Talented Young Writers' Workshop

What a privilege it is to be part of the Canterbury Literacy Association and the amazing opportunities they provide for education in Canterbury.

As a committee member, I got to spend the day at the Talented Young Illustrators' Workshop at Ferrymead. This day is designed as an opportunity for schools to put forward students with special skills and a special interest in illustrating. The two students that attended from my school were very excited about the day - and it exceeded their expectations.

I felt the same way!

The day started with Gavin Bishop who taught us all about understanding just what goes into a picture book. It's like an iceburg - most of the work is behind the scenes. Picture books have restrictions that novels don't and it takes a lot of thought to overcome those.

It turns out that a picture book has 32 pages all because of money! 32 pages fit on piece of paper. End papers do not count as the 32 pages but are part of the binding of a hard cover book. Page 1 and 32 are the only 'single' pages in a book, and the rest are 'double-page spreads'.

Illustrations begin with a story board, where double pages are designed together to compliment each other. The storyboard plans everything - including covers and titles. Consideration has to be given most importantly to the words - you don't want them crowded out by the illustrations. The illustrations for Gavin's Book 'Rat's' took six months. A book can take over a year from go to whoa - sometimes several years.

Pictures are so important to these stories. They fill out the story and sometimes introduce a new sub-story that you may not even notice the first time you read it. Take for example the page of rats that reads, "They invaded her bath." How many words would you need to describe that picture? 

Not only do you need to read the words - but also read the pictures. 

The students finished this workshop with the challenge to create an opening image for the nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence.'


I also really enjoyed listening to David Elliot - especially about his time working as a Zoo gatekeeper and living at the zoo - using that as inspiration for his art. He started making plasticine animals and began drawing them the way he made them - start with blobs then pinch, squeeze, pinch - add bits on and take bits off until you have a finished product.

David talked about using quiet lines to start the basic shape of your drawing and getting louder as you add the detail on each layer.

Most importantly her talked about not being afraid to make mistakes. Just make mistakes and think 'how can I make my mistake better?' A drawing is about half what you want it to be and half what it tells you it wants to be.

He also talked that he also uses this technique for writing. Start with an outline and re-write and mould it.



Our last workshop was with Stuart Hale, who talked us through taking amazing photos with an iPad. Rule one - turn your grid-lines on. Rule two - follow the rule of thirds rule. We had great fun taking photos and hunting for the Alphabet in nature!

A busy year! Time to get back into blogging....

Wow! Term three due to start already. Time has really flown this year and I've had so many amazing opportunities thrown at me - it's been remarkable.


But before I go into all my reflection (catching up in one big long go), I think it is necessary to reflect upon the goals I set myself at the beginning of the year.


Goals:
1 Get Place Value teaching and assessing under tighter scrutinyAssessment has definitely improved and with that comes more awareness of needs. I have managed to focus more explicit teaching in this area - with noticeable results for some students.

2 Focus more on explicit teaching of reading strategies.Still an area in progress according to the classes end of term reflection. Students could confidently tell me what they had learned in writing and maths but found reading much more difficult. Time to pull out the modelling book more frequently!

3 Maintain and continue developing on-line collaboration and connections
Yes and no - along with blogging, Twitter has taken a back seat as far as contributing goes. I need to keep working on this. I did make it to Educamp Dunners but unfortunately not to my own hometown Educamp! I can only hope the opportunity comes up later in the year again.

4 Improve recording and collation of summative data
Happening! (Yay!) And across all curriculum areas.

5 Be nominated and successful in the position of staff representative on the Board
Done.

6 If possible, get a management unit - or at least run my responsibilities like I deserve it!
Done.

7 Jog 5km (I'm realistic, not Superwoman)
I WAS getting there, and then winter and reports happened and I discovered it's not fun to run in the dark.

8 >10.2.68 (Yes, this is cryptic...)
Needs attention.

9 Take up a new evening course or activityDone - and I'm thoroughly enjoying learning and creating in my acrylic and mixed media class.

10 Chill out and take more time for myself
Getting there. Some times are better than others.



Term three looks to bring better teaching practice within the classroom, especially in the areas of literacy.


Early in the year I identified that many of my students needed help with listening to sounds to aid their spelling and also, for many, their decoding. Having done my degree in linguistics I had a fair idea that it was their phonological awareness that was letting them down and so I needed to put into place a phonics programme. Most of the teachers within the school have attended Yolanda Soryl workshops and so my request to attend one myself was happily received. Yolanda still teaches (now as reading recovery), as well as runs her workshops and produces her fantastic resources. That meant a bit of a wait for one of her extremely popular workshops - so I spent some of my release time observing and reading up on how to implement the lessons. From there, I was able to develop my own basic programme and now that I've had the training I can refine my lessons further. I've also decided to timetable in short periods during the week to focus purely on listening to sounds (phonological awareness).

