The Questions Have Started

I am working a little backwards with the next few blogs as I am very keen to post about my Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) as well as the PD we had on Collaborating and growth/fixed mind set. I am just waiting to get a few slides and links which I hope will explain it a bit more clearly than I possibly could.

 I have reflected already how this year is going to work. Already it seems strange as usually I would have a class room all set up, displays to help with the students thinking scattered around the room, planning for at least the first 3 weeks completed and just a general sense of  a room ready to greet the students.

However this is not the case. I am working in a team with 4 other teachers and my ‘classroom’ is merely my homeroom for my class to have registration taken. I don’t own the walls therefore can’t splash all my own things on it –yet.

I am loving this, it is right up my alley and doesn’t faze me one bit (this will become apparent when I blog about the HBDI) but what is hard is all five of us agreeing about how we will do and go about things. We are a great team and I think we will work fabulously together but we are also individuals who have different ideas and interpretations about how things may work.

What has been great is out principal has been using what we will be using with the children- Our Graduate programme and our first one is Team Player. This is something we have to do in order for success to happen and for our students to be successful.

I won’t lie it’s daunting as I know I am someone who has a million and one ideas and sometimes get carried away with excitement. Very much like a child right before Christmas! But I do know I have to restrain this side of me and listen (which can be hard for me) rather than talk!

Already we are thinking how we will work with nearly 120 students and four classrooms (we have two rooms that could easily fit two classes in and have doors that lead into each). We know we need to utilise the space we have to best suit the students and our teaching. So far we have a few ideas but setting them in stone is hard.

Today I began thinking;

Some students need to be read to everyday others once a week. How will this rotation work? Where will they go? Is it easier for students or teachers to move around?

What about maths? How can we get away from interchange?

Would utilising the two bigger rooms as ‘independent’ working rooms with teacher/s facilitating work?

Could the others be used as group rooms? If so how would we work this?

How will we work collaborative learning so that we are successful? At the moment everyone have a very different definition of this.

Movement- How will this work?

I know in the next few weeks my questions will be answered but there is a lot to ponder over.

What does 2015 hold for me?

You can tell when teachers are back working while on holiday as Twitter once again is filled with their blogs. A lot have been reflecting about 2014 and what they want to see in 2015.

A lot happened for me in 2014 and I have tried to get onto the ‘blog train’ and reflect about all the changes that have been taking place. But for me it is all about 2015!

I am moving away from my comfort zone completely. Yes, I am making a change which I am excited about and at the same time terrified. Not only that, but the school is also making a lot of changes which I am super excited to be part of.

So what am I going to be doing?

I am going to be teaching year 3/4 students. The last time I did this was over 12 years ago and in the UK. For me this change is important. I need to be able to confidently say I can teach a range of year groups and have a solid understanding of them as individuals and how they fit into the New Zealand curriculum. I love teaching older children and enjoy the banter and conversations you can have with them. They are also a lot more independent! So I am slightly worried about how I will cope with younger students. Moving from year 5/6 is a big leap but I'm sticking with the idea of ‘what my year 5/6 students could do, so can these 3/4 students’ (It just may take a little more scaffolding and time).

The other change is that we are going to be working in teams rather than having our own individual class that we would teach throughout the day in our single cell rooms. I’ll still have a group of about 25 students that I will over sea for pastoral care but it won’t be like last year where I only taught those children and they were ‘my class’.

Our year 3/4 intake is big (over 100 students) therefore we have four classrooms but 5 home-bases (we have yet to work out a name for this) as two classes are going to be in one room. My concern is the odd number and how this might work. Collaboration between 5 teachers could be interesting as well as movement of over 100 students around the classes and school.

 Part of me wonders if we will break off into two groups and have 2 teachers together and the other 3 as a team.  I also wonder if we should have made a separate year 4 class with two teachers while the other 3 taught year 3. At the moment we are still trying to work this all out.

We have a tentative timetable and what we might see happening each day. Thursday seems to be the day where we will see every single student in our team (that we have called Arohanui) through the rotation of subjects we are doing. I am excited about whom I am working with and having worked this way before, I know that communication is the key. We all have expertise in different subject areas which is great but we also have our own ideas as to how a MLE could be run so we are going to have to tread carefully.

Still I have a few concerns. Maths is one of them. At the moment we are grouping students by ability and each teaching a group of students in a classroom. To me this is still what we have always done. I am not a big fan of ability setting and while in the UK we moved away from this and I enjoyed teaching mixed ability. We are trialling mixed ability lesson on Thursday which is what I will be taking (all classes during our rotation day) so hopefully we can branch out if this is successful. Also how will we work this? I guess this is when I jump onto Twitter and get help from my PLN to come up with ideas.

I like change. I have always taught different topics and chopped and changed the way I teach things every year. I am looking forward to this and I know there will be a lot of hurdles we are going to have to overcome. Questions will be raised and hopefully solutions will be found.

