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!
No comments:
Post a Comment