I felt for many of my students that there needs were very basic and were 'gaps' that needed consolidating. Not having experience myself in the junior area of the school, I had to grapple for a little bit, wondering the most efficient and beneficial way of introducing these. It was great timing that Jill Eggleton was to be presenting 'Lighting the Literacy Fire' - with a focus on Reading. She covered some of what I knew - oral language, keep it simple, embedding comprehension, and focusing on vocabulary - but gave practical and effective ways of delivering all of this each day. For me, it was one simple book. To have a shared book, everyday, without fail and a clear, consistent plan of what gets covered each day. Every week since that workshop I have had a shared book or poem and it's so obvious now the benefits it has had. The children are transferring the learning to their guided reading groups and their writing, AND verbalising what they are doing and how they know to do it!!! 

"Reading is making sense. Not sounds." 

--Jill Eggleton--

I loved that Jill Eggleton was pro banning worksheets, however, I did question where eLearning and future focused learning comes into her model. I was taken back to the iPads in Literacy presentation by Stuart Hale, that was put on by the Canterbury Literacy Society earlier in the year. One of the first things he encouraged was for the teacher to engage with the technology them self. If you become a user, you become a pusher. He believes (as do I) that schools can not be the last place to know the future. He spoke of many apps and ways to use iPads for literature based activities (Wordbook, Piccollage, Stripdesigner, Lifecards, Puppetpals, Book Creator, Tinytap, Amazon). He emphasised though, that devices are designed to be personal - so ultimately schools should be heading towards BYOD. And I know that many are. In line with the e-learning planning framework, my take-a-way was that use of iPads and devices should be moving away from the emerging, engaging stage and towards the extending and empowering. That means allowing students to use higher-order thinking to be creative (use creativity apps) with their devices.

All of this learning was topped off, with an amazing opportunity to attend the New Zealand Literacy Association annual conference (thanks to both the Auckland and Canterbury Literacy Associations for their sponsorship.) The best part of attending a conference such as this is being with like-minded people and, this time, the wealth of knowledge and experience from both the presenters and the attendees in the room. 

The plenary highlight, for me, was Steven Layne. He spoke of sparking a flame for reading - and fanning it. He talked about fires within the classroom.

• The Bonfire - controlled and has to be prepared prior, needing the right tools, materials and place.
• The Flash fire - very sudden and occurs when two combustible materials come together (certain child + certain book).
• The Wild fire - uncontrolled, unexpected and often happens by accident.

He finished by telling us a story about a child he had taught early in his career who had said to him "You guys have made all the decisions before we even show up, you don't care what we're interested in." Steven changed his approach because of this statement, and it made me think about my approach. In general, I think in New Zealand we are pretty flexible and well resourced to be able to do this. My personality tends to usually fit the 'bonfire' profile. I'm a planner and I need to know the direction I'm going. I have to ask myself, do I allow enough room for change within my plans once I get to know my children?

My workshop highlight was Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey introducing their new book - The Writing Book. They spoke about children having a writers tool box - the skills and knowledge. The spoke of the importance of generating ideas and providing support with this, QuickWrites, their burger model, showing children how to plan, QuickStops, responding to writing and improving writing (may only be one or two things). Children should know what they're learning, be able to find examples in their own writing, improve their own writing, talk about their successes and next steps and feel like an author by sharing their writing. From listening to Sheena and Louise and referring to their book, there are a lot of things I do well. My next steps with writing is to provide more opportunities for my students to feel like authors. I also think that sometimes I'm a little too hard on my writers and could do with scaffolding some of them a little more with their structure and editing.

So, it's a continuing literacy journey. I'm also lucky within this first half of the year to have gained my first aid certificate, have a first year student teacher (to return again later in the year), be elected to the BOT and to attend a Sport Start course provided by Sport Canterbury to implement their programme into our school/syndicate. Sport Start is focused around teaching students strategies and generic skills instead of specific games and units such as 'small balls'. 

I hope that the remainder of the year is as enlightening as the first half. I look forward to the term ahead - being only nine weeks, I'm sure it will fly by!