 As we are still set up as single cell classes (some walls will be cut through but not for a while) it will be interesting to see how this work. We are lucky that two of our classrooms are big; hence we can fit up to 50 (maybe) into the one room. So I hope that we utilise this as much as we can.

The biggest thing for me is how will we teach the students so that we are moving away from the traditional way of teaching?

This year, I hope to try and blog about what is happening to me as a teacher as I grapple with year 3 and 4 students and the changes taking place in our school.

Reflection TIme

As we embrace 2015 I want to reflect on 2014 and how it went for me. Term Three, 2014 signified a whole year of teaching in NZ which also meant I could apply to become fully registered again!

I have to admit, I had a wonderful class of year 5/6 and having taught for a while now, I have to admit they are up there as one of the best classes I have ever had.

When I look back at the first day and how they were I would have never expected by the end of term 4 the majority of them would have grown in confidence and develop skills to become independent learners. They were a fantastic class to ‘experiment’ all my new ideas with as they seemed to enjoy taking on a challenge as much as I did.

What I learnt the most is things take time and one big change can be better than a million of small ones.

 I started in Term 2 with a lot of the ideas I had gathered from other teachers off Twitter, through their blogs or from my own readings and research. I will admit I was so excited to be able to ‘change’ a lot of what I was doing, I probably went in a little too fast. I had to remind myself that most of these students were used to a very different way of teaching and learning but I also had parents to contend with. Boy, did it take a while. I have to admit I had my doubts at times. I’m impatient and I have high expectations of myself so I thought by Term 3 it would be perfect!

Looking back now, there were a lot of very small changes happening to each individual student. It wasn’t until I had relief teachers in the room and through their comments I began to see this. From then on, I sat back (now and then), watched and listened to the students during lesson time and this really did inform me a lot!

Communication was the key.

Whatever I changed or did differently in class it was important to also keep my parents informed and explain my reasoning. This worked ok. I would send a letter home, write in certain student’s diaries and also communicate via our class page so they could access information at home. We are yet to trial allowing parents to email us personally and there were times I wish I had been able to do this. Also, I wish I had ‘opened’ up the classroom each term so parents could have had the chance to visit and ask questions. One idea could have been having an open evening in week two of every term so parents could come and find out about what was happening.

Also communication with my class was important. Each term we reflected on what worked and what didn’t. As well as what did they want to do differently? They articulated their thoughts and ideas so well even to the point they would talk to each other to find answers or solutions.

What I found interesting was how sometimes what I thought they would like, they didn’t. Two things that really surprised me were; they didn’t like sitting on the floor even with cushions and they were not a fan of low tables.

Realisation

I had to accept and realise that not all my students would get there- ‘yet’. There were still those who needed more of a structured timetable and others who were able to plan their whole week independently. To be honest that was ok with me as I had seen the small changes in them and knew they would get there just it would take a little longer.

The best moments were seeing the changes in my students who relied on mum and dad a lot in the first term. Some were now even planning their whole day independently and had made huge leaps and bounds academically.

We made a Zoo

This term as well as trialling the timetables, I decided to get back to what I liked- cross curriculum learning. This was a MUST when I was teaching in the UK alongside cross curriculum writing (as to be honest writing is not just happening in a literacy lesson) and I loved teaching this way.

Our Topic this term was ‘The Zoo’ so this was ideal as there was so many different ways to approach this. This time I let the students decide for me what they wanted to do. I outlined what was going to happen in Term Four and what our ‘focus’ was. This way they had something to start off with and I was also following what the school had put in place.

They all branched off into groups and talked about what they wanted to know, learn and questions they had. I had to admit some of the ideas and questions were great and even had me thinking. I have to be honest; their question has developed so much throughout the year. They tend now to ask thought provoking ones rather than the basic closed questions. This was also observed by our Educator at Orana Park, who was ‘blown’ away with the questions my class asked while visiting. She actually made a point of thanking them as she had thoroughly enjoyed all the types of questions they had asked!

When we came back, they told me what they wanted to know and find out. We then discussed how we could incorporate this into the lessons we had to teach each day. As we set for maths we missed that one out but students in my class who were also in my maths set decided we should make our maths cross curriculum so we did!

In the end the class decided that they wanted to all research an animal and design a shelter for it. We decided Non Chronological reports would suit this very well but they also wanted to write a poem and try and develop a story (if we had time). Art we were working on collages so a collage of the animal was obvious!  Everything else, we tried to adapt to fit into the ‘Zoo’ theme where possible. We also learnt that not all subjects had a link and that it was better to carry on with what was already set in place rather than try and make it fit.

Term 4 is always a busy term and we had planned to work with our buddy class (year 2’s) on doing this topic together. We started off well and would meet with them once a week to share what we had found out all ready but as the term went on and year 6’s went on their orientation days to their intermediates, teacher were out of class and ‘other’ things popped up, it began to get a little harder to do.

