, maybe something a bit different, so that Friday can still be Fabulous and a bit different.

I'll keep thinking. 

As I said above, usually the free choice had been working, so maybe just with the mix of the day was a one off, but i'll keep it on my radar as possible options. 

Happy Writing!

Why I have a class blog...

With re-starting a blog at my new school, I decided to have a think about WHY I blog.

I teach students who are at an age where they need assistance to blog, either fully, or with their spelling when they email me some work... so since i've started classroom blogging it's been very teacher heavy with what does and doesn't go online.

My students will say 'can we put this on the blog', and the answer more often than not is 'yes'... but then on busy days when there are meetings, work to be marked and planning to be done, the blog can easily be  put to the back.

But WHY I blog is because of connection...

Blogging is an awesome way of connecting the classroom with the home (& the wider world!). Connection has been a main goal of mine this term, encouraging families to go on the blog at home and to comment... 

and it's going great!

We definitely have some star commenters, and some whānau I would still love to get onboard, but there is a connection going. I'm not just making blog posts which only I view (kinda like this blog :p), they are being viewed by many people outside the classroom, and there is connections happening!

YAY!!!

I'll finish with one comment on my classroom blog that made my day... this is what blogging having a home/school connection is all about :) 

In my opinion, blogging is achievable and very worth while... if there is an audience.  

Finding my Strengths - SO INTERESTING!

I have had many people who have done a 'Strengths Finder' course tell me how interesting and insightful it was... but only after doing it myself do I agree!

Also our coach said at the start to get a fuller understanding of our personal strengths, she suggested getting a personal coaching session... my first thought was it's just more money... but after a 3 hour session, i'm quite keen to fins out more!

So I did a 3 hour workshop with 19 other people... there are 34 different strengths, and out of the 20 of us, we only had 1 which wasn't covered!

Then she told us the stats which go along side the strength finder... all very interesting and most I didn't write down, but some which stuck out to me were...

1:278,000

People have the same 'top 5' as me

1:33 million

People will have the same 'top 5' order

1:4 trillion

People will have the whole 34 in the same order

Pretty cool!

So as in my previous blog post, my top 5, in order are:
- Belief
- Responsibility
- Communication
- Arranger
- Developer

During the workshop we  looked into our own 'top 5' and write out what part of the description I really relate to, and what it looks like in our lives... then we had a chance to go around for 5min intervals and talk with someone who had one of our strengths. This I found was super interesting an valuable. It was interesting to see that some us had the same ones, but took different bits from it... but I think it was even better when I was talking with someone and when they were describing some things they did in that strength, I could totally relate to, and sometimes didn't even realise it until they pointed it out in themselves!

The 'strengths finder' has been used an studied for over 50 years, and through it they have found that there is no gender inequality across the strengths, while there is a cultural one. 

An analogy I liked was about handling others baggage. 
With my set of strengths, I need to manage myself so that I don't take on too much and burn out, so I'm going to try and keep this analogy in mind. 

When you're at the Airport traveling overseas, you need to check your baggage in.
Now the person who is on the other side of the booth takes your baggage, you might discuss your trip and other details, but when the time has come, you leave them, and they let your baggage go.
There is a time and a place for the person to hold my baggage, but there is also a time to let it go (what a mess the airport would be if they held onto our bags!)

So I'm going to try and keep this in my mind, I can listen to what's going on in others lives, but I need to remember that it's theirs and not mine, I need to let go. 

One last point is about expectations.
We discussed that one of the biggest reasons people 'fail' is because of the lack of expectations or unknown ones. 
We thought about what expectations we have on ourselves, what expectations we thought others had on us... but also things like, what expectations we had for meetings and training events...
Are the expectations I have good or not? 

If expectation aren't clear from both sides it can lead to people being disappointed, hurt, upset and burning out. I need to be aware of expectations I give and the ones around me. I need to be aware of if they are appropriate and achievable or if they will impact negatively (i.e. giving people expectations which stretch them our of their skills/strengths into a place they struggle). 

So that was just some quick thoughts and ramblings. There was so much I learned, and lots more to think on and look into. Would be definitely be keen to look more into it, as well as do it as a team sometime to see how we can best work in together and explain why some things are as they are. 

Everyone has a part to play and individual strengths they can bring to any team!