Reflection upon term 3

Well, we've now had two full weeks in our changed classroom and it seems to be ticking along quite nicely. I'm enjoying having the freedom of literacy workshops - it feels more flexible and that if I need to spend a little more time with a group, or a particular child I can do that. I feel I have better tabs on where everyone is at and where they are going. I would say though, that all of my targeted workshops are based on hard assessment and I think that is important.

The six page plan is actually working very well and as long I have a direction in mind for the week, it's not hard to whip up the formalities throughout the week. I usually try to plan Monday-Tuesday/Wednesday, then revisit the needs for the second part of the week.

One thing that I have noticed is that the children are often choosing diffferent places to sit, but not neccessarily different people. I have started taking short videos around the class so I can analyse them a bit more - but my first step is to give more direction about choosing sensible people to sit beside. Many of the children have identified this as an area of need for them.

I think the children are enjoying more responsibility and are generally stepping up to the mark (today was hopefully a one-off!). We are doing a Friday review for both literacy and numeracy, in the form of a WOW factor - something postive, and a Hot-Tip - something to work on. I make an effort to take those home and read them over the weekend so I clearly know where the childrens heads are at, then we re-read and remind on Monday when they glue them into their books.

The first week, the children really didn't have too much direction. So we looked at what a good reflection and goal setting was. This week, I'm blown away! (Although we still need to work on adding 'because..')

Some examples of WOW factors:

• I enjoyed sitting by other people because it helped me learn.
• I learnt to subtract by slitting numbers into parts so I could use tidy numbers.
• I enjoyed learning the three rules of speech marks.
• This week I enjoyed soing to group sessions.
• I thought my recount was cool because I used language features.
• I learnt how to jump the number line two different ways.
• I think that I made a good choice of book becasue it was very similar to the kind of person I am.

Some examples of Hot Tips:

• I need to choose to sit by myself sometimes so I can get my work done.
• I need to move onto my next times tables level.
• I need to use a ruler to rule my lines. (!!!!)
• I need to use more language features.
• I want to be more involved in reading.
• I need to sometimes sit beside a boy. (???? less distraction?)
• I need to help others by not telling them the answer.

Inspiration and wonder - an impromptu post

Earlier this evening as I was working on my relievers folder and outlines I was thinking about many of past and present colleagues, teaching friends and aquaintences etc - their strengths and weaknesses.

I was also thinking about the fact that I was working on a Friday night in the middle of the holidays (I have taken a holiday already and another next week) and how I, along with many others I know, go above and beyond to seek development, change and provide quality teaching programmes for our children.

But that also made me wonder, do you get job satisfaction from doing the bare minimum?

All of these thoughts crossed my mind before I checked my email to see that I had lots of feedback via twitter and blogger regarding my previous blog post about learning spaces.

It was so refreshing to see that others I look to as role models and inspirational colleagues are interested and care about what I'm doing too.

That gives me job satisfaction because I know I'm having professional conversations that are moving me forward to provide my students with an engaging environment and teaching programme. It also engages me. I have job satisfaction - I love my job as a teacher.

But it still doesn't answer my question. Chances are, if you're reading this, then you too, do more than the minimum. But do you know someone who does? Are they happy in thier work?

Personalised/Independent Learning

I've been trialing with my Year 4/5 students independent learning. Many other teachers call this personalised learning, as I did too when I first started using the concept. I'm still not sure that independent or personalised are the best words to describe how this looks in my class. I'm still working on the ultimate name..... differentiated, specialised, customised, individualised..... self-directed, targeted....

At the moment, I'm running this time during my reading block. While I'm teaching my reading groups, the rest of the children are completing word study, handwriting, journal writing and blogging tasks. At the beginning of the week I present the children with a list of must-dos and can dos. I have found that many of the children in the class can successfully manage thier time and begin completing the can-do tasks. However, some don't even get half of their must-dos done because they don't yet have the concept of time-management.

The other problem I was having was that often things would crop up during the week and they would not be on the list, and by the following week the idea was 'out of date.' This was temporalily fixed by leaving space on the list for tasks to be added to. Or, school events and class tasks for specific students would crop up and by Friday there was not enough time for many of the tasks to be completed. This left the students feeling like they had underachieved and not rewarded for their hard work because they had not got to the can-do activities. What to do.?.?.?.

Fortunately, a very timely opportunity came up for me to go and listen to some interesting 10 minute presentations at a CAGE (gifted education) meeting. Here, I heard the amazing reports of year 2 students successfully completing daily timetables. These students were then spending time each Friday to reflect upon thier time coming up with a WOW factor, and a Hot Tip (next step). Then they would set a goal and write a letter home informing their parents of thier goal.

