What a Great invention!

Image used under CC licence.

What a great invention, the internet. Not only a great teaching and learning resource for students but a fantastic way to bridge the gap between home and school. My weapon on choice is email (slightly antiquated these days I know). Email is my lifeline to families, and with 80% of my students families on email, I love the ability to send them a quick note.
I can tell them what we are up to, remind them of upcoming things, ask for resources or just chat about their child, all at the touch of a button. Unlike a phone call - e-mail does not require the family to be home and I don't need to ring 28 times to reach everyone. I send out notes to check the new updates in the children's e-portfolios and encourage participation. Of course the uptake by parents to email is varied depending on their daily use of the tool. But still I find this invaluable.
Other teachers though can see this resource through very different eyes. They question - you give out your email address? Won't the parents bug you all the time.... I don't want to be able to be contacted outside of school hours....
My answer to them is OF COURSE! I have been giving out my email information for 4 years now - I have never had a negative email from parents, nor been bombarded. In my experience parents very rarely contact teachers on purpose to bug them. They often don't have the time. Parents do bring up concerns they are having - and they are often very genuine for them - but wouldn't you rather the parent be able to email you about them first rather than just turning up in your classroom on Monday morning and wanting to make an appointment to see you.
I have found that by opening up the lines of communication through email in positive and supportive ways first, means that often small concerns can also be dealt with this way, which is time saving and timely - no waiting to meet with the teacher till next Thursday. I can think before responding, reword what I want to say, attach information and sometimes even respond instantly. I feel sorry for the 20% who aren't on email, as I really do talk with them less as I only have texting or official 'written notes' with them, which is used quite sparingly.
And as an added bonus parents are starting to participate in school more. They email in photos of family trips, videos about bullying to share, pictures to help with current topics...
The internet truely makes my connections with parents stronger...well worth spending 5 minutes at night checking, and well worth the risk of bombardment...

Online Planning

Planning is my self confessed weakness - along with organisation, but that's another story.

Image thanks to cybrarian77 

Planning takes up time, too much time in my week. For 9 years I have tried template after template, planned in lists, in grids, tried it after school, day by day, month by month. Anyway I have seen or can think of trying to create efficient and effective teaching plans. But still hours of my week disappear in planning that never quite feels right.

This term I am trying digital planning in a shared forum - Google sites. My decision around this is because I have stopped printing all my word processed planning - as it seemed a waste of time printing, and organising into folders, bits of paper, just for my senior teacher to view for attestation. Not good time management.
So on-line I go - into a place others can view in real time with me if necessary - senior teachers, student teachers and relievers... hopefully!
Thanks to the VLN, and TaraTJ's advice and sharing of her trials, it gave me confidence to try Google sites too.

Now my task is to organise this document and transfer last terms planning over in bulk to meet expectations for attestation so far, and to then create a working document for moving forward. Thanks to Tara I have a simple way to get started and will build this from there. Keeping the ultimate goal in mind, which is saving time...  I have some trepidations. But will bravely move forward...

I have high expectations that this form of planning will help me to make some changes in my planning - like moving the time focus to planning each lesson, rather then the scheduling of the lessons. I will be looking at the sequence of lessons over a term for groups rather than week to week or day to day. Then these lessons just fit in as time allows. secondly I want to add a reflective column, with a guiding question to think about. This question will be related to the lesson and the children's attainment/self reflection. This may mean adding to this in the moment...a real challenge for me. But something I know I need to work on, getting this reflection out of my head and onto paper (still don't quite understand why this is, but will try it).

Once this is up and running I may add a link here. Wish me luck.

Great Idea #1

Great ideas often come at unexpected times - and often in teaching it is these last minute ideas that show real success with students.

Image thanks to  epSos.de  

In my class this year is an interesting lad (lets refer to as Bob). Bob is 9, and has been at our school just under a year. I am noticing that he seems to have a lot of A
spergers type tendencies - he avoids groups, only likes working alone, doesn't really affiliate with "friends", avoids touch, avoids eye contact, and stresses over small things that don't bother the rest of us. He also has a great sense of humour, is smarter than his academics show and has intense interests. At the moment those intense interests involve drawing and dragons!
He is a neat kid although challenging to get 'school work' done. So the last few weeks of term I had the brainwave (I'm exaggerating a little, it was obvious really, but sometimes we are too tired to think clearly). Anyway I downloaded a few dragon apps onto the class ipad thinking I could use these as a motivator for him to get work done, and casually talked to him about them on a field trip. Over a 20minute walk to a nearby school, he and I had negotiated his written language programme for the next week. He was going to use one of the apps to make an image, and then create a story to go with it (simple stuff really). And he was going to do this even when I was on release....

Yeah right! I thought. I was sure he would be sidetracked by playing with the dragons and never decide on a picture, and never come up with a story unaided...

Boy did he prove me wrong. He reminded me everyday, asking when he could start. He chose a friend to help him take the picture (to promote him working with others), he went outside and was back within 10mins with 4 pictures. He asked me my advice on which suited his story idea the best, we cropped it together. Done! The next day I was on release. The day after he came to me with his finished story about a dragon attacking the school. he went on to publishing this - via computer as he decided that was tidier.

He showed me that with a good idea, some trust, some negotiation and time, children can achieve. Where do I take this next? Now I know he can work like this, now I need to negotiate in the learning focus for his writing, and give him skills to check himself against this.

The spin off - Bob became a role model for another low achieving boy in the class who has high absenteeism. The next day this boy wrote a 3 page dragon story inspired by Bob. He usually only wrote a sentence. I let Bob know this, and now Bob's status in the room has been increased - and he talked about being an inspiration for days.

A great idea - a great outcome!