Because we had been working on our own timetables, I adapted this slightly to fit in whole class teaching and group teaching times. This usually was at the beginning of the week where I went through things I felt that it was better to have the ‘whole’ together rather than in small groups. Then I spilt them into groups and would work with them all throughout the week. This worked great and it meant that for the rest of the time they could spend it on what subject area they wanted to. So while I may have been taking writing groups, some would be doing their own writing, art, blogging, designing their shelters etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and so did the class. They would even stay in class during break to carry on working. You can always tell when things are working well, when other students from other classes keep visiting every day to see what was happening in the room.

In the end I was so proud of my class that we invited all the other classes to come and see what they had done. They all choose a class to write an invitation to. Once again cross curriculum learning!

On the day, they set up their area and as the classes came through, they spoke to them and shared with them what they had learnt about their animal. Once again my class did me proud.

 

Term 3 Reflections.

Last week the class reflected on what Term 3 was like in our classroom.

We used three criteria's:

• What worked in Term ?
• What didn't work?
• What did we want to see in Term 4?

Students opted to work on their own or in groups of their own choice. The conservations I over heard were amazing. My students were really reflecting about the three questions and the language they were using made me feel so proud. Words like, self manager, independent, options, student voice could be heard throughout their conversations.

I wanted to punch the air as it finally seemed to all be working.

One BIG issue I have had with all of this change is how long it 'seems' to take. It wasn't a 'quick' fix and there were times I wondered if it was all going to work. I guess I thought all children by now should be 'self managers' and it has taken me a while to realise that this isn't always going to be the case.  There are still some students in my class who are 'directed' learners. I would say 2 definitely and another 3 now and them. So I guess out of a class of 26 that is pretty good. I think until I did this Term 3 reflection. It wasn't until I heard them discussing and talking about the questions did I realise how far they had come.  Rather than just say 'this didn't work"   they were trying hard to find alternative solutions and working with other groups to gather ideas.

Timetables

This term in the classroom we are learning to use timetables to decided what we will be doing each day.
We started this week and it seemed to go pretty well. There are already a few changes I know I need to make for next week but overall I am very impressed at how the class adapted to this so fast.

We have had a busy start to the term as we have had Athletics day as well as Softball training so it has meant that our hours of independent work has dramatically decreased.

Each Monday students will take their own timetable and review my timetable which will be on the IWB. By doing this, they can see what is happening during the week that are compulsory and when they will meet me for reading and writing groups. Once they have been pencilled in, they then look at their MUST/ CAN activities and decide when they are going to do them.

MUST activities are compulsory and tend not to change week to week. It usually is, touch typing/handwriting ( handwriting books for a small group only), spelling, reading, timetables, 100WC and a science question. Then I add in others that are relevant to their Topic for the term.

CAN activities are a range  activities that they do to help consolidate their learning. Most are linked to maths, art, music etc and some link to our Topic  Some of the class are doing their own choice and therefore don't complete the CAN'S. This is a small group of students who have shown that they are 100% self managers and therefore I have given them the chance to decide on their own learning during these times.

Changes:
I will divide the timetable into 30 minutes slots as students tended to only write one activity in.
I will add in all the MUST's for my 'directed' students which will be at the beginning of the week. (rest can decide when and where they put them as they understand they need to be completed by the end of the week).
Make sure I have seen everyone's Timetable by the end of class on a Monday.

Althletics

With the onset of Athletics day looming, our syndicate goes out together so children get the opportunity to practice the track and field events every day. I like that the children have this opportunity to work on their skills, participate and have some friendly competition. Yet how it used to be taught in the past even bored me. Therefore if I’m bored surely the students are as well? Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti PE and do love being outside, but to me it just wasn’t working. We tended to move around in our classes and spend up to 30 minutes on one chosen item. Trying to engage a whole class, teach them skills and then let them work on this always felt rushed and disorganised. I never felt like I was making most of the opportunity or able to really teach them the proper techniques. I also had students who found certain track and field areas quite tough and a challenge. Each day they dreaded this hour with one actually avoiding school in order not to do it. Notes slowly would come in as well and athletics training felt more like a chore rather than a pleasure.

This year we decided to try and teach it in a way that was more like a MLE style that some of us have been trailing in the classrooms. We gave the students options! The first day we did this we allowed them the opportunity to visit any station they like. They had to spend at least 15 minutes there and had to do at least 3 stations. It worked ok but as teachers we still felt we didn’t really have the opportunity to teach the skills without new students coming over and some were still overcrowded.

Day two we decided to group the children into their age groups and designated two stations that were the MUST activities. Each day, two groups would go to the MUST activities and then carry on with their CAN choices. The rest of the groups had CAN activities but had to complete a certain amount in the allocated time. This worked so much better as groups were smaller and as a teacher, I felt that I had the time to teach new skills and techniques. It also meant that students had ample time to practise and work on their technique.

Feedback from my students showed that they enjoyed being given the opportunities’ to decide themselves what activities they wanted to do. My students who found athletics challenging also enjoyed it as well. Even my usual ‘absent’ one only missed one day out of the two weeks we did this! They also turned up to Athletics Day as they had realised that they had a pretty good throw on them!