A year 3-4 teacher was doing something very similar with her students. Each day she presents must-dos and WILDs (What I'd Like to Do) to her students via Edmodo. The students were then able to upload their work the site and parents could access it via home as. This teacher also talked about James Nottingham's Learning Pit. Her class instead, had a Tightrope for Learning which was represented by a string across part of the room where each child had thier photo joined to a body. By pegging themselves upright the teacher could clearly see who was finding things too easy and could then approach the student to put them in the wobbling zone - pegged sideways. If the child was upside-down the teacher could clearly see they had fallen off, again, indicating to the teacher she needed to make time to catch up with that student. I love this idea and I think it would effectively within a classroom.

Next steps...

• Build in a Friday reflection and goal setting
• Utilise our school Ultranet site to present daily tasks
• Include more 'fun' personal experience can-dos

EduCamp Dunners = AMAZINGNESS!

Wow! My mind has been blown. What a great day at EducampDunners 2012.

The days highlights for me:

• Meeting a new colleague from the Canterbury region and discovering EduCampChch is happening very soon!
• Gawker - classroom timelapse, great way to assess on-taskness, cliques, 'attractive' areas of the classroom
• Teach cybersmart instead of cybersafe
• Learning about Daily 5 and CAFE, some concepts worth adopting, in particular stamina and developing learning stamina + indepence aspects and children self-managing literacy times
• Sharing about inter-city ebuddies via skype and using writing as the vehicle (learning intentions and giving feedback), and later having a discussion with someone who admired the idea and referred to it as a long-distance super-classroom
• Talking about and seeing a flexible learning spaces within a classroom (I just love the concept of flexible learning spaces!)
• Touring classrooms and absorbing effective classroom practice - reflected by the actual classroom space and displays
• Catching up with a fellow colleague (now e-colleague), and planning our next steps for our e-buddy (skyping) classes

My do-able next steps:

• De-clutter the classroom and remove my desk space
• Create visual for "iPICK good fit books"
• Pitch some cost effective ideas and fundraising ideas to colleagues to up the digital learning opportunities and integration of e-learning
• "Gawk" into the classroom

My future dreams:

• Replace most of the childrens desks with tables and provide tote-tray type storage areas

Jill Eggleton - Writing Course

For me, one of the biggest everyday occurences that I stuggle with is teaching writing. I'm forever looking for the best way! I don't know why writing is so challenging - but what I do know, is that I'm not the only person who finds it to be like this.
Is it because children work at such different paces? Is it because there are sooooo many different needs? Is it because it's not a black and white science? Is it that I havn't found/adapted/produced enough meaningful writing activities? Is it harder to teach writing in the senior school? (My theory to this one is yes.....) Or, is it just me?

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go to a writing conference by literacy guru Jill Eggleton. It was eyeopening and helpful in many ways. (Unfortunately, my biggest challenge has not been solved - I will continue to fight the groups/not groups, fixed/flexible groups, timing issue.) I had four major take-outs:

• quality not quantity, encourage short pieces of writing that can be well re-crafted (also, length puts a lot of children off)
• there is no good writing, only good re-crafting
• Writing is about a message - always positively feedback to this. Writing isn't spelling.
• You shouldn't DO writing. Instead, writing should have a meaningful context. Eg, "We are going to try and convince the principal that we should wear mufti, so to do this we need to use the structures and features of an exposition/persuasion." OR "We are going to be learning about the moon. In order to present our information, we need to know and use the features of report."

Where to from here?

• adpat my approach to writing to meet the above
• create a level 2/3 tick list of success criteria that each child can have in the back of thier book and tick off each time they achieve. Eg, I can write in compound sentences.

Restorative Justice

My school is looking into putting restorative justice principles into place. I'm undecided what I think about this - I think it's more the name than the principles that put me off. It's going to be an interesting process for me and I know that I need to go into this with an open mind and some idea of how it could work for me. (Maybe just call it something else?!?!)

My current beliefs on behaviour management are (and I feel most teachers are similar):

• Put into place good structures and expectations
• Positive praise for target behaviours and celebrations
• It's all to easy to forget the 'good' children, when the 'tough' ones demand more attention - it's important to make an effort to balance this
• Re-direct children before the behaviour occurs (if possible)
• Give children a chance to be responsible and make choices
• Teach what good/expected behaviour is at school (maybe it's different at home)
• If a punishment is absolutley neccessary, make it relate to the 'crime' (eg, if Johnny is climbing the trees when he shouldn't be, the next play time he needs to play in a particular area where there are no trees)

I have found this article which is the start of my research.
http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume2_issue2/carroll_lind.pdf

Awesome Learning Spaces

Sweden
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/swedens-classroom-free-school-the-future-of-education.html

On the road to providing outstanding personalized learning with flexible learning spaces

Although an advert for furniture, it poses some good questions that need some thought before I dive right in!

