How time Flies...

A year came and went... and now I find myself suddenly in 2015. Last year was a great year. I was fortunate to be allowed to teach a new entrant class. It was a year of awesome learning.


- Team teaching taught me that two is better than one. Teaching together with an experienced new entrant teacher made my transition to this age group seemless. I was able to build on my teaching philosophy with a likeminded peer, who instilled in me her knowledge and belief in the value of play. We complimented each other with our teaching strengths, and had an amazing time.


- Five years olds taught be about the power of the human brain. Boy, do five year olds learn a lot in just 10 months of school. I feel all teachers should feel the success you feel as a teacher when these little sponges suck up all the information you can put out there. I can't wait to see how these children grow through out all their years at school.


- My inquiry in Maths taught me that five year olds can go beyond what is expected of them. By focusing on remembering an using basic facts, my five year olds we able to start thinking in patterns, and using information they knew to solve problems. Very exciting. I am hoping to test my ideas of skipping past counting on, by promoting use of facts straight from the start, again this year with my year 3 maths class.


- My colleagues taught me that teachers are resilient, risk takers, who are modelling these traits to their classes. I was very pleased to hear that all the year 5/6 teachers(my team I had just left) were willing to throw their hats in and have a go at using GAFE for the first time with their students, and manage individual student blogs. The learning curve was enormous for some... but they made it through with each others support, and said they would never go back.


- I taught myself that teaching can still take a backseat to life. Through having another teacher to share paperwork and teaching with I found I got my weekends back. With two of us working hard Monday to Friday I was finally able to use my weekends for rest. This year I have looked carefully at what helped us to achieve this last year, and am attempting to implement efficient was of meeting teacher paperwork, so I can continue having my weekends to myself this year.


So that's my wrap for 2014.


let the adventures of 2015 begin...

Great idea 2

Buddy e-books - A great idea but time consuming.


We had our book unveiling today. 56 6-11 year olds huddled in our classroom. Smaller children perched on the knees of their bigger buddies, staring at the big screen, reading aloud the stories they had written. What a great whanau they have become over the year.

We read, we write, we draw, and we talk  - together.

Over 2 terms my year 5/6 students collaborated with a 6 year old buddy to write, illustrate and produce an e-book. From a small idea rose much learning. My senior students learned what true leadership meant, what collaboration, whanuangatanga, accountability, responsibility, and perseverance meant. They had to be helpful, graceful, and tolerant. It was not an easy task. There were a few moans of "Not buddy time..." but once the little buddies were present the big kids were all business.
The little buddies learned about writing a narrative, breaking the parts of the story into pages, taking photos with the ipad, creating illustrations that matched, and how to use powerpoint to publish. Some little buddies also learned that sometimes they have to be a responsible one and keep their team on track.

The Tuakana- teina relationships we developed over the year are valuable to both young and slightly older students . They take care of each others buddies when someone is away. Every year I try to foster this relationship over learning and it always has pleasing results.

Term 3 Blues

Its the beginning of term 3 - winter is with us (although the weather has been pretty fab) and I've got the Term 3 blues.
The beginning of terms are usually an exciting time. You are refreshed after a break, you have ruminated new ideas over the holidays and are all ready to roll them out. Nothing has changed there - lots of ideas, things I wanted to do, try.... BUT

The enthusiasm is missing. I feel disorganised, overwhelmed, and still tired.
I have a feeling it is of my own making...too many new ideas, complicated groupings and organisational ideas that are making me feel nauseous. I have forgotten the number one rule KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid.

So what do I do.... Run with the new ideas, start them and see how it goes, or forget about them and simplify? What goes and what stays?
I feel this is the decision that will keep me awake tonight...fingerscrossed the decision comes to me and the light at the end of the blues is just around the corner.

Reading rocks - (daily 5)

After coming across daily 5 early last year, I became excited. I had been looking for a way to do reading time in the classroom justice. A way to incorporate reading to, silent reading, skills work and teaching sessions. Daily 5, and "the sisters" ideas just made sense to me.

So last year I decided to give it a go and began,  the quite long journey, to train the children how to become independent learners. I followed "the Daily Five" book quite closely, using the language of reading that 'the sisters' incorporate. WOW! I was a little skeptical, but the change in my students attitude to reading was great. That was enough for me to decide that I wanted to continue a similar program this year.

Our school goal this year is to increase reading mileage, and what better way than to read. I have adjusted down to just a daily 2 so far - read to self and read to someone. It took a long time to establish the routines in term one, we had camp, my weekly release, Easter and then I was off school for two weeks with my son. So it has been a long journey. 

But finally, this week, despite cross country practises interrupting us, we got in a few good sessions of my newly named Reading Rocks daily 2. As I looked up from the group I was working with I could see the kind of reading classroom I wanted. 6 children were bent over the yellow table with our student teacher deep in conversation about a book, 2 children were tucked in a corner reading on the iPads, 4 children were working on our 'River of words' using the words they are learning through Tune into interesting words and creating a display for everyone to add too, 4 children were quietly reading to someone and the rest had found a spot and were (on the most part) drowning out everything reading a book.

Now we haven't got this perfected by any accounts yet, as we are just developing how we should be working towards our next steps, but I had my first glimpse how daily 5 could work, and work wellwith children   leading their own learning. My only worry now is, thinking about having to restart this journey with new class the next year...

Hopefully the fact that my colleagues are beginning to become interested too, is a good sign.

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!