I Love Teaching Conference

Alison Mooney - interesting to have four personality types, but all equally important. I think I'm a bit of a mixture but mostly "a peaceful." My character traits are easygoing, diplomatic and patient. I am a balanced, calming, levelheaded and approachable. I thought it was a great presentation and I spent most of the time thinking about the adults I know and fitting them into types, however it would be quite enlightening to fit my students into the types and come up with a plan to teach to those needs. We often talk about learning needs and character traits are just another way to look at it.

James Nottingham - P4C - Using picture books to get children to think and question more deeply. You don't have to come up with all the answers. There are a variety of benefits to why you might teach?/encourage? Philosophy in the classroom, the most relevant to me at the moment is getting participation and more focussed questioning from the children.

James Nottingham - Challenge, Wobble and Roll - This workshop brought up again, are we challenging/teaching our children or giving them the information for them to regurgitate. It made us all very aware that our perception, as teachers, is quite different from every other teacher. I need to have the children in the learning, or wobble, zone. That's the zone where the children are thinking "why can I not do it the way I know?" another interesting thought, that will be expanded upon tomorrow, is - be careful what you praise, it can get in the way of the learning zone. Isn't it interesting at Finland's educational success and yet they only have 18 hours teaching time a week. The difference - they use a model based on Vgotsky and we, in New Zealand use a model based on Piaget.

Websites:
Www.p4c.com
Www.Jamesnottingham.co.uk

Handwriting

http://www.thespec.com/living/healthfitness/article/552797--the-perks-of-handwriting

A very interesting article on handwriting. It has certainly changed my mind about how I teach handwriting because I was starting to go down the path of "once children can write the letter why bother to keep teaching them because people are writing less and less."

Discovery Time - Weather

Discovery Time - Weather on PhotoPeach

I love this woman's work!

This lady amazes me every time I watch one of her videos. She certainly inspires me to continue along the whole brain teaching path - which I have just begun. I think my next steps are to adapt and introduce a 'quiet riot' and also I really need to introduce the 'switch.' What I also like about this is that I can do an assessment on the whole class by simply asking all the children to put their heads down and asking questions. I don't know why I've never thought of that before!

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!

Shift happens

Whole Brain Teaching

At the beginning of this term I decided to implement Whole Brain Teaching strategies that I had been looking into and researching only for a little while.
I have found that the children are more engaged and are cementing their learning a little more than they were. It has made me more aware of my teaching strategies and different learning needs within the classroom. So far it has had a very positive effect.
I have so far used the 5 rules, class-yes, teach-ok, and the scoreboard with the 'mighty oh yeah' and the 'mighty groan'. After initially learning these, we have spent the rest of the week with reminders about how they work and the expectations - just a ONE second party, no longer!
The scoreboard in particular is a very powerful tool.... when I remember to use it. And also the difficulty is that it is on the board and often I'm not stationed near the scoreboard.
However, we will keep persevering and I'm sure it will be very effective.

If you have not seen or heard of whole brain teaching (aka power teaching) then I suggest you check out the website, but first search 'whole brain teaching' on you tube and watch a couple of clips.