What  type of learning do you want to encouage?

Who should use the spaces?

How will furniture and ICT be used and configured?

Can staff visualise what it will be like to work in the spaces?

Although many of these videos are aimed at older levels, I believe the principles still transfer to primary school level. I'm excited to get this project going and to modify and adapt as I need to.

I think it is so important to recognise childrens needs, wants and styles (to achieve as well rounded citizens who can take on the world at anything they desire!) We don't expect adults to fit one mould, and we should never expect children too.



Educamp Invers

http://educampinvers2011.wikispaces.com



Above is the link to the Wikispace, which will also take you to the shared notes.


This was my first 'unconference conference' and I was a little apprehensive of what was going to happen. However, it turned out to be a very useful and inspiring day. The day started with a 'smackdown' which was a chance to share any 'gems' that had been using in your class or pearls of wisdom. This was followed by a general discussion about whatever came up. Very informal, which I think was helpful because it cut down the barriers of self-conciousness. 




Biggest take-outs and where to:

• Incredibox is a great website to encourage students creativity. I think I will leave it up for the students to have a play with, but I would also like to base a music lesson around it somehow.
• Google-Docs as a tool for writers. It allows students to add to their writing at home, it allows the teacher to leave comments from home without lugging home writing books, it allows reluctant writers to write without barriers (write bullet points then link them all together in a story). I would like to introduce this with just a couple of students to start with before introducing to the whole class. Using this method means you need to have reliable internet access with probably one computer between two or three students.
• Networking and putting faces to 'tweeters.' 

Will I attend another Educamp? Without a doubt!

iPad, iPod touch and iCloud training

What an interesting afternoon! So much information today, I hope I can get it all written out in a sensible way. Fortunately we were given a folder of information to support what else we learnt.

iCloud and Cloud Computing
Sounds fantastic. Instead of having one central device that you have to transfer things from one device to another (often using iTunes), cloud computing means that when you download an application it will be stored in the cloud and automatically sync to all of your devices you have linked to it! That saves a lot of time. Also comes with 5MB (or GB?!?!?) of free data storage and I believe that is exclusive of music... I'll have to look into this much further as it sounds amazing.
I do have some hesitations and questions though at this stage -
1.   From what I can tell from the apple.com website, all new devices will automatically have cloud computing, but I'm wondering how do you go about connecting existing devices?
2.   I currently use my work laptop for some personal use - does this mean that if I download something for me personally it will go to the 'work cloud' or can I sort things into different clouds.
3.   I'm currently looking at getting a new personal lap-top and tossing up between a Mac or a PC. At this stage I would love to go with a PC (cost + I really just need the basics for personal use) so can I still use an iCloud off a PC like you can with iTunes?

iPad and iPod touch in the classroom
BYOD = bring your own device
Sounds brilliant, and going to become more accessible with cloud computing as you won't have to have a central device in which you use iTunes to download all your apps like you currently do. So how do you monitor and effectively incorporate BYOD into the classroom?
Easy! See the iPod touch section of Berkley Intermediate School's website. Berkely Intermediate iPods in schools

Such potential! I think I'll have to add an iPod touch to my wish list, and as for the iPad, it will be great to be able to put some more applications to use on them.

EITC - for the teacher!

Today I visited another school with the focus of looking at their literacy programme. And what an enlightening morning! It's always great to see what others are doing. First, because there is always the chance to learn, improve and try new things (sharing! what a wonderful concept) and secondly, because it helps you to realise that there are areas that you are doing ok in!

Reading: This school streamed for reading and I observed two classes; "the lowbies" and "a bit higher." 

The lowbies: the purpose of the reading programme in this room was to encourage stimulating material to interest and encourage reading. The children were in a 'social' group and a reading group (as I do now, except my purpose is based around behaviour). The social group followed rotations such as browsing boxes, listening post, free choice, grammar activities (word finds, cross words etc - books of them that you can pick up at reasonable prices), www.starfall.com, and blogging. The teacher pulled out reading groups as required. The structure of what I saw in this class was similar to what I plan for my own class.
The class environment was more stimulating for reading, and this is probably what I need to set up better. The interactive whiteboard displayed Sheena Cameron's "What do good readers do?" the whole time. I didn't see it referred to by the teacher, but there was also a copy printed on the wall by the task board and I understand the children refer to it independently. The wall was also set up with all the strategies and prompt cards that the children could take and use at their desks independently. A strategy card (one only - WALT) was placed on the teaching table in front of each child as well for the child to refer to.

