The 2x10 Strategy

It's a no brainer really.

Talking with a student for 2 minutes for 10 consecutive days will help grow a solid relationship with them, and it will reflect in so many areas of their learning, behavior and general person. 

I got the 2x10 strategy from reading this blog, and as any teacher talking with students is something you do on a daily basis, and I know that the more I get to know my learners, the better I will be able to teach them... but i'm not that often directly intentional with it. 

While doing kids camps, during our morning meeting each leader would name 1 or 2 kids in their small group who would be their 'focus' for the day. We would intentionally be building relationships, and while camp was only a week long, because we were thinking about it, we could build awesome relationships with the kids there. We also had to name times of the day that would be best for this relationship building... during whole group activities not so much, but maybe during a meal time or kids free time would be great :) 

As a teacher it's all that more important... while I have longer to build these relationships, the urgency isn't any less. The blog talks about having the 2x10 strategy for 'at risk' students, but I do strongly believe it's for ALL students. 

So this is going to link in the my last post about being more culturally responsive/learning about the cultures in the classroom. Maybe alter it a bit 2 students a day where I take the 2 minutes either in the morning or at the start of morning tea or lunch to just talk. Let them guide the conversation and see what excites them and what makes them, them. 

I'll have a reflect back on it when I have been doing this 'intentional' talking for a while! :) 

Bring on Term 4!

It's a New Term!

Term 4, 2014 begins... TOMORROW!!!!

Well for the kids at least, it probably begun about a month ago for me :) 

One of the things on my mind over the holidays was about being culturally responsive to ALL my students. 

I was very lucky at my last school to have a high proportion of the school being Māori, Tongan and Samoan, so I have had the chance to learn some of their culture... but even in that i've only scratched the surface. 

In my current class I have an absolutely wonderful group of students, and they are such a mix of cultures and backgrounds. Out of my 18 students I have 9 different cultures... how awesome is that!!

Last year some educators from around Canterbury had the chance to go to Samoa to experience school and Island life to better understand their students.

Here is a video about their visit...

Right at the end there is a challenge given, which I'm going to take as my challenge for this term.

Something I started at my last school (but misplaced in the move!) was a list of how to say some classroom directions and praise in the different languages represented in my room... written correctly and phonetically so I could try and learn it.

It was a great list to have, so I'm going to start it up again with the help of my parents... probably as a google doc this time so I can't misplace it!

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.