A bit higher: these students can cope with a bit more writing so had lots of text based activities on the go. Rotations included wordfind, picture story, writing short story from photo, blogging, browsing boxes, story pyramid, retell, free reading, spelling words and sentences, new vocab, www.imagechef.com - word magic (with vocab words) and specific activities relating to group reading. Groups were included in the taskboard to see the teacher. Guided reading sessions included some time to share what they had been doing etc. One group had been writing stories relating to what they had read so for their teacher time they had to talk about what they had written and then as a group they discussed vocab etc.

Where to for me?

I think because of the behaviour and learning needs in my class I need to keep my rotations as reading based and pretty basic. However, for my higher end groups I need to start giving them extra activities that relate to their reading - especially vocabulary based activities. I also think that one of my rotations needs to be grammar based activities - so I need to get my hands on some 'activity books.'

Writing: A year 4 class

Lesson started with recap of yesterdays WALT and then books were handed out so children could look and reflect upon what they had achieved.
Todays focus: Dictionary Skills and Proofreading
Lots of great use using the Interactive Whiteboard and Active Inspire.
- Alphabetical Order
- Spelling Corrections
- Child's sample of work, get it started with editing

"Proofreading is all about doing your writing slowly."

Where to next?

Don't expect the children to write everyday!!! Take time to teach editing and give the children time to work through it with some guidance. Also, set up writing buddies to critically analyse. This will take time to set up guidelines and expectations so the children are giving worthwhile feedback and feedforward.

Teacher Inquiry Observation

My teacher inquiry is focussed on increasing the levels of surface features in writing. One of the ways I have been doing this is to introduce Whole Brain Teaching. I know that this strategy can be applied across the curriculum, however, as it is new to me I want to do it small but do it right first.

Anyhow, today I had an observation focussed on my teacher inquiry. I asked the observer to focus mostly on the WBT strategy. She was impressed. I was also very impressed. Today was the day that I had the best WBT session of the term. And the results were amazing! She couldn't get over the student engagement and the focus in the room. Not only that but the success that the children were having was HUGE. One girl in particular who can be a wee bit slower to pick up concepts, was so onto it! (The observer could tell I was super surprised but stoked about her immediate success!)

A great lesson and I can't wait to continue with WBT!

Charter schools $125k experiment

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7359538n

Check out this link.

Marva Collins

Have just been given the book "Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Teachers" by Marva Collins. Have only read the introduction and already I'm inspired.

Children don't fail.....

Reading back on placement notes........

I have decided to have a cleanout of all my college stuff, thought I'd read over it and anything I find interesting (food for thought) that I want to think about again, here seems a good place to put it - takes up a whole lot less space than my ring binders!!!!!

Notes from 1st placement: teacher said she provides homework but is completely optional as she doesn't believe she has the right to be telling parents what to do, practice singing as children transitioning between mat and desks, have laminated sheets in reading groups (with title, author, setting, characters, problem, solution, new words, interesting) so that fast readers have something to do when rest are finishing off), have a wonderings scrapbook where children can write any questions they like and at a time during the week the teacher will try to answer them/show skills to find answers, when counting in groups of 2, 5, 10 etc keep a rhythm to help with fluency.

Notes from 2nd placement: Really I'm just having a laugh! My notes are all just a big rant of what not to do as a teacher, and thankfully I haven't done any of those things yet, I don't think.

Notes from 3rd placement: heart of achievement - steps into the middle then get to choose a prize from pre-defined prize list, top group for week (using group points) get to move one space in heart of achievement, give a goal for Monday journal - don't want children to just write a recount of their weekend, read mark beside name for undesirable behaviour, target 10 - when whole class doing desired behaviour green dot in specified part of the board - when get 10 it's game time - start fresh each week, basic facts grid timed - children call out stop and teacher tells time for them to record - tick each line if all correct - circle ones got wrong, when a child is talking over they stand up, class mascot that can be a demonstration to say "Rodger has his handwriting book ready, do you?", celebration of work photocopied for everyone to look at why it is such a good piece of work, book "More Quality Circle Time" by Jenny Mosely.